Eldritch horrors WIP

Hello,

I've got my Strange Aeons book I was talking about on monday. My brother and I went to play few games on the first day, and played whole tuesday. He is 13 so he has problems being interested in one thing and I was surprised at his enthusiasm about the game. This, I think, is one of the best proofs about how good the game simply is. I'll write a review in one of my later posts, but in a nutshell, it has simple mechanics, which means everyone can get a hold of the rules pretty quickly. Yup, even a 13 years old with a limit knowledge of english. We've proxied all the miniatures, as I don't have any for the 1920's period the game is set in. This means that my zombies were played as zombies, as frankensteinish constructs, fishmen, giant vermins (well... :D) and so on. We did, however used two of my mostly done sculpts, that I'll be showing you today.

First, there is Shantak I've been working on for quite a while (and is still not done):

For those of you who aren't familiar with Lovecraft's tales, a Shantak is an elephant-sized, not entirely bat and not entirely bird thing with horse's head and scaly skin. I gave mine 4 eyes to get him a bit more nightmarish, but the head has this...wrong expression on it. He looks like if he'd been giggling. From the last time I've shown him, he got some work done on his tail, but mostly neck and a head done. I was having enormous problems with sculpting his feet (note for the future: sculpt those first), so I had to make a base first. Yes, make. A custom one, just for him. I gave him a rock of DAS putty, so he becomes bigger. Still not an elephant size, mind you.


I've made him modular now. I've glued his wings on the body, as I have to bulky the arms a bit and sculpt another few fingers on the bent part. His legs will probably be sculpted once I'll paint him and the body, because otherwise wings would make those parts pretty unreachable.

He was used as a "winged nightmare" monster in a game, which is a nice way of naming that allows you to use any remotely flying thing in its place. It might be good to add, that rules specifically let you play with any miniatures you'd want, not just with official range. In a game, my brother thought it'd be a good idea to grab my main character and carry him out table (to "nightmare's nest"), where my hero of the fairy tales was unheroicaly fed to little nightmares, efectivelly ending my campaign! Brave companions of my hero were unable to form searching party in attempt to save lost adventurer as they got beaten by the nightmarish beast as well.

Next is a formless thing that I could say, is finished:

It sits...or should I say in that given moment it occupies an area, as big as 50mm round base. Formless thing could be painted as one of the million formless things Lovecraft mentiones in his tales, or the "eyes" could be painted green and the body black to make a "shoggoth". I am pretty happy with how model turned out, but it is too one dimensional, so to say, and too low sitting. I'd need to add more layers of putty to make one parts of the monster higher. For putty, I've used milliput (yelow, not seen much as it was covered with other layers), greenstuff (darkest green areas) and a mix of both (my new favorite putty). It took me some courage to actually mix milliput and greenstuff (you mix 2 components of each first, so you got a ball of milliput and a ball of greenstuff, thne you mix those 2 balls together). You get a putty that isn't as sticky as greenstuff (which is way too sticky :P) and not as crumbly as milliput - its perfect. The eyes were made with balls that I've got from Carl at Grekwood miniatures (check the tab on the right, if you haven't yet ;) and holes and craters were simply made of sticking my homemade tool (a ball of GS ) into the fresh putty, varying the pressure from hole to hole. It gives monster's "ooze" or whatever the thing is made of, some more texture, making it more interesting. And, as you can see, I've made some a coulple of mouths I am not satisfied with and HAD TO make a tongue sticking out of one. I have to do something about those 5 little eyes, because they look too plain, but so far, wasn't lucky. Its too small area to work on and I'll probably just leave them as such. Maybe I should do something about those mouth under them to make something there a bit more interesting. Any ideas?

There's another WIP picture of the thing below:

Last thing I got to show today are three dollies that are slowly becoming monsters. I've only started working on them this week, so they're nowhere close the end. I'm sculpting them using "greystuff", or procreate Carl has kindly sent me to test. So far, I like the putty, but I've found out I keep mixing too much and that it cures way faster than other two putties I work with. As for stickiness it is less sticky than greenstuff and much nicer to work with.


A Night-gaunt:

Only made legs (keep in mind, no feet yet, I haven't learned a thing!) and started working on a body. If it goes as planned, he will end up "thin", rubbery, faceless and with wings. I'll go in more detail when I'll make more details!

A conglomerate:

...or, if you wish, a clump of human, animal and any other parts stiched together and given life.

 I will make this one up as I go, but here is anatomically uncorrect hoove:

(either the hoove or the knee is twisted around...or, now that I think about it, we could call it a back leg and everything ends up beign fine!)

And, for a femine touch, toes-walking human leg:

Probably borrowed from a fashion model!


The god-knows-what:

This started as another conglomerate (I just love the idea of those, pretty funny (and pretty deadly in a game), but I will probably make him a "dimensional shambler". I was thinking about making forearms two big tentacles, but now that I've coated one, I am thinking about cutting the other one and repositioning it in "reaching forward" position. I think I will, indeed, go that way to produce as wide range of different beings as possible, just for the fun of it. There is only 1 real reason to keep him as a conglomerate, his left "leg" (so right, watching the picture) is actually an arm. I thought it'd be funny to give him an arm to walk with...but I can do that again any time!


Lastly here is a group photo I took when I had them all nicely set up on table:

Overall, I must say I really enjoy sculpting those. Firstly, they're all made up so I am free to interpret everything, which means I can't do things wrong and I don't have to worry about proportions too much and secondly, it feels good to jump in a shoes of a reanimator! Muahahaha!

Well, thanks for reading and any comments, critics and ideas are warmly welcomed!

Mathyoo