Khurasan Dictator; Finding my Design-Fu

Sometimes models seem to make themselves, other times it’s like beating a steel plate with a foam rubber mallet. This project was the latter.

Jon at Khurasan has been keeping me busy; he gave me a good description and a few concept images to work with. The concepts had differing styles, Crab, Turtle and Arachnid. Jon also wanted a smooth surface free of clutter and minor details, bolts and such.

Normally I can just make a concept sketch and get to work but this one was difficult for some reason. Even after the concept sketch that Jon signed off on, I still found myself unable to jell the idea in my head. Perhaps it was my sweet dog Maggie passing. Perhaps such a large model without surface detail intimidated me. Whatever the cause it took a while to find my Design-Fu.

In the end, the “Fu” flowed and I was able to give Jon something we were both happy with.

You can see from the component view that its a dual layer turret, each can fire at different targets. The head and all six legs can be glued in place or left to move by gluing the top and bottom of the body together without gluing the components in place. Add to this all the small ball turrets and you have a very customizable model.