Wrath of Kings: Monster add-ons

After sculpting up the C.A.G.E. and Blood Engine I was asked to make a couple of parts to swap-out on those figures. Casts of the figures were sent to me and I just sorta made some stuff. Here are the WIP pics...

Teknis C.A.G.E. : I sculpted a right hand for this guy thats pretty much like the original left hand and gave him a spear.

Goritsi Blood Engine: Kinda had fun with this, a replacement arm with a sword and a new boiler for his back. I tried to keep it looking Gothic and unusual.

And here are some shots of mix and matching

As well as some side-by-side shots of the C.A.G.E.

Life size Blood Rage Frost Giant?

Special thank you to a follower of my blog, Nate Lavotha for posting this and letting me know because without it I probably would never have found out. A company called Monster City Studios http://monstercitystudios.net/ who specialize in constructing anything from dioramas to full scale environments have been working on a life sized statue of the Blood Rage Frost Giant that Adrian Smith designed and I got to sculpt. Here is the post from their Facebook...

"Blood Rage the final epic Viking saga-
Sometimes, we get the coolest creatures to work with. This time is no exception. Our friends at CoolMiniOrNot asked us to create the Frost Giant from the ultimate Viking saga board game, Blood Rage. Naturally when we took one look at the artwork, we jumped at the opportunity. He's almost ready to leave our studios, and we wish him a safe journey, but we will miss having him as part of the Monster City family. Farewell, old friend"

...Wow! Seriously, wow! And this is not the first time they have done work for CMoN as they were the team who built the life size mecha for Rivet Wars. If you get the chance, check out their online portfolio and see what they can do. Very inspirational.

Who knows, maybe I'll get to see this guy in person one day.

Massive Darkness - Cliffbreaker Cyclops

It's up and running, the Massive Darkness Kickstarter campaign has just started today and that means I can talk about the sculpts I've been working on for over half a year. First up is the "Cliffbreaker Cyclops"

Here's the concept art I worked from...

And here is the final sculpt...

 Are you ready to rock?

His ammo pack of stones will not be included so here is what the production miniature will look like...

So far the campaign is off to a strong start and I'll have more updates as new stretch goals are unlocked.

I guess the stars were right?

It's frigg'n weird how my life works at times. If you have been reading some of my posts then you know I'm a fan of H.P. Lovecraft's works and I sculpted a little statue for myself a few years back. I was inspired by Simon Lee's Cthulhu statue he had done...

I'm a fan of Mr. Lee's work as well and I wanted one for myself but the casting runs were very limited and by the time I found out about it they were all gone. So I had decided to try it myself. I didn't want to straight-up copy him but I liked how organic it was, it really made it look alien. There was also a book cover of a collection of Robert E. Howard's called "The Mythos and Kindred Horrors" that had always inspired me...

It must have inspired others as well because I've seen sculpts based off of this picture around. The last was the actual description of the idol from the book which implied that the statue was beyond ancient and not carved by human hands. So with all that in mind I made this guy up...

I kept it very rough looking as I wanted it to look like it had been around for a while and I kept the features and details vague in hopes that it would rather imply what it was making it more unusual. Not as awe inspiring as Simon Lee's work but at least I felt better about missing out on his statue sales.

I had cast a few for myself and this last October while I was at the Lovecraft Film Festival I had ran into my old colleague Jason Soles from Privateer Press. I had one on my person to give to him but as we were going in opposite directions I just tossed the figure to him and told him it was a gift. Later that day Jason told me that he had shown the figure to the guys from "The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society" who had a booth there at the festival and they wanted to meet me. These guys have been regulars at the festival for years and have made some of the more fun and, (I feel,) accurate films in the genre. They had said they liked the figure and wanted to put it into production so I sent them the original and now it's in their store. If you feel like checking out more pictures of the idol that I shamelessly stole from their site or even buy one from their store you can head over there in this link...

http://store.cthulhulives.org/products/cthulhu-fetish

Like I said; kind of weird how things work out or maybe it's just that the stars were right?

P.S. Sorry Mr. Lee for stealing your picture, don't hurt me.

Wrath of Kings: Gorbal the Rampager (AKA: Wolf-Bat-Man Guy)

Another new WoK figure finally making it's way into production and it turns out he is called "Gorbal the Rampager" and not "Wolf-Bat-Man Guy" like I had named him. I guess they don't like my ideas for titles.
This guy was finished up in August of 2013 and looking back at it the work I did on the backpack I am not displeased too much. Something that is pretty regular for me in my work is a lack of back detail in concept art, especially with the steampunk boiler/backpacks that seem to be the fad right now. Because of that it's up to me to figure out how all these tubes and such all fit together and every-once-in-a-while things work out OK. I usually don't get the chance to be retrospective about my work since as soon as I am done with one figure I'm thinking about the next so getting to look back at these pictures is kind of nice. Keep in mind it's been almost three years since I sculpted this guy and I have no recollection of actually making this so it's sort of an added, "I did that?" to the walk down memory lane.

Wrath of Kings: Arkazan Greatwing (AKA: Bat-Wing dude #1)

Since these are finally getting shown off by CMoN I can now post about them. And keep in mind that when I get these assignments that no official name has been given to them so I have to make up my own. This guy for 2 years has been only know by me as "Bat-Wing Dude #1." Looking back in my archives this guy was finished on 03/23/2014 so that should give you an idea of how long it's been since I sculpted this guy. The Zombicide figure was included in there for size reference.

Finished painted figure picture by: Cool Mini or Not

Warmachine - Cryx Bloat Thrall overseer Mobius

I did this guy... 11 years ago (I think?) on my own volition as to just do something I thought was cool. This was right about my transition between Greenstuff and Fimo. I can't remember exactly why I decided to do him but apparently I had planned for this a while back as I had the gun from the original Bloat Thrall I did cast up in pewter when I was originally sculpting him. I had nicknamed it the, "Septic Thrall" and I think I had been playing around with the idea of some kind of variant of the original, something to do with leaving nauseating odors that could give the opposing army minuses when in too close proximity to it's launched leavings. The guy on his back was a spotter/range finder for arching fire with the eye-plug in the Bloat Thrall's head a direct feed into the corpse to infer that the Thrall could see through the spotters eyes like an undead targeting system.

He sat near done for nearly a decade when last year I had been asked about it, PP wanted to use it and wondered if I could finish it up with a couple of changes. "Sure!" I replied and set to work completing a figure I had nearly forgot about. Originally the guy on the back was on a kind of extending pole which I got rid of, bought him down close to the Thrall's body and integrated it more. Something that at the time had stumped me was all the wires I wanted to put on him, I really wanted to get tubing spilling out of the back guy and make it look like loose intestines but I just couldn't make it work. I had set aside the figure until I could work it out and after a while, sorta forgot about it. But by the time PP had plans for it I was able to do that key, (at least to me) detail. 

Anyway, been a long time in the making.

Painted picture provided by Privateer Press.