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

[beefcake]

That's so cool.

[warburton]

  Nice!

[Michka]

Thank you von Lucky, DeafNala, beefcake and warburton. I'm truly having a blast doing all this sculpting. The upside of sculpting is I'm saving a lot in miniatures purchases. The downside is I'm not getting any of the lead mountain painted. 

[Knightofspades]

You did the right thing keeping the ettin as creepy as it is.
Great work on this project over all. Very cool.

[Michka]

Thank you Knightofspades. He ended up being a big hit at the table. And I learned I can sculpt most monsters if I need/want to. (So long as they're large enough.) 

[Michka]

I finally finished running the basement area of the Skull's Crossing. I got a lot of sculpting done for this one, as well as some new terrain. I really can't explain all of the set up, because I don't want to give away everything. There are still lots of spoilers here, so consider yourself warned. Lots of photos are coming. Lots and lots of photos. Lets kick this pig...

First room: a large pool in the middle, with doors at either end. This pool and all the others were painted like the DM Scotty method, but without the Hot Glue raised areas. the gloss coat was Mod Podge, which was coated with Acrylic Gloss Coat. Oh, and I finally got some new larger doors made. (Hee Hee Hee. Oh look. The party is all split up.)



Suddenly a Skrag Troll bursts out of the water. (It's an old GW sculpts that I just love.)



Room Two: A pair of Pit Fiends on glowing rune circles. Their horns and wings have been torn from their bodies. One is dead and the other is nearly so.



Close up of the Pit Fiend sculpts. I made the bodies out of Super-Sculpey. The ripped off horns and wings, the ears and the tail are all Green Stuff applied afterwards.



Different angle. Sorry I didn't take work in progress shots. I was running out of time and needed to get these guys painted. Not my best sculpts.



Here are details of the room and circles. The Rune Circles were painted on thin cardboard (comic book backing boards), so I can move them to other locations. The raised details in the rooms were a failed attempt at making the rune circles with hot glue. The effect didn't work, but placing the cardboard circles on top of the hot glue gives it a nice almost floating look.



Room Three: An architectural model sits on a raised area across from a pool of water. (I didn't get the architectural model made. There were some serious time crunches here.)



The party hears a sound above. They see a Skull Ripper skitter down a wall. This construct is made from skulls and bones, given life by foul magics.



I got a lot of shots of this thing. You can tell I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Here's a shot of the ripper without the terrain.



Here is a work in progress shot of the Ripper. The main body, claws, tail and legs were made out of Super-Sculpey. The legs were sculpted around brass rod bent into the leg shape. This gives them strength enough to support the body. Originally the tail was attached, but it broke off a number of times, till it was pinned in place. Green Stuff was used to add details and hide mistakes and such. The 'fangs' on the tail are two BBQ skewers cut down to size and driven through the snake-like head. The snake head was my creation.



Underside shot. This part was never seen in the game. This thing is still very fragile. One of the problems with making it out of Super-Sculpey. Even if it was made of metal the legs would probably still brake.



Room Four: Another large pool.



As the heroes crawl out of the water to investigate the box at the other end, a series of Buzz Saw traps spring out of the floor. (This room was empty in the module. I hate crafting empty rooms, and I really wanted to make some DM Scotty Buzz Saws.)



and a final shot of the whole Skull's Crossing basement action play-set. (Figures sold separately.)



I hope people like this. Let me know what you think.

[Jevenkah]

Oh, wow, fantastic! Love the Pit Fiends. That's a very inspiring dungeon set-up that looks like loads of old school fun.

Jevenkah

[von Lucky]

Cute and sinister. What a weird balance.

[DeafNala]

Now that's the way D&D was meant to be played. All your efforts have produced a memorable game for your Brave Adventures. FANTASTICALLY WELL DONE!

[Funghy-Fipps]

Great and inspirational collection: thank you for sharing.

[Michka]

Thank you Jevenkah, von Lucky, DeafNala, and Funghy-Fipps. I'm proud to say I got a definite reaction when I put the Skull Ripper out of the table. There's nothing like a gigantic scorpion made out of skulls to wake the party up.
Jevenkah, While I'm not 100% happy with the pit fiend sculpts, I learned a lot from making them. And the red bodies on the green circles does make a nice contrast. And I did get the players to feel bad for the pit fiends.   

[Noctuary]

Hey Michka! Crazy seeing you here. Great stuff as always.

[Michka]

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's 2.5D method. Foam Core with Balsa wood mast and rudder.



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.

[DeafNala]

EXCELLENT STUFF! I can see your 2.5D boats blown up to ships size would work better for naval skirmishes than the 3D variety. AND I love the Weird Water Whatever...VERY IMAGINATIVE WORK!

[von Lucky]

Haha - crazy.