The bag of joy

One of the more gruesome and horrific miniatures to come out of the Rivet Head Studio recently, the Bloatthrall. He'll waddle his fat stitched up butt across the field raining death down upon its foes with style. On December 17th blisters of the Bloatthrall will hit the store shelves and I'm here to give you a quick guide on how to assembly this fella. Normally an assembly tutorial isn't that big of a deal, but if you own one of these, you'll quickly see that we have, the "Bloatthrall gap". The main body of this piece is made up of two parts that clam shell together and where they meet, we have a touch of work to do.

Needed materials

• Green Stuff
• Files
• Dremel (Optional)
• Hobby knife
• Sculpting tool (Optional)
• Micro Bar Clamp (Optional)

To merge two continents

After filing away at any seam lines, take the two main parts and dry fit them together. To lessen the amount of green stuff work that we'll need to do, we need to get the pieces as close as possible before hand. With a combination of files and a Dremel tool, I worked away at where the two pieces touched. The place where I seem to gain the most is where the arms meet on both sides. The areas close to the arms also helped out a lot. The areas where the chest overlaps and close to the bottom where the pieces meet, needed almost no work, just a little smoothing out.

After we get these two pieces as close as possible, we can start to attach them together. Mix up a little green stuff and start placing it along the connection points of one half. If you place a little extra towards the inside of the piece, this will allow you a little working material once we start to mash them together. A little work with a hobby knife can also make placement a little easier while doing this.

Once we have got our green stuff in place, start mashing the parts together. There really isn't a worry here on to much pressure being applied, as these are two very solid pieces. I even went as far as to take a micro bar clamp and crank down on the pieces to force the excess green stuff out with pressure. Rubber boots are standard on the clamping area, and these prevent damage to the metal. Once we have squeezed the pieces together to our liking, then take a sculpting tool or hobby knife and start taking off the excess from the exterior and just inside, where our round base plate will be placed. The rest on the inside, can just be mashed down with your finger to reinforce the structure.

Stitch in time

Now to do a little custom work on our piece. I was handed a little suggestion from Alfonso Falco one of the guys from the PP warehouse, about doing a few stitches on the side, similar to the bum of the Bloatthrall. The idea has a lot of flavor and potential, so I went with it on the area under the left arm, which was well suited for this. I did it in two stages with green stuff. First I laid down a small amount and mimicked the back end of the Bloatthrall, minus the stitches. While I let this cure, I rolled out a small amount of green stuff to a very thin like cord, and cut it into sections to be placed in the area that I had sculpted earlier. The thin cord like shape can be placed under a light bulb to cook if you find yourself growing impatient. A little glue and dropping the small cord pieces into the gaps creates your stitches.

On the other side, I tried a different method. When you look over the surface of the Bloatthrall, you find several areas of tight bulges that over lap continuously. I decided to replicate something similar for the area up under the right arm. This was a more simple method by taking a tear drop shape of green stuff and cutting one or two lines into the tear drop, softly manipulating the cuts with a sculpting tool, and then very lightly rubbing my finger over the shape to smooth it out. A little spit is all the lubricant you need to keep your fingers from sticking to the fresh green stuff.

Water balloon on a tripod?

One of the first structural things anyone will notice about the Bloatthrall is quite literally its mass, and the four spider like legs that support it. I did a little something to reinforce this set up. Pin, pin, pin. I drilled a hole into the main plate where the legs attached to, on all four side. After, I then dry fit the plate into the main part of the Bloatthrall and trial fit a leg into one of the sockets. After figuring out its position, I filed a small flat spot onto the ball of the leg where I wanted the pin to penetrate the leg. Drilled away with a pin vise, attached a pin and cut it to length with a Dremel tool. Rinse and repeat three more times, and you get a more steady and reinforced platform for your miniature. One other thing I did, was to attach a small pin to the center of main plate, on the unseen side. This allowed me a single holding point, so I could paint it separately, and was small enough that I could assemble it without doing anything once I was done, since the main body was more than enough to contain it.

After all is said and done, you'll find yourself the owner of a more durable and better looking Bloatthrall with just a little effort. With a field allowance of 2, its not something you'll have to do much, so I felt it was well worth my time to do it right. Hope this helps and happy sludging.

Until next time.

DD