From GeoffreyT: Iconic Dungeon and Dragons Beasts (Black and White) (50 points)

Hello Again Challengers,

From the "Under Construction" Studio, I saunter east into the adjacent "Black and White" studio, where I show off some more home made creations (and not the last). Rather than sculpted I would call these crafted.

Whilst perusing the interweb for scratch building methods, I came across a very good you-tube tutorial from "Wylochs Armoury", which demonstrates how to make a Beholder from a ping pong ball and hot glue. For those not familiar with the genre, the Beholder is an iconic DnD monster, which is a giant floating eyeball, with 10 smaller eyes on stalks, each of which has a powerful and deadly magical stare. Perhaps it is eye-conic.

I don't partake in DnD these days, but could not resist the urge to try the tutorial. I didn't have a ping pong ball, but did have a LD polystyrene ball which I turned into this.

Pretty much just copied the tutorial ad nauseam, and got a great result. Below is an oblique shot. However, this is not in greyscale I hear you say, and I agree, but please hold on for a bit ...

After finding this easier than I expected, I grabbed my ready-to-hand monster manual and searched the pages for more monsters that could be made from polystyrene and hot glue. My next choice was the roper. The roper is a monster that pretends to be a stalagmite, and traps careless passing adventurers with its tentacles and eats them in its stony jaws. The rock is carved from HD polystyrene, and textured with PVA and garden soil (in Western Australia we call it soil, most of the world would call this sand). The tentacles are wire covered in hot glue, and the eye is a blob of grey stuff putty.

This heinous fake rock is kind of grey, but does have shadows with a purple tint and a yellow eye, so not really grey scale either. I do wonder how these things survive. Perhaps they eat more than just passing adventurers, or maybe they go dormant when adventurers are thin on the ground. It should have six tentacles, but I was happy enough with the two I added.

The next polystyrene creations is the grey ooze. For some reason the grey ooze is always depicted in the art as being on a wall, so on a wall it was made. With a grey monster on a grey wall, what could be a better subject for greyscale painting.

The wall is carved from a piece of HD polystyrene and the ooze is a blob of hot glue. From the reverse angle you can see unsurprisingly looks like a wall.

All three of these "creatures" are between about 50 and 65mm tall, despite nominally being in 28mm scale. After all, they are large and ferocious. I am happy enough with this trios, and polystyrene and hot glue is a simple and effective technique to try out. Nevertheless, I think polymer clay and/or epoxy putty will be more my jam for future sculpting.

Points:

3 x 54mm figures = 30 points

Black and White Bonus = 20 points.

Net = 50 points.

That is all, now I must go check on the Christmas cooking.

GT.

______________________________

Geoffrey, I'm loving these bespoke creatures you're treating us to. I'm especially taken (transfixed?) by the blue-eyed Beholder (great work on the eyes!) and the Grey Ooze, both wonderful classics from the original Monster Manual. Bravo!

- Curt