To answer Alphastream's questions from the other thread.
I don't really know how much time I have spent working on this. Clearly not enough as I haven't finished it, or touched it in over a month. The tentacles are done, but I've lost steam with working on the maw. I currently have about 20 or so open projects, so I bounce around a lot. Right now I'm working on my Quasi medieval redneck house (broken down front porch, wagon in the yard up on blocks, you get the idea). I think the tentacles probably take less than a 1/2 an hour to do the basic structure. Then after letting it dry overnight, I do 2-3 scales (15-20 minutes) then let the green stuff cure overnight. Doing more than that gets tricky, and I keep sticking my fingers in things that haven't yet dried and have to redo them. All together, I would say I've spent somewhere between an hour or two on each tentacles.
I do have some other Dark Sun stuff that I have been working on. I have several Dark Sun miniature conversions, the Mul with Cahulaks, probably being the best. A Belgoi, Silk Wyrm (scratch built), and other various Reaper minis painted to fit the Dark Sun theme. A silt skiff (in progress), a couple of buildings, a ton of table land terrain (rock formations) and cacti.
I've also tried to do a mock up of a Braxat and a Mekilot. They are currently unfinished, I think that they would turn out okay, but I'm just not that good at casting, and the work involved would be more than I'm currently willing to do.
oh, and I almost forgot. My Athas of Ashes inspired chariot.
Here are some closer up pictures of the tentacles. As you can see the soft fleshy part of the tentacles is just painted over pink foam, so it looks a bit rough closer up. I had thought about covering it up with a thin layer of green stuff, but decided against it because of the amount of work involved with doing that. I've been trying to come up with something that might make it look a little smoother without taking much time, but honestly, I got nothing.
The plating/scales on the top is particularly effective.A Silt Horror is one of my next projects I plan on tackling. This has made for some GREAT inspiration. Thanks for sharing.
A little thread necro. The She DM posted a very cool guide on how to use a rubber octopus toy to make individual tentacles miniatures. This could actually work really well for silt horror tentacles.
Note: There are spoilers to a future D&D Encounters session on that page.
She also has a post on the Encounters forums. Both include paper versions that can be downloaded and printed. That second thread has some other user ideas.
Here is the unsuspecting initial toy:
Clicking on any of the pictures should lead to the full-sized image.
Clicking on any of the pictures should lead to the full-sized image.
I'll update if I get around to doing the base.
Soon as I find another that would work as well will get started on mine.Thanks, Chartauk. I thought it turned out well for $8 and some fun craft time!
I'll update if I get around to doing the base.
let me know of any other projects you have.
Cacti:
Not the best lighting, sorry!
Not the best lighting, sorry!
Thay look fantastic Alpha!
You might also consider using metal washers for the base. They add a little bit more weight than wood does.
That said, I like yours better... just a good time saver the way The She DM did it.
I can't remember if I posted my table lands terrain in this forum or not? It's been a crazy few months and my memory is terrible. So if anyone is willing to slice and dice pink (or blue) insulation foam I can give you some advice on making some decent Radiator Springs....umm I mean Dark Sun terrain. I have shared custody of my Dark Sun terrain, two days a month it's mine, the rest of the month my four year old son uses it as part of his Cars play-set. On an interesting side note for anyone who plays any modern miniature games, the Cars die-cast cars are 1/55 scale, most D&D miniature are of the 25-28mm range and scale out at about 1/56. So, if you don't mind your cars staring at you, or smilin' at you, they work pretty good.
I actually got to use my Silt Horror a few weeks back. The PC's were crossing the silt via giant when the were attacked by a few tentacles. One of my players was absent while this was going down, when he came back to the table from the bathroom, and saw the newly placed Silt Horror tentacles. His word were "Hey, it looks a bunch of cats turds just got shaken out of the sand box". I'm not vindictive or anything, it was merely coincidence that his character was nearly killed and eaten by a bunch of vicious cat turds. LOL
I would dig seeing the terrain. Some of the Band Of Misfits blog entries have had me thinking about how to do good elevations in a flexible manner. For example, I would love some way to make tiers very easily that still felt desert and felt flexible. On thought is to use the normal table level as low and then build up however I want with pieces that could somehow lock together. Another is to perhaps have some sort of support structure framework that would lock together plus a triangular (for slope) or straight (for flat) piece to edge it so you don't see the structure from the side, and then you place normal D&D tiles over that.
My default way has been to just use 1" wooden cubes to raise tiles, but then you have the edge where people can see empty space, plus it can be pretty unstable (especially if you go 10' or higher). I would love some modular way to do this.
And, I'm very interested in anything my kids could use. They like helping with crafts and would be all the more inclined if they could also play with the result!
Sand dunes would be far more difficult given the sloping nature of sand dunes. One thing that might work for dunes is to throw some foam under the mat, but even this limits the height you can make your terrain. As for using tiles, that is even tougher. The only thing I can think of would be to make square or rectangular dune sections that you could mix in with your tiles. We've found that if you have a grid surrounding a terrain feature that it is pretty easy to approximate the grid on that feature, as long as it isn't to big.
I will dig out my camera sometime this weekend and take some pictures and write up a quick how-to.