Tauster's Miniatures

[tauster]

Yesterday I wanted to reduce the pile of half-finished projects on my desk, so I took a fomorian head (mold made from the follwoing mini)

...and some scraps I cut from a plastic shampoo bottle. Those bottles make great curved shapes; I used them in the past to make 'swoops' for flying critters. Add a magnet or small piece of metal like old xcacto knife segments at the lowest point of the swoop and you can prop them on a fly base.

Here's the thing primed, with a finished ghost in the background. All you need to make ghosts is a skull and an old plastic bottle. You might add some arms, or even legs if you want, glued to the swooping strips (I haven't tried this), but that isn't really required.

[tauster]

Finished. I didn't replicate the color scheme of the old ghosts, instead I made something more icy. Now I can use it as regular undead ghosts, undead ice ghosts and evil ice elementals. As usual, the pearlescent is hardly visible in the pics - the sparkle is much better visible than on the fotos.

[sgtslag]

Really good work! Thanks for sharing! Cheers!

[tauster]

So with the Zombie Sharks finished, my mission to make more and more weird subaquatic minis for the party to meat at the shores of, on the waves and below the surface of our Underdark campaign's Glimmersea, ...and reaper Bones just adding a Dark Depths Expandion set (dam you reaper for grabbing another 50$ from my almost non-existing miniatures budget!), I realized that I need many more fly stands.

...which would be swim stands in that context. And I want them to be adequately themed, so I need some maritime bits and pieces.

Making fly stands isn't complicated, but herre's the usual step by rambling step, just in case something isn't clear.

Poker chips* as bases and pieces of metal hangers bent into shapes like in the pic.

* some poker chips have metal cores and are thus not only heavier but also magnetic. You can get them in sets of 300 and more for a few bucks, and perhaps even less when you buy them used.

I glued the metal wires to the chips and a neodym magnet to the top, taking care to keep the magnets more or less level so that the minis will be upright later on. If I want a flying or swimming mini to be slanted upwards or downwards, I can do so by not gluing on the metal or magnet on the minis bottom in the desired angle.

Sneack Peak: future decoration pieces.

Bases dipped in PVA glue, then in construction sand for texture of the sea ground.

While the glue is drying, the Zombie Sharks tried out the stands. And somehow a ghost sneaked in too.

[tauster]

I was in doubt how to paint them up, but dark blue & green glazes after a white drybrush to brighten the stones up seems to be good. I played around with different variants of painting them, so one got only an uncolored gloss varnish (still drying) while another got the same gloss varnish, mixed with said glazes (still drying too). I can't wait to see how all of them look when dried!

I added some maritime decoration stuff like little kauri seashells and some pieces of mother of pearl-looking shell shards, plus too tiny tentacles peeking up under one shard (couldn't resist)

In the meantime, I made some small octopi with beads and mini-tentacles from my jar of hotglue whisps. It is a rare opportunity to use hotglue whisps, so I quite enjoy the three little buggers. I'm not sure just glazing them was the right decision, but I can always repaint them later.

[tauster]

Getting near to the finish line...

The octopi got washed and then a bit of pearlescent sheen to make them sparkle slightly, then more or less discreetly glued to the wire.

I might add that pearlescent effect to the sea floor on one base, just to see if this looks good or not.

[erho]

The little Nautiluses are awesome!

Great range of use for them if you incorporate a Mindflayer nursery or something!

[tauster]

The finished pieces,...

...plus some eye candy of the stands with seafolk:

These stands are so much fun, quick and easy to make, I suspect there will be whole sets of terrain-themed stands and large bases in the future.

[margaret]

I agree with erho that the cephalopods look like nautili to me. A fabulous way to make them - just pick the correct ribbed beads! You could use a little hot glue on them to hide the lines and make them more globular to get octopodes.

[tauster]

mme just shared a great tar monster tutorial, which literally did not let me go, so here's my take.

I don't have a 3D printer (yet), but I wouldn't have used one to make the inner core, as crumpled tin foil is the perfect material for that kind of thing.

And this one was far and wide the easiest, funnest and most astonishing 'sculpting' experience I ever had: I very lightly crumbled the length of foil (about 50cm), lightly pressed it on the table to make the underside flat, took my hands away... and saw that I was done. It took literally less than ten seconds to accidentally make this body, and I couldn't have made a anatomically better shape even if I had worked on it the whole night. I stared at the happiest accident in my personal sculpting history for about a minute before I continued because I couldn't believe what just had happened.

I made a pair of arms with two-fingered claws and took a pair of eyes.

All tin foil will be covered in hotglue, providing both texture and structural strength, as the body was only very lightly crumbled and wouldn't hold up on its own.

The arms were magnetized for a 2nd wow! effect on the table. And I can use the arms for Bigby spell markers too.

...looking good so far!

 

The eyes make all the difference! From the moment the first eye was set in, the mindless  beast suddenly got a spark of intelligence, and with both eyes in there is no mistaking it for a mindless monster anymore. I don't think I will still be able to make this look evil anymore...

...so where now from here? This could become a tar monster, which would be cool. Or a Lava monster? The former would be easy to paint, the latter, if done right, a bit harder. What do you all think? It would be easy to make more, this one took only 30min so far...

[tauster]

My son liked the tar monster and wanted to craft his own. We decided on one tar version and one shambling mound ...for each of us. Plus, I'm going to make a lava monster too. So in the end we'll have five of these buggers.

We crafted the whole morning and after lunch. The sculpting is done. The 2nd coat of my original tar monster and the crackle paint on the lava monster is drying/curing.

[edit] 3 hours later: the first cracks form.

The shambling mounds got a layer of construction sand, patches of DMScotty's pencil shaving moss, a few tiny flowers and some of the recently finished mushrooms.

The Tar monster. Two layers of each black and acrylic gloss varnish. That's the first varnish layer.

[tauster]

More WIP shots...

The Shambling Mounds got pencil shaving-greenery applied:

The Lava Monster's crackle paint has cured, and cracked. Next steps: applying a layer of PVA so seal in and stabilize the crackle paint (which tends to flake off in time), then painting: White primer, then yellow, orange, red, dark red, black, metallic black.

 

The Tar Monster is finished. I'm very happy with the outcome. Now I need a tar pond. And more black blobs. And tentacles of course.

[deafnala]

The eyes make the pieces for me. They are SPLENDIDLY crafted, very imaginative creations. VERY WELL DONE!
They remind me of Tar-Baby from the Uncle Remus stories.

[tauster]

Oct 20, 2019 18:40:27 GMT deafnala said:

The eyes make the pieces for me. They are SPLENDIDLY crafted, very imaginative creations. VERY WELL DONE!
They remind me of Tar-Baby from the Uncle Remus stories.

Yes, those eyes really make it. I realized that even before the first eye was in its final position. It gives the beast a soul, so to speak - enough so that the players will probably ask themselves whether they should fight or combat the thing.

I can't take credit for the eyes - they are available on ebay, in different sizes, colors, shapes and dirt-cheap. Unfortunately they don't come in pairs - you're lucky to have a few similar eyes in a pack of ten. I'll probably get me a few more packs so I have an ample stock to chose from for future projects.

The cool thing: The more weird an abomination is, the more profound the effect of a convincing eye is. Expect to see more of those in the future!

[tauster]

After the Tar Monster finished, here's the one of the Shambling Mounds. I'm tempted to declare this one finished.

Adding texture with PVA-soaked pencil shavings. This method is simple, cheap and very effective. If you don't know the details, watch DM Scotty's tutorial. Love this method!

Primed in dark brown,...

...then stippled/drybrushed some different browns on.

I found several Shambling Mound illustrations online where te critters have vines/tentacles snaking over (and probably through) their bodies. Never one to ignore tentacles, I added some on my mound. My son doesn't want them on his, so I'm doing only one monster with vines.*

* After seing the finished critter, he decided otherwise. So now both will get vines.

Primed the tentacles dark green,...

...then added a mossy green and the brighter GW Mood Green. Below are the claws, showing the difference the Mood Green makes:

A bit of eye candy:

With flash:

Finished. Or is it? I wonder how gloss varnish would look; I suspect it will look too wet. I'll probably try on a small patch.

[deafnala]

OUTSTANDING! The Tar Monsters & Shambler are WONDERFULLY imaginative AND DELIGHTFULLY disturbing. You have a flair for creating strange & inspiring pieces. VERY WELL DONE!

[tauster]

Thanks for the praise, Alan. Means a lot from the master of the Wonderfully Weird.

I decided to add gloss varnish to the vines, and toadstools. And the thing that passes for the tongue. Mainly to have an excuse and share a few more pics.

Here's more eye candy, this time un-armed to focus on the main body of Karl, the Walking Kompost:

I'll probably make a lot more of these, mostly because making them was so surprisingly simple. Seing the pose of the critter essentially done after a few seconds of squeezing the tinfoil was one of the most memorable moments ever since I started crafting in 2013. I had excepted a frustrating hour of trying to get the poses right,

I can see a half-dozen medium-sized shambling mounds, tar and lava monsters in the future... little armies to swarm the party while the big bos lurks in the background, or threatens some important goal the players are out for.

I'll have to sink a few more bucks and invest in more of those eyes. This will be hard, with Reaper's Bones V kickstarter biting out a huge chunk of the hobbie budget this month.

[tauster]

Another Reaper Bones mini paint job, this time the infamous Skeletal Giant. I wonder how many parties have lost members to this monster...

I used it as a training piece for my new airbrush (which hadn't seen much use after priming this one, unfortunately) but I'll spare you those boring pics.

Left: primed and color-blocked. Right: several layers of drybrush, highlighting and a little more blocking.

 

  

  

  

[tauster]

My boy finally painted his shambling mound, and is pretty proud of the result.

Not completely finished, but he has the patience and can wait for the paint layers to dry before going on. Not bad for a 7 year old, I'd say.

[margaret]

Great job for anyone his age! I can see that he has learned a lot from his dad - including to let the paint on some details dry BEFORE you go on to paint more. How often impatience leads to paints flowing together and becoming a uniform mud color...