|
Post by tauster on Jan 10, 2017 12:59:06 GMT
Really doing something from scratch - oh man that feels so good! I only now realize how much I have missed crafting. I got some progress on one of the beholder ships, which is building up the basic shape with lightweight materials, which is a peanut can, a plastic cap and lots of cleaned out cat food containers made of strong aluminum foil. And lots of hotglue. Some WIP pics to show how it is made up: Now I have a very sturdy and light shape that will support whatever I'll slap on to that monstrosity. I probably have to cover the aluminum foil with several layers of glue-soaked TP and then add more stuff: I still have spare tentacles from the one I made years ago that are even already magnetised. Then, some dried lemon peels (great organic shape!), walnuts that would look cool as pods for the beholders to sit in, and some acorns that could look like eyes; I think they'll look great at the end of an eyestalk. [edit] I had to completely re-do covering the whole thing in TP one I was done... My plan was to use glue-soaked leaves of kitchen roll (same stuff as TP, only larger) and cover the aluminum cone, pressing the sheets in the crevices to get some of the cool texture look through. It didn't work at all because paper would slip out of the crevices and all over the place without catching onto anything. In the end the whole shebang almost fell off completely, so I ripped it off and started all over again, this time crumpling the paper. I lost the cool scale-like look of the crumpled foils that way, but at least it worked. Now it sits on the oven to dry, I hope to continue tomorrow: Maybe I'll skip the TP on the next ship and leave the foil scales more visible. After all, all beholder nations build different ships, so variety is great here.
|
|
|
Post by tauster on Jan 11, 2017 13:35:10 GMT
Decided on a design variant, one from the official Spelljammer designs, see here. Hotglued a strong wire on the back (wire is still flexible enough to allow for some bending)... ...and then paper maché'd* some structure on. If you press it tight between your fingers, I get a great bone-like structure (see here). I didn't get it exactly right, so I'll wait until this has dried, cover it with lightweight modelling mass and try again. * Aluminum foil would have worked even better and faster but I try to minimize my usage of fresh aluminum foil because that stuff takes lots of energy to produce, and I'd have to dig through more moving crates that it was worth the hassle to find the other pile of cat food containers.
|
|
|
Post by margaret on Jan 11, 2017 17:45:22 GMT
Looking forward to seeing the end result!
|
|
|
Post by tauster on Jan 12, 2017 9:43:27 GMT
Started the 2nd beholder ship... Despite what I wrote earlier, I broke down and used fresh aluminum foil to make some bone-like structures. Paper maché doesn't really work good enough (at least the stuff I used - there are better ways to make real paper maché than just crumpling up some paper and soak it a bit) and takes ages to dry - the less time you have for crafting, the lower your willingness to wait... I didn't have enough lightweight modelling mass around, so I fell back to the next best thing, which is, well, fresh, unused, energy-intensive aluminum foil. On the bright side, now I have ten giant bones that will go somewhere on this ship! The cone-like thingie is crumpled paper, held together with masking tape. It will form the lower part of the ship and will be used as a ram. I used three long hotglue sticks to bond the two pieces together and strenghtened the lower back of the ship with more foil. [edit 1] The idea was to place the bones around the opening of the sphere, but I just realized that if I glue on the bones now already, the inside of the sphere will be insanely hard to reach with the brush. I'm toying with the idea of throwing out the bones completely. I don't really like the design concept I have in mind anymore, and bones don't have a thematic link to beholders anyway, apart from the 'organic ship design' angle. I'll compensate for the reduced cool-factor by adding more tentacles and veins, and go with something along the lines of the lower right variation. [edit 2] Making good progress. Aluminum foil is such a great material! *sigh* I rolled some foil up into ropes and then spiralled them around the cone: Should I ever make an Illithid Nautiloid, this would be the way to go.
|
|
|
Post by tauster on Jan 12, 2017 12:25:05 GMT
I got some years-old leftover welding rod for PVC flooring that I alway wanted to use somehow. Now I finally got a chance. Initially I wanted to use these strings as thin tentacles and weave them somehow around the stronger spirals, but then I decided to glue them on across, i.e. perpendicular to the stronger ropes. That way thay look a bit like muscle tissue, and that brings out the point of these ships being organic wonderfully. At least I hope that it will look cool after painting... Btw: This is really time-consuming. This last step took almost 3 hrs, and I finished only half of this step.
|
|
|
Post by tauster on Jan 12, 2017 14:40:41 GMT
...finished! That took quite a while, and I really hope that in the end it will be worth the more than 4 hours of work...
|
|
|
Post by stroezie on Jan 12, 2017 20:04:02 GMT
That is starting to look truely, epicly, awesome!
Love the look of that welding rod.
This build keeps getting better and better.
|
|
|
Post by curufin on Jan 12, 2017 21:20:51 GMT
That is a great looking result! It was well worth the time! Im filing that technique away for later....
|
|
|
Post by tauster on Jan 12, 2017 21:28:26 GMT
Glad you two like it. curufin, I can only recommend using that technique only when doing small areas, or when having huge amounts of time to kill. Plus you should have heat-resistant fingertips. I can't remember another project where I burned myself so much. Oh, and the hotglue whisps... Anyway, I'm glad I was able to finish it without losing any digits, or my remaining sanity. I'm quite happy with the result but don't cheer already - I can still ruin the thing with paint!
|
|
|
Post by sgtslag on Jan 13, 2017 13:56:40 GMT
Very impressive... Really looking forward to seeing it painted. Superb eye-candy. Cheers!
|
|
Estebor
Cardboard Collector
Posts: 49
|
Post by Estebor on Jan 13, 2017 14:25:27 GMT
Really impressive, great ideas.
|
|
|
Post by tauster on Jan 13, 2017 19:01:57 GMT
I hit the usual slump right before painting. As usual, I can't decide on the overall color scheme. The 'muscle' sections of the ram will get the flesh treatment, the strong spiralling ropes... either bones or wood. Probably bones. What would you prefer? But how should I paint the sphere section??? Bone? Wood? Stone/rock? Looking for your opinions! To keep the momentum up, I decided to give the sphere at least a coat of undiluted PVA glue to strengthen it a bit more, and discovered that the outermost layer, while dry and hard, did not adhere everywhere to the inner layers. In some places is became lose again when soaked in glue. I decided to open these 'bubbles' up so that these places look like heavy damage. This drives home the point that a) the ship has been organically grown rather than built and b) it has seen some fierce battles in its past. ...as a ship full of beholders isn't enough for the party to soil their pants! With the above said, I guess that the sphere should look like bone
|
|
|
Post by sgtslag on Jan 14, 2017 1:43:06 GMT
Are we there yet?... Is it soup, yet?... How much longer?... Is it done yet?...
LOL! Can't wait to see it finished. Never heard of Beholder's using ships before this thread. Blows me away, as they give me the creeps, just as described in the 1977 Monster Manual. These are chilling: the idea of Beholders having ships, being organized, working together with others of their kind... I'm the DM, and I nearly crapped my breeches! Love it! [Boom!!!] Mind blown... Cheers!
|
|
|
Post by tauster on Jan 14, 2017 8:12:48 GMT
The idea of organized beholders comes from WotC's Spelljammer setting: There are beholder nations in wildspace, but they count rarely more than a few dozen individuals. Realmspace has a whole planet ruled by beholder nation. Since these guys are 'genetically programmed' to violently hate everything that deviates from their own subrace, even if it it just the olor of their scales, and since they are prone to 'genetic mutation', they keep themselves in check quite nicely, offering not the kind of thread one would expect from a large group of organised beholders. For details see here and here. Still, a spelljamming ship crewed by a dozen beholders is much more than sufficient to induce a happy session of breech-crapping aorund the gaming table. [edit] quoted from the links above: The standard beholder is a staple of the game, but honestly I'm a bit bred with this monster: They have always the same set of spell-like abilities, and most players can tick them off a list even if they haven't encountered one in the game - that beast is just too famous to hold any surprises for all but novice players. We have scores of dragon subraces and dozens of elves, dwarves, heck there are even several illithid subraces. Would anybody like to participate in a brainstorming thread were we ome up with new beholder subraces?All descriptions agree that they are wildly mutable beasts, but I haven't seen much beholder variants with alternative sets of abilities (I haven't done any active research, granted). Yes, I know that 2E's I, Tyrant has several subraces, but they are completely different races (udead beholders, aquatic beholders, etc). What I am looking for is a beholder that fills exactly the same role as the standard beholder but with a different set of eye-beams. Let's have them a different appearance to give the players a hint that these beasts did not spring straight from the Monstrous Manual at them, but keep the variations minor - what we want is just a genetic mutation, a subrace and not a completely different race.
[edit] instead of waiting for responses, I just opened a beholder brainstorming thread. All entries & feedback please enter there! [/edit]
|
|
|
Post by tauster on Jan 14, 2017 12:31:08 GMT
Some progress on the first ship... It took several days for the little paper maché on the eyestalk/tentacle to dry, so I decided to continue with foil. I shaped the lower part with bone ridges and added a giant rope/tentacle snaking around the upper part for good measure, and because I want both ship designs to have some more common elements. A chestnut forms the upper eye, the lower one is an acorn. Some hotglue strings added to give it an even more organic look: I'm not sure how well aluminum foil and those welding rope would take the primer, so I'll give all parts of the ships a coat of PVA glue. Now they're drying, but I should be able to continue in a few hours. [edit] the ship description says: ...so while the glue is drying on the outside, I added some pockets inside the shell. This will be a royal pain to paint, so I start only with the prototype ship. If it's going to be really as hard to paint as I think, I'll probably paint the pockets separately on the other ship, i.e. before glueing them in, or don't make any at all. We'll see...
|
|
|
Post by tauster on Jan 15, 2017 20:26:37 GMT
I closed some of the crachs below the aluminum foil pockets with modelling paste and let it dry for a day. Today I based the whole inside with flesh color and the ridges with a mix (colos shown in the pic below, approx. 3/4 of the beige-brown and 1/4 of naples yellow. Painting the inside wasn't so bad as I had thought. There's an easy way when you have to paint tight places, but it works only when you don't have important texture details to lose: Thin your color down a bit, then just swamp the area with color. You can later wipe away most of it, but by applying a lot of color you make sure that it flows in all nooks and crannies, even the ones that you can't reach with the brush. Tomorrow I'll wash it with purple, then we'll see if I lost lots of details (I don't think so).
|
|
|
Post by tauster on Jan 16, 2017 21:10:27 GMT
Washed the upper side of the mouth cavity: There might be a game night coming saturday, and I have a neat idea how to use this, if I get it ready until then... Acquisitions Incorporated - PAX Prime 2015 D&D Game had an aaaaaesome underdark terrain set featuring a petrified giant purple worm. For the reveal, start at 45:30. My players are on a sidequest to find the arcane equivalent to a submarine, to attack an aboleth city in den Deepdark. So they made some contacts with allies, and one of them will lead them in a beholder city below the Anauroch, one of Faerun's largest black markets. There's supposed to be a dysfunctional Netherese artifact there, an ancient ... boat, in the shape of a giant anglerfish, that the Netherese arcanists captured on some planar raid, erm... adventure, well, lets say research mission. It is lacking the magic control crystal*, which is the reason nobody could use it. If it was working, it wouldn't be for sale at all. * an artifact in itself, which the players have, again with help of the same NPC, just a few days back looted from the hoard of a red dragon, being able to teleport away a split second before the enraged dragon's flame hit them.Nowadays, the giant anglerfish is used as a very small, and not very cosy tavern for visiting guests. They will arrive in the city, make some contacts (and try to avoid making trouble, haha...), get themselves a room (guess where the only free roms will be...), ask around for that arcane boat, try to win an auction where they buy it (giving me a long-looked for chance to melt their treasure by a hundred thousand GP) and then... buy the very tavern they're booked in. Can hardly wait to see their faces! Of course they won't know all that backstory beforehand. The NPC ally is quite powerful (an ancient green dragon, filling the classic Elminster role in my campaign) and will tell them only as much as they absolutely have to know for security reasons. The streets and slums of the beholder city is home to packs of cranium rats which try to extract secrets from the minds of unsuspecting visitors, which are then used as an edge against the clueless visitors in the deals they're here for. They will have to find a way of removing an artifact the size of a warehouse from an underdark cavern full of beholders, but I'm sure they'll think of something. They always do. Hope my ramblings made at least some sense...
|
|
|
Post by margaret on Jan 16, 2017 22:19:00 GMT
Sounds like you and your players share ingenuity!
|
|
|
Post by tauster on Jan 17, 2017 20:25:24 GMT
The mouth is washed and only needs some gloss varnish. The bone parts have been drybrushed, and will be washed later with Nuln Oil, Agrax Earthshade or soemthing similar (basically a thinned down brown/black wash). And the rest of the beast/ship is based in thinned down black, mixed with a bit of PVA glue in to strengthen the outer layer of paper a bit more. Before the black dried, I went over it with some heavy 'drybrushing' strokes, blending some dark brown into the black, to break the monotony a bit (brown not included in the pic below). Not sure it will work out as intended, just another experiment... [edit] The black dried faster than expected so I did the first drybrushing layer(citadel dawnstone, if you're interested... but really any medium grey would do). The texture came out great, but the transition from the rock part to the bone part is... dissapointing. I had hoped that the drybrushing would alleviate the stark line between black and beige. It did, but not as much as I had hoped. Well, maybe the next drybrush layer (at least one lighter grey and then some white highlights) and the final washing (both over the bone and rock areas) will make it better. I need that thing on saturday and can't afford the time to completely repaint it... [/edit] As expected, and as so often before, I'm totally clueless how to paint the eyes. Any ideas?
|
|
|
Post by margaret on Jan 18, 2017 2:12:42 GMT
Bone is going to contrast with dark rock - maybe a lighter brown rock would produce the effect you want?
For eyes, I like the format of the top right eye of the six on the first page of this post. Might need a different color palette, though.
|
|