Manufacturing Blightspawn

I actually do like the Foul Blightspawn model. He's a nice Plague Marine. Buuut... when I read the description, the model didn't feel entirely right anymore. My vision of the Blightspawn is an insanely disgusting creature, so foul that even the other Death Guard are saying 'steady on old boy'. Probably the best analogy is the way that the Pyramid Head creature is presented in the 2006 film adaptation Silent Hill: wading through rivers of filth with hordes of pests surging around him. I liked the idea that he'd become so corrosive that even his own armour was corroding away, the ceramite no longer able to withstand the toxicity of his presence. Also, I wanted him to look different to other Plague Marines.

I started with the body of a Putrid Blightking. They're roughly Marine-sized so it works. To make sure that he did, in fact, look Astartes, I added the head and arms from the Plague Marines kit, selecting the weapon which looked like a good approximation of his armament. This also allowed for a suitably bulky backpack from the same kit, good for suggesting lethal diseases festering away. So far, as you can imagine, this was actually pretty easy. However, the Blight King Body and the Marine bits weren't overly fond of being glued together - I had to use pins, poly cement and a good deal of gap filling afterwards!

Now, something mentioned in the lore is that the Blightspawn has a sort of churn rammed into his guts which is constantly processing new diseases. On the official model, you can't see too much of this. I used half of a spare set of gun barrels from the Skaven Stormfiends kit (jammed in and gap-filled) to represent the ever-spinning churn.

I was relatively pleased with the result. He looks more disgusting and degenerate than even his brethren and stands out enough from the rest. Plus I made him from bits, which is cheap!