Shadow Demon Blues

The shadow demon is complete and The FF Project has gained another member:

(L to R) Blindheim, Shadow Demon, Forlarren

The mini allows a nice contrast between the very simple scheme on the actual demon and the abundance of color on the base. The colors used on the demon were Reaper Military Blue, P3 Frostbite, and GW Chaos Black.

The three-part WIP photo below shows the base in various stages of completion: A) black wash and grey/white drybrushing over grey primer,  B) the basic colors glazed on followed by some selectively applied washes, and C) highlights and some stronger shadows where needed.

Revisiting the construction of the base for a moment, the Reaper treasure mound was too large for the base until I reduced its size with my trusty motor tool. I had a pretty good idea of where the demon should be mounted and tried to work things out so that point wound up at the base's center. This required the removal of everything behind the chest. The resultant void was filled in with green stuff.

The coin-pile was extended to the front edge of the base with some stretched plastic sprue cut into disks and embedded in more green stuff. 

And finally a few more pics of the end result:

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Many blogs that I enjoy feature ongoing projects bound together by a common theme. Prehistoric Pulp at Laughing Ferret, Folk Horror at An Evil Giraffe, and Secret Project at 28mm Victorian Warfare are prime examples of this sort of thing. Not wanting to be left out in the cold, I'm initiating The Fiend Folio Project; miniatures inspired by the first edition's Fiend Folio.

Some will be direct representations of entries from the book, others may wind up using those entries as a starting point only. I won't pursue this to the exclusion of all else but will instead revisit the project as the mood strikes me.

I actually got the ball rolling last year with a forlarren and a blindheim. This year's first work in progress is a shadow demon.

This uses the body of a Wyrd sorrow, the head from a RAFM night-gaunt, and the wings from a Reaper succubus. I made a base using a Reaper treasure pile and attached the mini; concealing the pin with some green stuff.

 

Hopefully a fair representation of the subject as rendered in the original (plus horns).

Now for some paint...

Giant Kegger

I have finally finished my Reaper hill giantess conversion. Originally conceived as a suitable accompaniment for Otherworld's hill giant, she suffered through an extended stay on the back burner. Well, it's Friday night and she appears eager to make up for lost time. She's liquored up, she's got her red dress on and she's ready to go clubbing.

The conversion was an exercise in addition through subtraction. The more bits and pieces I hacked off, the better it looked. I removed the staff, cleaver, mammoth tusks, pigtail, sickle, a chunk of her skirt, a small frog, and a host of piercings.

The staff was re-purposed as a club and a mammoth tusk as a drinking horn. I cut away the base except for a section under the right foot which would serve as the starting point for a slab of rock. The thumb on the right hand was removed and the fingers pried open to accommodate the drinking horn. Some bending (made easier because this casting was part of Reaper's discontinued P-65 line) and putty-work followed and she was ready for paint.

The Otherworld giant is basically stock except for the base. OW supplies the mini with a metal base which I sanded down and mated to a standard base. A lot of filing, filling, and sanding was required to make this work. I also gouged out the area under his left foot and built up the area under his right so he would stand more vertically.

The beer kegs (looted from their original Dwarven owners) are resin oil drums dressed up with GW bits and some treasure from Reaper. The tarp is facial tissue coated with thinned PVA glue. Solder was used to represent the hose coming off the tap.

The flesh tones on both minis were achieved with Reaper's olive skin triad and Vallejo washes. I took some baby steps into the realm of tattoo painting with the aid of this excellent tutorial.

Shine On You Crazy Demon

The new year has arrived (several weeks ago I'm told) and it's time to get cracking on a fresh crop of minis. Last year's goal of painting and presenting something by Otherworld each month suffered an eleventh hour setback... I missed December. I am therefore kicking off 2013 with what was meant to be December's offering: a black pudding and grey ooze by OW accompanied by Fractured Dimension's superb Juiblex (AKA Joiblexx, Slime Lord of the Bleak Fens).

The Juiblex sculpt is by Pedro Navarro. Pictures of the green can be seen on his blog. Very Lovecraftian and true to the original Trampier illustration from the Monster Manual.

No major conversion work on this one; just a couple tweaks. Initially, how to handle the base was a head-scratcher. In the end I shimmed the mini up by about 1/8", attached it to a standard 40mm base, and sculpted the lower portion as though it was about to flow over the base's edge. Hopefully this blurs the distinction between where the demon lord ends and the surrounding environment begins.

The mini comes with four "vomit pieces" that can issue from various orifices. I used one of these as-is, a second one that was chopped down, and a slime blast from Armorcast. This last piece was smaller than the others so I used an eye as its attachment point. All three pieces were pinned.

 The paint was achieved through multiple washes and extensive glazing. A good deal of purple and flesh-tone was applied over the green base. The eyes were first painted white and then red so they would really pop.

The mini received an overall coat of gloss varnish so it would look slimy. This looked awful. I then went with matt varnish followed by gloss on just the eyes. Much better.

The OW minis were very straightforward by comparison. Again, lots of glazing and some gloss varnish (which looked fine in this case). All that remained was to round up a green slime and ochre jelly that I painted last year and Juiblex, The Faceless Lord (AKA Joiblexx, Slime Lord of the Bleak Fens) was ready to hold court.

No Respect

In the early eighties the subject of today's post was described as a "frog-like humanoid with huge eyes that shine like searchlights". I refer not to Rodney Dangerfield following a tragic industrial accident, but rather to the blindheim; a creature found in 1981's Fiend Folio. Like the late, great, Mr. Dangerfield, the blindheim (and for that matter, the entire Fiend Folio) is notable for receiving no respect.

As evidence of the blindheim's standing, I present exhibits A and B.

Maybe I'm just dense, but I fail to see why the little yellow guy deserves such scorn. Seems like a perfectly workable concept to me. When I came across Valiant Enterprises' oni demon I saw the opportunity for a straightforward conversion project.

Right from the blister the mini has some issues: 1) static pose: It looks like he's trying to surrender. 2)eye line: Why is he staring at the ceiling? 3)ears: I kinda like these but they're anything but frog-like. 4)teeth: These are a bit slab-shaped in spots and lack definition between themselves and the gums.

Nothing too serious. The pose and eye-line were addressed through some considerable bending. The ears were removed and the teeth reshaped with files and a hobby-knife. The addition of a tongue from Otherworld's giant frogs helped to accentuate further his inner amphibian.

What I wound up with has not two eyes but four and is slightly larger than described but hits all the important notes nonetheless (frog-like, large eyes, vicious bite).

His other vital features (yellow coloration, glowing eyes) were handled with paint. The yellow was achieved with P3 sulfuric yellow and heartfire, GW dark flesh and casandora yellow shade, Vallejo umber shade, and Reaper linen white.

I went with a vivid purple tongue because purple sits opposite yellow on the old color wheel.

The eyes are my first attempt at OSL.