From my laboratory in the castle east
To the master bedroom where the vampires feast
The ghouls all came from their humble abodes
To get a jolt from my electrodes
They did the monster mash
(The monster mash) It was a graveyard smash……
I know, I know, perhaps not your traditional Dungeon monsters - but I’ve been having fun with a few examples of monstrous miniatures, who at least might be found in creepy crypts and castles, if not down in the vaults…..
I reckon you’ve gotta have a few ghouls and ghostlies, alongside the gnolls and kobolds - and as it was my first time in years in painting 15mm, they would not necessarily be a loss to the overall cast if practising on them didn’t turn out too well.
First up, I had a bash at some zombies - figured you can’t go wrong with something that shouldn’t be anything other than a bit of a mess - and lashings of bloody ichor could hide a multitude of sins:
The trio at the front in the photo above are from Alternative Armies, and appear in generic ‘medieval’ or plain clothes, so would be useful in a number of settings - the chap at the rear with the rusty sword is the excellent ‘Rotting Monk’ from Ral Partha Europe - a really characterful sculpt, hunched over with robes full of holes.
I think they scale well alongside each other - the poses from Alternative Armies are a bit stiff looking - but what do you expect from a Zombie !
I went a bit overboard on the strips of hanging flesh around the faces, so these are definitely not for the squeamish…..
On close inspection, the monk suffers from what I call ‘Fried egg eyes’ - perhaps not out of place for his ilk - Frankenstein’s Igor etc, but a mark of my inexperience at this - I don’t usually need to paint eyes on 2mm minis - so this will need further practice before I let myself loose on an adventure party…..
Talking of parties, there’s something a bit ‘Discotheque’ about the poses of this next group - I reckon if you lined them up just right, they could spell out “Y-M-C-A” :
Continuing the Monster Mash theme, more dance partners in the form of the genuinely scary-looking ghouls from Crom’s Anvil at CP models:
These have nice menacing poses, with bony taloned fingers reaching out for their next victim - or perhaps they’re doing the twist…… I wanted to go for a sort of rigor mortis blued-corpse effect for their skin colouration, that only half worked …… I can assure you that any resemblance to Smurfs, living or dead, is purely co-incidental. ;-)
Next up, a couple of ghosts or spirits - I’m not quite sure where these are from, as they came in an EBay purchase lot - the sculpting/posing says Alternative Armies to me - but they didn’t jump out in perusing the catalogue….
The green skin has come out a bit lurid - but I thought it would make a decent contrast with the white robes and add a bit of ‘pop’….. I had ambitions of doing a graduated colouring from a sultry whisp of darkling smoke at the base, moving up to pure white at the head, as if they were materialising, but it didn’t really come off - I went a bit heavy with the Army Painter soft tone wash - so they just look muddy - must be the Shades of agricultural labourers…….
Finally, accompanying the apparitions, the doyenne of all dead dudes, yes, it’s Dracula himself !
Unfortunately he also came with the EBay lot, so not too sure of his pedigree either…..
He appears with some suitably spooky columns - that are 3D prints ostensibly for 6mm scale miniatures - topped with Crom’s Anvil fire bowls - I wanted to have these to illuminate evil goings-on in the dungeon, and tried for a sort of marbled with green effect that is a bit slapdash in the photo, but doesn’t look too bad at tabletop viewing distances.
Dracula also came with with some bats as familiars, that I tried mounting ‘in flight’ - again, not sure who made these, but most of the manufacturers listed in my last post make their own examples.
A splodge of filler not so subtly hides the bent paper clip flight posts - but not so bad when seen from above.
Anyway, lots of fun was had working on all these, even if they are a bit of a cop-out in not being true Fantasy Dungeon dwellers……
Next time, I’ll be showcasing more monstrous things- in this case, all that creeps and crawls !
No comments:
Post a Comment