“A Great Unclean One, also known as a Plague Lord, a Fly Master, and a Stench Lord, is a grotesquely corpulent Greater Daemon of the Plague God Nurgle, the Chaos God of disease, death and decay.” Warhammer 40k wiki.
I remember first seeing ‘The Great Unclean One‘ in a copy of White Dwarf years ago when I was a kid and just loved the concept of the hulking mass of rotting flesh. The original idea for this was to have some sort of fight between the Great Unclean One and another GW hero character.
The first problem I found was that almost all of the GW hero characters have a type of hero pose that works for tabletop, but not for dioramas like the one I was planning. After some searching the only one I could find that fitted the idea was ‘The Changeling‘.
The only minor issue with this model was the angle the arms were posed at. If both models were on the same level the arms would be pointed at the wrong angle to the ground for a direct fight. So, my modeling buddy Elliot from The Miniature Rescue Project suggested having a raised area making the arm angle make more sense and have something conjured from the ground. The idea was to make it appear as if the Changling was conjuring something from the ground for the impending fight.
Quick side note to give credit where it is due. Elliot ended up painting The Changling, The Nurglings and Gutrot Spume. I made the landscape, painted the Great Unclean One and the skeletons,
The goals I had for this diorama were:
- The diorama was to be around 30cm x 30cm so it could fit in my display case. I also wanted it to be a larger diorama than my previous one.
- I wanted to work lighting into the model specifically having The Great Unclean One’s eyes lit along with his belly cavity.
- I wanted to do a resin pour so some type of stream needed to be carved into the MDF.
- I did not want to use any organic elements i.e. bits of branches etc, so everything would need to be hand made.
- I wanted a tree in the scene.
For the base I used three layers of MDF. My previous diorama was made from a single thick sheet and I had to carve out the electronic cavity which took a couple of hours and was a complete waste of time. So for two of the layers I cut the middle out to create the electronics cavity and then glued those to the top layer.
The basic structure of the surface was made up of XPS modeling foam and was then coated with builders plaster.
Once the basic shape of the diorama had been finished, it was time to start adding details. The first layer of details were large rocks. These were made from cheap ready mixed plaster bought from a local store for a couple of pounds. I crinkled some tin foil, spooned the plaster on to it and then let it dry. The crinkled tin foil creates a basic texture that is further developed when it has set and has been broken apart. For the river bed I used some basing sand.
The basic shape of the rockface was created using one of the attachments from my wire foam cutting tool. It turned out okay and in hindsight I would have gone with a different method to create the rockface. But, this is the first time I have tried doing a rockface sculpt and I am fairly happy with the result. Additional details were added using Games Workshop Texture Paints.
Further details were added using self adhesive grass tufts, vines that were pulled out of various scale model vine packs I bought and a few other random vegetation kits.
Once these elements were glued in place using ultra thin CA super glue, I added another layer of black paint to unify the look of the surface. Painting was a mix of airbrush and dry brushing, with smaller details being paint brushed. I used a lot of washes throughout, including the god wash that is Nuln Oil and several oil washes.
The Tree. I have never before tried to hand make a scale model tree. I looked at various options including scale model trees and 3d printed ones. The issue with all of them is that they did not have the aesthetic look I was after. I eventually settled on making one from scratch and I used Floral Craft Wire wound together and then glued into shape using CA glue. I then applied DAS clay to and then textured the clay using the edge of some broken cream crackers as that was the only thing I could find that would give the look of bark at this scale. Once that had dried I applied a layer of black paint, and then started wrapping some vines around the tree. The tree’s pose is deliberate as I wanted it to lead a viewers eye towards the middle and so that it also looked dead and creepy.
I’ve done smaller resin pours before in contained areas so this was my first attempt at a resin pour with sections that needed to be blocked off. For anyone looking to do something similar I used 3mm clear acrylic sheet and ‘No Nonsense 101 Clear General Purpose Silicone’ and the resin I used was a 1L Funxim Epoxy Resin kit from amazon. So, epoxy resin does not stick Acrylic plastic. The silicon sealant will dry to the point where it will hold the acrylic sheet to the surface applied, but it does not set like glue so it is easily removed. I mixed a few drops of paint into the resin to colour it. This helped sell extra depth to the stream as well. At this stage I also cut out holes for wire access and to seat some additional models.
So the idea I had for the conjured elements was some flaming skulls. I found some Possessed Flaming Skulls from Mini Monster Mayhem and used Elliot’s 3d printer to print these out. The original three I chose had the bases cut off so I could insert them into the base and then build up some rubble around them to show that they had erupted from the ground. After printing the models I then changed my mind a bit. To give the impression that these were magical I decided to reprint them in clear resin and then light them from the underside. After seating them into the base and lighting them, I quickly worked out the 5v powered pre-wired 3mm LED’s were not going to be powerful enough to give any type of light effect. This is where the lighting turned in to pure misery as, to be honest, the effect I was going for required 12 LED’s and I simply don’t have the knowhow to wire something like that up safely. To get around this I went with some micro LED’s with the idea of drilling a hole through the middle of the models.
This did not work. Printing resin is surprisingly hard when set and I end up busting two of the models. So, the solution to this was to pull the models into Blender and then sculpt a channel through from the base to the mouth and then feed the micro LEDS into that channel and light the models from the inside. The issue I ran into was two of the skulls simply were not big enough to have a channel modelled into them so I found alternatives: The Formless Spawn again by Mini Monster Mayhem.
I still wanted to use one of the Skull models so it became a mix. Modeling the channel took a while as I had to create a channel, print the model, test to see if I could run the led through it, modify the channel, reprint the model etc etc etc. I eventually managed to get a channel through each that worked, but the issue then was trying to pass several LEDs into the channel to light different parts of the model without the incredibly thin wires bending. The technique I eventually found was to twist the LED wires giving them enough strength to be pushed around the the bends in the channels. This entire process took far longer than expected and several times I had to set the project aside as it was incredibly frustrating.
The wiring for the electronics also became a rats nest and several times I had to rewire to tidy things up. I used Blue Tack to secure the wires in place as this gave me the freedom to move the wires if I needed to. Whilst the wiring looks complicated, it isnt. DC wiring is a process of simply following the flow of positive to negative from the battery to the LED and back again. Using pre-wired LED’s removes the need in trying to work out which resistor is needed to allow the current amount of current to the LED. I used a Sparkfun LiPo Battery Charger Plus, USB-C (PRT-15217) as a battery charger and an input connector for the LED’s. I used a 1200mAh 3.7V protected LiPo Battery to power the LED’s. It is important to use a battery that has its own protection circuit as this acts as a safety mechanism to prevent over charging and over discharging, both of which can cause the battery to explode.
Overall I am happy with how this diorama turned out. There is definitely room for improvement here. The main problem I had was using fibre optics to light The Great Unclean Ones belly cavity. Fibre optics simply do not carry enough light to light something like this effectively but they do work perfectly for the eyes. As the photo below shows I had to drill in some 3mm LED’s as the model was finished and painted. This essentially put them on display. I also only needed one, and not three. I would say this is the major mistake I made, but I am still happy with the overall end result.
And as mentioned further up I would have sculpted the rock face differently. Something else I wish I had done, that I also considered but rejected, was to light the water. The lighting on the diorama is nice, but its very point specific and does not create an overall lit effect. If I had lit the water, that would have provided a good overall glow for the entire piece. This is one of those things that you can only learn with hindsight so it is something I will do for a future project.
Anyway, if you have made it this far thank you very much for reading. Below are some studio shots of the final piece.
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