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Post by tauster on Apr 3, 2020 19:45:06 GMT
Painting that guy was quick and fun. I used rusted iron as the main theme, plus a dark bronze and a bright yellow, aiming for a weird contrast between old and new.
A few metal colors used for small accents. The blue, green and red lights on the central control panel go with identically colored 'missiles' on his left arm, which will be different 'arcane grenades' to be thrown ad enemies. Something along the lines of sleep, command or hold person and magic missile, chosen by the robot according to the danger of the conflict.
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Post by tauster on Apr 1, 2020 20:41:42 GMT
The giant plant is patiently waiting to be continued, as do most crafting projects as spring looms and the gardening season starts, eternal adversary of crafting...
...but a littly robot sneaked to the top of the to-do list and got somehow constructed today.
Due to corona lockdown in Germany there's no school at the moment, which is not nice when your kids loves going to school. He's doing daily homework (and loves it), but still it's not the same as being with your friends. Naturally, viruses and bacteria became a topic of interest, and this evening we started crafting some:
And while he watched a kid's video on how our immune system works, I made a little robot out of spray can parts and a few bitz and knick-knacks.
I'm pretty happy how it turned out, and am actually looking forward painting this guy.
It will be some kind of armed patrol robot, prrobably with a malfunctioning logic circuit. Talking their way around this guy should be as much fun as blasting it to bits!
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Post by tauster on Mar 31, 2020 21:03:19 GMT
Yep, armored battle snails are teh win. Despite gardening season just beginning and lots of urgent work out there to do, this snail made it right to the top of my list.
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Post by tauster on Mar 31, 2020 21:01:26 GMT
omg, this is so true!
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Post by tauster on Mar 17, 2020 21:20:20 GMT
Your Blight photo stage is...is... nope. I just can't find words that do it justice.
'awesome' slinked off and is whimpering in the corner, feeling inferior. ;( 'breathtaking' shrugged its shoulders, sadly shook its head and is gone now, joining the rest depressed gang of positive superlatives and compliments, all of whom feel like they arent good enough.
Alan, what you need is an exhibition, or even better, a roleplaying publisher who uses pictures of your creations for book illustrations. We'd all love to play games in a world with your creations!
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Post by tauster on Feb 28, 2020 21:16:13 GMT
So many unfinished projects, and yet another new one...
Just watched WALL-E with my boy, and took an instant liking to the countless trash cubes the little hero is piling.
I've got a foam cutter, I've got foam, and I have a texture rolling pin. What more do I need?
The cubes look too pristine...
...so I put them into an old pringles tube, add something sharp, spiky and heavy and rattle it around a bit to give the cubes some dents and cracks.
Basing them in back color with some watered-down PVS glue mixed in.
The final color scheme will probably be a rusted iron, but I might go with half of them for the well-proven ancient copper & verdigris combo, to go with the junkyard terrain set.
Nothing fancy, but quick, easy and fun!
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Post by tauster on Feb 9, 2020 15:57:16 GMT
.....aaaaand finished! This project turned out more fun than expected, especially the painting part. After assembling, I was - as is typical for me - totally in the dark how to paint this set up. I wanted it to stand out, but not glaringly. Turned out that 'glaringly' wasn't so wrong... My intention was to use very strong metallic colors to set some accents, but I suspected these would be too bold. So I decided to give Greenstuffworld's Colorshift Metal a try. I got two different bottles recently, and felt that green and purple would ge well together. Turns out I was right, at least by my personal verdict. Metallic colors are notoriously hard to fotograph, so I took a few shots to give you an idea how they look. The color shifting works best on large areas, but it does well on the small dots too.
The white pillars were washed with a watered-down green wash, and after drying, with a black wash. The subtle green has been obliteraded by the black, but I can live with that. The dirty grey makes it fit in quite well with my other ruined pieces, so overall I'm very happy with it all. The circular pillars can be set up in different configurations, and provide lots of line-of-sight blocking options in combat. Also, I'll describe the color of the unknown material as being really hard to look at, causing headaches and nausea. If the PC linger too long and too close to this weird apparatus, these affects will worsen and their skin will begin to blister. This thing might have been created by aboleth or illithid, or a some obscure but powerful sect with ties to the Far Realm. I treat Far Realm effects like radioactivity, which will, when it finally dawns on the players, give them a nice shock. There will be a strong incentive to get - and stay for a while - near this thing, as it's failing arcane/psionic(?) technology can be used as a crude weapon: They can try to overload the arcane/psionic(?) circuits, and cause powerful energy discharges to strike the battlefield, with various degrees of precision. I'll present a group of very powerful enemies to give the party an incentive to use every weapon available, and don't look too closely at the prices that are to be paid. I still have some never-revealed very large monsters like the walking ruin or the walking hill monster...
I might have to demonstrate this power by having enemies using it on them before, or adding a sage NPC to the party with the required knowledge. Or, more frightening: The apparatus telepathically contacts nearby beings and gives the information freely. Heck, it might even have a twisted personality...
More evil ideas? please fire away!
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Post by tauster on Feb 7, 2020 22:00:36 GMT
Made up my mind and painted the pieces in a simple ancient copper with a double verdigris wash, plus a Gehenna Gold drybrush to bring some of the sheen back.
Primed in black
Stippled in gold (cheap acrylic craft paints, a 50/50 mix of gold and aluminum silver)
First verdigris wash
After the second verdigris wash. The part where the brush rests on is drybrushed with Gehenna Gold. The difference is subtle but vital.
The left piece is finished (i.e. 2x verdigris wash, then drybrushed in gold), the underside of the centerpiece on the right is only washed once and not drybrushed.
The whole bunch
Next steps is painting up the stone-tiled tripod legs. I'll go for a white basecoat, a perlescent drybrush and a dark brown wash, aiming at an 'ancient marble' effect or something like that...
Now I have two small golden pieces left where I can play with. I have a number of interesting metallic colors and want to see how accents of those look. I don't think it will be better than how it looks now, but there's only one way to find out.
Also, I intended to wash everything with a dark brown wash. This will probably kill the golden sheen (which would have to be done all over again), but I'm not sure this will really improve the look.
Whatever the outcome, the lesson learned is: Always make a few pieces more than intended.
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Post by tauster on Feb 6, 2020 12:59:36 GMT
'nother spontaneous terrain project...
Months ago, I found pics of the Cyber Defence Platform myde by TTCombat, and instantly liked the design idea behind it. Even though it isn't really expensive, I didn't buy the thing but let the idea bubble for a while. Today I wanted to fool around with the proxxon foam cutter and decided to give it a try.
I decided to use the Necron texture pin and a pavement roll for the support pillars.
In addition to hotglue, I pinned the pieces with wooden skewers.
The additional pillars won't stand...
...so I glued on poker chips as bases. Always remember to remove the protective plastic foil on the upper side of the chip, or it will later peel off and separate the terrain pice from the actual chip!
This was going quickly so far, I think it took about 30-45 minutes. Painting shouldn't be that hard ...IF I could decide on a color scheme!
Several classics lend themselves to the design, copper/brass & verdigris is my favourite, rusted iron might work too (but I'm not sure it will jive with the design well). The stonework will be painted as soiled white shimmering marble (white primer, pearlescent sheen, dark brown wash) so that it blends in my Mirrorspace terrain set.
How would you paint the necron pieces? Actual necrons aren't in my game, so the black-silver-green is more or less out of the question. Also, glowing effects over all the tines are probably too much effort.
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Post by tauster on Feb 6, 2020 12:44:53 GMT
Making the actual plant for the carnivourous fruit takes a bit longer than expected because...life came in the way. Here's what I did so far.
A circular base of a scrap piece of aluminum compound called 'Alucore', 15mm strong, with a M8 pop rivet nut already inserted. I screwed in a bent M8 threaded rod, added a connector and screwed in another scrap piece of rod. Stuff like this goes to the recycling bin at work, so I can scoop up some bits and pieces from time to time.
I considered several options for making the trunk around the rod. Construction foam would have been the fastest, and would leave me with lots of interesting textures, but I went with recycling my heap of paper towels that I used for cleaning brushes, dipping them in watered-down PVA glue and pressing a first layer around the rods. It took a few days to dry, but I can add another layer tonight or tomorrow.
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Post by tauster on Feb 3, 2020 18:22:47 GMT
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Post by tauster on Jan 29, 2020 19:39:29 GMT
First drybrushing layer with a cold blue-ish dark green. It might look out of place and 'not natural' on plants, but that impression will dissappear after all green layers are done.
Two more drybrush layers: olive green,...
.... then some white and ocre mixed into that for a lighter green, which will let the details pop out like crazy:
When you drybrush the darker greens on, use less color on the brush but brush a lot more (i.e. go over every area several times, with varying pressures). However when you switch to lighter shades, be extremely careful or you might ruin your piece.
I washed the mouth out with dark pink / purple, let the excess color drain from the mouth, cleaned it away wherever it had left stains outside the mouth and waited until the color tht remained outside and between the teeth was almost dry - then painted the teeth with white. The effect is that a little of that dark pink mixes with the white and gives the teeth first hint of bloodstains.
I'll have to wait until the teeth have dried, then I can add a little brown wash there. If that is dry, I might add a feew spots of coagulated blood color for more evilness. Just in case my palyers don't get that this plant won't let itself be plucked so easily.
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Post by tauster on Jan 27, 2020 16:33:13 GMT
OUTSTANDING STUFF! You have a WONDERFULLY rich imagination & a fine eye for useful objects to turn into FANTASTIC creations. Your players have a visual treat each game. The Chickens bring to mind the Trojan Chicken from Monty Pythons' Holy Grail.
Thanks for the praise, Alan. It is always appreciated!
When reading the realm's description, I initialy thought of making troyan chicken from little planks, but scrapped that plan when I realized how much work that would be. Also, the tight deadline pushed the project into the 'make chicken of living wood' direction. Now I think that the 'licing wood' variant I made is more true to the spirit of the fey realm than plank chicks.
So with this quickie finished, let's start the next spontaneous project!
I stumbled over a wonderfully weird carnivorous plant a few days back, and immediately knew imma gonna do this:
Why? Because sometime in 2018 or 2017 (can't remember) I made a silicone mold from a dried exotic fruit, whose name I can't remember either, and whose shape fits the 'body' of this critter totally. I had planned to make it the body of some spikey abomination, but I never got beyond that general idea.
Due to the mold's shape, it is next to impossibl to reach every spot with the gluegun. So this was a perfect time to recycle all the hotglue scraps I collect (all scrunched up hotglue whisps and cutt-offs go into a tin can). I just shoved them in and put the hot air gun into the mold, melting the glue scraps.
It worked almost perfectly, only the sides (yes, exactly the spots I couldn't reach with the gluegun...) were left incomplete.
I simply made another segment and glued it in place:
A few stones for teeth...
...and a pair of glass eyes.
Bonus points for a detachable anglerfish-like glowing lure.
I'm going with a similar color combo I used on the small carnivourous plants I made earlier, i.e. green and purple. This time I'll try basing the whole thing in purple first and then going over that with the greens. Also, using purple as a base makes painting the inside of the maw easier. I hope.
And that's where it stands. The purple took over a day to dry, so I can't continue tonight. Since this little beastie has no tight dedline, I don't have any pressure. I just hope it won't get another procrastinated project.
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Post by tauster on Jan 26, 2020 14:57:17 GMT
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Post by tauster on Jan 25, 2020 12:42:28 GMT
I managed to finish the Giant Carnivorous Wooden Chicken just in time for yesterday's game night, which was glorious in several aspects. story-wise
- we got the wizard's familiar back from the dead, i.e. returned her sould from the faerie world it went to after dying
- the other PC, Gulug the hamster (former human, former frog) is alive again, sort of. More on that later.
gameplay-wise - the encounters were very athmospheric, nailing the intended mood exactly
- it was one of the rare sessions where my plan for the night survived during game, story-wise as well as playing through all the stuff I had prepared for the night. We landed exactly where I had wanted to go for the evening. Honestly I can't remember having met the planned point before, ever. This was the first time I put much of my winter-themed terrain and monsters in front of my players, who loved the stuff. Very satisfying! The party were supported by a friendly allied faerie, who knew a fey portal to Flibbertigibbet's realm, where she had determined Neha's soul went. The portal is oneway* and only active during a certain moon phase, which ended unfortunately one day before. The faerie's solution was a small gul-de-sac in one of the city's run-down harbor quarter, which was known to a very few people as 'Backwards Alley': If you walkit in a certain order of steps, you can time-travel, in a limited and 'it's too complicated to explain to you' way.
* The return trip was done via magic beans, also provided by the faerie, that each player had to eat.
So the faerie guided them to Backwards Ally, hummed a melody that the party immediately forgot even while hearing it and danced a weird dance. In the dead end of the ally was a decrepit wooden ladder dissappearing in the dark above, which they had to climb. The farie explained that the remaining link between the wizard and his familiar would ensure that they arrived somewhat 'near' the familiar. She had to stay back to make sure they can return, which was all accepted by the players as part of the faerie magic.
Actually, this was one of the few sessions where magic really felt mysterious to us. A nice change after over 20 years of roleplaying!
They climbed for several minutes through complete darkness and rising winds, while the temperature dropped with each rung and the wind grew into a veritable snow storm (it was summer in the city where they started). At that point I started this on the TV in the back of the room, and left it playing for the whole night. I dimmed the lights and put the terrain pieces on the table. They arrived on a very small flying rock, barely large enough to hold them all, less than 1m wide and about 1.5m long. There was nothing to be see around them, only another flying rock about 2m in front of them, and the edge of another beyond that, dissappearing in the blizzard. Only clouds above and around them, and if there was any ground below, it was obsuced by the dense fog and whirling snow. It was about -10°C, and they hadn't prepared for winter. They immediately got their sleeping blankets out of the backpakcks, protecting them against some of the cold but negating any DEX bonuses they might have for future checks. The party's shapeshifter shifted into an eagle and braved the storm (one DEX and STR check for each rock isle, plus a WIS check to time the next step/jump to one of the very brief relatively calm moments (providing a +2 bonus for the other two checks). He had to make 6 rock hops until he found a rock with a wooden ladder going down. The party's psion then established a sight link to the eagle, and while seing the target area, was able to open a psionic dimension door to get the party through. Again, they had to climb down for minutes, which was difficult considering the iced-over rungs. The wind sounded different, hinting at the ground being near. Which was furtunate because the ladder broke off and all of them tumbled to the unseen ground below. I had them roll a D12 to determine the drop's height (2m - they were lucky), switched the room's lights off completely and put Glazier's Heart on the table. Much aaah!'s and oooh!'s ensued. The party landed in the center of a frozen pond. I can't stress enough how athmospheric the mood was. The LED lights provided just enough light to see the immediate surroundings, even though it was hard to read the character sheets and dice.
The ice held for a few moments, but when the magical rolling chair of the NPC mage hit the ice and knocked one PC off his feet, the whole ice surface broke into sheets. I switched the pond and got another round of praise. The eagle shifted back in human form. They had a hard time getting off the ice because dice results were very dramatic during the whole night (we call them drama dice), but eventually made it to the shore... where they encountered their first snow man (a small one, without any arms). It took them only a few moments to realize that it wasn't a regular snow man, as it had suddenly grew arms and moved towards them when nobody looked it's way. More snow men appeared from the fog between the trees, and the fight was on.
The Decimator, or 'Bert the intelligent flying sword' (my son's temporary character) got gripped by a snow man and used as a weapon against his friends. (months back, I had a snow man arm using the same type of sword I used for Bert's miniature, which was pure luck). His STR checks failed for almost the complete battle, so he could free himself and help only in the very last stages of the battle. The farie had given each of them a magic bean (and a tiny pot with earth for each bean). When you throw it, a random magic effect (chosen from a D100 table) happens, for better or worse, or entertaining. They rolled up a very angry and aggressive ogre that immediately stormed towards the PC who had thrown the bean, axe high and roaring, knocking one of the smaller snow man out of her way.
So the fight had suddenly become more interesting... after two more rounds of battle with more snow men incoming, the ogre threw herself on the PC, buring her under her bulk. Just in time to pretect her from the frost breath of the small dragon who made a fly-by attack from out of the storm and dissappearing back into the white fog and snow flurry. Now she seemed to be on their side suddenly... the whole situation got from 'more interesting' to 'downright confusing'.
The players didn't have time for catching breath or conversing with the ogre/troll/ , as more screams came from the dark woods, and stomping from many feet. When the dragon attacked next time, they threw a glass sphere enchanted with a fireball it's way. It hit the dragon the exact moment it breathed frosty death their way, resulting an a strange mix of different magics: The ice breath seemed to freeze the exploding fireball, which hang in the air like, appearing like someone had hit hte PAUSE button on the remote while the TV showed an explosion. Rime had formed on the edge of the unmovong flames, and the dragon who should by all means have flewn through the explosion seemed to have been frozen to the flames. It screamed while being unable to remove itself from the flire, being suspended in the air and slowly burning to crisp. One more hint that magic works strange in the faerie realms... A giant eight-legged weasle(?) appeared between the trees, and a male ogre/troll/ followed behind. They didn't attack the party immediately, but the players attention got already drawn to the next threat: More stomping from the woods, louder and accompanied by the sounds of splintering and falling trees. Moments later, the newest abomonination apeared between the trees: A friggin' giant wooden chicken, with a blood-spattered beak and claws, came crashing through the trees!
Unbelieving stares among the players, followed by much amusement)
The ogres/trolls seemed to lure in the chicken from the other side of the pond, which seemed to work: The beast went into the shallow waters of the shore, but instead walking on sinking below the ice sheets, it jumped and flew to the other shoreline, landing in a splash of icy water and snow among the enemies (3D6 damage for all in 3m distance). A few rounds of thrown glass grenades (lightning and fireballs) another chicken crashed through the trees. Unfortunately the first one had just exploded into giant splinters (one player had aimed for the anus with a fireball grenade, and made the difficult roll). The second chick died faster, as dice luck was on the player's side this time (later the ogres/trolls would explain that those beasts are fiercely territorial, and killing the first one before the second arrived had made the battle actually harder).
The decimator was finally able to free istself from the snow man, reduced it to a heap of ice and snow and started chopping away at the second chick's legs. The ice dragon died finally, falling to the ground in a heap of charred bones. They harvested the skull (the allied mage had a handy portable hole on his flying wheel chair) and tried carefully conversing with the ogres/trolls, which was difficult because they didn't speak their language.
They had received a crash curse by 'their' faerie how to behave when among fey (be very polite but never say 'thank you' as it puts you in their debt, don't accept food or drink, etc). They weren't sure whether or not these creatures were fey... and one character offered them a bottle of strong beverage as a sign of piece and good will, which the female accepted and offered a giant mug in exchange. Before the other players could react, the mug was emptied... and only then the player realized his character had just drank something offered by a potential fey. Facepalming ensued. Long story short, they were invited in the ogre's hut (surprisingly civilized and cosy, no dirty felts and rotting food on the ground!) and offered a quarter for the night. It turned out that Neha, the wizard's familiar, had found her way to the hut and lived there ever since, which was many months ago. Time indeed seemed to move differently here! After a joint meal (where each ate their own stuff) and a night's sleep, the party 'not-thanked' the ogres/trolls and parted via the magic beans, arriving back in the city they started. During the one day in the faerie woods, almost one month had passed here. During this time, Gulug was brought back from the dead too: Gunther von Schwarzhügel (black hill), a good-aligned(?) necromance looking like an eight year old boy who had already helped them rescuing the soul of on of the characters from the plane of hell, had helped a team of mechanically inclined mages and priests to create a ersatz body for the missing lower half of the hamster (which was blown away in a unfortunate cascade of fireball and lightning glass grenades). I introduced Gulug the flying robo-hamster snake, sadly without the player of the character being present (she had agreed to getting her hamster changed that way beforehand). More facepalming and smiles.
The session was a great mix of what makes roleplaying great: difficult terrain, strange and interesting monsters, unexpected tweaks, interesting social encounters and more weirdness and fun than our usual lot. Add to that a mission the players have a real stake in, a happy end that actually means something, and a night that for once didn't end with a cliffhanger. We need to get together and talk between the players and me as DM (they DM their own campaigns, so all of them are DMs too) to determine how we reach that more often.
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Post by tauster on Jan 22, 2020 20:13:04 GMT
This friday, the party will journey to one of the Faerie realms of Flibbertigibbet, a powerful fey lord. The goal is to get the soul of the Gnome Illusionist's familiar back, which was killed during an extraction mission ('Find the undead captain of the elven spelljammer ship. He had been added to the army ofseveral thousand undead, who are now 'parked' in the middle of the Jungle of Chult.'). Obviously, the mission didn't end in a complete success.
Yes, they found and rescued captain Oakenleaf and got out before the undead ripped them apart and/or assimilated them, but at the cost of two lives, one being said wizard's familiar. In all of our 20 years of roleplaying, we had only three characters who died and had to be brought back, these two included. The first PC resurrection (after a failed resurrection check against a chance of 97% - the player rolled a 98) had the rest of the party travelling several layers of Hell to get the soul of their friend back, so these sessions are something special among us.
The party's patron deity is the elven trickster god Erevan Ilesere, and Flibbertigibbet* is of like mind. A bit less powerful than a true god, but... more fey. The players recently got to chose whether they'd visit his realm or face the abovementioned giant undead army. After a quick description of Flibbertigibbet (creator of the gremlin race, fun-loving but a scatterbrained to the extreme (he played hide-and-seek with his mother and permanently forgot where he'd hidden her resulting in the dissappearance of a feaerie queen), unintentional destroyer of worlds, etc) they decided to face the undead. Half of the party has an extreme phobia against undead. That might tell you how much they fear the fey. I think I have portrayed the fey correctly. * I warmly recommend The Faerie Ring - Along the Twisting Way by Zombie Sky Press. Even if you have just a passing interest on all things faerie, this is probably the best sourcebook on fey out there. Long story short, here's the blurb about the abovementioned faerie realm:
Somewhere there they hope to find the sould of the wizard's familiar, but they will have to earn it. The party is around level 8 (ADND 2nd edition rules), with a shapeshifter fighter, a gnome illusionist and a drow thief/psion. Plus the Decimator, an intelligent flying sword (my 7 yr old son's temporary character).
They'll be break in the icy waters of a frozen pond, barely make it out of the freezing waters, somehow need to get warm and dry again, which wil be interrupted by aggressive snowmen they'll have to fight in a blizzard (reskinned Weeping Angles, so don't blink! ...don't blink my ass - try that in a blizzard!). The ruckus of the battle will lure in other creatures like a pair of ice drakes, a married couple of ice trolls and their pet giant ice weasle (at least those will help them), and others. And when they think it can't get any worse, the first giant wooden chicken appears: 6m of massive wood, claws as long a a grown-up human, an aura of chill and terror surrounding it, plus a very... fowl temper. Unfortunately that pun doesn't work in German. Long story short (yes, I do realize I've broken that promise already), that's the rough plan for friday night. Let's see how much survives contact with my players. Not much usually does. In any case, I need giant wooden chickens and have two nights time to make them.
Some WIP pics of the chicken follow, and as always I'm thankful for any input, craft-wise or encounter-wise. You can find paper maché chicken online for 2€ (see here). They don't come with legs, so I bent some wire and drilled holes in the body to glue them in. The legs and feet were covered & textured with hotglue. The cavity is filled with crumpled tin foil (cat food containers that have been used as color palettes)...
...then the whole opening got covered with PVA-soaked paper, to hide the seams:
I decided to leave the third chick untouched, as two are enough for the encounter and I want to have a spare one for future ideas.
And that's where we are. The PVA glue will be dry in the morning, so I can prime them black before going to work, finishing the painting in the evening & night. I hope they'll look like proper wood...
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Post by tauster on Jan 12, 2020 20:58:34 GMT
A little progress on the crystal critter, and a new batch started. This time: Fishes!
But first things first, I based the crystal critter two times with regular acrylic white. Most of the pink is covered up already, and the rest will hopefully be with the following layers of whatever strikes my fancy.
I'm thinking of a very watered-down blue/green wash, plus a pearlescent drybrush on top. Maybe I'll reverse that order on one of them, just to see the difference.
The leftmost got covered in crystal effect color; the color is still drying so I'll probably have to wait until the morning to see if that stuff really makes any effect (got it years ago in a set with other colors, hadn't tried this particular color out so far).
The right one belongs to my kid who, after seing mine, wanted his own. He decided against tentacles and opted for horns.
And here's the new sh*t: Fishes.
A whole school of colorful, harmless, happy fishes! Noticed how I sneaked the ' harmless' in?
I made molds from a plastic toys and cast a whole bunch, intending to use them below the waves of the Glimmersea. They didn't come out too well, many of them have casting defects, but that can be wounds (fresh and/or healed up). Live in an underdark ocean is dangerous, after all. And I am sure my players will not think of them as harmless for even one moment.
They know mee too well for that... So I need some unexpected powers for these little koy-like fishes. Poison is always an option, sure. But that isn't spectacular. They live in the vicinity of an Aboleth city, so psionic stuff would be nice. Any ideas?
When the basecolors are dry, I'll try some metallic drybrushes, plus some washes. I feel like making large swarms with 10 or more individual fishes on a single base, hopefully branching out into more squatic scatter terrain from here. Floating algae forests, plus some terrain pieces similar to what DMScotty did last summer ( here and here). So far I have some aquatic bases and a trio of zombie sharks. Not nearly enough, but a start.
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Post by tauster on Jan 10, 2020 22:33:22 GMT
Another new race was born today. Or rather, crystallised. And no, I can't resist bad puns. Inspired by Krakongames' Ferrus Testudines, I recycled some pink foam cut-offs that I could't throw away for months, always hoping to find some use even for small pieces. Well, seems like I just did. Here's what I started with: 20 minutes later. Making three creatures took about 30 minutes from there, give or take. I made mine a bit different from Krakon Games' version, adding a roper-like eye instead of a proper head. It felt better that way somehow. Or maybe I'm just a little too much influenced by deafnala 's critters.
And of course I couldn't resist adding tentacles. I have now used up my last good-looking tentacles in the box, so I'll have to break out my trusty tentacle maker asap. Crafting without having a supply of tentacles to add whenever I feel like just doesn't feel well. Btw: When you cut pink foam with a craft knife, do yourself a favour and use a fresh blade. I am a notorious not-changer, using my blade until it is dull, dull, dull. And no, l I can't justify that habit... Here's the difference between cutting with a dull and a new blade. The picture speaks for itself, I guess.
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Post by tauster on Jan 5, 2020 18:05:43 GMT
They are SPLENDIDLY creepy characters. VERY IMAGINATIVE & VERY WELL DONE!Thanks for the praise, Alan. It means a lot from the God of Mushrooms and the creator of the Spooky Woods folks! I did some groupd shots outside today, which should be the last shots you see of these critters for some time.
Team Turquoise Soldiers and guards, but neither as strong nor as dimwitted as their green siblings.
Team Blue The hit team with their ogre arms.
I'll make them a bit dimwitted but bigheaded, constantly using complicated words to show their intellect, without realising that they use them completely wrong. The king, or whatever title he likes. I absolutely love his 'scratching head' pose. The others are members of the ruling caste, constantly emphasising that all Oculants are equal, but leaving no boubt that they are more equal than the rest.
Some of the original batch.
They're cute, but I'm happy that the newer ones are clearly better.
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Post by tauster on Jan 4, 2020 21:07:21 GMT
Finished!
Wow, that was a wild ride. Twentyone little cutesies, each one unique. That is more than I ever made of one creature, so this has truly become a race of its own.
Making them was so much fun that I hesitate to not call it addictive, but at the moment I simply can't justify making more of them. Heck, now I need to come up with a series of encounters and a worthy story arc. This might spin off into a mini-campaign of its own. I do have several ideas where to set them up:
1) In the Underdark, as an old cast-off experiment of the aboleth. The oculants are abandoned and forgotten by the aboleth (or are they?) and eek out a living on the shores of the Glimmersea in the Deepdark. Thanks to their varied magical eyepowers and a few magical items, they are relatively safe, and a potential ally of the party.
2) Faerie: In the last session of another campaign, our Gnome Illusionist got his familiar killed. In the same fight, a NPC-turned-temporary-PC lost his life too...again. Gulug was a frog that was turned into a human by a beholder in need of a crew for his spelljamming ship. The party has long since killed the beholder and now owns the ship, but during the adventure, Gulug was killed when siding with the characters. They reincarnated him and he came back as a Giant Space Hamster, a shape he vastly prefers to the former two. Now he lost his life again, and the party will have to get his soul back, which currently resides in the demesne of a fey lord called Flibbertigibbet (a trickster fey lord).
3) Spelljammer: The Oculants are perfect as a weird race on one of the thousands of worlds in the Known Spheres. Since they are in no monster manual, none of the players will have encountered anything like them before, making it a true 'wow that's something new!' moment.
As for now, #3 is the option I like least because I get the least mileage out of it. #2 will at least make for a memorable 'get our dead back' quest, but it will likewise be a one-shot adventure; the players will probably not return to that place in a fashion that will require the miniatures on the table. #1 is the option that I like most, as the Oculants might join the group in the battle against the aboleth and the monsters they send against the group, once they found out that someone out there has a reasonable chance of foiling their plan of world domination.
Ideas welcome, as always! Also, if you feel I could improve on the color scheme, postures or anything else with these critters, please fire away. I always welcome your opinions!
Anyways, enough rambling. Enjoy a few group shots.
I might break them up into smaller groups later and bore you with more details about them.
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