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Sunday, January 05, 2014

Ozymandias (15mm terrain)

Ancient Stone Head
15 mm scale

This was an idea I had a while ago for an interesting, cheap scenery piece.  I don't normally make, or have use for, scenery/terrain but this was too fun and easy to pass up as a holiday project.


Sacrificed: one "Clone Wars" Pez dispenser; surprisingly solid and tedious to saw through, I have to say.  You could probably use any action figure head or even a Barbie (if you didn't mind your relic looking like Barbie).


I glued the sliced head to a 2.5" diameter wooden craft circle with hot glue, and smeared some more glue around to make the ground uneven.  Then covered with a mix of sand and ballast and spray-primed.


Wow... at this point I was pretty pleased with the result but I felt it still kind of looked like a toy.  It needed a bit of scale.  So I painted on some lines to make it look like it was originally carved out of massive blocks.  And, of course a little bit of scraggly desert vegetation to add some colour.


So there you have it.  One mildly-interesting terrain piece, the mysterious ruins of a long-lost temple or monolith.  Could be better, but as a test run I can't complain.  Maybe someone else can improve on the concept with some more details, or better source material.

"Astounding!  I'll definitely get published in the Xenoarchaeology Bulletin for this!"

15 comments:

  1. That looks amazing! Consider the idea stolen!

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    1. If I didn't want 'em stolen, I wouldn't post 'em ;)

      Thanks!

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  2. Hah! Great idea and follow through, Mr. M. This project of yours got me stirred with scenario imaginations.

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    1. Well you are the master storyteller among us. I can only guess what you'll come up with!

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  3. Lovely! I painted pavement cracks on my (soon-to-be outmoded) city tiles the same way and was surprised at how easy and effective it was.

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  4. This is such an excellent idea... I always want to make an alien dig site...

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  5. Looks amazing! That's a great idea!

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  7. Brilliant! I was looking for a similar piece of terrain, will have to look for the Pez like this one :)

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  8. Fascinating idea. I love it. Looks really good.

    I've always had a thing for half-buried statues. So beautiful and tragic all at the same time.

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    1. I met a traveller from an antique land
      Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
      Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
      Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
      And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
      Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
      Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
      The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
      And on the pedestal these words appear:
      `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
      Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
      Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
      Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
      The lone and level sands stretch far away".

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  9. Looks like a really fun (and forgiving) project. This manages to show how a dull paintjob (the original one) can obscure a simple yet nice sculpt.

    I mainly like 2 things about it; first is that the surface looks grainy. Dunno if it's cause the spray primer or drybrushing but on this given piece is ace as it gives sense of material's quality (rock not plastic) and scale.

    Then you have the theme wich is so much flexible... As I see this you made a piece that would benefit from different paint approaches and this is great to me; someone like you did could go warm and give it an arid approach, much like something out of Egypt or stargate, while other could have gone the opposite way and do it cooler (gray) and overpopulate it with vegetation, vines etc. as in cambodia (thailand) or alien jungle world.

    Hell, it could use even cooler and darker hues to picture an undersea scene, imagine a merman or a deep one on top of that and some algae arround.

    Execution is great, but the fact it can be customized so deeply with just different paintjobs makes this a great piece IMHO.

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    1. ps: wife says it's beautifull...

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    2. Thanks for a double vote of confidence! Your detailed input is always appreciated :)

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Thanks for commenting!