Skulltaker....and Rant in GW Major

So, finally getting back to the blog.  I actually tried a few days ago, and Blogger was having issues and wouldn't save anything.  It kept telling me I had logged out.  I decided that someone didn't want me to post that day, so here I am, trying again. 

First, I need to get something off my chest.  Sometimes (more and more often) Games Workshop really irritates me!  The latest reason has to do with coverage from the various Games Day events around the world.  Last week, via a post by Mathieu Fontaine (winner of many, many Golden Demon trophies) on Facebook, I found out that there were a few photos from Games Day France (specifically Golden Demon winners) up on GW's website.  This was about 4 days after GD France.  North America Games Day was the end of July and there's still no photos up from it!  Three months!  Where is the coverage from the other Games Days?  Games Workshop, you make some really great games.  You also make some really good miniatures (don't get cocky, there's LOTS of other awesome miniatures these days.)  The way you interact with your customers/fans; not so good.  You're getting more and more competition all the time GW: better watch out, people are getting tired of dealing with you. 

Now that I've vented a little......here's some pictures of my Skulltaker-on-a-Juggernaught conversion!  I've seen a few of these over the years, and they never look right.  Always, Skulltaker is just stuck on the back of a Jugger and is balancing there like he's a circus act.  I gave him reigns to hold on to; which meant I had to swap his sword from one hand to the other.  It went smoother than I was afraid of, with only a little putty work to finish him off.  What do you think?

 I cut away the flaming skull, and then repositioned his hand so he could be holding the sword.  Swapping the sword; easy.  Repositioning the hand; tricky.  I didn't want to try sculpting an entire hand, so I carved away until I had just the hand with a cylinder shape in it that would look like the sword hilt.  I then cut the fingers at a knuckle joint and bent the hand around the "hilt."  Rebuilding the joint with intact fingers on each side of the gap wasn't too tough.

 

  Here, I had to cut the hand free from the arm so I could reposition it....without damaging his armor!  I then pinned the hand to the arm, and built a new wrist from Green Stuff.  Some plastic chains from the Skullcrusher kit finished off the look.  I'm pretty pleased with the overall look.  This was a pretty fun conversion to do.  This was my first conversion using a Finecast model.  Finecast definitely has some problems, but this project was much easier to pull off with resin as opposed to metal.  Comments?