An Aboleth brought my camera back!

This is my best sculpt to date. I realize it is still pretty much in the "formless blob" genus that I've been working in, but I do think I'm crawling up a little further out of the ooze.

It is a composite sculpt, using the Reaper Giant Scorpion as a base. I laid the scorpion body out on the one inch grid battle mat I have and got a sense of proper proportions from the monster description. I was using the illustration from the Night Below monster supplement, and when I paint I will probably use the color card illustrations as a guide...though they are a tad on the pink side for me. The savant is distinguished from the normal aboleth by size and by the bony ridges on its top.

I was very careful with this one to build only a little at a time rather than my newbie "do it all at once" method from before. On the scorpion body I built up the front and eyes of the aboleth, using brown and green stuff to keep the parts clearly identified.

I used the same technique on building up and attaching the scorpion tail, after using toenail clippers to lop off the stinger.For the flukes I broke off the ends of the scorpion claws and glued them together, reinforcing with green stuff, then attached to the rest of the tail.

For the four big tentacles I used four tentacles I clipped off the Reaper Miniatures Stone Lurker (their version of a Roper, which I use for a Yochlol). Although my skill level is not particularly skillful, I think this is a reasonable enough sculpt of an aboleth and I'm excited to find a way to use it in my campaign. I don't know that it is sculpted in a way that would allow casting--you'd certainly have to remove the tentacles--but I'm not in the manufacturing business so this is likely to remain a one of a kind. I'm going to prime it and paint it later today and will add those images when it is finished.

I think it would be easy enough to do another, if I did want to do a casting of it, but next time I'd do a regular aboleth. Afterall, too many Savants and not enough aboleths would be a real problem.As this post demonstrates, I have my good camera back. The theatre department I used to work at doesn't use this camera very often--which is how I was able to borrow it for six months last time--so I proposed that I'd buy it from them for about half what a new one would cost and the promise that they could borrow it from me whenever they have occaision to use it.

I'm really pleased to return to the photographing and sharing of my miniature collection

Also, if you have comments on the greens, so long is it is constructive because I alredy know that I'm not really very good, I'm eager to hear them. Without feedback and suggestions I'm not likely to get any better and I'd really like to.

The Horgar--Acid Spitting Grub of Doom!

Well, it was a big hunk of green stuff, but I have another in the amorphous blob series of rudimentary sculpts. The Horgar is my most recent scupt, completed this morning.

Working my way backwards through my mini collection, creating a 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendium sheet for each in Publisher 2000, and using an image of the miniature for each entry instead of the artwork from TSR, I am now up to the H's.

I saw the page for Horgar and knew that nobody but me was ever going to make a miniature of it, so I did. If you click on the link above for the image, you will see that the beastie itself is a blob of green stuff, etched with my sculpting tools to look like the broken rock that makes up its crusty skin. I hadn't intended to mount it on a base, but my 6 inch glob of greenstuff kept sticking to the table so I had to.

Fortunately I had a large metal base from one of the Reaper minis I have that stood well enough without a base...I think it might have been that huge hill giant with the tree trunk for a club. Anyway, it looked super dumb just sitting there on the metal base, so I got some brown stuff out and made some underdark terrain to dress it up a little. I think it looks pretty good. It will look even better when I paint it black with the hot red magma peeking out between rocky plates on its skin.

Who'd have thought I'd ever have a Horgar to throw at my PCs? Not them, I'll tell you that much for nothing.

Happy Birthday to me...and my Lamprey

Today is my birthday, don't ask how old you 3.5 edition playing whippersnappers. I'm staying home in the basement doing nothing but working on organizing my D&D stuff, adding more pages to my comprehensive monstrology cyclopedia, and prepping for our session on Saturday.

This morning I came across the compendium page for Lamprey and didn't have a figure for it...so I tried my hand at sculpting one.

I'm still lousy at sculpting, so I am learning the ropes by doing figures of creatures already described as amorphous blobs.

I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out, though green stuff is soooo hard to work with. I got something I sort of liked--though the feelers on the front were really hard to do because they kept drooping down and touching other tentacles and sticking.

I put it in front of a hot light to help dry it out and instead of drying faster, it melted and drooped more. I need to get some of those clamp/clips on an articulated frame so that figures can be held in sideways positions while they harden. That would keep them from drooping down to the table top.

This fig does have a wire skeleton, but the wire must habe been too thin, because the weight of the green stuff was heavy enough to make it droop. Can't imagine my troubles if there was no wire at all.

Anyway, let me know what you think--but don't be too harsh, I'm still learning!

I'm going to the dungeon to eat worms....

As you know, I'm working on rudimentaray sculpting...and not wholly successfully. I tried to make a wraith using the Reaper dollies and green stuff and was utterly unable to even create "a vaguely human cloud".

I think I'm better with more monstery monsters at present...less to compare them to. In reverse order alphabetizing of my monster collection, I got to the worms section and decided to try my hand at creating a Tunnel Worm and a Tenebrous Worm. (Click on the links to see the original TSR artwork from Monster Manual II, for reference only and review purposes only, no copyright infringement intended.)

For the Tunnel Worm, I first took a rubber caterpillar I had that reminded me of it.

Next, after studying the original TSR artwork for a long time, I crafted the head in brown stuff and gave it green stuff eyes. The mandibles were really difficult, as were the two clawed tentacles.

Finally, after it cured, I primed and painted it.

Another view.

Is it my imagination or does this thing look like a Zanti Misfit?


For the Tenebrous Worm, I again used a rubber caterpillar I had that reminded me of it. About the right shape and body structure.

Then, (again) after studying the original artwork for a good long while, I crafted the head out of brown stuff onto the rubber caterpillar. The mandibles were a little tough, since they had to be very thin and jut out from the head. I had a hard time getting them not to droop. At this point I preferred to work with brown stuff over green, because it isn't at tacky as the green stuff and firms up faster. I hated to paint it, actually, because I really liked the contrast between the brown stuff and the green body of the existing caterpillar...but the Monster Manual says these things are black and grey...and if I weren't a stickler for accuracy, I wouldn't be making my own miniatures. Curse my obsessive compulsive disorder!

Finally, I primed and painted it. This one was a little harder than the other worm, because the entire caterpillar had to be painted, not just the horns and mandibles. The spray on primer didn't stick very well to the rubber...duh...but once it was coated in paint and then sealed, I didn't have any problems. I'm sure it will crack and chip if I it gets bent at all, but most of its life it will sit on a shelf and when in combat, I'll be controlling it, so I think I'm relatively safe. That frothy stuff isn't rabies, it is just Reaper brush on sealer, and I was too impatient to wait for it to dry before I took the pic. I have got to learn some patience....

Post your comments, I'd love to know what you think.

Priest of Gond and a Volt

I got my enormous package from my friend at Reaper, Matt Clark. I now have nearly 50 pounds of minis and paints in my workshop in the basement in addition to everything I already had.

I've been very busy building terrain features for the upcoming module I'm running my players through, Doom of Daggerdale and prepping the minis I will need for that adventure.

I've also been reading lots of posts on various miniature based boards, especially Reaper. One of the most common threads on such sites is "What minis do you want to see made?"

I really want to see some priests of specific Forgotten Realms mythoi...in particular I needed a priest of Gond for one of my players. There just ain't a figure out there, new or old, that even comes close. And if they did make one, I bet it would be a gnome.

Soooo, among the things I ordered from Reaper was Green Stuff and Brown Stuff to start working on making the minis myself that I can't seem to buy out there.

The first one I worked on was creating that Priest of Gond for my player. I had searched the internet far and wide, as so far as I could tell no company anywhere, ever, had made a miniature of a Priest of Gond. In the Forgotten Realms book they are pretty specific. Fat, happy, clad in yellow robes with a bandolier of tools and...a gigantic yellow hat.

I vaguely remembered seeing a miniature that might work as a scratch built base in the Reaper catalog my friend Matt had sent me. I had lost it, though, so I searched through the whole Reaper on-line catalog page by page and until I found a mini that might work as a base, from a really nice set called 02950 : Townsfolk: Clergymen. The figure is a pretty straight forward medieval monk.

The next thing I did was take the base off one of those plastic trees that people use for model railroads scenery and used my dremel tool (a thougthful gift from my wife!) to hollow out the trunk/stump area from the underside to fit over the figure's head in order to make the base for the "big yellow hat". It took a while to get the hole just the right size, but trial and error eventually yielded good results. I toyed with the idea of making the hat removeable, but decided that only invited a lost hat and more work to replace it. Gluing it on his head saved me some trouble in the future, I'm certain.

I then cut around the edges to make it round and sanded it down to get rid of the grooves that were there to represent roots. Then using my "Brown Stuff" I made the point and rim of the hat, also the holy symbol, sash and tool belt for the character as depicted in the Forgotten Realms Adventures book. I tried to get the sash to look like it was caught in the wind, but it kept drooping and I decided that even if I did get that wind-blown look it only meant they'd snap off in game play. I decided to let them touch the robe.

Lastly, I painted the mini once it all cured and dried. I'm not the painter I used to be and I'm having a little trouble re-learing the new techniques they describe for the Reaper Master Series paints, but with practice I'll get better. At any rate, I've got what is likely to be the best miniature of a Priest of Gond I'm ever likely to see. He's standing on some of that terrain I mentioned. There will be more details on that in a later post. I fight the temptation to torment the player using this miniature by having him encounter a curious little kobold named George.

With the left over brown stuff, I made another mini entirely from scratch based on a monster in the original TSR Fiend Folio, the Volt.

My friend, Matt, wanted to see the original artwork for one of my favorite monsters from the original Fiend Folio--the volt.

The volt is one of my absolute favorite monsters. I know that once upon a time, long long ago, someone made a miniature of it because it used to be in my friend Matt's collection. It was a tiny little think that sat on top of a very thin wire that stuck up out of a base. Matt doesn't have the miniature any more and nobody either of us have talked to remembers who might have made it. I could kill him for refusing to sell it to me when I bought most of the rest of his collection ten or twelve years ago.

My sculpt is much larger than the one Matt used to have back in the late seventies, early eighties. This was my very first attempt at sculpting anything. I think it came out extremely well. These things are supposed to swarm, so I'll eventually have to make more of them.

This was a pretty easy monster to make, but my very first original sculpt so it wasn't without difficulty for me. I rolled out a small line for the body, two balls for the eyes, lots of little tiny lines for the hair, then mounted it on a pin...squishing everything in the process and having to start over again. I used a needle to dig out the mouth and add detail to the eyes, then stuck the pin in some more brown stuff to make the base. I should have checked the illustration more often because I almost forgot the horns!

The tail kept succumbing to gravity and drooping, but Routunious the Priest of Gond was able to help me hold it up and under hot light it did eventually cure to the point that it held.

At any rate, I now have a volt. And I've also got the sculpting bug. If none of those boards are going to listen to my pleas for the old school monsters from MM, MM II and FF, I'm just going to have to make them myself.

So there.

If you have comments, I'd love to hear them. If you remember the original volt miniature, who made it, and where I might be able to get one--I'd really like to hear it! Googling "volt" or doing an eBay search for "volt" render extremely unsatisfactory results!