My Chaos Lord conversion articles, originally posted on the Bartertown Forums:

Anyway, here's the basics... I had an Abaddon fig but no use for Abaddon. In the middle of the night, I woke up with this inspiration for a conversion, so I jumped out of bed and got out all the pieces so I would remember the next morning. (No, I'm not kidding... this happens alot...)

So, I would do a fly headed Nurgle Lord with a mutated arm (think Akira) and a sashimono style back banner. I didn't want Abaddon's sword, but hadn't figured out what to do. I thought about some huge pole weapon (always like the Grey Knight idea), but that would be done on the fly. Here's a pic of stage one:
 
 

At this point I had drilled and inserted wire into both arms and the head, and drilled a hole in the top of the armour for the back banner. I put a base layer of putty on the arm and the head, and sculpted out the basic form of the 'skull'. The back banner frame was a couple plastic Mordheim and Man o War pieces pinned and glued into place with 24 gauge wire. The arms & head were pinned/framed with 20 gauge, and the shaft for the pole weapon is 18 gauge. The blades are skaven weapons from the ANCIENT set of plastic WFB figures along with a little sheet styrene, all glued and sanded.

Next:
 
 

In several stages I have sculpted most of the mosquito-like head and part of the arm. The head was done by first drilling and gluing three wires into place for the proboscus and two little antennae type things (girlfriend has a Zoology degree and all these cool physiology books for reference *grin*). Then I made the eyes and sculpted the proboscus onto the middle wire. When this was mostly set, I then sculpted chitinous (sp?) plates onto the rest of the head, trying to leave slight gaps between plates, and ridges along each edge to accentuate them as separate. Also had to touch up around the base of the two outer wires since they were not quite symetric. A close up of the head and arm are here:
 
 

The arm was fist textured about 2/3 of the way down, with a sort of bundled fibre look. Then, the end was given a flat disc. When this was dried, I sculpted some teeth onto the outside of the disc. The next step will be the outer skin of this 'head'. (The intention is to give it a lamprey like mouth.)

Back to that second pic... The back banner was detailed by randomly winding wire around the joint between the main shaft and the crossbar. This would hide the joint and give the appearance of a disheveled assembly. Then, the banner was sized & cut out of paper, glued into place, and soaked with super glue for rigidity.

Two more blades were added to the pole weapon. It looked too 'flat'. These two blades are smaller, from the RT era plastic beekee marines. Then, I loosely wrapped a few wired around the weapon and the arm. When I had these in place, I sculpted some 'connectors' over the wire, where they met the blade. This will help stabilize the wire, and make the wire look like part of the weapon. I started sculpting some detail onto the blades as well. I also used some ultra thin layers of super glue at key points along the wire to hold it in place. The idea is to use just enough to hold it, but so little that it will not be noticed when the figure is painted. The blades are glued to the shaft by drilling a hole in the base of the styrene cross piece that holds it all together. So the crosspiece as well as the two main blades are all glued to the shaft.

(Note, I normally think that 2 part epoxy is MUCH more durable than superglue, but it is a bit thicker and sloppier, so not as useful so far. I will probably use it to attach the weapon arm and back banner though, as well as basing the figure. Beyond that, the figure will just require careful handling. The plastic weapon head was assembled with polystyrene cement, backed up by minute bits of green stuff when I smoothed the joints.)

At this point, I am having second thoughts about the spikes that are suppsed to go on the shoulders. I think I may leave them off, and replace them with something a little lower in profile, since they will hide/obscure a good bit of the sashimono. Maybe smaller, stubby, organic spikes? Tentacles? Not sure.

Hard to see, but I also sculpted a tentacle and nurgle symbol on the shoulder pad, from which I had previously filed the eye or horus symbol off.

Just as a side note... I've got this squad of SoB seraphim I can NOT seem to get rid of in my ads here (as well as a regular squad), so I was thinking about converting them to Nurgle, also. Maybe with a bunch of fly heads and fly wings... I can even call them the 'fly girls...' ;P
 
 

OK, here's the next bit of work I did on the Chaos Lord conversion...
 
 

It was relatively simple stuff, but was done in many stages.

On the arm, I added the end bit, over top of the teeth (pointed away from scanner). Then, I later went back and added three tentacles coming from the joint of the arm/body, wraped around the mutie arm.

I didn't like the shoulder spikes for any number of reasons, so I decided to leave them off. But I didn't want to just fill in the gaps. So I fugured I go with tentacles. Can't go wrong with tentacles, right? Furthermore, to give more of a 'direction' and focus to the figure, I figured I'd have them all reaching in the direction that the arm is pointing and the head is looking (well, as close to one direction as ol' bug eye can look...).

I did these in a good 4 or 5 stages, so I wouldn't mess up the previous ones as I did subsiquent ones. They didn't set 100% between steps, but enough so that I would not disturb the ones already there. I started from the ends and worked toward the center. I left the last few on his left shoulder until the banner was in place, so that a couple of the rentacles could be winding through the banner.
 
 

I also glued the left arm on, and puttied the joint, as well as putting a small skull on the back of the hand (not visible).

I had put a thin wire winding very loosely around the banner, to the lantern, with the other end plugged in to the back, near the base of the pole, but ended up removing it. I still like the idea, and think that it would look cool, but I want to actually use the model in games, and I doubt the wire would survive gameplay, let alone transport.

At this point, the big guy is mounted on a base I was working on at the same time. It's a 40mm round, with a swampy look to it, and a half submerged space monkey corpse. His helmet is knocked off his head. I did this by boring out a SM head, and using a human head from the Mordheim sprue for the body. There are a couple of coiled wires sticking out from both the helmet and the neck of the monkey's armour. Hopefully I can get a pic when I start painting him...
 

Painting:

Here he is, painted up and based. I went with a bright glowey effect on the haft of the weapon, since it was a bit thin. The blades were done with copper and antique gold, and 'patina-ed' with some aqua and green mixed paint. There are alot of small dots on the figure. The eyes (hard to see in the pic) are base coated black, with many small red dots, as if they are multi-faceted compound eyes (like an insect...) The tentacles are also spotted, more at the tips, then gradually trailing off. I did this after highlighting as normal (the look a bit flat in the scan, unfortunately.) The base was done with sand and static grass, and some bits from a marine sprue, and a mordheim head. The helmet is hollowed out, and the coiled wires are just a narrow gauge florist wire that had been coiled around another, thicker wire.