[Factions Ep. 5 - Cat B][Q10 - Deysum - TT] Fighting the Dragon Slug

[marvelBoy123]

*Your entry has earned 8 XP*

Farantros narrative:

Of the entire itinerary of my boring hunting trip, this was the part I was looking forward to the most - the dragon slug. To almost any other being a dragon slug is terrifying - a twenty metre long, fire breathing dragon with almost impenetrable skin. And yet of all the beasts that I have fought on this trip, to a Devaronian this monster is no challenge at all. And so it began...

That sleemo of a neimoidian was once again fighting from the safety of a vehicle, this time from the comfort of a three seater micro-barge fitted with a number of weapons. The rest of the party however had to fight the beast on foot. It had been released in the caverns of the volcanic northern wastelands and now reared up its ugly head. First, some idiot had brought along spears to the fight and through a couple at it, the first two bounced off but the second lodged in drawing a small amount of blood. This enraged the creature which sprayed a torrent of fire down upon us. As everyone panicked, I simply climbed up the beast's body, using the spear lodged in it as a handhold. Then I got to its head. As I looked down I saw that the Mayor's barge had been hit by the fire and was on fire. It looked like it was in a bad way, if I didn't act in a minute then the flames would probably blow the thing up soon. As much as I would have liked for the Mayor to not survive the encounter I had a job to do. Anyway, I stood on the creatures lower lip and raise my hands to the roof of its mouth, taking the full force of the flames that came at me. Then I pushed upwards with all my might. There was a resounding snap and the creatures upper jaw came clean off. I jumped from its mouth as it fell to the ground dead. Well, the Mayor realised that I had saved his life and pledged full support to the Triumvirate on Deysum, he awarded me the Order of Klerint and gave the Triumvirate permission to build a major base in Klerint to house both land forces and a sizeable fleet. Well, I still wasn't fond of the guy but I'd say the mission was a resounding success - perhaps now I'd be able to get back to the tropical paradise of Rishi.

http://Star Wars Factions - Deysum - Fighting the Dragon Slug by marvelBoy123, on Flickr

http://Star Wars Factions - Deysum - Fighting the Dragon Slug by marvelBoy123, on Flickr

http://Star Wars Factions - Deysum - Fighting the Dragon Slug by marvelBoy123, on Flickr

http://Star Wars Factions - Deysum - Fighting the Dragon Slug by marvelBoy123, on Flickr

http://20200426_170711-01 by marvelBoy123, on Flickr

http://Star Wars Factions - Deysum - Fighting the Dragon Slug by marvelBoy123, on Flickr

Well a couple of notes about this build. First the Dragon Slug was pretty hard to get right, it is really quite round and yet the majority of the body is made with rectangular plates. The body is made of a number of modules which can be disconnected and reconfigured. I also tried to get the spots along the dragons back and I'm pretty happy with the result. The eyes were a big problem, the only reference images are from a comic which has quite a 'cartoon' style, this was the best solution that I had (lever bases on minifig heads) but it isn't quite perfect (from the wrong angle there is some resemblance to Elmo). The idea for how my character fought the creature came after watching episode 6 of The Mandalorian, after I saw that devaronians are very strong, near indestructible and fire resistant (I actually didn't know this at the time I chose for my character to be a devaronian). I'd also like to announce that the next set of builds I'm working on will be a murder mystery on Ota with @Tariq j, I'll explain more on how it will work as things go along but I think it will be quite a lot of fun, so keep an eye out.

[Beleg the Ranger]

Very good! This creature is Star Wars like and makes good use of SNOT. It might be my favorite build in this challenge yet!

[Tariq j]

Very nice work on the base there. Good use of plates to create the rock formations. Positioning of the monster looks very good too.  I also love the way you’ve connected those fire pieces. 

And yeah, we do have something really fun planned so please stay tuned for more details!

[MKJoshA]

Very nice! I think your work on the slug paid off. You have very few gaps and the shaping is nice. I would suggest working a little harder to hide the brackets and snot bricks. The grey and yellow really stand out in some of your pictures. Your terrain looks really good and I love the combo of black and dark red. The hovercraft looks okay, but begins to dwarf the landscape. It just looks too big to fit on your 32x32 baseplate. I would also recommend using GIMP or photoshop to get rid of the lines around your poster board. I use GIMP myself since it's free. It has a steep learning curve, but it's well worth the time. Something else you could do to get more instant results is re-position your posterboard to leave fewer gaps and lines. Here's what most of my photo set-ups look like:

You can see I use the natural curve of the posterboard to remove all harsh transition lines. And I can get most builds onto 1 or 2 sheets.

[marvelBoy123]

I completely agree, I didn't have enough red plates to completely hide the snot bricks as I would have like to, but they do bug me. I've just got photoshop so hopefully I will be able to improve on the photo side of things, its never been my strength. As for the poster board, its actually a light box, I currently don't have the space or money for a good light setup so its the best I can do, sadly its only  just able to fit a 32 x 32 baseplate so without photoshop you would always see the lines. As the weather gets better I'll try to photograph outside but the model was too fragile to move to much. Thanks for the feedback!

[Darth Bjorn]

Solid entry! Even though a bit comical looking, you’ve really captured the look of the slug!

[Tezclatipoca]

Cool slug !

I like how it's spitting fire !

Good job!

[dvogon]

This slug is very effective being angled and with the fire. I like the base as well.