This huge scratch-built Warhound titan is the work of Warhammer 40,000 fan Davy McCracken. What started off as a joke idea among friends turned into a five month long “hyperfixation” that used 3lb of plastic sprues to realise the colossal god-machine.
McCracken, who hails from London in the UK, started work on this custom Warhammer titan on March 6 this year. “I’d always loved warhounds but could never justify the cost”, he says – the official models for titans are among the most expensive of all Warhammer 40k kits.
Initially he was only going to make the Warhound’s head “to test the idea out”. He explains: “even if I didn’t finish the model the head itself would still look cool on display”.
The custom model is made from sprues, the waste plastic left over from other plastic kits. He used almost 3lb (1.3kg) of sprue to build the model and all its weapon options, and when fully assembeld with guns in place it weighs just shy of 2lb (850g). On top of that, the project used up “14 hobby knife blades, 18 bottles of glue” and “all my sanity”.
This isn’t McKraken’s first sprue project: he’s built a substantial army for the Kroot Warhammer 40k faction entirely from sprue bits. You can find more of his work on Instagram.
What began on a whim became “a bit of a hyperfixation”. “When I had a day free I’d sometimes start working on it in the morning and not stop ‘til around 1am”. Though he didn’t keep track of the time spent on the project, McCracken estimates he “put close to 500 hours in”.
“I didn’t really have a plan for the titan”, he says, “there was a lot of guesswork involved”. He worked from reference photos and mocked out the basic shape of each component to approximately the right size, before trying to replicate the details with sprue. “I tried to avoid really sculpting the sprue too much”, he says, “as I wanted every part of this model to be easily recognizable as sprue”.
The torso was a particular challenge. “I wanted to have all the internal details included”, he says, which made assembly very challenging. “I ended up having a break halfway through that part to work on the legs”. Those became his favorite part of the build. “The aquila on the legs turned out much better than I expected, and I love how all the pistons look”.
He doesn’t plan to paint this behemoth. “I really like the sprue look, and I want people to be able to recognise it as sprue when they look close rather than hide that”.
Is he planning to follow up with some sprue Space Marines next? “I have some individual character models” planned, he says, and “I’ve got ideas for terrain”. He adds: “my Warhound still needs 900 more points of models to escort it so I can use it in a proper game!”
If you’re inspired by this project, make sure you check our article interviewing McCracken about his Sprue Kroot army. This isn’t the only budget titan we’ve seen – check out Denys Tsiokhla’s amazing papercraft Titan maniple.
Source: Wargamer
