Seeing the woods from the trees; or Barrels from Drums

I had been putting together my goblins in barrels. These goblins would be carried in barrels on the back of orc blitzers. It was fun putting the goblins together, bu the barrels themselves were proving to be hard work. Turning the rocket packs from the Stormboyz kit in to the barrel meant working with Green Stuff. So far I had tried to approaches.

The first way was to shape stripes of putty and stick them vertically to the rocket pack so it looked like planks of wood.

The individual stripes method

The second way was to roll out a sheet of green stuff and wrap it around the rocket and then press/ shape/ scrape with a sculpting tool the planks. I preferred the second method because I find it quicker and neater.

The wrap around method

So there I was working away with the putty when I had a light bulb moment. I had only recently come to the realisation that kit bashing is about using what already exists in a different way.
The Orruks kit comes with a Drummer, who I had put together as is and intended to use as a cheerleader model. The kit came with 3 drummer sets.

My light bulb moment was to look at the drum in a different way. 180 degrees different to be exact.

That my friends looks a lot like a broken barrel that a goblin would ride in.
The drum came in 2 pieces, one piece has an Orruk arm wrapped around it holding the drum. This was easy enough to saw off and file down. That rough side would go against the back of the Blitzer and be mostly hidden anyway.

I got one of the models I was going to use as a Blitzer and attached the new barrel to the back of it

 I am really pleased with how that looks. Really pleased. I can neaten up the join between the Blitzers's back and the barrel with putty, but that will be a lot less work and much easier then using the putty to the shape the barrel.

I already had made 2 barrels and there were 2 drums left in the kit so that covered all four Blitzers. My only problem was these new barrels required the goblin models to have legs, while the original two I had made need them not to have legs. That meant one goblin was shorter then necessary as I had already cut in half.

Looking desperately through my off cuts. ( When kit bashing NEVER throw anything away) I found one leg, the other was too far gone to reuse.

Looking at the model above I also felt that the pole was too long and grabber to big for the game board. It would interfere with other models on the board and quickly become annoying. So I made the pole shorter and changed the end of it.

My plan is to add a team pennant to hang off the pole. The legs wouldn't be seen, they just added height to the model so it is looking out of the barrel. I glued on a bit of sprue to act as the other leg so the model stood evenly in the barrel.

I think when it comes to painting these models I will paint the goblins separately and then glue to the barrel when both models (Blitzer and goblin) are finished.

Really happy with how the Blitzers are turning out. It makes the team more unique and gives the team character.