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Greetings fellow gamers and welcome to my laboratory!
I finally got around to posting pictures of some of my homemade beasties and figured I'd share. Readers of my Campaign Journal will recognize some of these things since I try to post pics to go along with the story and alot of these were created specifically for the adventure. That's enough talk. Let's get to the monsters!
Zelekhut - One of my first homemade minis. I needed a zelekhut for the Call Zelekhut spell from Spell Comendium so I chopped up some Mage Knight and Heroclix pieces and built this monstrosity. I could have gone with more traditional wings, but I think the big dragonfly wings actually look large enough to get this guy off the ground.
Punxizu - Another early homemade mini built from a Heroclix figure, this guy is also a homemade monster. I posted the stats for it a few years ago.
Huge Gelatinous Cube - This one's kind of a joke. I only needed the cube for this photo so I simply froze one of the PC's minis into a block of ice just long enough that the inside was still hollow. The result was this nice, transparent brick of ice with a cleric and a treasure chest (mimic!) trapped inside.
Black Pudding - I must thank Paizo for putting those cardboard wedges on the corners of the books they send me because that's what is under all the melted wax I used to make this thing. Also, I <3 pipe cleaners. Pipe cleaners are responsible for the pudding's pseudopods, and I use them in alot of my monsters.
Tendriculos aka The Green Death - I like to experiment with different materials for my monsters and really wanted to give the tendriculos some texture so I killed a plush froggie and skinned it to give The Green Death a mossy coat. Sometimes, I like to plop him down on the table just to mess with my players.
Huge/Gargantuan Otyugh - The cardboard wedge returns! This otyugh's body is actually a wedge covered in more melted wax. I think wax is great for slimy monsters like otyughs and oozes because of the way it forms little rivulets and lumps, but it's a pain to work with because the end result is really fragile (also, it burns.)
Large Grick - I needed a large grick for an encounter and didn't want to use carrion crawlers as proxies so I made this guy. Once again, pipe cleaners played a huge part in the construction. The Sculpey is molded onto a pipe cleaner skeleton.
Apparatus of the Crab - How come nobody else has made a Crab-paratus mini yet? It seems like a natural for a minis line. Anyway, here's mine. Built from a wind-up robot and some stuff I bought at a hardware store, I was originally going to attach little walking skids to it so I could wind it up and let it walk. However, the skids ended up making it too heavy to crawl, and it looked really cumbersome.
Huge Achaierai - I recently needed a Huge achaierai mini and quickly came up with a plan to make it from some junk I had laying around. Do the googly eyes make it look silly? Probably, but have you ever seen an achaierai that didn't look silly?
Aboleth - The only aboleth mini from DDM is too small and the Reaper version is, like, $50 so I made my own, basing it on artwork from Bestiary 1. I'm not a great sculptor, but I think it turned out alright. To add to the ick factor, I covered it in a thin film of rubber cement so it's really shiny and sticky to the touch.
Elder Xorn - I really like the way this guy turned out. Pipe cleaners for limbs and a plastic easter egg for a body formed the skeleton that I covered in Sculpey. I only wish the jaws were hinged so I could shove minis down its throat.
For anyone who's interested, most of the bases on these figures are made from cheap aluminum sheets. Sometimes I only paint the aluminum, but I usually cut thin cardboard into puzzle-like tiles and then glue those onto the metal to make a more detailed base.
The Aboleth and Otyugh are actually standing in wax. I had to glue the minis to the bases first and then drip the wax around the minis to form the base.
Nice work. I love seeing the creative use of common materials. Easter egg Xorn... that's awesome!
Keep up the good work!
Nice job VZ.
The google eyes throw me, but the rest is really cool. Not sure I am willing to give up my purple worm for a tendriculus, but a skin that slides over it might be in my future. :)
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Thanks all. The googly eyes do make the minis look a little silly, but my games tend to feature quite a bit of humor so I think they're okay. I try to use them sparingly, for monsters that have some charm to them.
I've got an athach and a lillend to post and some others planned for the future so I'll put them all up here as I finish them.
I had four purple worms before I made the tendriculos and figured I was probably never going to run an encounter with four worms so one got volunteered.
AWESOME!
I really <3 that tendriculos. I wonder how many boring minis would be "weirded up" into freaky monsters if you just gave them some flocking...
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@ Sean K Reynolds - Thanks. If you want to make your own tendriculos, I used fur from a faux beanie baby frog toy I found at a Fred Meyer. The aquarium plant tendrils are attached to a pipe cleaner frame that goes under the fur, and the whole mess is affixed to the purple worm with rubber cement and plain old white glue.
Here are a couple more minis I've put together.
Lillend - I made this lillend several years ago before WoTC put out their Lillend mini for DDM. The torso, wings and end of the tail come from the Heroclix Mirage figure who came with her pegasus, Aragorn. The tail used to belong to a Mage Knight skeletal dragon.
Athach - It seems alot of people don't like athachs, but I've always thought they were cool and wanted a mini of one so I put this guy together using one of my several DDM Fomorians and a MODOK arm that came with my Marvel Legends Moon Knight figure. I used a Dremel to grind all the robotic looking stuff off the arm, then repainted it. The athach also features a cloak and beard I made from teddy bear fur, and his arm still bends at the wrist and elbow. The "hair" on his head is made from the plastic I tore off the MODOK arm with my grinder.
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A new monster for the shelf!
Arrowhawk - I haven't had much time or need to create new minis lately, but here's an arrowhawk I put together. I'm not a great sculptor. I think it came out a little more snakey or eely than hawky, but I'm happy with it. I used bits from a shredded towel to give the arrowhawk feathers along its spine and cotton to make a little cloud for the base.