Giant Mushrooms (3) #2

 

A bonus Thanksgiving post! What else could it be, but more giant mushrooms. It is just so fitting for the season. 

The models belong to the Shadowsea Fungal Pack set, along with my other giant mushrooms. These ones got a little more attention than the first two I posted, and even feature some quick highlighting on the cap to make them "pop."  I have included a group shot of the whole completed set below. I think they make a great, and colorful, core to my growing mushroom forest.  

It occurred to me that LMoP has a small "fungi cavern" so this set is perfect for that project, too. Check out the "Lost Mine of Phandelver" label tag to see other models in that module. At some point I'll get around to making a dedicated page for that collection. 

Feast well and with good company. 

The complete set:

 

Orc Skeletons (5)

These orc skeletons are half of the "old guardroom" skeleton encounter in LMoP's Wave Echo Cave. The brief encounter description mentions the bones of both dwarves and orcs, and I thought a good mix would make for a more memorable encounter than if I had just subbed them with vanilla skeletons. Making species appropriate undead adds a good deal of work to my various adventure module goals, but I enjoy the depth it adds to my collection.


The models are 3D prints, sculpted by Avatars of War. Bases were hand sculpted and are ~32mm. I'm still having issues with bloggers image display - it always scales images up and makes them look fuzzy relative to how they look in an image viewer app. Ah well, Ill replace these images if I ever figure it out. 

 

Ordinary Bat

A tiny "ordinary bat" miniature on a 15mm base. This unassuming creature marks a return to one of my favorite subjects - non-fictional animals! Despite their bad reputation, I love bats. While most people associate them with the fall, I look forward to our small friends first arriving at the end of long summer nights. Watching them flutter over the fire pit in the back yard is a favorite pastime with the fam. 

 

The "ordinary bat" title is a joking homage to how they are named in the AD&D MMII. Evidently the fantastical creatures are so abundant in some fantasy worlds that natural ones need to be specifically called out as "ordinary." This convention applies to other ordinary critters which are sure to wander onto my painting table in the coming year. 

 

This itty bitty miniature is from the reaper Bones familiar pack. Thankfully, it is a light enough material that I was able to attach it by the wingtip to a branch with a small pin, and it has proven sturdy enough to survive several falls and even a rampaging house cat over years of play. I think the added height is needed to capture the character of this little flying fellow. 

Giant Mushrooms (2)

 

Mushrooms are one of my favorite Fall features. They are also a staple of fantasy exploration tropes, even appearing on the cover of the first B series module "In Search of the Unknown." the concept has been revisited in many iconic scenes since, and I am always a fan. In Antimatter games' Shadowsea, vast fungal forests are a staple feature of the underdark ecosystem. These giant mushrooms, the size of small trees, were made for that game system, and are now sold by Darksword Minitaures. They are formally titled " Thin Stalk Mushroom," and "Death’s Crown Mushroom," and are part of a larger Fungal Pack set, all of which I painted many years ago. Despite being such a specific and fantastical environmental feature they are one of the best represented types of terrain in my entire collection.  The idea of swords and sorcery amongst the stalks of huge fungal trees tickles the right part of my brain. 

Giant Four-Armed Gargoyle

 

Gargoyles are a fantasy staple; if you don't have gargoyles, you're doing it wrong! While standard gargoyles are a recognizable classic, this mountain of living, flying, rock with four arms and loads of animosity isn't what most people picture. It is a classic for the lich Acererak, though, and his opinion holds some weight around here. This model will make a nice leader / centerpiece for a clan of gargoyles I have been working on at the same time, but are just a little behind this fellow in terms of progress.

This very nice model is made by Threat Factory, who have earned an increasing share of my time at the paint table.  Their sculpts really appeal to me because of sheer paintability. This model was completed just in time for TF's paint contest. I don't expect to place, but I love to participate for the brief moments of community the events foster. I am a fussy painter, and models tend to slow down the closer they are to being done. I always want to touch up this-bit or that-bit, and I take twice as long to finish the last 10% as the preceding 90%. A paint contest and its deadline give me a good reason to just say "it's done" and just move it to the display cabinet. Heck, I should do more contests for that reason alone - a similar outcome for a fraction of the effort by forcefully bypassing my own indecision and procrastination. 

 While I personally love painting heaps of rock, I imagine it isn't super thrilling for others. The pop of orange eye-glow gives it that little bit of visual interest / focal point the model needs.  Normally I avoid the glowing eye trope, but it really fits for a gargoyle mauler. 

 

Dretch Demon Horde! (20)

 Demons! The perfect seasonal post.

Even dretch can be a threat in numbers, and any demon invasion needs its front-line minions. Unfortunately, it can be hard to find enough unique models to really fill out a big horde of weaker creatures. To compensate for that, I have gotten in the habit of rigging models and reposing them. This set of models was my test case for that approach. I started with Schlossbauer's excellent dretch model (center above, top left below), which had a nice neutral pose and rigged it up in Blender to practice all sorts of poses. I ended up having to do some sculpting opening the mouth so I could get a better variety of facial positions; It was a hack job, but at scale it works. I gave several of the dretch dog like poses, as I thought that would fit their personality well. Once I had made that many, well, it'd be a shame not to print and paint them all!

With so many models, I broke these paint jobs up over ...years, lol. They went through many iterations, and the current paint is nothing like the quick dip I had been planning on originally. I am not much of an army painter, so this was a big batch for me to take on all at once. They were fairly simple, so that helped, but painting the spots on the back ended up being a a much harder exercise in persistence than I had expected.  Still, I really like the end result.

These are an awesome addition to my AD&D MMII collection. Lots more demons to come. Maybe even more dretch, of a different sort.