Return of the Shoggoth Masters

Elder Thing
28 mm scale

Unlike many of H. P. Lovecraft's horrors, the Elder Things were not supernatural or truly malicious in any way.  They were aliens who traveled to earth in the Cambrian era, founding a strange civilization and bio-engineering the dreaded Shoggoths as their servants.  Though hinted at in various eldritch volumes of the past, their existence was only truly discovered by Antarctic explorers from Miskatonic University in the 1930s, precipitating the loss of most of the expedition.

This alien from H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness is actually a figure I sculpted myself about 5 years ago... I primed it and everything, but I think what stalled me then was that I couldn't decide on a reasonable colour scheme.  If you look at fan art of Elder Things online, people seem to go with everything from "grim grey" to "tropical parrot with tentacles".  I finally decided to go with a bit of colour, but I tried to keep it muted or a bit desaturated... I don't think Elder Things are specifically "evil", but I didn't want it looking goofy either.

I made this piece out of greenstuff over a wooden bead and wire; the results were pretty detailed, but when I revisited it it was obvious the wings are not nearly as robust as they should be... one had broken off.  It definitely wouldn't do well as a gaming figure.  I think that if I made it today I'd also use a very different wing design, this one is a little too simple/static.  Oh well.  I still like that weird tool it's carrying.

He didn't remotely recognize the species, but he
figured politeness couldn't hurt.

Exobiology Major

First Contact

15mm scale

Dr. Phan watched in amazement as the roiling mass of spheroids churned this way and that, finally elevating itself to over two meters off the ground.  The individual globules seemed to grow and shrink smoothly, matter flowing between them in a faintly discernible phosphorescent process.  As she peered at the entity, it slowly arched forward, several large spheres taking up position an arm's length from her faceplate. Particles seemed to travel through its body, coalescing in a constellation of bright spots in the sphere closest to her. "Hello," she said, "Who are you?"

This piece was a "quick" (2 days) response to a friend; I asked for a prompt for my next piece and she offered "first interplanetary meeting".  The astronaut figure is from Ground Zero Games, the alien is my own design. I tried to come up with a truly unique concept for an intelligent alien: a sort of syncytial giant slime-mold-like entity that's not formless, but doesn't have a fixed skeleton or appendages either.  I wanted to hint at sensory structures that float free in the body and are recruited to whatever part is proximal to the object or direction of interest. 

On a technical level, the alien is just a collection of balls of greenstuff, stuck together as haphazardly as possible.  The blue life form on the ground is a mixture of blue paint, acrylic gel medium, and sand.  The photo backdrop was hastily painted today, I've never done that before!

Galaxy Guardian

Baby Groot
180mm

"Groot, you can't.  You'll die!  Why?  Why are you doing this?
"WE are Groot."

This one's a slightly different project from my usual.  My 5yo son is a big Guardians of the Galaxy fan and I made this to decorate his room.  Groot is made from Fimo, sculpted over a wire and tinfoil armature.  I filled the pot with plaster with a bit of pea gravel to give it some heft.  I've never worked substantially with Fimo before, it was surprisingly easy and forgiving to use.  I had to make this in stages so it was baked probably 4-5 times and the first part I did (the head) shows no discoloration, cracking etc.  I added a bit of dark washing to enhance his wood grain, and a few painted details which I think make him look very similar to the recently-sprouted Baby Groot as he appears at the end of the first GotG movie.  He's about 18 cm tall and another 10 cm for the pot, so this is definitely not a small item, by my standards anyway.  Lots of fun, and hopefully my son will like having this cute guy hanging out on his dresser!

Winged Old One

Elder Thing (sculpt)
28 mm scale; 40 mm tall

They were not evil things of their kind. They were the men of another age and another order of being. ... Scientists to the last - what had they done that we would not have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible, just as those carven kinsmen and forbears had faced things only a little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star spawn - whatever they had been, they were men!

Unlike many of H. P. Lovecraft's horrors, the Elder Things were not supernatural or truly malicious in any way.  They were aliens who traveled to earth in the Cambrian era, founding a strange civilization and bio-engineering the dreaded Shoggoths as their servants.  Though hinted at in various eldritch volumes of the past, their existence was only truly discovered by Antarctic explorers from Miskatonic University in the 1930s, precipitating the loss of most of the expedition.

This strange creature from "At the Mountains of Madness" started out as an oval bead from my daughter's necklace kit.  I'd painted Lovecraft mythos figures before, but the Elder Things never caught my interest simply because ATMOM is, frankly, not a very accessible novel.  My sculpt isn't overly original, largely based on various Deviantart pieces as well as Lovecraft's oblique text description.  Most people's interpretations look something like these:

Stay away from the brown acid.

I imagined the tentacles, legs and wings to be boneless fluid-filled structures and sculpted them accordingly.  I don't think the "hands" and wings turned out particularly well, but overall I'm happy with it.  I gave it a tool or weapon (Laser gun?  Musical instrument?  Elder drain unblocker?) because they were supposed to be a highly advanced civilization, not just tentacle-waving animals.

Cult Movie Alien

Cult Movie Alien
15 mm scale

"Sorry to interrupt your recreation, fellows, but it is time for Sgt. Pinback to feed the alien."

John Carpenter's 1974 film, "Dark Star", is a weird, fun, low-budget story about a cranky crew of oddballs dealing with life in space and trying to save themselves from an intelligent bomb that has decided it wants to explode.  A major subplot features the shenanigans of a maliciously mischievous beachball-shaped alien (obviously made from... a beachball, and a pair of Halloween fright hands) which wreaks havoc on the ship while moving around via the ventilation ducts.

Dark Star was co-written by (and co-starred) Dan O'Bannon, who went on to write a rather more well-known 1979 film about a cranky crew of oddballs whose spaceship was destined to self-destruct, confronting a malicious alien traveling through the ventilation ducts:

"Look, we have actual money now!"

Some DEVGRU SEALs... and their "dog"

DEVGRU riflemen and marksman
15 mm

So I painted three of these cool guys to start - two assault types and a sniper.  I tried to stick with "realistic" military colours - pretty drab but with sharp highlights - but they're not based on any specific uniform the US military now uses.  As people have said, they would definitely fit in any current or "mid tech" near-future scenario.

BigDog load-bearing robot
15 mm scale

I felt like my SEALs needed some kind of very-near-futuristic technological support, so I sculpted this guy to carry all their extra gear for blowing things up and shooting at people.  BigDog has received a lot of attention for its impressive ability to walk around in an eerily lifelike fashion while carrying heavy loads.  This version would be roughly donkey-sized IRL.

This was a fun sculpt.  I'm not very good at sculpting anything but pouches, so I just let this take me wherever it ended up.  The fabric protecting the legs saved me from having to do anything too mechanical-looking there, and careful painting hides the irregularities in the rest of the frame.  Overall, I think it's a good dog.

Instant Mold

A few weeks ago I ordered some "Instant Mold" from the Coolminiornot shop. This product is a clear waxy plastic, which melts to a soft consistency in hot water and can be used to make press molds of somewhat simple items.

There are a number of demo and review videos out there, so I didn't bother doing one. But I did a quick test that might be informative. Space Marine shoulder pads are a popular target for this, so I tried out a couple for my test run.



The pieces I'm duplicating: an old SM medic and a random Terminator arm.



The softened Instant Mold formed around the parts without any difficulty, and appeared to hold a very fine detail level.



The results. I'm pretty impressed! There's some loss of detail on sides of the Medic pad. There appeared to be some air bubbles in the Terminator seal, but it looks fine out of the mold. I imagine after a few more tries I'll get a more consistent result.

One thing: some forums I've seen have pointed out that polycaprolactone is available from various sources for cheaper than IM's price. That might be worth pursuing, but since this stuff is reusable, I'm not going to worry about it.

Molly Millions

Some sculpting. The medium is Green Stuff - 2-part epoxy putty. I've actually been working on this for a while (very very slowly since sculpting is not my forte). It will eventually be a model of the character "Molly" from William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy - a cybernetically enhanced mercenary with blades under her fingernails and mirrored lenses surgically grafted over her eyes.

Molly Millions
32 mm





Future additions include huge lenses on the face, 80's rocker-chick shag haircut and of course hands and face. I might actually remove the combat boot and give her cowboy boots instead. The book mentions those somewhere.