“Monster May(hem)” (week 1)

Monthly challenges are a great way to get you to paint or do all those gaming related projects you’ve been meaning to do for ages but you always end up putting off for some reason. Well this month Keith over at “Dead Dicks Tavern*” is running a “monster month” (I’m calling it Monster May(hem), I dropped so many hints but….😒).

Anyway basically you have to paint up at least one monster in the month of May, easy right? Well on looking about my un-painted pile there was a decided lack of monsters (or at least any that I was desperate to pigment!). So I cast about for something to do, then I remembered a film that was on the UK “Horror” channel in the early morning a couple (or possibly few) weeks ago (I really can’t keep up with the days at the moment!), “Island of Terror” a hammer production from the sixties starring Peter Cushing and featuring some tentacle swinging slug like creatures called “Silicates”. Long story short, the island in question was overrun with these “nasties” and… well if you haven’t seen it I won’t spoil it for you, I think it is on “Amazon Prime” so give it a watch.

So I thought why not try and sculpt something along those lines (they were definitely not a man in a rubber suit, more like a prop dragged on a piece of string!). But rather than try and just replicate the ones in the film I thought I’d put a bit of a spin on it and make an original monster a bit bigger than the movie version (but still only 28mm man sized). So here we go.

Right to begin with I like to get a (very) basic shape to work upon so a blob of greenstuff was mixed and a shape not dissimilar to a “peardrop” sweet was made and then flattened on the bottom by pushing it onto a piece of plastic (it is actually the plastic the greenstuff comes rapped in so doesn’t stick to it), I then pushed the end of a paintbrush into the front where the tentacle will be added later. I don’t do any drawings, everything is planned and stored in my head (probably the least reliable place to store anything but..), so all the detail will be worked out and added to this as I go, it might grow in size yet, or might not, we’ll see (I’m making this up as I go along!).

Next I wanted a long wormlike tentacle to snake up from the front of the body. Now you can buy a rather ingenious bit of kit from the US to make these, but I don’t have one of those and I’m too tight to buy one, so next best thing…a comb! I rolled out a tapered sausage 50mm long then carefully picked this up and rolled it gently again, this time down the teeth of a comb, this will give you the “segmented” look of a worm. I then carefully shaped this into an “S” shape and left this and the body to dry overnight.

Next morning I had another look at my pieces and decided that the body was too small so mixing up some more putty I added another layer over the top of the first one making it now about the size of a rounded “brazil nut”. I also added the “stinger” bit to the end of my “worm”, this was just a small piece of putty rolled into a teardrop shape then after it was attached to the worm it was flattened out, and curled slightly, then a tiny ball of putty was dropped into the middle of the front “face” and a hole was pushed into this using my pointed colour shaper, to form the “mouth?”. Note that I used a small peg to hold the worm upright while it dried.

Preparation for the next major stage came the following morning. I want to add a “ruff” or “skirt” around the base of the figure to represent what it would move with, but I also want it to flow over the surrounding terrain. Easiest way to do this, build the terrain first! So I looked at making a base for the figure, I looked at a few different sized bases but in the end went for one of the 60mm x 40mm “m.d.f” bases I’d bought to mount the “skimmers” for my “Barsoom” army on, but to make it fit with the rest of my 28mm stuff that is generally based on two pence pieces, I marked the corners of the base by drawing around said coin and then sanding the corners round along the marked lines. The base was then covered in “Tetrion” filler, and a few cat litter stones were glued in place to add interest. Given that I now had the size of this new base the body was lengthened again to fill it better.

Next day it was time to attach the body to the base. This was done by rolling out a sausage of putty, long enough to run right around the base of the body (I drew around the body with pencil onto the base first, see previous photo), then laid this down onto the base just outside and around the pencil mark. Next I pushed the body down onto the top of the putty sausage, and then taking a small knife tapped and dragged out the “hairy/tentacles/legs/whatever” in a fan like pattern. I ran them up over the edges of the cat litter rock as if they were flowing over them. I also added a blob of putty to the back of the “stinger face” just to thicken it up and so I could add a little detail here.

The outer shell on the body was next on the list, so a large ball of putty was mixed up and I then began by running a thin sausage around the two back plate areas, leaving the front edge that would be under the next plate open. These were then filled with a flattened piece of putty roughly the right shape to fill the area. These were then pushed and flatted out with one of my colour shapers leaving a small ridge around the edges. Then I took some tiny balls of putty and after attaching them by blending around the sides with a cocktail stick and pointed colour shaper, I flatted the tops to make boney lumps. I also roughed up the rest of the surface too give it a more shell like appearance. As I had mixed up far too much putty I decided to crack on and do the next set of plates too (not something I would recommend as it is easy to muck up your earlier work while messing with this next bit!). Anyway these were done just the same as before but with the back end slightly overlapping the first pair.

I began today by drilling out the hole that the tentacle pushes into. Then basically repeated the above process on the front plates, only this time I made the “infill” pieces thicker as I thought the slope on the front was a bit too shallow. More lumps and bumps were added to these and then once it was dry and hard I simply glued the tentacle in place and “hey presto” one monster to paint for “Monster May(hem)”, (seriously guys I’m not gonna’ let this go till it sticks, just go with it!).

This has been a fun and simple build, there is really nothing difficult about this, give it a go yourselves.

Painting next, so till then… Stay safe, cheers Roger.

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