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Lack of sleep and work left me so exhausted that my regular progress disappeared as the week wore on, unfortunately, but to celebrate Friday night being here I did some more crafting.
Biggest news is that all the sculpting and converting is finally done on the nothic, all that's left will be painting after this.





I have also continued work on the zombie that I am sculpting from scratch. This now includes the first human head I have ever sculpted.

That alien is looking super creepy, great stuff!

You also inspired me to take a stab at the terrain competition though you seem to have a good headstart over me

Thanks Commander Cain, it's great to hear that you'll be trying out the terrain competition.

Also I wouldn't worry about my head start with your legendary speed for completing goals

I've done a little more sculpting of the hawk head fountain. I burned my finger on hot glue pretty badly yesterday so crafting came to a sudden halt.

 Syro_ wrote:
I've done a little more sculpting of the hawk head fountain. I burned my finger on hot glue pretty badly yesterday so crafting came to a sudden halt.

Ouch! That is really unfortunate, I hope the burn isn't serious to call for a medical attention? One of the reasons I no longer have courage to use melting equipment when noone else is around... I wish You a speedy recovery.

The fountain looks a bit weird, but this is a good thing, Very intriguing how it will end! Oh, and I've been browsing Your recent photographs again - that water effect acrylics produce really interesting effects! Ice staff in wizards hand is very well done, congratulations!

 Syro_ wrote:
I've done a little more sculpting of the hawk head fountain. I burned my finger on hot glue pretty badly yesterday so crafting came to a sudden halt.

Huh. You almost had me convinced to try hot glue sculpting. Now I'm not sure I want to...

Thanks WireCat, I didn't need any medical attention luckily. It hurt for about 4 hours which was more than I expected but I just kept swishing it in cold water to keep the pain down, and then started applying a lot of aloe. I still have quite a blister, but I'm fine other than that. I burned myself much worse than this about two years ago (also with hot glue), so I'm not worried. It's a shame you don't use melting equipment anymore, but it is a wise choice. As for the fountain, I'm still kind of up in the air with where I'm going with it. I've been trying to decide if I want to make the water effect with hot glue, paint, and a gloss varnish or try to pick up one of those two part epoxie glues that people sometimes use for water effects. And thanks about the wizard, I am quite happy with how the staff turned out.

Thanks Josh, I hope you still try out the hot glue sculpting, just don't be a careless as me. If it makes you feel better, I was already using hot glue again this afternoon even though the blister is still prominent on my finger.

Speaking of playing with hot glue, I was in the mood to make another gelatinous cube tonight. I don't know why, when I have more than I will probably ever use in game, but they are really easy to make with a silicone baking mat. Today's was made with about 40-50 cents of dollar store hot glue and a single skull from the citadel skulls kit. It's my 5th gelatinous cube that I have made this way, and right in the middle of this "family shot"



The silicon baking mat I use, even has inch measurements printed on it, so it's very easy to create 2 inch square panels of pure hot glue (they peel right up from the silicon).


Then it's just lining the panels up, melting the edges a little to help them line up, and adding more glue to where they connect. A very quick and easy gelatinous cube.


I also have some pulled apart dollar store jute twine from a failed project, that I'm thinking could work well if I make some shambling mounds for D&D, what do you guys think?

You won't know until you try!

--B.

Your cubes look great and I'm interested to see what you do with the mounds. If you were able to get some Sylvaneth bits, it might make some cool additions to them.

The Nothic is coming along really nicely! Fair play for working with armatures too - I am always too intimidated to try that.

The cubes are great. I saw a similar technique using transparent plastic with hot glue on them, and one my students made one that he brought in, but yours look more sturdy and durable.

I reckon shambling mounds will be most convincing if you do a couple of small details like leaves on them as well - the suggestion of wood elf bits is a good one!

Wow thanks for all the replies Brian, Tyranid Horde, and Da Boss! What kind of Sylvaneth/wod elf bits are we talking about? The treeman branches? I'm willing to try to make similar stuff, but I'm worried that I may be descending a slippery slope if I buy bits because of not wanted to waste about a penny of jute twine. I'm still willing to consider it though. I have some spare aquarium plants for making stirges, I could try that. I'm also trying to decide about mushrooms on the back, like the official art.

Not much progress today, I sculpted three more feathers on the hawk head, and started the very bare bones armature of an ogre I'm going to try to sculpt. Hopefully, i will have bigger updates soon, as I'll be starting to make a band of 10 orcs for D&D each customized to be different.

The sprues come with little sculpted leaves and roots and so on, as well as little faeries.

I think actually the aquarium plant stuff will probably add enough detail particularly if you also sculpt some mushrooms as well. It just needs a little bit of appropriate detail to draw the eye and make the idea that the twin is actually roots and vines convincing.

Out of curiosity why are you not sculpting the feathers individually and then placing them on the hawk head? That way you could make them all at once and also fashion them around each other much easier.

Love the cubes, really smart way of making them!

@Da Boss: Thanks for the advice and information. I'll try out what you suggested. Also please let me know what you think of the progress so far.

@Commander Cain: Thanks, I'm glad you like the cubes. As for the reason way I'm doing the feathers the way I am, I do have a reason but not a particularly good reason. I wanted the feather to fit together better than I thought I could do with making them in a big batch separately, and also wanted the feathers to flair up away from the head at the ends. I've taken a picture to hopefully show you what I mean. In hindsight I probably should have just sculpted them separately.


I've started working on the first shambling mound with really basic cheap styrofoam and a sci-fi base that I will cover up:


From there I made the main vine/branches using wire and hot glue.


After I started adding the shaggy jute twine with PVA glue. Because of the PVA, I stopped there to wait for it to dry.



From there I'm thinking of making trails of hot glue over the jute twine to simulate more vines, I'll be adding teeth to the mouth, touching up more detail for the head and back area, and adding some foliage and mushrooms like Da Boss suggested.

Wow that has come out really well!

Thanks Da Boss! I need to decide how many shambling mounds I want to make. I imagine there isn't much need for multiples of them.
There is still more detail I can add, but I am also tempted to call the zombie sculpt finished, so I can move on...




I have also finished the feathers on the hawk head statue



Thanks for stopping by

AFAIK, shambling mounds are generally encountered alone, but they can sometimes come in groups. I would say 3 is enough, then if you had a random encounter table with d3 on it, you would have enough.

In 3.5 edition, this was a level 9 druid spell...
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shambler.htm

 Syro_ wrote:



From there I'm thinking of making trails of hot glue over the jute twine to simulate more vines, I'll be adding teeth to the mouth, touching up more detail for the head and back area, and adding some foliage and mushrooms like Da Boss suggested.

Simple yet effective. Great trick with that organic stuff!

@Da Boss: Thanks for the advice, I'm aim for three, that should perfectly use up my pulled apart jute twine also. I went through more of it on the first model than I expected to. And wow, that druid spell is cool. I may need to create a villain creating and sending forth large amounts of shambling mounds.

@Wirecat: Thanks Wirecat! I didn't expect it to turn out as well as it did so far.

I've continued work on the shambling mound, adding vegetation and some mushrooms, plus sealing down the twine.


Here is the batch of mushrooms I made for this project, nice and simple


I've also started on a second shambling mound


And least interesting is adding a little more to the frame of the ogre I'm sculpting

Good work with those mounds

Those mounds are coming along nicely, the added vegetation is sweet and those mushrooms are really nifty!

Are the gelatinous cubes transparent? I've seen Cubes with a open bottom, when a PC gets swallowed by the Cube you just pop their miniature inside the cube. Looks really cool.

Thanks monkeytroll, thanks Tyranid Horde, and thanks Shadow Captain Edithae. I'm glad you like the stuff I've been making.
@Shadow Captain Edithae: To answer your question, I've seen cubes with the open bottom and like how you can put the minis inside when they are engulfed too. For that reason, I made mine with an open bottom also. Sadly, the cubes aren't as transparent as I would like, but you can kind of tell when a mini is inside. I've taken some pictures to show you:
The five cubes and 5 minis to use as victims

Here the minis are inside the cubes with the light source on the same side as the viewer

And there they are backlit instead


I have also finally finished all the beds I was making for the D&D starter campaign (only thing I might do is age or paint the wood

Those beds look great, and comfy.

Excellent work going on here as usual.

As a btw, easy mushrooms are, plastic rod, any kind will do. Light the end over a candle, and pretty much immediately stub it out on the desk, instant mushroom.

Thanks so much Cam, and thanks for the info on making mushrooms, I never would have thought of that.

I was reading through the "Lost Mines of Phandelver" campaign book again, when I came to the description of the NPC Sildar Halwinter I noticed some information that I had no memory of and may not have had much meaning to me before. It said he is a former griffin rider from Waterdeep. I don't know much D&D lore, but after having read most of the adventure book "Waterdeep: Dragon Heist" and having gotten a griffin rider mini in the single blind box I bought, I decided to start making a new mini for him.

I am converting a MTG: Arena of the Plainswalker mini of Gideon into Sildar Halwinter.


After sculpting a griffin rider helmet, I also made him a long sword (heavy crossbow to come).


Speaking of MTG: Arena of the Plainswalkers. I can't find these amazing deals that I've seen some people talk about getting these for $5 at Walmart, but for me it's dropped to $12 on Amazon. $12 for 35 minis sounded good to me, so I bought myself two more boxes of the game

I've been very busy at work, so there was a drop off in my crafting, but I've started up again. I began working on the third shambling mound this morning

Great work on those beds

If this is what it is like in a "drop off" in your work rate, I am seriously impressed. I have had a bunch of parent teacher conferences recently and only had the energy to play video games in the evenings. You are doing fantastic work here. The shambling mounds are coming out way better than the actual official miniatures!

Thanks monkeytroll!

And thanks Da Boss! It's hard to achieve more than occasionally, but it gives me such joy and pride when someone says something I make could be mistaken for an official mini and in your case, even better. Thank you so much! That is also a good point about claiming my work rate dropping off, lately I have been so into modeling for D&D that I'm excitedly doing only that, not even really doing video games anymore. It's been my main way to relax and unwind so I've been posting almost daily. But that's only recently, there have been much longer droughts over the life of this blog than the 2 days or so I didn't post and claimed a drop off. I guess it's all perspective . Luckily my parent teacher conferences went well, and I hope yours did too. No matter what, they are always exhausting, huh?

Not much news on the hobby front. I've spent most of my hobby time and skills repairing a porcelain fish sculpture I gave my mom which was recently broken by the cat. It's not perfect but it's in one piece again, and I painted up the gaps and new pieces as best I could. Buying the gloss varnish for LoER really came in handy for the finishing touches. I did however get started on a statue that I think looks surprisingly good so far for how little work I did. In the game story it's supposed to be a wooden statue, but I plan to make it a bronze statue and try painting patina for the first time. I think the statue looks very Athena-like which I think is a plus.