Tauster's Tentacles

[tauster]

I washed the tentacles first with Thrakka Green and then with Coelia Grenshade. The latter pooled on the twist-off cap under the mini and had begun to become a slurry mush. Since I wanted to have the rear orifice look a bit different than the rest of the fleshy body, I gave it a try. ...man, green on reddish really lookes ugly!

 

I caved in and went over the whole critter with that stuff, and now it looks like it just rose from a cesspit. I'll have to give the green tentacles another wash with Agrax Earthshade or another dark brown shade because the tentacles look clean compared to the upper sections.


Spontaneous idea:
I've probably made more tentacled stuff than any ten users combined, but I never actually used them like in this creature, i.e. in a thick, twisted-together bunch. I really like how those intertwined tentacles look! I can see that texture applied practically everywhere as a small detail: Peaking through a portion of ripped open dungeon floor, inside all kinds of cyborg-ish creatures or mechanisms, as innards of a giant zombie critter, etc. It doesn't have to be organic - this could be cables or hydraulic tubes or wires carrying raw arcane energy.

Making this bow wasn't too difficult (although the pointy ends of most tentacles broke off), but it took relatively long. Soo...


You know whats coming next, right?

...

...exactly.


I will make a mold, or several molds. Chaotically twisted, more or less parallel, systematically intertwined. Thick cables and flat surfaces. This will take quite a while but it is time well invested because from then on I can add that kind of detail with almost no effort.

Insert hand rubbing and maniac chuckles at your discretion.

[tauster]

My current bedtime reading is all of the Spelljammer Monstrous Compendium addendums. Lots of funny stuff there, many of which could be used for all kinds of campaigns. Here's the Strangler: a carnivorous and - more important - tentacled monstrous plant. Easy to make and like many entries, usable in all kinds of campaigns.

The strangler is a 3-foot-wide (1m) green ball with eight tentacles and a nasty disposition. It will automatically attack anything that gets in range of its tentacles. The tentacles are each STR 16 and secrete a paralyzing poison just in case breaking free from multiple STR 16 tentacles is too easy.

In the time-honored tradition of D&D Monsters With Tentacles, you can of course save yourself most easily by attacking the (AC 7, 2d8 HP) tentacles, assuming you're not paralyzed. The HP possessed by the tentacles are a separate HP pool from the main body, so severing some (or even all) of the tentacles won't kill it. Severing all the tentacles, however, will make it very frustrated. (Save vs. Willpower, fail means the strangler starts sounding like my dad watching heavy metal videos on MTV back in the day.)

Final Analysis: A fairly nasty mid-level monster. It blooms a single flower every 250 days which, since there are no insects on Plata, self pollinates and then explodes. The aarakocra consider the flower a delicacy, which presumably helps keep the aarakocra population in check.

You'll find a conversion to 3E (I believe) here.


I already made some monsters from this funny pasta type, and it immediately came to mind when I thought about how to shape the maw of that critter. Due to the pasta's size, my versions are roughly double the size (3 ft diameter).




For the tentacles I twist tin foil around and bend it into various curved shapes. I'm not sure if all 8 Stranglers will get 8 tentacles as described. I probably make some with less, so save some time.




Then the tentacles get textured with hotglue. Start with one half, dip int into cold water to get it harden up instantly, then turn it around and cover the remaining length. It took about 5 mins to get all 8 tentacles textured.




I positioned them so that all tentacles go into one direction - where the PCs will be. It occurred to me that for each attacking Strangler, I should make another passive version with the tentacles laying on the ground ar wrapping around the main body. That's what I'll put on the table at the encounter's beginning. When the party comes into reach of a critter, I swap it out with the attacking version.

Of course I could use magnetized tentacles to make only one main body and then move the tentacles in whichever direction the players are. That would save me the work of making separate versions, plus I could use the tentacles for other monsters (with the same color scheme) too. Lets see...



Primed green. I later wet-blended some brownish-green before the first color was dry but didn't took a pic.

[bluecloud2k2]

Glad you're not going with flesh tones on that thing... it would look vulgar and not kid-friendly.

[tauster]

Drybrushed with a very bright yellow-green wall color called 'lemon grass', plus some light touches with Citadel's Moot Green.



Not sure I'd call it finished, but at least now the details pop out.


...no, definitely not finished. Any ideas what's missing? What would make this plant cool,visually?

[Neyjour]

Great looking plant-critter! 

What about some brown tones (perhaps a thin brown wash over all of it?) that would compliment (and contrast with) the green-yellow?  If the wash muted the yellow too much, it would be easy enough to go back over it again with a yellow dry-brush.

The main thing I would definitely recommend is making the mouth more noticeable with a different colour(s).  But I'm not really sure what colour(s) to recommend.  Hmmm...

[angie1985]

After looking at all your tentacle creature, some wandered into our game as well, creeping out of a chasm...and the treasure box on the other side? I wasn't as crafty for the big pieces though...found an old childs bathtub squid-like thing around, based and painted the tentacles from that...had to make my own for the chest though. Think they fell out a dozen times and of course had to be repainted it seemed every time I touched them How do you get the paint to stick to foil? I use folkart paint.

[tauster]

That chest is sweet!

(here's a larger pic; I just changed the file's URL)


I usually glue stuff on before painting, but when I suspect that something flimsy would fall off during the painting, I paint first and glue later.

The cheap acrylic colors I use stick to foil well enough, never had a problem with them. Expensive miniature colors like Citadel's colors work just as well.

[tauster]

Not exactly tentacles, but it falls in the same general topic: Ugly sights.

I got a stamp that is normally used for cake decoration, but I think I can put it to better use. If you press it in almost-hardened hotglue, you get something that looks quite disturbing:



Paint it with the tried-and-true bloody flesh color combo (it pays to have some red clumps in the purple wash, btw!) and the yuck! factor rises even more:



In other news, I have a savoy cabbage in the larder, and I fully intend to use it, again. Last year's stuff was just for seing if it works, and boy does it work. Now I want larger pieces.

[erho]

Thats disgusting.

Go start a Nurgle Plague Marine army already!

[tauster]

Apr 2, 2018 16:27:06 GMT erho said:

Thats disgusting.

Go start a Nurgle Plague Marine army already!

My alternative to Nurgle is Torog, the King that crawls, and the creations of the Aboleth in the Underdark. Thats more than enough excuses to inflict those disgusting things on my players.

And here's the threatened giant cabbage tentacles:

I made the core of each tentacle out of crunched-up newspaper, tightly wrapped with painters tape. The outer savoy cabbage leaves that went to the compost made a small detour to my craft desk, where they were immortalized before becoming earth again.





I needed almost 500g of air-dry clay for each tentacle, even with the paper core.




I stopped after those two giant things, and used the small leftover to make a comparatively small tentacle. It still stands more than twice as Lady Forscale's height, but is dwarfed by the two monstrocities towering over it.




Not sure how long the drying process will take, I think at least a full day. It took me less than half an hour to make all three, clean-up time included. Those leafes make tentacle creation ridiculously easy. I have more clay laying around, sooo maybe...

[factoriatabletop]

i really like the texture of this tentacles!
you made it pressing the cabbage on the air dry clay¿? ( i didnt understand very well, sorry if you said it already)ah, and the red ugly sight you made it just great!!! i am going to try to do something similar for my next project!

thanks for your pics, have a nice day!!
cheers!

[tauster]

Apr 3, 2018 15:51:41 GMT factoriatabletop said:

i really like the texture of this tentacles!
you made it pressing the cabbage on the air dry clay¿? ( i didnt understand very well, sorry if you said it already)ah, and the red ugly sight you made it just great!!! i am going to try to do something similar for my next project!

thanks for your pics, have a nice day!!
cheers!

Glad you like it!

Yes, I simply pressed the cabbage into the clay. You can wrap the leaves all around the clay without any seams being visible afterwards, which is great for making 3D objects like these tentacles.

2D terrain is even easier, just put the leaf on top of your rolled-out or otherwise flattened terrain piece and press it into the clay.

[sgtslag]

The cabbage leaf texture evokes a repulsive reaction in me, towards those tentacles. Can't say why, but I find them... Very repulsive. Yuck!  

Mission accomplished. Well done, as usual! Cheers!  

[tauster]

Painted up:




The only things missing are the gloss varnish (it's drying at the moment) and some basing, so they won't have to stand on the clay itself.

[erho]

I admire your work and talent, but... Nine Hells, man those are disgusting!!

I think I contracted some disease by upvoting this...

[tauster]

Apr 9, 2018 20:04:18 GMT erho said:

I admire your work and talent, but... Nine Hells, man those are disgusting!!

I think I contracted some disease by upvoting this...

Glad you ...liked(?) them. I hope the disease will make you craft similar stuff, so IT will spread.

Here are some shots with the tentacles plus other, older things.







Among them are two pieces of my multi-staged monster, something I believe to have accidentally invented myself: Different versions of the same monster that will haunt the party in encounter after encounter.





When they think they have slain the slug-thing, it returns during their hard-earned rest, as half-regenerated crawling corpse, to give them even more nightmares. And then it comes back yet again, even less substantial, a crawling spine with a head, but with different powers and perhaps even more deadly - all while the players are denied their rest so that they can't regain HP or memorize spells. And then, a fourth and final time, as a flying and tentacled skull, laughing at them, utter madness shining from its eye sockets. After they have slain that thing, it is over, but the players will definitely have become paranoid.

Can't wait for that game night!

[angie1985]

Ewww...I mean awesome lol...

[sgtslag]

I need an Iodine Shower! [Shudder!...]     Not much has this effect on me, but you have struck muck, in spades.  I feel for your players...  Can't wait to hear how it went!     Cheers!

[erho]

I imagine the players reactions will be something like this;

[angie1985]

Erho: love it haha. Bet you are right.