Warhammer Kitbash - Making Dog Soldiers From Beastmen

Dog Soldiers, Jackals, Werewolves, Anubis are all part of Fantasy folklore, but despite that they do not appear as part of the Games Workshop Warhammer realm. So, I decided to give it a go and make my own. 
I like the idea of the Ungor body size and shape, so that's where I'd start!
I removed all the obvious shaggy fur, trimmed the legs to be more dog-like, added some paws to the feet, did some reshaping of the back, build a tail and then set about turning a Beastman Gor head into a dog head...
It all sounds soooo straight forward - and surprisingly it was!
As much as the result is a bit rough now, once sanded and trimmed it should come out okay, even if he is a bit foxy.
++ Want a closer look? Read On + +

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So here he is. I like the idea of the dog soldiers being spearmen, halberds would be even better!
The shield has been left off in this shot for painting later.
The basic body changes listed above are all pretty obvious and I was surprised how the body became dog-like so easily. 
In my head, Beastmen can be all kinds of beasts - dogs, cats, maybe birds and potentially dragon-men.
The plan is to try that idea out a bit, I do have a Beastman Battalion to play with after all.
(BTW, that is a great set. If you like Warhammer, then give it a look!)

The first step was to even work out if this conversion was possible.
This is the Gor head I used (left) and by cutting off the goatee and hair it was then all about shaping.
I very early on removed the bags under the eyes as it ruined the sleek features of the face. There was a lot of trial and error here and I used a mix of Doberman and Labrador for reference. As I got to the front of the head it ended in a point, so I took the leap and cut it down. I think this is the key to any kind of dog - the length of the muzzle. Then some shaping of the top of the muzzle and shaping a groove to make a nose.
The ears were cut off the side of the head and put on top. He does look very alert!
There's something very Egyptian about it. Tempted to may Anubis dudes, but not sure... 
The neck of the Gor was WAY too thick so that was dramatically cut down.
I still have a little bit of filling to do around the ears and a good scrub with sandpaper and a toothbrush.

You can see here the Green Stuff around the shoulders and arms. After I removed the shaggy fur it was necessary to keep the muscular frame so I did some reshaping.
There wouldn't normally be this amount of Green Stuff, but I wanted the arm out further than the kit allows.
There's also a bit of Green Stuff on the back of the head where the horn would have been.
The tail was where this guy stopped being a fox. There was no way I was going to try to make a bushy tail.

The legs were also reshaped slightly (left). The front of the hoof was cut off and replaced with the paws. I did these a hundred times and should have stuck with the third version!
The hind quarters were then angled in where the tufts of Ungor fur would normally be and shaped to taped down the the tippy-toes look of large dogs hind legs.
There's a bit of smoothing to do here where I removed all the flank fur the Ungor would usually have. You can see (right) that I removed that shaggy fur around the existing details on the body.

Here's those pesky paws! The surface area is also so small that they don't stick too well so I turned the surface of the base into a pool of molten plastic with glue and then slid him into it.
You can also see there is a bit of work needed with a sharper blade to clean up where the shaggy fur around the flanks was.

And there he is - what do you think?
There'd be scope for different breeds I imagine and a helmet could also be a later design, I'm thinking with a blade crest on the top of it!
For what was about 3 hours work all up, it was more successful in my mind than I had thought.