Crafting large Elementals - Earth, Water, Fire, Crystal...

[Sam]

I think you could bolt some plates on the sides and put it back together. It won't be as strong as before, but would still provide a 'third hand'. JB Weld may hold it together too, but pot metal (cast) is difficult to work with.

[dossen]

Since the crystal elemental came out OK, I figured why not steal another great idea...

Jun 23, 2014 0:02:29 GMT Jason said:

After seeing Darkslayer's Ice Elemental and AJ's Huge Earth Elemental, I wanted to tackle one and see what I could do.  In 3rd edition terms, he is a large creature.  I used stones from outside and some beads my wife had in her bead box (I asked first  .  Decided on what pose I wanted him.  Made a frame for the spine and legs from a paper clip.  Used some beads to form the "skeleton of the elemental.  Then began to glue rocks trying to emulate human musculature.  I will paint it up later this evening.

Thanks AJ and Darkslayer for the inspiration to do this.  I wouldn't have tackled this without your posts.

So... to the crafting area... or kitchen at the moment ;-)

To get roughly the right amount of small stones (maybe 5 mm diameter) in roughly the right shape I did a aluminium foil mold of a Troll.



Filled that with stones and watered down PVA.



Since I'm lazy and impatient I used the oven to speed up drying - caused some bubbling in the PVA, but a lot of stones stuck together in something like the right positions. I took the mold apart while the glue was only partially dried and added some hot glue and more stones to the figure. Seems that if it's hot enough hot glue will stick OK (but not great) to the stones I used - especially if they have been coated a little with PVA.

Building up like that and adding a little PVA or superglue where needed, I got it roughly into shape.



Picture is kinda blurry because it was taken just before spraying black on - not in my kitchen, where I have decent light and a stable surface to work on.

Some washes and a bit of dry brush later he starts to look like a rock elemental.



Still needs some details, maybe some moss or lichen and some basing. I'm still considering small crystals for eyes on some of these - this guy included.

[dossen]

I also added a darker stage to my cloud.



Still a long way from my vision of a thundercloud, but eventually I'll get there :-)

[dossen]

And finally I got some work done on my fire elementals as well.

Just some layers of gloss varnish mixed with old GW yellow ink.



And more yellow with a bit of magenta added.







I think the Temple of Elemental Evil elemental will need a lot of work still, but I'm hoping it will end up OK - at least it gets to be shiny ;-)

[bluecloud2k2]

Feb 5, 2017 22:10:47 GMT dossen said:

Feb 5, 2017 21:14:14 GMT sgtslag said:

Very sharp Crystal Elemental (no pun intended)! Sorry to hear it caused so much hassle. Good for the rest of us to know, though. Cheers!

Yeah, this is what it looks like now (pardon the messy background)


Quite useless... And I can't even think of anything I could craft from it ;-)

You could make partial molds of the screw and the teeth... use the casts from that to make traps?

[dossen]

Time for the final one of the four "classical" elements to join the fun: The Air Elemental.

I decided to do it mostly from hot glue and make it look like a spinning funnel/tornado thing, so the first task was to do the top of the funnel, which I wanted to be quite deep. I used a large piece of glass with an irregular surface to sculpt it on and then just put down a layer starting in a circle around the glass chunk and covering all of it.



Dunking it in water ensured that the hot glue cured evenly on top of it instead of sliding down into a pool on the paper.

Then he got an armature from a bit of wire drawn into a spiral. Plus arms.



To help build up the spiraling structure I added a couple of thin strips of clear plastic wound several times around the armature.



On top of that I just added a layer of hot glue. I tried to draw it in a consistent direction, to support the impression of rotating air. Using the tip of the glue gun I burned eyes and a mouth into the hot glue. A little bit of blue-gray paint to just mark those and next step is painting some whites, greys, and possibly light blues onto the structure.



And here he is next to my rock elemental.



Size is about as I wanted it. And you can jut make out the open top of the funnel.

[bluecloud2k2]

Not too shabby.

I still like my Colossal Air Elemental

[dossen]

Feb 11, 2017 14:48:44 GMT bluecloud2k2 said:

Not too shabby.

I still like my Colossal Air Elemental

Definitely one of my inspirations :-)

I'm hoping that by using mostly clear hotglue, I can make it slightly transparent - just enough to notice. But as far as shape goes, I LOVE the funnel you managed to shape for yours. And the texture is just about perfect.

By the way, do feel free to put in links to other elemental ideas in this thread - or pictures of them. I'd love to see all the different ways of doing it collected.

I am also planning to do a couple of "family photos" once all the elementals are done.

[Sam]

30 year old lead - Air , Earth, Fire, Water elementals

[dossen]

Feb 11, 2017 23:46:45 GMT Sam said:

30 year old lead - Air , Earth, Fire, Water elementals

...

I quite like this one :-)
Lots of character.

[Sam]

Some 'homemade' elementals

air elementals from bottle tops



water elementals from foam plate



fire elementals from converted Heroclix



earth elemental from HeroClix Thing



Nothing spectacular, but GEtGW (Good Enough to Game With).

[DnDPaladin]

I found myself a great technique to make fire.

its quite simple...
#1 put some hot glue where you want flames.
#2 let it set for a few seconds.
#3 poke it with a toothpick.
#4 pull the hot glue up to reveal the flames.
#5 hold there to let it set entirely.
#6 cut out any excess you dont want.

makes great flames. really love my fire elementals and am about to do the same to my golden lions and hell hounds.

really love the air elementals. though i understand the point of being able to put a mini inside it. i wouldn't just let it be a tornado.

[dossen]

Thanks Sam for the different takes on the elementals - nice to see some more variations.

And thanks to DnDPaladin for breaking down flames into simple steps.

I've made the smallest possible progress on the elemental project since last time - just a small addition to the rock elemental.



Those are little gem stones meant for gluing on nails - acquired a few from my daughters stash :-)

BTW: I've also gotten a little else done, but that goes elsewhere.

[bluecloud2k2]

Here are all of my Elementals:

Air

Earth

Fire

Water

[dossen]

Did a bit of work on air today - got a nice light blueish grey base from some Space Wolves Grey, some white, and some matte varnish.

I had three small air elementals that went first.



And then my large one got the same treatment.



The Temple of Elemental Evil one also got a hit with that.



And even though half of them are works in progress, I felt like taking a group photo of the four classic elementals.



I think they are all far enough along, that they can go on the table - and with a few more layers of paint and some basing I'll be happy to put air and fire next to the other two in my display cabinet - might have to create a little section for elementals :-)

[sgtslag]

Nice -- but I'm biased... ;-) Cheers!

[jennifer]

Wow very nice

[dossen]

Time for another update on this project :-)

My non-DIY water elementals got a small update - first a blue glossy wash.



And then some light white dry brushing.



I also added some glossy red to the flame tips on my fire elemental.



And some on the one from ToEE - which I'm not yet quite happy with.



And the ToEE earth elemental got a little love - that's turning out quite nice.
My only complaint with that one remains the size (it even matches the picture in the 5th Ed MM, which says Size: Large - so why??!?...)



And my rock elemental is done (for now anyway).



And that's the last few days progress on the elemental front - now I mostly need some basing and fine detail work to finish up the stuff I still have underway :-)

[dossen]

Time to dust off this thread again - got some finishing touches done on my air and fire elementals.
I wanted their bases to look like desert sand and lava/fire breaking through black rocks respectively and I'm quite happy with the result.



The blue eyes is a light blue mixed with some metallic medium and a touch of gloss and the base is just fine sand over a bit of rougher grit.



The bases were done up with hot glue and inks to look like flows of lava/fire and sprinkled with little black stones. Then I mixed some black paint with some acrylic artists filler/medium (its got a slightly grainy feel to it, but very fine grains). This made the basing look more like a surface that is breaking up/cracking open (and the medium actually cracks a bit if you put it on in a good layer - perfect for this use).

And the big family shot (large elementals only).


I'm quite happy with how they turned out - these are massive elementals which look not necessarily evil but like they could really ruin your day :-)

PS: I did actually get started on little earth elementals on 25mm bases after taking these pictures - so at least a few more pictures to follow :-)

[Sam]

Nice stuff. I think the fire elemental is my favorite.