Dwarves & Monsters.

 When I got back from the holidays I found a package from Battle Valor Games waiting for me.

There were a bunch of sculpts in his lines which I really liked but I was a bit hesitant as I kept running in to various forum posts saying the minis were really big for 15mm.

After much hemming and hawing I decided to just take the plunge and see and well, some of them are and some of them are not. 

As I paint them I'll include pictures with models from other manufacturers so you can judge for yourselves.

Here's the first ones, four dwarves from the dwarven character pack.

And here they are alongside some Demonworld dwarves.

I also painted my own sculpts from the previous posts.

The Grell 

and the Carrion Crawlers

And off course I couldn't resist throwing together a little scene,

It would seem my new dwarves have run into a little spot of trouble while exploring a newly discovered mushroom forest.

Luckily they brought along their steam golem to help clear the path.

Cheers,

Stroezie.

Meet the Grell.

Another day, another monster.

I'm starting to feel like an evil overlord or maybe a mad wizard cackling away in his laboratory😁

This one was fairly easy to make and if anyone were to tell me they wanted to have a go at sculpting a monster I think I'd recomend they try to make a Grell.

So...

Session one, take an aluminum foil ball, stick it on a paperclip, cover it with milliput and roughly sketch in where you want things to go.

Now I would also recomend you pause here to let the milliput harden but as I am an impatient gith...
... do as I say, not as I do...

...so I immediately added the beak.

I also decided to make the tentacles seperately as it's much simpler to form them ahead of time, and then attach them once they are fully cured, than to try and support them when they are dangling from a figure all soft and stretchy like.

Session two,

Stick a blob of putty on the bottom and jamm all those tentacles in then draw a bunch of lines on it with your sculpting tool to make the blob look like the hairs / frills on the bottom of the Grell's body.(see I told you it was much simpler this way.)

Next it was a simple matter of rolling up a bunch of tiny saussages and laying them down in a kind of brain looking pattern.

Et voila, Grell's your uncle!

And a quick pic with our helpfull friend the Splintered light beastman for size.

Another monster done, back to the Monster Manual for more! Muhahahahah!!!

Cheers,
Stroezie.

More Sculpting.

I seem to have caught the sculpting bug again.
Best to make the most use of it then.😉

I started of with a conversion of a splintered light Chimera.
Instead of glueing on the three heads I sculpted it a new one and gave it a spiked ball tail, turning it into a Manticore.
I was going for a blend of human and leonine features but it's been a long time since I've tried doing faces and I had forgotten how much I struggle with them.
Even so, I think he looks pretty good on the tabletop, so I am happy with it.

And here's the little fellow with some paint on him and his cousins flanking him so you can get an idea of what the original mini looks like.

The next two sculpts are going to be another D&D classic, the Carrion Crawler.
This was actually the first monster I ever ran back when I first started playing D&D as a kid, so I've always had a bit of a soft spot for it.

Now the Carrion Crawler has gone through quite a few desingn changes throughout the various editions and they all had things I liked about them and things I didn't, therefore mine will be an amalgamation of all of those plus whatever I think looks cool or I think I can pull of within my limited sculpting abilities.

Now, because a number of people have asked about my sculpting process I thought I'd post photos of these session by session.
Be warned ,I am a very unorganised, chaotic builder / sculpter so it might get rough sometimes.

So first session:
I made an armature out of aluminium foil and promptly forgot to photograph it (don't worry I'll get the next one)
Then I covered that in a thin layer of green stuff and roughly sketched in the belly plates and started on adding the legs.
That's it for the first session.

Second session.
I added the rest of the legs and started on the head, adding a little more bulk and starting to detail the eyes.
The teeth were also adde at this stage.

I used the left over putty to sculpt the first chitin plate and there ends session two.

Session three:

Here's that armature I promised you (see I told you it was going to be unplanned and chaotic ;-)

Not really much to see there so...
...back to the sculpting,

I added the mandibles and the euh...    ...lips I guess,

And did another plate of chitin on its back.

I also decided the rear end was to plain looking so I started adding some detail there too.

Session four,
more backplates, butt detail and starting to cover the second armature with the first layer of green stuff.

Session five, more backplates...

Session six,
finished the first crawler by adding the tentacles and made some serious headway on the second one.
I actually made the tentacles, legs and mandibles ahead of time and let them fully cure before attaching them with a teeny weeny ball of green stuff and some super glue, this greatly sped up the process.

Here's a picture of the finished crawler next to a Splintered Light beastman to give you an idea of the size.

Well that's it for now.
Next time we finish the second one and get some paint on them.

Cheers,
Stroezie.