“The Tiny Tentacle’d Terror of Trollenberg”

Try saying that fast! Anyway when I left you last week we were here, with my second entry for Keith’s “Monster May(hem)” sculpted but awaiting some prodding with a paintbrush, and for him to be allowed to added to my “tally” he needed to be completely finished. So it was time to get out the “Tetrion” filler and cut him a suitable (70mmx90mm) base from MDF and after said filler and few cat litter “rocks” were added he was superglued onto the base. I built up the area under his rear right tentacle as it was proud of the ground, this was deliberate (honestly!) so that he looked like he was interacting with his base rather than just “plonked” into the middle of it. He was then taken out into the back garden (between downpours of rain!) and given a coat of matt black from a “rattle” can and then touched up with a brush once this was dry. Now as the original movie was made in “Black and White” I had pretty much “free rein” with the colours I could use, just so long as his tentacles were darker than the “eye” part, so….

I started with the “ball” part of the figure first giving this three rough “stripes”, one around the lower edge (just above the tentacle area) in stone green, then around the middle in pale flesh and the top in cream, these were then all blended into each other to form a gradual transition from green to cream. Now it did look a bit like a spring onion but hopefully the next stage would stop that resemblance. That stage was to take my pink burgundy and add the “veins” running around the ball area, this meant carefully painting the tops of all the ridges running from the front to the back, (who the bloody hell came up with this thing and sculpted all these bloody ridges!!!…Oh yes, never mind). Let’s just say this took a while, I did it in several stints, and it involved a lot of touching up and swearing!!.

Next it was the turn of the tentacle “ring” so I undercoated the ring itself and the first 5mm (or so) of the tentacles with dark red, then did most of the rest of the tentacles in royal purple and the tips of the tentacles in fusia, then blended all of these into each other and left them to dry. Fortunately the ribbed texture I had added to the Tentacles meant I could now just dry-brush over the top of this undercoat, so that’s what it did next. I wasn’t too keen on the “hard” edge between the ball on the tentacle ring, so first off I dry-brushed more of the stone green around the top of the ring to blend it in to the ball a bit, then once I was happy with this I went over the section that was undercoated in dark red (and a little of the stone green) with more pink burgundy, running this out to where the royal purple started, then switched to fusia and then where the fusia undercoat started I switched again this time to lavender.

That just left the eye and mouth to do, so starting with the eye I was originally going to just do a small iris and pupil in the centre (like the movie version) but after painting the area in coffee with cream highlights I decided to go much bigger and so painted in a black ring just inside the edge (thus leaving a thin cream ring around the edge), I then filled this in with bright red, I then added some orange (while still wet) and then some yellow, and after I’d added the pupil in black, dotted in some more yellow around this on the inner iris. The mouth was pretty simple, I just dry-brushed this with some deep turquoise, then again with the same mixed with some stone green, and finally with just stone green, and he was ready to be “Quickshaded”, I decided to use my light tone for this. That just left basing, and my usual suspects were used here, I did consider giving him a snowy base like in the movie, but decided with the colours I’d used that a bit of green on the base might be a nice contrast (plus if I ever do game with him he’ll match the majority of my figures this way). So chocolate brown with khaki and coffee dry-brushes were the order of the day, scenic green patches with some “rubberised” moss and hairy flock finished him off before his spray coat of matt varnish. All done with a day to spare! That means I can relax tomorrow before I get stuck into “Forgotten Heroes”, hooray!, no peace for the wicked as they say!

I’d just like to finish by thanking Keith for coming up with this wonderful bit of nonsense and all the other participants for all the wonderful “eye (no pun intended) candy”, over the last month.

So till next time, stay safe and cheers Roger.