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Hello like minded friends of tabletop and role-playing games.

for quite some time (read years) i am in the hobby, and even longer i have been a more or less active player in role playing games of various themes.

nowadays i have started to combine these two, for many already this is nothing new, but for me i am still starting to build up my resources as a crafting dungeon master.
this creates obstacles in the beginning, as often the need for miniatures to play with and terrain is not met with resources at hand. thus soon you need to improvise and adapt to meet these needs, cause creativity in creating tales and games demands it. i have started to build terrain and feel quite at home with this. the other part, the need for minis often is only solved by buying stuff as the market (or the purse) allows. but i also want to adapt and rise to this challenge by my own hands. thus is the subject of this thread. i want to collect in this thread ideas and maybe even helpful tutorials as to how to create your own monsters out of readily available stuff. also the ever creative think tank that dakka dakka is, i ask you to discuss and hopefully show your ideas of your favourite monsters on these pages.

to spark the merriment, i like to draw the attention to one of my favourite monsters: the Golem!

In Jewish folklore, a golem (/ˈɡoʊləm/ GOH-ləm; Hebrew: גולם‎) is an animated anthropomorphic being that is magically created entirely from inanimate matter (usually clay or mud). The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material in Psalms and medieval writing.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem

in RPG the golem is of many variety, any non living matter is sooner or later used to build unique specimen of this monster category.

made from clay, iron, lava, stone, heck i recently saw a "cheese" golem even...

so now i invite you to share with us your ideas and maybe even the odd pic that could lead to new miniatures to make yourself!


cheers, vik

I recommend that you have a look into 3D printing. There are YouTube channels specific to DMs making models for their games. You can do this very cheap (FDM/hot plastic) or semi-cheap (DLP/liquid resin), with different quality going with the chosen method.

In any case, there are a load of digital resources,even some character generators out there, that provide you with the source files to print what you need.

Oh well, I had hoped to be the first response, heh. This is a great idea for a thread Vik, I'd like to help and be a regular viewer.

Creating minis by hand with putty, hot glue, kitbashing, other other method s onen of the parts of the hobby that I enjoy most. I find even a poorly made rather rough mini can be more fun than a beautiful token of paper cut-out.

As for golems. During a pottery class I decided to make a few D&D minis with my clay. One that I made is a clay golem (meta, right?). I've seen some clay golems looking like the Chinese Terra Cotta Warriors, or more like earth elementals, but I invision them as pure unfired clay. I also think they would be built simply and sturdy rather than very intricate statues like some of the art for them. Because of this I built a very simple design, basically 4 rectangles. The largest rectangle was split part way up for some very thick legs, and a waist line was cut in. Two more rectangular prisms are roughly attached for the arms. And a small one with a very basic three holes pushed in for a face. Despite how simple it is, I think it works well for a golem miniature. Especially once painted.





It's been nicknamed Gumby and the gingerbread man golem
Also Vik, I've started on making a flesh golem just for this thread, but nothing to post yet.

I like the DMsCraft on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAzKpkhmW9w

@Tim 121RVC: I'm a big fan of the DMsCraft as well.

I've finally finished another example of a golem for Vik's threa here. This time is a flesh golem. Flesh golems being stitched together corpses, like Frankenstien's monster, I feel it's easiest to just sculpt some additions onto a zombie mini or even better convert/kit bash from multiple parts to give it a mismatched stitched together feel. They don't have much detail and could be sculpted from scratch too.

I went the root of converting from multiple parts and minis. I started with a "zombie" from Sedition Wars, plus another set of legs from the same game, a cheap low detail gorilla from a dollar store animal pack, and a dead human head, grot arm holding a sword, and a human hand holding a trench knife from 40k. The knives are purely aesthetic as in D&D flesh golems just smack you, but I wanted mine to have knives.


next step was cutting apart my minis for the parts I wanted, and beginning to combine them into a humanoid form. I took one leg each from the sedition wars minis as I really wanted a lopsided non-symmetric appearance.



I then added flat pieces of green stuff that I tried to sculpt stitches into for patches of skin on the body, as well as filling in the large void where the legs met the body to look more like a continues single pair of pants.



Lastly comes the painting. I started with bone color paint as I feel it reflects dead skin well. I then painted different skin tones on the different skin patches and portions to reinforce the "built from multiple dead people" vibe of a flesh golem.





I hope this was an enjoyable read, and even more I hope someone will both try this and improve on it. I plan to make all four of the types of golems on the Monster Manual for Vik's thread here (unless some beats me to it ), so two more to go.

LOKA when you see it on sale is dirt cheap and has a bunch of suitable elementals (as in under a fiver for 9 models sort of cheap) heres the elementals from it.



Continuing to stretch the rules this Sewer slime is literally just Clear glue (UHU in the UK) spread over some waste bitz on a base.

I have made a stone golem now, which is by far the easiest of all the golems to make for you collection. You can use the exact same process as making a stone statue for terrain (just make sure it has a base).

Here is the finished stone golem mini in action


You start with a figure too large for 28mm scale, probably a toy of some sort. I have a lot of these very tall elves from the Toys R Us Mythic Warriors bucket still, and this is finally a good use for them.


I started by clipping off the bow, and then cutting and repositioning the arm into a pose I thought looked better.



After that it was a quick prime, light gray basecoat, and black wash.


Very quick and easy mini. I would put correct size bases on all your statues, that way they can pull double duty as gargoyles, stone golems, etc. Plus it will keep your players nervous, if every statue has a base, they won't know when they're going to come alive

Here's my example of an Iron golem made from random junk and recyclables. I've been done for a while, but didn't finish painting it so didn't post until now.


Here's most of the materials I used: markers, broken mechanical pencils, old contact lens cleaning stuff plus cases, and lots of the little twist tops to kids applesauce pouches.


Using a hobby saw, hobby knife, and hot glue I cut apart the empty markers and mechanical pencils, to make the arms and torso. The spikey bits on the arms are from contact lens cleaners but are only there to look cool. I cut the wings off of an applesauce twist, but cut into the main cylinder and folder up a chunk of the plastic to make a somewhat samurai helmet looking head.


bridged with a little foamcore, I attached the pieces, and cut a contact lens case lid in half for shoulders (cutting it was the hardest part of this build)


After cutting the wings off of two applesauce twists, I attached them with more marker pieces for legs, and cut the wings into several smaller sizes to stack atop each other for the feet.



I made a sword from another applesauce wing, foamcore, and a piece of marker back.


I cut up more of the contact lens cleaner (same as where the spikey wrists came form) for fingers. Anyone who wears contact lenses, I have found Clear Care contact lens cleaner to give a wealth of crafting supplies.


Using a large number of applesauce twists, I cut them up into rectangles to make a scalemail style armor.




I then finished attaching the arms and had the completed model

It'll be months before it is fully painted, but here is a crafted gravestone/tombstone/graveyard golem.



Materials are simple, mostly just a lot of foamcore. If you have some out of scale figure that you can paint up as a statue for the centerpiece, it works well. I've seen art using a coffin with a skeleton coming out as the center piece as well. I used a cast copy of the sarcophagus for Hero Quest since I already had the mold for it. I wanted my golem to have a 40k dreadnought aesthetic. From there you just jumble and attach foamcore grave stones of different sizes into a humanoid shape.

Starting materials (I needed about twice as many foamcore grave stones as shown here. I carved two little obelisks from balsa wood for flavor, and wanted a rock with runes carved on it.


Then you start piecing it all together into a humanoid shape.



I decided to use the sharp point of the obelisk as the arm for attacking, and all the other golems I've seen of this type have a hand made of smaller gravestones.




Finished except for needing more paint:




Shall we start sharing some other things than golems. There's a lot of resources out there already, but how about we compile info on crafting beholders and beholder kin next?

I've finally finished the paint job on the gravestone golem

Brilliant.