Michka's fantasy projects. (Totems & Throne, the Final Chapter 4/18/15)

[Michka]

Thank you Dijit, Little Odo, and Grimmnar. I'm completely blown away by how many people like this little project.

I have another quick update from the game last night. This was the penultimate scene to the last chapter of the Hook Mountain Massacre. Just one week left. All I have for now is shots from the table, as I left the terrain and minis at the house we game at. I'll post proper pictures of the miniatures in the coming weeks.

First up, the three Annis Hags huddled over their cauldron.



The hags are not my best work. I'll explain when I post the close ups. I am rather happy with the cauldron though.

Next we have the cavern with all the mushrooms. Made the mushrooms out of Super Sculpey. No surprise there.



After the Rogue scouted out the area, and the Ranger determined that the mushrooms were not Violet Fungi or Shriekers, they carefully approached the area to confront the Frost Wight. Here, the Rogue distracts the Wight while the Half-Orc Paladin sneaks up on it to smash it over the head.



and here is a shot of me being a GM. I'm holding up the book to show the nifty picture of the monster they are facing. If the module comes with cool pictures, I'm gonna show everyone those pictures. Notice the picture matches the mini. That's because I was using the official Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords plastic miniature of this bad guy. See, I don't re-paint everything.



and that's it for today. Let me know what you think.

[DeafNala]

OUTSTANDING! From my Ravenloft days/nights I developed a fondness for the Hags; your versions are IMAGINATIVE & just plain COOL.
AND the Mushrooms are GLORIOUS creations. I like the thick stems; that will be something that I'll imitate/steal...inspiration is a FINE thing. VERY WELL DONE all around!

There is nothing wrong with prepaints. While they might not be up to your own standard, they are infinitely better than using unpainted minis. AND, if you are moved to do so, you can always upgrade the brushwork.

[Doomsdave]

This entire thread is just a goldmine!   All your sculpts are amazing but that Roper does it for me the most.  It looks like the old school monster manual drawing and perfectly straddles the creepy/whimsy * line, with just a dash of Harryhausen.   






*apologies to Zak Smith for cribbing his turn of phrase.

[Michka]

Thank you DeafNala. I will be making a Mushroom making tutorial video for YouTube eventually. All I need to do is figure out where to place the camera, how to edit, why my camera keeps shutting off while I'm shooting, and a raft of other problems I've run into lately. There's a Roper making tutorial coming as well.

Thank you Doomsdave. I really like how the Roper came out. I'm a gigantic fan of the Old School style. That description from Zak Smith is perfect. Is here the guy from D&D with Porn Stars?

[Doomsdave]

Thank you DeafNala. I will be making a Mushroom making tutorial video for YouTube eventually. All I need to do is figure out where to place the camera, how to edit, why my camera keeps shutting off while I'm shooting, and a raft of other problems I've run into lately. There's a Roper making tutorial coming as well.

Thank you Doomsdave. I really like how the Roper came out. I'm a gigantic fan of the Old School style. That description from Zak Smith is perfect. Is here the guy from D&D with Porn Stars?

That's the one.  The paraphrase is from his latest book:A Red and Pleasant Land, which is about vampire factions warring in Wonderland with Alice to boot.  It is great RPG fodder in the OSR style.

[Michka]

I have that book, but I haven't read it yet. His Vornhiem book is a go-to for every game I run.

[Doomsdave]

I have that book, but I haven't read it yet. His Vornhiem book is a go-to for every game I run.

I have that one too!  It is extremely useful and his drop tables are great.

[Duke Donald]

This thread is great. I love the mimic in particular; really excellent sculpting and a brilliant concept.

[Michka]

Thank you Duke Donald. I'm really enjoying this sculpting stuff.

And now, some closer shots of the Annis Hags. First up, a group shot...



Next, a hag who wears a burlap mask because she thinks she's so repulsive that even hags would find her hideous. She's right. Hidden beneath the mask numerous eyes and gaping mouths sprout from unlikely places on her misshapen head.



And then there's the hag with the white dress. She tortures her male victims by telling them they never should've left her at the alter. How could they leave her with this poor innocent baby? It isn't a delusion. She just likes the look of utter confusion on their faces as try to figure out what's happening.



And finally we have the leader of the hags. She is much shorter then her sisters, yet much wider. The face of an angry baby hides a cunning mind and awesome power.



Hang on folks, as I blather on about what I learned from this phase of the project.

Of the three sisters, the leader is my favorite. Of course she's the one I had the least interesting back story on. Of course that's the one I'm happy with.

I love the idea behind the burlap mask hag, but the sculpt is just lame. It started out well, but I really needed to make a full body and drape the robes over it. The lesson learned here was, there are no short cuts when it comes to proportion. Even when it's a distorted body, it needs some structure. Oh, and the arms are ridiculous. Who wears a sleeveless robe? And if you look closely you'll notice she has two left hands.

The hag in white is a mixed bag of good parts and bad. I'm really happy with the face, and most of the body. Her hair just didn't turn out, and the arm that reaches up to her face is screwed up completely. I had originally sculpted that arm to hang by her side. The other arm that's clutching at her breast looked so interesting that I decided to move the dangling hand up to her face. Well I didn't pay attention to what was happening to the arm, and ended up with a spaghetti noodle attached the the shoulder and the hand. I cut the offending arm off and replaced it with green stuff, but it still wouldn't hang correctly. That's when I got the idea of covering the arm up. I made the doll purely to cover the mess I made of that arm. It still isn't right, but it's not as bad as it started out. The first time I painted the dolly, I made it green. One of my players thought it looked like an unpainted piece of green stuff. He wasn't being mean. He just said what he saw. Fortunately I had a week to fix the problem before the actual combat started. I'm now pretty happy with the dolly, but over all I know I can do better.

The real kicker of it all is, screwy arm hag is a replacement for the first white dress hag. The original is so bad I wasn't sure I wanted to show it off. Crappy proportions, the worst head I've made so far, and a terrible paint job to tie it all together. Eventually I decided to just show the damn thing and admit I have bad sculpting days too. (I hope that doesn't sound arrogant.)

Here she is in all her glory...



and here are both the white dress hags, side by side.



And because I want to end this installment on an up beat, a close up of some mushrooms.



Let me know what you think. I'll have photos from last night's game up in the next couple days.

[mpennock]

One of my players thought it looked like an unpainted piece of green stuff.

Sorry, man. The color matched perfectly....

[Michka]

That's OK Mike. Like I said, you just said what you saw, and you weren't wrong. I think the re-paint is a big improvement anyway.

Update time. On Tuesday night we had our final game of the Hook Mountain Massacre. It was the last chamber in the Ogre Caves of the Hook Mountain. A Stone Giant named Barl and two bodyguards faced our heroes in the throne room. There are a number of familiar sculpts in this cave, along with a couple new pieces. I'll start with some in-game shots to establish what's going on.





So to start off, I'll show the throne with the Stone Giants for scale. (Great photography Michka. You covered the throne, which is the reason for taking this photo.)

 

This was a simple build using foam core and hot glue. I primed it black, sprayed texture paint on it, painted it grey with some darker shadows, then an additional texture spray. The second texture spray was because the first pass didn't really add much texture. I think that can is running out. Here's a shot of the throne before I started spraying.



Next we have the totems. These were a last minute replacement for some statues that are meant to line the upper walkway. I decided that statues were kinda boring, and not really primitive enough for décor that ogres would have in their throne room. (Barl the Stone Giant took the throne room from the leader of the Ogre tribe.) Here's a close up of the totems.


 
The totems were made with metal skull beads my wife found at Micheals around Halloween. The post was made from Super Sculpey, which I formed into a column, twisted to get the cool shape, the pushed the top of the post through the hole in the skull bead. I added a dab of Sculpey to the top to cover the hole. Then I added small skull beads, also found by my wife, to the base along with little balls of clay. I wrapped thin strings of clay around the posts to add texture. It was only after priming the things that I decided they should be snakes. After cooking the original posts I realized the bases were too small, so I quickly made larger bases which I pushed the baked totems into and baked again. I'm really having fun with re-baking Super Sculpey. Here is a shot of the totems from before I primed them black.



I painted these with Americana Dark Chocolate, followed by an Americana Burnt Sienna heavy wet brush. Then a quick dry brush of Americana Cocoa. I wasn't happy with how this was coming out, so I hit then with another shot of Burnt Sienna, focusing on the top skull area. The dry brush was too heavy and chalky, so I brushed on GW Nuln Oil wash. (which is quickly becoming one of my favorite tricks) To get a streaky look I dripped some Army Painter Red Tone straight out of the dropper bottle, just on one side of the skulls. Finally I painted the snakes: Black, then Reaper Meadow Green with Vallejo Model Color Stone Grey spots.

Here's another shot from the game. The flame markers were provided by the sorcerer player who chucks fire balls like they're going out of style. She used them to show the edges of area of effect of the fire ball. The small red ball on the one giant's base was the center point. By this point they had killed one giant and were well on their way to taking out the second. The Banner did not become a mimic this time. It seems my players had all seen this trick on the internet somewhere. It was just a clue to where the next chapter would be taking place. Good thing the elf had a Mend spell to repair all that fire damage.   


 
As I said, this was the last installment of this chapter. The other GMs will be running for a while, so I probably won't be any more Runelords stuff for some time. Instead I'll be focusing on some Science Fiction projects I've been wanting to get back to. But I promise, this isn't the end. I still have three more chapter of the Rise of the Runelords to work through.

Coming soon, Fortress of the Stone Giants!

[Alxbates]

This sculpt was made for a miniatures contest on the DM's Craft. I don't plan to use it in my Rise of the Runelords campaign. At least I wasn't planning on it before. Here is a simple banner.



But as the players approach it, something doesn't look right about it...



That's right folks. It's a Mimic pretending to be a banner.

I love this idea so much I want to steal it!!