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Post by michka on Feb 22, 2015 16:09:54 GMT
Sorry DnDPaladin. I usually 'copy and paste' the names so I get them right. I figured I knew how to spell Paladin. I was wrong. (Hey, I earned my 'c' in English class.)
Thank you milojaggerson. Originally the water was supposed to by covered with slime. I wanted something I can use again, so the clear blue. If I had time, I'd have made transparent sheets with textured details that can sit on top of the blue water.
Thank You chiefsgtbradley. The Hook Mountain Massacre has been my favorite module of Rise of the Runelords so far. I would have liked The Skinsaw Murders more if the threat had been more. Then again, I'm running this for a group of six players who work together smart and tactically. I've had to cheat a lot, just to give them a challenge. So far my favorite trick was using the 5th level Fighter Ogre stats for all the ogres encountered. After Fort Rannick, they have some respect for Ogres.
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Post by michka on Feb 25, 2015 17:13:14 GMT
The moral of this week's game was, "Even if you don't think you have time, give it a try". The problem: the party wanted to go back to the nearby town. I had been planning on a trip to the last location in the module. I had not finished said last location, and here they were headed somewhere else. I was all ready to run the town visit as a 'theater of the mind' experience. Then on Sunday night it hits me, I can still run the two monster encounters I originally skipped over. All I needed were some boats, a snake and a really big monster. The game is on Tuesday night. Hey, I had two days. Why not. Here's what I got done in the past two days... Three Boats, Ala DM Scotty method...  The sails weren't needed, as this encounter took place in a flooded city during a terrific thunderstorm. (I'll make the sails later.) The odd shaped green boat is a ferryboat made from a giant turtle shell. The town is famous for it's turtle shell ferryboats, hence the town's name: Turtleback Ferry. The PCs find a schoolmarm and her students stranded in one of these ferryboats in the middle of the storm. (Schoolmarm and students, along with the buildings for this encounter, provided by my buddy Mike. Never forget you can borrow minis and terrain in a pinch.) While the heroes are rescuing the schoolmarm and students, a 16 foot boa constrictor attacks one of the kids.  I almost hate to show this one off. It's not a great sculpts. Hell, it's not even a good sculpts. This thing was sculpted, baked and painted in the span of 25 minutes. Can you say Rush Job? After the boa is dispatched, the party finds out there's one more menace to be faced, and this is a big one. Tentacles burst from the flood water all around them.  and one of the tentacles has an eye on it!!!  These things are absolutely huge, easily dwarfing everything in the town.  I won't explain what the party did, other then to say none of them were killed, and their efforts did save many lives. OK, now to the "How did you make that" part. The tentacles are a simple variant of the DM Scotty Pine Tree project. First a picture, then some explanation...  At the center of the tentacles are a clear green pony beads, strung over a white pipe cleaner that's been covered with white glue. Then the pony beads-pipe cleaner string is bent into a suitably creepy tentacle shape, and covered from top to bottom with hot glue. A couple of layers will be needed to give these some strength. Then take two washers, a 1" and a 1 1/2", and glue them together with Goop. Cover the washer with concentric circles of hot glue, radiating out from the center hole. Fill the hole with a plug of hot glue. Once those are hardened, hot glue the tentacle shape to the base. (DM Scotty uses Goop for this on his pine trees. Since I wasn't trying to simulate flat ground on the washer, I could use lots of hot glue.) Once the tentacle is firmly attached to the base, go over the whole thing a bunch more times. You should blend the base into the tentacle so it sells the frothy water being disturbed by the tentacle erupting out of the water. The trickiest part was holding the tentacle on the base while the hot glue dried. Until you have a decent number of hot glue coats on this thing, each layer of hot glue added reactivates the hot glue underneath it. This let the tentacle sag, and nobody wants a saggy tentacle. I found the best way to quick dry the hot glue was to walk outside with the tentacle. See, while I was working on this thing at 3 o'clock in the morning, it was 6 degrees outside. It's amazing how fast hot glue hardens at 6 degrees. Finally, to make the eye tentacle, just find the one with the smoothest front, and add two green stuff eye lids. Actually, seeing the white pipe cleaner at the center of the green pony beads showing through the translucent hot glue gave me the idea for the eye.  And there you have it. The game went great, and everyone was rather creeped out by the tentacles. I wouldn't recommend doing every DM craft project at the last minute. For one thing, I'm really tired. And if Mike hadn't had the schoolmarm and kid figures, as well as a church and buildings, the tentacles wouldn't have been very impressive. There's nothing like seeing a bright green tentacle taller then the town church suddenly appear out of nowhere. Anyway, that's it for this week. Let me know what you think.
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Post by Sam on Feb 25, 2015 23:45:31 GMT
None of it looks rushed. It all look great. Kudos! And Karma too!
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Post by SpielMeisterKev! on Feb 26, 2015 2:42:22 GMT
Howdy, Three Boats...Tentacles!!! Absolutely fabulous!!! Great work, Kev! |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2015 14:48:29 GMT
Great work man! I love all of it. The way you paint is so smooth.
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Post by voduchyld on Feb 26, 2015 15:53:52 GMT
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Post by vestrivan on Feb 26, 2015 18:15:59 GMT
Wonderfully done! Good job! Doesn't look rushed at all!
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Post by michka on Feb 26, 2015 18:58:57 GMT
Thank you Sam, SpielMeisterKev!, Noctuary, voduchyld and vestrivan. I'm very happy with how this turned out. I'm even more happy that we're skipping the game next week, so I don't have to rush the crafting the finale. I'm about halfway done with the terrain and almost all of the miniatures are painted. Now if I can just get my miniatures contest entry finished in time, I'll be able to relax.
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Post by tauster on Feb 28, 2015 8:45:00 GMT
wow, I missed that. Awesome tentacles, I love them!
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Post by dragon722 on Mar 3, 2015 6:04:09 GMT
Great job dude... those tentacles arewicked and inspires me to make some at smaller examples to use I think lol
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Post by chiefsgtbradley on Mar 3, 2015 15:24:54 GMT
They are freakin' awesome! You rock, Sir!
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Post by michka on Mar 3, 2015 18:00:35 GMT
Thanks tauster, dragon722, and chiefsgtbradley. I made the tentacles really tall, just to be intimidating. It would be much smarter to make them about half the height. For one thing, they'll be more stable. With two metal washers for a base I wasn't worried about them easily falling over, but it does make reaching across the table that much harder. But you do need at least one that has an eye on it. I creeped out numerous players in game with that thing. And if the eye doesn't do it, the acrylic gloss coat will.
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Post by silver0wl on Mar 10, 2015 23:40:39 GMT
killer work man, i absolutely love the texture of the stone nice paint job
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Post by michka on Mar 25, 2015 16:08:09 GMT
It's been a while since I updated this thread. We gamed last night, so now I can show off my newest additions. First off is the Hill Giant.  and since you guys wanted lots of photos...    Here are some Work In Progress shots...   And here are some shots from our game last night. Lunderbud the Hill Giant is part of an Ogre clan. The Ogres convinced him when he was young that he was a really tall, really stupid Ogre. Well they were partly right.  and for the first time you can see the PC miniatures we actually use on game night. This is them facing Lunderbud and his Ogre pals.  Lastly, I have a couple shots of the Rune Giant statue that was standing at the end of a cavern.  Yet another last minute solution. It started as a DC comics Blue Devil action figure. I wrapped a piece of white-glue-soaked paper towel around his waist, sprayed it black and texture painted it. A few brushes of brown craft paint. Another coat of texture paint and you have a statue. I was planning to fill in all the joint that give away the toy-ness of the thing, but once again I ran out of time. I did start putting green stuff into the leg joints, but it was taking far too long. For a piece of set dressing that I can't use that often, I figured I'd go with something quick. If I change my mind I can fill the gaps and texture paint it again later. Here's a shot for scale. He's supposed to be a 40 Foot tale Rune Giant from out of ancient Pathfinder history.  There's also some 2.5d terrain there, along with some stone columns that are supposed to be 20 foot high Dragon Bones. Anyone want to calculate how large a dragon is supposed to be if it has twenty foot tall rib bones? Get the feeling some module writers don't always consider scale when they're typing? The columns are cut out of pink insulation, painted with craft paint and hit with texture paint before getting some more paint to match the tiles. I'll do some more shots of the terrain once I've finished the chapter and have all the tiles together. I can also take better pictures of the statue if anyone wants them. Let me know what you think. |
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Post by tauster on Mar 25, 2015 19:06:49 GMT
I love how efficiently you made the Rune Giant statue, and the hill giant is simply beyond awesome!
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Post by SpielMeisterKev! on Mar 25, 2015 23:22:07 GMT
Howdy,
Dang dude. You truly gifted bro.
Karma,
Kev!
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Post by curufin on Mar 26, 2015 1:15:21 GMT
Wow! The hill giant is nothing short of stellar! That is really some amazing sculpting skills your have.
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Post by michka on Mar 26, 2015 1:46:09 GMT
Thank you Tauster, SpielMeisterKev!, and curufin.
I'm been waiting to show off the hill giant for a long time now. In fact you can see some of his back in a background of the Stone Giant W.I.P. shot.
The Rune Giant was a last minute Hail Mary pass that worked out. When I get to the chapter of Rise of the Runelords where the players have to face living Rune Giants I'll need to find some more Super Hero action figures in that size.
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Post by beerfrog on Mar 26, 2015 3:09:12 GMT
Bravo! The hill giant is awesomely fantastic.
I really enjoy how clean all of your tiles are. Everyone of them looks like you put tons of care into them.
And we do like tons of pics! Thank you!
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Post by vestrivan on Mar 26, 2015 7:48:10 GMT
Amazing sculpting... Wow!
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Cheers!
Cheers!