Flotsam and Jetsam

[uncledog]

You could go with a mummified or jerky look, remember Otzi the Iceman?
blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/files/2012/02/iceman.jpg Warning: Mummified flesh in image.

or you could go burned and shiny:

[tauster]

Another lesson learned: The surface of the foam, it's 'skin', is very smooth and doesn't hold acrylic paint well. The one on the left side was basepainted with paint that was watered down minimally while the one in the foreground was painted with undiluted paint.



I want to see if this gets better when using spraypaint and have another two objects with white spraypaint that are drying overnight.


Still no idea which color scheme I should use to get a 'petrified flesh' effect...
Ideas, anyone?

[edit]
I hadn't seen uncledog's posting when writing the above...

The arm looks absolutely horrible!
...which means 'absolutely great'.

How do you get this result? My guess is very dark red / brown basecoat, black washing and some transparen sealing, but I'm not sure and I don't have an arm lying around to try...

[uncledog]

Jun 8, 2014 17:28:30 GMT tauster said:

Ideas, anyone?

[edit]
I hadn't seen uncledog's posting when writing the above...

The arm looks absolutely horrible!
...which means 'absolutely great'.

How do you get this result? My guess is very dark red / brown basecoat, black washing and some transparen sealing, but I'm not sure and I don't have an arm lying around to try...

It was pretty simple. Rattlecan of flat black, dusting of cherry red, dusting over that with the flat black, clear coat. The arm is a hula hoop, cardboard tubes from glowsticks and tp mache. Oh... and a metric ton of hot glue. haha.

Edit: To help with the acrylic sticking to the foam, hit it with flat black spraypaint (or whatever color you chose as primer). The spray sticks, doesn't melt it and makes a good medium. That or lightly sand it.

[tauster]

I was quite productive last night and got to work on several of the critters / organic buildings (can't decide)...

This one got hotglue veins; unfortunately I forgot to texturize them before basepainting them - if you go over the glue lines with the hot guntip, you can draw additional 'veins' over the veins. Drybrushing brings out these details later, and the veins look absolutely great.

Guess it's time to find out what happens when you go over the basepainted glue...





My largest piece so far, washed and with matte black 'eyes'. Not sure how I'll continue with the eyes though; I think I'll try a 'blue/turquoise glow' effect.




backside:




A smaller piece where I sprayed the foam around a part of a egg box; the effect looks like the thing grew around a wheathered obelisk (or the obelisk pierced the amss of flesh). I'll drybrush it later and give it some glowing runes or psychic/psionic circuits.

[uncledog]

Yup, if I were a PC at your table I'd be gone when these came out! Looks great!

[tauster]

Here's a piece from the 2nd batch, the first I've painted in a different color scheme that 'flesh'. I'm not so sure about the result...

I mean, I should have known from the start that Scotty's new sediment stone color scheme works on stalagmites, but might be, well... less than optimal on the specific shape I wanted to paint here. At least I had a strong suspicion about how this might turn out.

It did turn out as something markedly different. It looks... unhealthy. Infectious.
























...oh well, let's just say it: it's a giant turd!

[sgtslag]

Reminds me of the demon lord, Juiblex, from the 1st Ed. AD&D Monster Manual... Works for him, or the pile of **** (same difference, actually). Cheers!

[uncledog]

As a suggestion for the shambling poo,
try working in some dark blue as veins, with a pale yellow wash over that. It may give the depth you desire with a poo-look reducing quality.

Though I suck at painting for the most part, grain of salt and all that.

[dragon722]

chet from Weird Science?! lol

[tauster]

The 'ruined terrain' pieces for my walking ruin have finally seen some progress. Which is to say, I began working on them this evening...

I had a small old styrofoam box with some interesting shapes inside, broke it up into several pieces, primed them black (acrylic color, not spraypaint) and whiteglue'd them on some sturdy cardboard.



Some pasta pillars added to the mix and some plastic pieces for pillar bases; they are prominently featured on the walking ruin itself, so I hope to get the 'this stuff just formed a giant monster' effect across.



So nothing fancy, really. Next will be flocking with construction sand and some larger pebbles or pieces of rock, some greenery (green flocking made out of colored sawdust, some commercial flocking I got cheap on ebay, some plastic plants from my recent aquarium decoration raid, plus some larger shrubs/hairgrass made of colored hairs/bristles from old brushes.

---

Random thought: What's cooler than fighting a giant walking ruin?

Controlling it!

Rough encounter script (not much thought put into this, it's just a spontaneous idea...)
1) PCs explore the ruins
2) minor skirmish with some adversaries (either native monsters or rival group of adventurers / tomb robbers)
3) some parts come to live, form a ruin and attack the party --> the group is in deep sh*t, possible alliance against the walking ruin
4) another enemy arrives on the scene, wipes out the allies (or crunches the monsters under it's feet)
5) PCs find out how to control the ruin (psionics, controlling amulet, etc.) and barely win the day.

Of course the ruin crumbles at the height of the battle (you just can't give the party such a fighting juggernaut), according to the laws of drama, if will naturally crumble during the end fight, burying the main villain under tons of stone.

[uncledog]

Quick q: Did you make those 'shoom huts?

On with the show: I always enjoy your posts, good photography, plenty of pictures and a pleasant read. Thanks for posting!

[tauster]

Jun 10, 2014 19:42:11 GMT uncledog said:

Quick q: Did you make those 'shoom huts?

On with the show: I always enjoy your posts, good photography, plenty of pictures and a pleasant read. Thanks for posting!

Thanks for the praise. I'm not much of a photographer; just try to get the light more or less right and take care to avoid blurry pics...

I didn't make huts, as I don't see use for them in any of my games anytime soon. Storage space as my natural limitation, so I make only generic stuff useful in many games, specific things that I can use soon(-ish) in a campaign, or stuff that is just too cool not to make (even though I haven't any use for).

[uncledog]

I'm no photo buff, but clear, focused images are all I desire. You (and pretty much everyone here) deliver that. Clever use of noodles by the way, looking forward to seeing the finished product.

[slurpy]

Tauster, rubbing alcohol or acetone (finger nail polish remover) should help clean up the foam, if you're still having issues.

[tauster]

Jun 13, 2014 2:56:23 GMT slurpy said:

Tauster, rubbing alcohol or acetone (finger nail polish remover) should help clean up the foam, if you're still having issues.

Thanks for the tip, but I'll leave it as is. You never know when you'll need a 10 m high pile of dung in your game. Could be anytime, practically...

...ok, come to think of it, I think this is a good time to make a new shitbrainstorming thread!

--> 1001 uses for a giant turd pile of dung

[tauster]

I've posted several ideas regarding pasta as crafting material before (too lazy to include all the links right now; it should be somewhere in the early pages of this thread). Here's another type that lends itself to being included: Letter noodles.*

* I don't know if this is what they're called outside germany ('Buchstaben-Nudeln'), heck, I'm not even sure they are available anywhere else. Not that they are a German speciality; I just haven't seen them elsewhere (though I did not look specifically for them)... Google's picture search brings up some stuff, so they're probably availabel elsewhere.   




I would glue them to a building or ruin set. If some specific letters are missing, that's no problem - at least not with ruins, where letters could have eroded away or fallen off. Or you use a foreign language (most ruins tend to originate from a culture that had a foreign language, so go wild with whatever letters you have at hand).

I haven't used them so far (though I definitely will add them to my ruin terrain tiles, and maybe a few to the walking ruin), but I imagine they add a great three-dimensional feeling.

Which color schemes would you use?
My initial ideas:
- stone-colored (probably better paint them before gluing to the walls, or else you'll spill color to the walls behind the letters)
- metallic (brass, copper with a bit of green rust added for aging, gold)
- ...?

Any other ideas what to do with these letter noodles?

[indigo777]

You might be able to use the U's as horseshoes. A lot of people used to hang them over doorways to keep evil spirits at bay as old ones were a plentiful and cheap source of iron. So paint them rust color and hang them over ancient doorways.

The T's and X's could be used as grave markers if you paint them granite or wood colored.

[tauster]

Progress on the ruined terrain pieces: I've finally dragged myself to doing the flocking. Or in my case: rubble-ing.




Nothing special, just squirting generous amounts of whiteglue more or less randomly on the tiles and adding pebbles. Basic Scotty stuff.

Next steps after drying:
- glueing on some metal scraps so I can later add magnetized stuff
- painting the walls and pillars (drybrushing, a bit of washing, doing some highlights
- painting the remaining ground (browns & a few green tones)
- flocking with grass and plastic plants.

[tauster]

...it's garbage crafting time again!

I always wanted to try out cement mortar as a casting material: It's dirt cheap, very hard when cured (compared to plaster), ...and I have an open 25 kg bag standing around.

So I dug out some of the cat food tin cans (aluminum, to be exact) I had saved* and used them as disposable moulds. If you try it, remember to give it a good shake after pouring the cement in so that the air bubbles go out.
* Advise: Take good care to clean them completely before storing them!



As you can see, they have a nice texture at their sides. I think they'll make a great pedestal/plinth. I've inclined two of them to get a 'partially buried' - type pedestal. So far the cement is still drying...

The aluminum cans can also be crumpled up for modelling stuff, saving regular kitchen aluminum foil. The cans are made of a much stronger foil then the kitchen foil one on the roll, so you'll get something that's much more stable & resiliant to mechanical stresses.  I'll give it a try and probably make some gnarly funghi stems.

...heck, I can even use the crumpled moulds from the picture above. The cement remains will dissappear under layers of hotglue, color and varnish, so it doesn't matter whether I take new or used ones. As long as there are no cat food remains, it's working fine.




Here's a small lemon juice plastic bottle. It would make a great ballon, but I intend to make a giant mushroom from it.

[edit]
some hotglue texturing and a few pebbles pressed in, plus a flickering LED tealight later:

  

[Deleted]

This is my favorite thread on the forum. Brilliant stuff!