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Post by tauster on Feb 12, 2016 18:54:27 GMT
This week I discovered a hitherto unknown corner in the nearby hardware store where they sell *drum roll* pink foam! That's a big thing for me, because it took me two years to find a place where they sell this stuff in small quantities like single slabs. Whenever I saw pink foam left over, I grabbed it. I found some in trash containers of construction sites (you learn to ignore people staring, but you wouldn't do it in your own neighborhood) and stopped the car when I found discarded scrabs lying on the roadside. Simply going to the store and buying a single slab feels so good!  I have a giant slab of pink foam (approx. 1 m x 50 cm) left over from the house isolation we did last fall and didn't dare to use it unless I have a truly great idea. But now that I know where I can get new ones I can afford using one half in an experiment. When I made the dwarven rock grinder, I discovered that melted pink foam makes great organic terrain (see here and here for details and pics), so I wanted to use that method for a large piece. I have some truly huge flesh-mount monstrosities made of construction foam painted the same way, so even with a board of 50x50 cm, I can't place more that one of the larger ones in without totally cramping that new 50 x 50 cm flesh cave board:  Seems another shopping spree in the construction store is in order...  Long story short, here are the pics. Melting the foam with a lighter didn't remove the imprinted texture,...   ...so I used the wire cutter. The results are great:  At this stage I seriously thought about making an ice table instead, but I still have that other half of the slab. I cut in some deeper gouges, deep enough for minis to crouch in. Not sure my players will have their characters crawling through dlesh tunnels, but the NPC will.   I found a simple wat to get those 'warts' or pimples: Put a small snippet of foam somewhere and touch it with flame of the lighter.  It will melt into a small sphere and the area surrounding will sink in due to the foam shrinking because of the heat.  When I found how to consistently reproduce that, I made more of these structures. They look disturbingly organic - can't wait to see the whole thing painted up!   ...oh, and this time I didn't forget to glue some metal scraps in.  |
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Post by sgtslag on Feb 12, 2016 20:00:23 GMT
That reminds me of the Percy Jackson version of Hades... When Percy and friends would kill a monster, it would go to Hades, to be reborn. Hades was a living being, itself. The monsters would reform in, basically, a pimple on the surface of Hades, itself, until the zit popped, hurling the fully reformed creature onto the surface of the land. After its re-birth, the creature was free to return to the land of the mortals, and wreak havoc again.
In the last round of Percy Jackson books, he, and his girlfriend, Annabeth, were dropped into Hades, and had to make their way to an elevator, back to the land of the living. Along the way, they encountered these monstrous pimples. They would stab the forming creatures with their magical bronze weapons, thus forcing the creatures to begin reforming, again... It's a great scheme, I thought, for explaining Gygax's take on demons and devils being banished to the nether planes, to wait decades, or more, to regain their physical bodies, before they could visit the Prime Material plane again. Your terrain seems like a close approximation of what Riordan was writing about. Cheers!
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Post by tauster on Feb 12, 2016 22:10:25 GMT
Thats's a truly evil idea: The party kills a monster - and it pops back from some pimple on the board! The only problem is that it feels weird when this process takes only a few minutes, i.e. works in a single encounter. It should take days, weeks or months, but then you couldn't use the concept in a battle. Still, cool thought fodder!
My take on these pimples was this: I'll use this terrain in the context of Nihilath, the ancient Illithid empire from so long ago that even the Mindflayers don't remember it in more than just myths. Living buildings, growing terrain features. Some of them can be interacted with, even by non-psionic beings. You have to somehow get into uncomfortably close contact (read: gross) with some feature and get some cool psionic one-use items. Like squeezing a pimple or drinking some fluid from a cyst to get the equivalent of a potion. Something like that will gross the players out but it will drive home the point that the former inhabitants were quite far beyond what humans think is normal. Make it story-relevant and you have an instant motivation to do it anyway. *evil DM grin*
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Post by tauster on Feb 13, 2016 10:45:23 GMT
Mashaaf hadn't been worked on ever since ...well, August 2015. Which translates into a five month hiatus, following that four months summer hiatus. *sigh*  One thing that kept me from going on was that I wasn't particularly fond of the claws I had made from plastic spoons. The 'arms' were OK, but the claws simply hadn't enough texture, plus they break too easily.  I was looking to get cheap Tyranid bitz but had no luck for months: Sure, there were tons of 'nid claws out there, but nothing cheap. So I finally gave in and sunk some serious money (about 20 bucks!  ) to buy the largest, meanest Tyranid claws I could find. I got some more than the four pairs (left & right) I needed for Mashaaf (swarm tyrant scythe claws), plus some other 'nid bitz that will see use soon-ish, but now I can finally go on! I cut off all old claws. I somehow like the look of those stumps... It gives me some evil design ideas. *happy hum and wicked grin*  Makeshift fixing of the head and butt parts with small dabs of hotglue, to see how it looks assembled:  ...yep, that is much better. Those new claws were worth every penny! Yes I know - a 3D printer would have come in very handy here... Damn, thad head changes the balance point - now the body tips over! I'll have to glue a larger stone into the belly to fix that. Some more detail shots. Poor Lady Forscale!   I'll go with the flesh color scheme as written in previous postings. The purple just didn't work as well as on the Flumph, apart from that this is an avatar of Torog The King That Crawls, and raw flesh is ust perfect for this guy. [update] I corrected the belly stone and glued the head and butt on:  Creeepy! |
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Post by Meph on Feb 13, 2016 14:10:16 GMT
+Karma!
That thing is awesome. My players would drop a load if I threw that on the table! Nice job.
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Post by tauster on Feb 13, 2016 14:12:40 GMT
Thanks for the praise, Meph! I'm still wondering how I should paint the claws and the two 'horn shields' of the mouth piece. Any ideas? |
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Post by DnDPaladin on Feb 14, 2016 15:48:37 GMT
pains me everytimes i see left over foam after someone cuts their board with cutters...
i really hope you did something with it. the crater things looks awesome too.
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Post by deafnala on Feb 14, 2016 16:11:10 GMT
That really is a SPECTACULAR Beasty...definitely the stuff of Nightmares. VERY WELL DONE!
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Post by tauster on Feb 14, 2016 17:47:04 GMT
pains me everytimes i see left over foam after someone cuts their board with cutters... i really hope you did something with it. the crater things looks awesome too. Of course I didn't threw it away.  I primed a handful of these scraps in flesh color and atm wait for that to dry. I want to see how well these styrofoam scraps work as fleshy mounds. |
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Post by tauster on Feb 14, 2016 17:48:29 GMT
That really is a SPECTACULAR Beasty...definitely the stuff of Nightmares. VERY WELL DONE!Thanks for the praise, Alan. The nightmare is still before me - I like crafting and sculpting much better than painting, so I hope it won't take me another four or five months until this beastie gets finished... |
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Post by tauster on Feb 14, 2016 19:56:22 GMT
Huzzah - I finally started torturing Giant Mashaaf with the brushes! Just basepainting this giant with flesh color took almost an hour - and there was no artistic brush fu involved, only persistent, dogged stippeling.   I realized that it will take some extraordinary measures for me to finish this monster without further procastinations. So I hereby vow not to work on any other craft project than Mashaaf until I can declare it done. Putting that out the public makes it harder for me to break the vow, that's why I bother you guys with it. |
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Post by tauster on Feb 15, 2016 16:57:02 GMT
Washing Giant Mashaaf is well under way.  I have to do it in steps, turning the beast in different angles because you can't wash areas that are vertical or even upside down. Which explains the following degrading scene. But I'm sure the creature will get it's revenge, eventually.  |
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pepebe
Paint Manipulator
Posts: 187 
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Post by pepebe on Feb 15, 2016 17:06:56 GMT
I've enjoyed this thread for quite a while but the latest updates will fuel my nightmares FOREVER!
How about a fair warning to the title? "Not for the feint of heart" would be a minimum.
Please continue to destroy what's left of my sanity.
Exalt!
Patrick
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Post by deafnala on Feb 16, 2016 2:30:39 GMT
That is a pretty SPECTACULAR piece; the paint scheme suits it perfectly. GREAT WORK!
I love that you always have the same victim posing with your Beasties...it adds a certain continuity.
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Post by tauster on Feb 20, 2016 14:26:57 GMT
Thanks a lot for your praise, Partrick and Alan! Here's the latest news. Not much to write home about, just an hour of basepainting all the embedded stones and most of the crystals - which I had intended to leave transarent, but since I did a sloppy job with the flesh basepaint and the purple washing around those crystals, I and to paint them to hide those gobs of color spots... *sigh* Granted, painting those two steps took a long time, but it would have been worth the extra time to paint a little cleaner. Lesson learned. ...until next time I guess.  The rocks will be easy to paint, but those crystals... not so much. My guess is that in the end I'll go with something similar to what I did on my earth elemental's crystals. Only painted a bit cleaner.   The painting scheme of these crystal's looks a bit like comic art to me, so I'm not sure how well this mixes with the style I used on Great Mashaaf up to now (i.e. more or less realistic looking flesh). Next steps (not neccessarily in order of work) - basepaint the plates/hinges of the maw - basepaint the claws (have to do some research to find a good color scheme for maw plates and claws... probably something based on Bleached Bone) - drybrushing and washing the stones - working on the crystals There are lots and lots of organic looking features in the texture of the skin, and I'm tempted to add a little more color to them. But I don't want to make this critter too colorful and paint it to death... Let's see. [update 2016-02-21] Basepainted the claws and maw plates with Bleached Bone:  Drybrushed the embedded rocks in grey (Astrogranite) and light blue (Etherium Blue)  |
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Post by tauster on Feb 23, 2016 13:50:54 GMT
Some washing done...   I debated whether to wash prior or after drybrushing the claws, and finally decided on washing first. Not sure this was clever... Heck, I'm not even sure if I should drybrush the claws at all - it doesn't look too bad as is. Also, I wonder if I should do a light washing of dark brown & black (i.e. the same tone I used on the claws and beak) and go over the whole body. After all, this critter crawls through the Underdark, and it's quite dirty down there. At the moment the raw flesh looks a bit too clean*. But washing dulls the sheen, and I haven't even applied the gloss varnish yet. Applying it after the dirt wash would result in the dirt also getting shiny, which isn't what I'm aiming at. Varnishing before and later applying a dark brown wash would, again, take the shine away... Or am I missing something here? * ...I know I know: 'Clean' is definitely not a word that should be used by a sane person in the context of Mashaaf. |
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Post by kgstanley81 on Feb 23, 2016 17:36:37 GMT
When done, you could add some dirt basing on top of it, I sure some dirt would stick to it
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Post by tauster on Feb 23, 2016 18:21:02 GMT
When done, you could add some dirt basing on top of it, I sure some dirt would stick to it Brilliant. Thanks! |
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Post by tauster on Feb 23, 2016 19:07:10 GMT
...woah, drybrushing after washing makes sooo much sense when it comes to tyranid claws! Here's a direct comparison. The drybrushed ones (1st & 2nd from left) look way more realistic - the effect looks like the claws are chipped and pitted from heavy use. Exactly what you want for that kind of monster.  It works best when you have an extremely thick color and a very stiff brush. I was totally lucky to get this combination, so don't think I am such an experienced painter. I first tipped my brush very lightly into the color ('Bleached Bone'), then rubbed the color off on the inside of the pot, which resulted in the color remains that are caked on there getting rubbed into the brush. So with this mix of very little fresh and lots of old gummy color on a stiff brush, I got that result. Sorry if I just bored someone to death with going that deep into detail. I figured that maybe somone might make sense of my babbling and try it out. |
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Post by curufin on Feb 23, 2016 19:48:21 GMT
Awesome work! That thing is HUGE! What kind of hit dice is it going to have?
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) to buy the largest, meanest Tyranid claws I could find. I got some more than the four pairs (left & right) I needed for Mashaaf (swarm tyrant scythe claws), plus some other 'nid bitz that will see use soon-ish, but now I can finally go on!
I primed a handful of these scraps in flesh color and atm wait for that to dry. I want to see how well these styrofoam scraps work as fleshy mounds.
