scratch | Swords & Dorkery

Some more grylli

Here’s my first effort sculpting with “Super Sculpey” — a grey version of Sculpey polymer clay that is supposed to be a bit firmer and hold better detail, for finer sculpting. I think the key advantages over epoxy putty are that is does not harden until you bake it, and it is comparatively inexpensive — especially with a 20% or 40% off coupon at Michael’s.

I used a very basic armature for the biggest guy (basically some wire folded into an open rectangle, the open ends inserted into some holes drilled into the wooden base). The “nun” is so solid there was no need for an armature. The chickenhead is a little different — I had a few random bits of broken models from lots of old figures I’d bought online. The base was to the Grenadier “false phoenix,” with just the lower legs. I drilled those out and inserted a bit of wire into each so I could plop the head onto them.

The ultimate goal is to make some grylli good enough to use as masters for a mold (I have some mold-making RTV rubber that I’ve been meaning to try out) but I didn’t think these were quite there.

As you can see, the biggest guy ended up with a very flat face. I tried carving a face into the ball of clay and couldn’t get manage to get the nose to stand out much. The other two had separate bits of clay added on and that worked a lot better.

I’m still struggling with smoothing out fingerprints on the Sculpey. I’ve seen special tools for this (soft silicon rubber “brushes”) and might invest in one. I could made the comb on the chickenhead gryllus look more realistic but he was mostly a joke anyway. Since Sculpey hardens at just 275 degrees Fahrenheit, I could bake the lead/tin base with no worries. But I had to use wooden rather than plastic bases for the other two, because I figured the plastic would melt. Chickenhead was glued onto a thicker plastic base afterwards.

I think the biggest guy’s face looks suitably unpleasant from the front, and the pushed-in face kind of grew on me as I painted him.

I might try epoxy putty again next time, and see how it goes if I apply small bits and layers instead of trying to do the whole thing in one go.

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on May 30, 2023 at 5:30 pm Comments (1)
Tags: monsters, scratch, Sculpey

Grylli! or Grylluses?

I only recently learned that these odd creatures — which generally look like a head walking on a pair of limbs, sometimes with a tail, fins, or various other things attached to or growing out of them — are called grylli (singular gryllus).* The term seems to go back to Roman times, where it was used to describe various grotesques, usually including one or more “bearded masks” (faces) combined with parts of other animals. A later drawing in that vein is here. More recently it’s been narrowed down to mean grotesques with human faces on legs, as seen in medieval marginalia.

I am not seeing much about them online for D&D — there’s an entry here which may or may not have the same thing in mind, and apparently the Tome of Beasts 3 has an entry for a “gryllus swarm” but I can’t tell if they are insects or Boschian nightmares. Maybe it is similar to the 5eSRD version, which is somewhat meta swarm of enchanted marginalia. I’d rather treat them as independently-existing beings, possibly minor demons.

Here are some figures I finished recently:

Spiked cat, Yelling head on arms, and Giant head on legs

The first three are from the Minifigs “Valley of Four Winds” line — a very early and idiosyncratic fantasy miniatures line from 1978. A fourth is possibly a gryllus too:

Walking lips

I’m not sure if the walking lips is a reference to novelty “chattering teeth,” the Rolling Stone’s logo, or something else — I very vaguely remember something like that in an old Looney Tunes cartoon.

Here are a few more I crafted out of the hindquarters of a plastic lion and some epoxy putty.

Roger G-S’s version has them listed as small creatures, and the drawings show them only slightly larger than a regular human head.

My figures — both the Minifigs and Eureka castings and my crude scratch-builds — are more medium sized. The little I’ve been able to find out about them suggests that the gryllus was either a sort of short-hand caricature that monks could easily doodle, or else that they represent “sinful impulses.”** In the Valley of the Four Winds (the story based on the Minifigs figures; the story in turn inspired a board game of the same name), the grylli are possibly some of the familiars or servants of a wizard. They don’t have any role in the board game, as troops or quest items, from what I’m told.

The walking lips are probably the least medieval of the lot; the spiked cat fits in with other marginalia chimeras I’ve seen. But the walking heads are really the archetypal grylli as far as I’m concerned.

As long as I’m posting some minis, here are some other assemblages in a similar vein — and one more VFW figure. Not quite grylli but definitely odd.

First up, a double lion. Waste not want not.

Medieval heraldry sometimes has a lion with two full bodies attached to one head, but this is more inspired by Catdog.

Next is a sort of “Brown Jenkin” figure. Asgard released a giant rat with a human face as a “wererat,” which is pretty much how HP Lovecraft described the familiar Brown Jenkin in “Dreams in the Witchhouse.” (“Brown Jenkin” seems like a perfect fit with the names of the familiars in an old woodcut showing a witch with a variety of uncanny familiars, though none look quite as chimerical as that.) I made this with more epoxy putty and a rubber rat or mouse from a bag of Halloween toys.

Mine is closer in size to a pony than a rat, though.

The next several assemblages were made from poorly cast chessmen that I bought by the pound for casting my own figures. The pawns (page boys) and bishop (a jester) were interesting, but poorly cast and 54mm scale, so I just used parts of them: the jester’s midsection and arms sawn off and his arms replaced; the pawns chopped up and reassembled with various bits and bobs I had lying around.

Not great photos from my phone but you get the idea. They all have thier torsos truncated and short arms compared to their long legs.

A fourth creature is a sort of walking Bible, assembled from another pawn and a spare dragon claw.

The chessmen were all made from this set of molds. The several pounds of castings I bought included a few figures that were potentially salvageable but nothing near a complete set (for one thing, there were no knights/unicorns). I kept a few towers, kings and queens, and jesters to paint for fun. Someday.

Lastly, a Minifigs “Old woman turning into fire,” another mysterious VFW model.

I tried to suggest a nun’s habit for her, since a burning nun seems a little more freaky than just an old lady. The fire is oddly sculpted, pointing downward, but somehow seems plausible. Maybe there’s a strong wind.

I sculpted a few more grylli out of Super Sculpy, and post them when they are done.

———————-

*I should have known — I was reading Roles, Rules, & Rolls back in 2012 when Roger G-S posted this.

FWIW I think grylli is the correct plural, not grylluses, but I see both.

**Citation needed. Those were two suggestions I saw a while back in earlier searches that I can’t quite find now. They could also be simple cartoons to amuse the scribe, I guess.

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on May 23, 2023 at 6:00 pm Comments (5)
Tags: Minifigs, monsters, scratch

2019, minis painted to date

I’ve had a handful of productive days painting, in spite of everything.

On my birthday, I finally painted the infamous Ral Partha three-headed troll!

It is a bit of a testament to Tom Meier’s skill as a sculptor that when I uploaded a photo of this on Ye Faces Booke, I was asked to tag Curly and Larry!

I decided to also paint a Ral Partha AD&D ettin. I already had one from many years ago, so I painted this one red, after the fairy tale Red Ettin (which had three heads, but who’s counting?)

And here’s a group shot all the ettins I’ve painted to date. The tan ettin has the oldest paint job, though the green one (Grenadier) is my oldest and was repainted when I was in college some 25 years ago.

Next up, a Grenadier dragon. He came in a lot of old minis and needed a new passenger side front claw. A spare bit from a GW cold one sufficed. Because the color scheme is so simple he hardly took any time to finish.

That same lot had a bunch of really old dungeon dressing, mostly from Grenadier’s old Wizzards & Warriors line.

Two small statues that reminded me of Tikis:

A couple of thrones or chairs. I believe they’re from the same “temple” set, but have what I can only assume are Indic naga figures on the backs.

A pair of altars. Scale creep is real. On the left, a Reaper Bones altar; on the right, the Grenadier W&W altar. The demonic figure behind the small altar is a bit shorter than a typical man-sized 25mm miniature.

Next, a few piles of bullion from the Grenadier W&W treasure room set. I have a another pile that came as a “bonus” in a set of supervillian villains from Grenadier.

And these are pretty cool. On the right, an iron maiden (also Grenadier W&W) and on the left, a mystery figure that seems to have been a “bonus” mini in certain Grenadier “Encounter …” boxed sets. Several other pieces from the Encounter at Lloth-Komar were in the lot, and a FB group member asserts he got the same piece in his set, so maybe it’s just in that one.

This next piece is a hammer from the board game “Dark World” mounted as a Spiritual Hammer spell. That spell has often featured in our D&D games so it will be nice to have a way to keep track of it.

Another quickie paint job is this Reaper silver dragon. This too came it a big lot I bought online, and luckily with all its pieces.

Back to the scenery, here’s a Minifigs Valley of the Four Winds figure: man impaled on tree. The VFW line is pretty great, and this one — from 1978 — is pretty unsettling. The humans in that range tend to be either in baroque armor from an Ian Miller drawing or 19th century finery. This chap has a high collared jacket and spats!

Also from Lloth-Komar: a dragon statue.

Next up a couple of fun items scavenged from bits and parts. Inspired by the 1980s Michael Caine thriller “The Hand,” I took a bunch of spare hands from a plastic kit and made a swarm of hands.

I also found an unidentifiable pair of hands that probably go to a scale model. The other hand holds a gun. But the clenched fist screams Bigby’s Hand spells, so I painted it up as one.

For scale, next to the wizard form last update.

The greenish paint you may have noticed on the spells is a GW “technical” paint I bought on a lark. I decided to try it on some spirits I recently acquired. On the left, a Grenadier ghost. There is another version with a less fluttery cloak and base, and I have a few of those, so I decided to put this one on a wire like it’s floating. Next to it is a Minifigs Sword & Sorcery line ghoul.

On the far left, a Wizzards & Warriors wraith. The other two are later versions of the wraith/ghost. They don’t really lean to the side, that is an artifact of taking a photo close up with my phone. I have a lot of ghosts and wraiths painted various shades of grey, black, or white, so I figured I’d add a little color.

I was really pleased to find this tree man (“Tree with arms and face”) from the VFW line. His companions are a couple of tree stumps made out of polymer clay, and will naturally serve as casualty markers for ents.

These two were fun. On the left, a toilet mimic, made of soft rubber and probably from a gumball machine. I inserted a wire for stability and painted a few layers of Mod Podge on it to make it a bit more stable and keep the paint from flaking off. The chest is just a plastic piece from a Weapons and Warriors game. I keep finding components to the games I picked up on clearance when Kay Bee went under 10 or 12 years ago.

These are a couple of pillars from Citadel’s Fantasy Specials line. You never can have too many pillars.

Another mini that somehow took me about thirty-five years to paint is this table from the Grenadier AD&D “Wizard’s room” set. Next to it is a scratch-built flying carpet made form epoxy putty. There’s a 1″ x 1″ flat space on it for a mini to occupy. I meant to eventually make all the possible sizes of flying carpets from the DMG but never got inspired.

I especially like the little lizard behind the skull candle holder.

Lastly, a ballista which I am unsure of the origins of. The lot it came in had both Roman and Orc crew from Grenadier, and a catapult, so maybe Grenadier. It’s quite large though, so maybe some other company. I added the string (a bit of thread).

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on March 9, 2019 at 9:34 am Comments (1)
Tags: dragons, dungeon dressing, Grenadier, Minifigs, Ral Partha, Reaper, scratch, undead

2019? Impossible

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything, and I’ve had a lot going on. I did manage to paint a few more miniatures. Some of the photos include a penny for scale since I posted the pics to social media where not everyone knows what the hell these are.

Click pix to embiggen.

First up, some undead rising. I had a bunch of spare parts from some kits so I cobbled them together with gravestones made of bits of matte board. I’ll need to flock the bases some day.

Next up, some barbarians. The two on the left are plastic, from board games, while the two on the right are metal. The big guy is a spoof of Thrudd the Barbarian (himself a spoof of Conan), while the little guy is a VERY old Ral Partha sculpt from when 25mm scale meant 1/72 scale. He’s now sold as a “young barbarian” and still in production! I had an older casting from a box set but it was one of the many lost in a tragic incident I’ve mentioned before.

Next up a couple of plant monsters from the TSR line of AD&D minis. I don’t remember what they are called but they sure were easy to paint.

Nextly, some GW Horrors of Tzeentch. They should only be pink or blue per the Warhammer fluff but I thought I’d mix em up. A couple needed tails, which a cheap plastic dinosaur donated (one has the actual tail and the other has a leg as a tail). A WotC “ravening maw” is crashing their party too.

The “musician” is easily my favorite. Very Boschian.

Ole Birdy is cool too.

Gotta love Pinky and his asymmetrical eyes.

The maw was missing an arm, but a plastic dinosaur supplied a replacement.

Finally, some random minis — a Reaper succubus, yet another plastic barbarian, and a really old Ral Partha necromancer.

The ole Schnozzola!

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on January 4, 2019 at 10:21 am Leave a Comment
Tags: monsters, plastic, Ral Partha, Reaper, scratch, TSR, WotC

Coquina shoggoth

Among a bunch of shells of various sizes in our craft supplies I noticed a small piece of rock with tons of embedded mollusk shells. I rhought at first that it might be some kind of coral, but a little Google image searching led me to conclude it is more probably coquina, a kind of limestone consisting mostly of shells. I was initially thinking about using it for a base for a mermaid I was painting but it looked so irregular and gross that I realized it would make a much better Shoggoth. The coiled shells and holes suggested pseudopods and a bubbling chaos of mouths, eyes, and appendages.

The eyes are just beads I glued on and painted, and the mouths are formed from breaks in the shells. I just picked out teeth in white along the edges. The whole thing is washed with maroon, with additional brown washes in deeper crevices, then roughly drybrushed with pink and white. The “mouths” had more maroon added to deepen their color. The whole thing took barely any time; I wish I had more of the stuff. It will serve as a small shoggoth or gibbering mouther.

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on June 12, 2017 at 12:00 pm Comments (4)
Tags: HPL, monsters, scratch

Treasure

Treasure chest miniatures are usually worth using, but I am not so sure about loose piles of treasure. The problem is that usually show some explicit items — swords, helmets, scrolls, whatever — and your literal-minded players (who have perhaps been conditioned/spoiled by the fact that I often can throw out a mini that exactly mirrors what I described) assume that they are there in the treasure. Even so, I have acquired or made some loose piles for variety.

Here’s a pretty humble treasure pile, I think from Reaper:

Here are a couple of loose piles of gold coins (in this case glitter) with some random objects.

On the left, a crude scroll made of paper, a buckler from a 1/72 Italieri Saracen, a sword from a Rafm customizable fighter kit, and a tiny twig standing in for a magic wand. On the right, a wooden bead “urn”, a plastic Skaven shield, the helm from an MPC AD&D orc, another wand, and a pebble. The coins are gold glitter.

Next up some gold bars.

These came in a Grenadier Champions set, but the pile of gold bars mini was in production for a really long time — all the way back to their Wizzards & Warriors days, at least.

These chests see a fair amount of use. The one on the far right was the “open” chest from the Grenadier AD&D Thieves set, but for reasons I can barely fathom now, I closed the chest, filing off the treasure that was in it. For a while the chest was part of a portable war altar for a Warhammer army. The other two chests are plastic pieces from a “Weapons & Warriors” game.

The big hoard of gold is another plastic piece from the MPC AD&D set. It is a pretty accurate but scaled down copy of the treasure pile that the Grenadier dragon lair had.

Lastly, a pair of golden urns and a pretty bitchen dragon idol, both scratch built by a friend I haven’t heard from in a while. (I hope all is well, Scottsz!)

I dig the candles on the idol quite a bit. The urns are wooden beads, and the dragon idol appears to be some wooden blocks with a tiny metal dragon on it. I’m guessing he used Testors enamel paint to get that smooth, shiny gold effect.

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on March 3, 2015 at 12:00 pm Comments (4)
Tags: dungeon dressing, Grenadier, MPC, plastic, Reaper, scratch, Weapons & Warriors

Flail snails again

Some time ago I made the flail snail on the right; more recently I made a second, more naturalistic flail snail.

Click to embiggen … at your peril!

The new one, on the left, has a real seashell for its shell (lightly washed with dark brown), and the body is made of polymer clay. The flails were also polymer clay, formed around some florist wire so they’d be less likely to break, and to give them an easy way to attach. The older one, on the right, has a shell from a cheap plastic animal, a body of epoxy putty, and the flails are wire with mace-heads from cheap plastic knight toys.

While I have no doubt that others have made their own flail snail minis (this lovely one came up early in a GIS), I do find it odd that no miniatures company ever made them. They hardly require much skill, though I guess as one of the infamously “dumbest monsters of D&D” lists, and an example of what’s so terrible about the Fiend Folio, the poor flail snail is subject to too much ridicule to get a fair break.

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on September 27, 2014 at 8:00 am Comments (6)
Tags: flail snail, monsters, scratch, Sculpey

An elf and I don’t know what

So here’s the elf from the Milton Bradley/GW Heroquest game. I originally painted him a god ten or twelve years ago, but did his hair grey, which ended up looking very blue. All that timehe’s been a bench-warmer. No-one wanted use a blue haired elf as thier PC, and I really can’t blame them. so finally I repainted his hair as blonde, and maybe someone will put him in, coach!

If I had another copy of this figure, I’d definitely give him a pointed cap, like Zelda.

The other thing I photographed is a column I made out of Sculpy a while back. I keep buying bricks of Sculpy and thinking I’ll do a bunch of cool terrain or monsters and instead I let my daughter make koalas and stuff out of it. But one time we both worked on projects and I decided to make a sun and moon idol. I think I was definitely plagarizing John Blanche’s moon faces from his GW work. I’m not quie sure what I’ll do with this; it could be an idol used by humanoids, or the ancients; it could equally well be some sort of magical trick or trap.

The sunny side

An angry moon

The nice thing about stuff like this is takes almost no time to paint. Just a bunch of dry-brushing over black paint.

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on February 5, 2013 at 1:00 am Comments (1)
Tags: dungeon dressing, elves, HeroQuest, scratch, Sculpey

Myconids

A while back I picked up a couple of loose myconids made by Wizards of the Coast. They are nice and just a little creepy:

I decided I really needed a lot more than two myconids if I’m ever going to use them for D&D. So, I decided to make a few more out of Sculpy, and while I was at it, made some giant mushrooms to go with them.

The mushrooms were easy. I had recently been reading a kid’s book about mushrooms to my daughter, who was very interested in them last summer and fall, and it had some nice color photos for reference. They were all glued down to small (3/4 inch or so) glass tiles left over from one of her craft projects. This gives them a fairly heavy base and makes them stable.

The myconids turned out to be a little trickier, because I learned that Sculpy gets sort of soft in the over before it hardens. Next time I’ll try ‘Super Sculpy,’ or at least use an armature. I didn’t mind my myconids being a little simpler and even cartoonish, since I was whipping them out pretty fast (all the ‘shrooms and ‘nids were done in about an hour, plus baking time).

My first one has a very silly look and reminds me of the ‘blob fish’ or maybe a McDonaldland burger dude.

For most of them I went with a face more like the WotC minis. I think these guys look a bit like the dancing shrooms in Fantasia, now that I think of it:

This guy was the skinniest myconid and completely fell apart in the oven, after slowly drooping, so the best I could do to save him was to make him crawling:

The Myconids are mounted on steel washers or electrical box punch-outs I scavenged, and these are equally good as ballast.

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on March 31, 2012 at 4:24 pm Comments (6)
Tags: dungeon dressing, monsters, scratch, Sculpey, WotC

The eyes have it

These will haunt the Panopticon. One idea is give them a stunning gaze; another is to make each one have the power of one of a beholder’s eyes. Not sure how I’ll do this. I like the idea of flying eyes that can’t actually harm you on their own, but I also like the idea of, say, eleven of these creeps, each with the power of one of a beholder’s eyes, collectively comprising the big bad of a dungeon, adventure, or even a campaign. It would be a nasty surprise if the party assumes that the power of the first one they encounter is the only thing these things do, and then later they find out they’re all different. (The ‘traditional’ beholder eye rays: disintegrate objects, transmute flesh to stone, cause sleep, slow the motion of objects or beings, charm animals, charm humans, cause death, induce fear, levitate objects, and inflict serious wounds; plus the central eye does an anti-magic cone). Maybe 11 need to assemble, like Anime robots, into a giant beholder… or maybe all flying eyes just roll for their special ray…They are made from some old wet-set clay I had laying around; the wings are from rubber monsters I got on clearance at a party supply store.