Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The Ghoma wrote:It's not about looks that are scary, it's the atmosphere. Locations or things that make you think " need to get away from this thing" or "this thing is going to kill me" that are truly scary IMO (silent hill does an amazing job of doing this)

Very much agreed but in the case of minis, that atmosphere is irrelevant for the most part. Now for movies and books, it's way more important than what the monster looks like.

Things that are creepy are things that really shouldn't be and if they caught up with you they wouldn't kill you quick. Stuff like walking babies with scythe arms, crawling little monsters, hot girls with no skin on there backs, arachnid attachments to humans, drill fingers.....

Bat Manuel wrote:Things that are creepy are things that really shouldn't be and if they caught up with you they wouldn't kill you quick. Stuff like walking babies with scythe arms, crawling little monsters, hot girls with no skin on there backs, arachnid attachments to humans, drill fingers.....

Have you checked out any of the Malifaux stuff?

I was always haunted by just pale eyes, its as much psychological then just making them bloody. So to add more cents to the pile, I would suggest doing something twisted; you know have a chaos space marine holding childs severed leg, or head. After all the only movies I ever get scared from are satanic movies, and twisted movies ie, silence of the lambs. I hope I added at least 2 cents.

Flinty wrote:The beasties from The Thing are pretty scary, but that might just be from their initial unexpectedness (especially the damn chest mouth thing!).

Oh jesus, the part where the guys ribcage bites off the other guys hands is the single thing in any media to this day that has disturbed me and made me feel physically sick with disgust.

corpsesarefun wrote:

Flinty wrote:The beasties from The Thing are pretty scary, but that might just be from their initial unexpectedness (especially the damn chest mouth thing!).

Oh jesus, the part where the guys ribcage bites off the other guys hands is the single thing in any media to this day that has disturbed me and made me feel physically sick with disgust.

Barfing dinosaur in jurasic park 1... thing gave me nightmares for 3 months. I was 6.

The monster for Alien is probably the scariest monster in cinima IMO. My father and i watched when when i was 12 and i literly did not go in my basement for a whole year. Its because it has the mystery of being unkown on top of the fact that when you finaly get a good look at it, it just has this smooth emotionless dome with a mouth instead of a face..... Plus it lays eggs in your stomache.

We already have xenomorphs in warhammer, they are called Tyranids xD

Soladrin wrote:We already have xenomorphs in warhammer, they are called Tyranids xD

speaking of which, one of my friends who plays nids painted them dark dark blue and black just to skrew with me because they do look so much like the xenomorphs

Personally, as a horror infused fantasy as well as straight up horror writer, there are many things that I like to use and manipulate to freak readers out. Mostly, it's already been said, but something mostly human with something horribly, horribly wrong is downright terrifying. I also like to take other things that are familiar; like dogs, cats, household layouts, trees, etc; and distort/mess with them to make them disturbing. Something I use often is the concept of a great dog or wolf with piercing eyes and seems to be made entirely of living, moving, pulsating shadows. It never attacks, just follows people, makes its presence known to really get under their skin. A nice thing I find, to make humanoids creepy is to remove/horribly enlarge eyes or a mouth (think about it, a man with blank eyes whose mouth opens up to both sides of his face), or eyes/mouth sewn shut. Maybe even combine them, my favorite is to have the eyes sewn shut with an impossibly large mouth.

Maybe it's worth mentioning, my freakiest creation yet (mostly because he's mostly left to the imagination) is a horribly mangled corpse (or is it corpses?) that is alive, guts hanging out, face gone, little skin, constantly dripping blood/organs. Yes, I'm fethed up.

Two odd things that I find slightly creepy.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.darkrealmfox.com/film_reviews/wp-content/images/pandorum_pics/pandorum_18.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.darkrealmfox.com/film_reviews/2010/06/16/blu-ray-screencaps-pandorum/&usg=__02T4t-X3yML9HnRb968isJth0Xs=&h=1080&w=1920&sz=925&hl=en&start=66&zoom=1&tbnid=JDHdleC7y6jTtM:&tbnh=114&tbnw=203&ei=PYk4Tav_BsOclgexprH-Bg&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpandorum%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D844%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C2280&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=939&vpy=392&dur=2037&hovh=168&hovw=300&tx=140&ty=85&oei=FYk4TcWWHcOclgfnl-zcBg&esq=4&page=4&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:14,s:66&biw=1280&bih=844[/img]

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zswvgN3NvdY/TQLfAUGsQuI/AAAAAAAADSw/P0lwIzlJRNY/s1600/pandorum_15.png&imgrefurl=http://horrorthon.blogspot.com/2010/12/pandorum.html&usg=__UIz_B6Y1nOGHuj4_PoapDVuRwro=&h=900&w=1600&sz=1760&hl=en&start=33&zoom=1&tbnid=p8K6PjsidstRFM:&tbnh=162&tbnw=228&ei=wYk4TbDiA4OclgeMyYzUBg&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpandorum%2Bmonster%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D844%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C855&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=390&vpy=529&dur=673&hovh=168&hovw=300&tx=201&ty=69&oei=u4k4TfLaGYLGlQex0PHLBg&esq=2&page=2&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:33&biw=1280&bih=844

This last one kind of gets me because I have a strange almost phobia of bears. Why? No idea, but they terrify me more than any fictitious monster/demon/abomination ever could.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/15810/preview&imgrefurl=http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/15810&usg=__pvX0qpUtEx7GLRqftd2j0wMdTAU=&h=520&w=640&sz=34&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=qNFIZZUF8LeEBM:&tbnh=154&tbnw=210&ei=oIs4TciaMMb_lgeVyo3-Bg&prev=/images%3Fq%3DBear%2Bdemon%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D844%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=541&vpy=306&dur=963&hovh=202&hovw=249&tx=139&ty=93&oei=dos4Tf_pAoH6lweclO3lBg&esq=12&page=1&ndsp=26&ved=1t:429,r:9,s:0

Edit: The Iron Maiden from Resident Evil 4 was a bit creepy too.

Id deffo say anyhting that came out of the hellraiser films! also anything from in the night garden kids show... holy sh*t it freaked me out the 1st time i watched it with my daughter... you thought the teletubies were bad!!!!

Liam

The perversion of the normal (gonna spoiler it, cause it scared me at least )



Also, just conveying that something is unstoppable/unkillable can be pretty scary; just knowing that you have no power whatsoever against it.

S_P

Not being a shrink or a designer of any kind, i can only speak of own experience;

What i feel revokes the most disgust in me is seeing something humane turned bad - like SUPER bad. If you can resemble it with a human, you create a foundation, i think, that makes the mind want it to be good and righteous. If it has human shape, we've given the viewer a basic understanding of what it is. After we've done that, we're free to make it FUBAR (F**ked up beyond all recognition).

On the other hand, if you give it the appearence of something supernatural or beastlike, it loses that foundation - the psyche (i think) figures, that this is something evil or beastlike, and adding gore, torn up bodies etc. is no more frightening than watching a pack of Lions feast on a downed Gazelle.

I personally feel alot more frightened by humans that are capable of evil, than i feel about a creature (fiction or not) that kills out of instinct. The difference is the choice, and hence why it's frightening, 'cause; Here's a person, that's evil... He's intelligent, and his basic instinct isn't about carrying out evil deeds - it's about survival and adaption. What a mass murderer does is killing/maiming/shreading/cutting up people out of lust - not a survival instinct, and therefore unspoken questions arises: "how is this person able to do that? He's just like me!!!".

Most of all, what we fear is what we don't understand. So my suggestion is: Make it resemble a human, but make it do evil deeds out of lust.

Billinator wrote:Not being a shrink or a designer of any kind, i can only speak of own experience;

What i feel revokes the most disgust in me is seeing something humane turned bad - like SUPER bad. If you can resemble it with a human, you create a foundation, i think, that makes the mind want it to be good and righteous. If it has human shape, we've given the viewer a basic understanding of what it is. After we've done that, we're free to make it FUBAR (F**ked up beyond all recognition).

On the other hand, if you give it the appearence of something supernatural or beastlike, it loses that foundation - the psyche (i think) figures, that this is something evil or beastlike, and adding gore, torn up bodies etc. is no more frightening than watching a pack of Lions feast on a downed Gazelle.

This is an excellent point.

And I like the OP so much that I'm going to indulge in another wall of text here. And this may get a bit adult. Sorry.

The problem with the Chaos Gods in WFB/40K is that once you're confined to a battlefield miniature a lot of the things that could convey the horror of their evil are not available. When the good guys have guys in 8ft tall armour carrying chainsaw-swords and mini rocket pistols led by chaplains with skull masks, it's kinda hard to say the bad guys are scary for doing the exact same thing, except their 8 ft tall armour has horns on it. And if you're playing a miniature war game, then it stands to reason that you're already somewhat aware of what warfare is like and are not exactly sensitive to the genuine horrors of war. So that miniature of a barbarian cheiftan who wants to cut off the heads of the other army doesn't elicit horror because we aren't personally empathizing with anyone who might get their heads chopped off, nor are we afraid the 30mm barbarian might chop our heads off, nor are we so squeamish that the notion of heads being chopped off in the abstract is going to horrify us.

So, how would you then go about making a Khorne miniature genuinely scary?

The Ghoma mentioned atmosphere, and I think if you made dedicated scenery for your army and used that scenery to show the results of a Khorne rampage on a civillian populace, that would create pretty good atmosphere.

On the miniatures themselves? I don't know. Horror needs to be subtle, and Khorne isn't subtle. But I tell you this, a 15 thousand year old berserker in power armour flipping out and wanting to murder everyone doesn't frighten me. Bob from accounting flipping out and wanting to murder everyone does frighten me. Because like Billinator said, you need to be able to relate to something to be scared by it. And I can't relate to a 15 thousand year old berserker, but I can relate to Bob from accounting, at least enough to be shocked that he flipped out and wonder with horror if I don't have that capacity hidden away somewhere.

So I think the first thing to make Khorne more frightening is to make his followers look more normal. That may be hard to do in miniature form because even the Imperium in 40K is pretty alien. But in WFB this is possible. An army of what look like ordinary Empire troops consumed by bloodlust would probably be pretty shocking.

The scariest faction to me in 40K has never been chaos. Chaos tries too hard to look cool, and something that looks cool can never be truly scary because you know they want to impress you. The scariest faction for me is the Adeptus Mechanicus, especially in the artwork. Imagining someone who would have their mouth chopped off and replaced with a feeding tube and a speaker box because it's more efficient is pretty horrific. We're talking someone who doesn't seem to care if they never taste another thing again, let alone make out with space chicks.

And the big fellows in mythology wearing giant suits of armour never strike me as scary either. Because effective armour is a very sensible thing to wear. The people who always scare me in fantasy/history are the (male) naked fanatics, the people who have the option of wearing armour but instead choose to run out into battle without a stitch of protective wear. So a miniature with a buck-naked barbarian covered in scars and woad, with meat and two veg flying in the wind and hair done up with pig grease, that would be a pretty scary mini. (probably not least of which because if modelled correctly it would no doubt make a lot of GW's target demographic very uncomfortable. ) But of course this would raise issues of when and where you could use or display the miniature. So that got me thinking that maybe the way to make the Khorne naked fanatic work is to put evidence on the model that it had been sexually nullified.

First, because any male is going to have a visceral reaction to seeing that. And second, because it inverts the "proper" warrior mentality that naked fanatics arose from. A "proper" warrior accepts challenges and kills dangerous opponent in order to gain renown, thereby gaining prestige, thereby gaining a shot at wealth and connections to power, which would primarily be used to either attract a high-status wife or secure a comfortable home for the warrior's wife and the children she would presumably in that time period provide for him. The killing is a means to an end for the "proper" warrior. But for our nullified naked fanatic, there will be no wife or children. Killing is the end in itself for that warrior, and forcing the viewer to imagine a life with truly no other outlet other than violence- I imagine that would be pretty horrific.

I'll go away and have a think about the other Chaos Gods.

JOHIRA, Now that's what scary should be.
Take the understandable and make it wrong, twist it until you can't see it for what it was anymore and yet you still know exactly what it is.

I like to think i've done not too bad a job on making my Horrors of Tzeetch look scary (made from Dryads). Also my Traitor Guard looks very Sinister IMO! ^_^

@Johira

I really think you're on to something, with your fine examples.

Warhammer 40k Fluff-wise, i must say, i feel much more frightened by the Dark Eldars. Most armies has some sort of brutality to them, be it Chaos Khorne with a big axe, Space Marines with a big Hammer or Eldars with a swift sword. But Dark Eldars would much rather coat their weapons in poisons that stuns it's victims.

Though i feel that what makes the big difference, armies appearences overall, is how the mind adapts to the scheme of the army, and hence we've got - as i mentioned in the previous post - the foundation. As soon as this basic foundation is set, the mind will be expecting something from that source, that is the cause to that foundation.

NOW! If you're able to play my mind in such a manner, that i would EXPECT something from this foundation, and you're able to take it further - MUCH further - then you'll be much better off at making whatever you're making scary.
(It is basically the same principle, that you as a kid gets scared of more harmless horror movies. But as you grow up, you adapt. As a result, you won't get scared that easily from the same movie. It'd have to take you by surprise to such a degree, that your "mental cap" can't soak it all up.)

In real-life terms, i'd be much, much more frightened by a pair of eyes staring at me, that in it's own, wordless sense tells me "when you're finished, i'm not even getting started". Hence this, i'd have to say that, fluff-wise, i'm more scared of the Dark Eldar.
- They don't just give you a quick death. They don't just bash your brains out. They don't just cut you in half. An ordinary death just doesn't cut it, because it's just too boring for them. They want you alive. And they wanna KEEP you alive, so that they can torture you. The Dark Eldars are the far most perverse minded army i've yet to come across, and if anyone was able to take the fluff further than just the ordinary, they'd be on their way of making it scary!

Pain, plain and simple. All of these things above are, to paraphrase, just regular stuff that has been twisted from the normal.

And why? for my, its because something would hurt.
Its why the Saw movies do as well as they do. If it was just...
"I'm going to cut him, should I cut him, audience? I am cuting him now, are you scared"
...no one would be. But you show a meat hook sliding into someone and it makes everyone wince.

So, I guess things that are both being hurt and hurting themselves?

Something to keep in mind on color, red (and things on the red side of the color wheel) will enhance the emotional response, blue (and things on the blue side) will suppress it.

Anything Giger inspired is bound to terrify.. But it's all about the suspense, which is a bit difficult to create with miniatures to say the least.

What about the human centipede?

Slushosaur wrote:Also my Traitor Guard looks very Sinister IMO! ^_^

That they do. Very effective.

Requia wrote:Something to keep in mind on color, red (and things on the red side of the color wheel) will enhance the emotional response, blue (and things on the blue side) will suppress it.

I think this is somewhat cultural though. IIRC, in Chinese culture red is thought to be lucky, and is worn for celebrations. Meanwhile every Chinese monster/ghost/zombie I've ever seen in movies (okay, I admit, on movie boxes) has been blue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Doomthumbs wrote:So, I guess things that are both being hurt and hurting themselves?

This isn't enough, at least not for me.

Maybe I'm odd, but violence in and of itself, especially gross, overt, and lingeringly observed violence, doesn't frighten me. When I watch stuff like that, I just instinctively shut off the part of my brain that relates to the character, because I know it's not real suffering. The more closely I can see the gore, the less scary I think it is.

The most nightmarish thing I've ever seen was an old news clip of I think a group of people protesting a KKK group, and someone happened to be filming it. And the protesters got a little too up in the Klan members' faces for their liking, so one of the clan members pulled out a gun and started shooting. There were no pools of blood, no gory closeups, no shots of people in agony. Just people you could relate to in a split second going from alive to dead. That was terrifying to me in a way that I don't think a Saw movie ever could be.

Don't know how that could ever be converted to 30mm miniature format though.

listen to the songs

Prothstetics, and scissors
by slipknot... creepeyest things i have ever heard


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Viktor von Domm wrote:

thats scary!!!

the shining is a great movie ;D

Papaskittels wrote:listen to the songs
Prothstetics, and scissors
by slipknot... creepeyest things i have ever heard

You sir, have impressed me with your musical taste.

Heh, listen to 'the Penelope EP' by Shabutie. Most disturbing and creepy music iv'e ever heard.

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but making a recognizable human head that is faceless would be terrifying. Kind of like deadbowl in that awful awful wolverine movie that i hope none of you saw, sans eyes.

put that on a normal human sized neck scaled down by like 15%, and then attach other scary features via the body.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

JOHIRA wrote:

Don't know how that could ever be converted to 30mm miniature format though.

Creating a corpse that has no obvious wounds but is obviously dead would do this. @ OP: if you went with my faceless idea, then having a faceless guardsman behind the model itself but still attached to the base -again, obviously dead- would be pretty frightening.

Humans are naturally terrified of the things that we do not understand. If you can create that in a model then you will make something eerie and, ultimately, scary. The facelessness brings up all sorts of obvious questions "how does it breath, how does it eat, how does it see/smell/hear etc." The dead but unharmed guardsman raises all kinds of questions. "How does that thing kill" is a question that, i believe, would be quite a startling one.


In the grim dark of 40k, its not the guys striding through a battlefield with huge guns, massive swords, and psychic powers that you fear. It's the thing walking slowly towards you, ignoring everything else. It is the thing that is striding unharmed, unhindered, and unarmed that is truly unsettling

CrazyMez wrote:What about these deamons from the films constantine.

http://gracelimsm.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/demons-3.jpg

They have the tops of their heads missing, below the eye, so they give off no emotion and shouldn't be able to live with out a brain.

Those are COOOOLLLLLL!

I just recalled another creepy thing, but again it relies on the combination of lack of sight and sound to be fully effective. Playing System Shock 2 aaaages ago when you come across the crazy nurse androids. You hear them singing nursery rhymes and then you go round the corner to have this smooth harmless looking thing tear your head off while your bullets bounce off it This combines a few of the things mentioned above, i.e. humanoid, outwardly harmless, designed to help with ultimately domestic things, turning into an unstoppable killing machine.

FredTheEvilKitteh wrote:

Papaskittels wrote:listen to the songs
Prothstetics, and scissors
by slipknot... creepeyest things i have ever heard

You sir, have impressed me with your musical taste.

Is that sarcasm XD

I always thought things that had a monstrous, terrifying form, but a normal, maybe happy, human face were pretty scary.

The most unsettling miniature I've seen thus far is probably the Wet Nurse from Kingdom Death (NSFW pics at [urlhttp://shop.kingdomdeath.com/product/wet-nurse[/url]).

As has been mentioned, I think the traditional notion of "scary" is going to be nigh impossible, what with the lack of motion and all, but you can certainly achieve "unsettling." As much as I think more subtle perversions of familiar forms are the more unsettling, something a bit overblown, like the Wet Nurse, is easier to translate at this scale. It's the acts of birth and nursing - very basic, necessary, and strongly emotional acts - that are thoroughly perverted to create the viewer's discomfort, more than the creature's grotesque construction from very familiar and private parts (which certainly doesn't hurt, either).

As for general creepy tropes, you've got the application of human flesh to unnatural machines (many-armed, caterpillar-like machine with a human face stretched and pinned to it's head), overly emotive single features inappropriate to the setting (remorseless killer with an overblown smile), removal of familiar features (no eyes, no mouth, etc.), just to name a few.

Oh, and British children. NOTHING is as unnerving as completely emotionless British children.