Sunday, January 25, 2015

Killing You With Ugly

To quoth the good book:

      This nightmare creature is loathsome beyond description and has no redeeming features. Its body resembles that of a huge, bloated buffalo. . . (its) neck is long and thin, and perched atop it is a big head uglier than that of a warthog. Its legs are thick and stumpy, much like a hippopotamus. . .In any case, the most horrid aspect of the catoblepas is its bloodshot eyes.
                                                                                 -Gary Gygax, Monster Manual, 1977

Ral Partha Catoblepas, vintage 1988

Ugly is right. Although this Ral Partha sculpt misses out on a few of the nicer details from D.A. Trampier's original art, like the fleshy bits 'round the eyes and the clubby tail, I think it hits a home run in the straight-up ugliness game. More importantly to me, it gave me the golden opportunity to really work on wet blending techniques. Serpent neck blending into hippopotamus armored flesh into hairy warthog bristles. I am very happy with the grey-to-flesh blending on the abdomen. I think I could probably have gone a little warmer with the greens, but I like the "natural" look I have now and I don't want to do anything that might screw that up.


It was a very productive week hobby-wise, as I also managed to prep all of the Otherworld Adventurers and Hirelings that I still have in my queue, along with the first batch of Redbox Games Kickstarter rewards. I finished off this OW ranger mid-week, and he will probably end up replacing the thief mini that my older son uses as his character in Barrowmaze. He's a big fan of the bow here.



And finally, I (admittedly) rushed the paint job on this (honestly) iffy sculpt of an undead dog from Grenadier just to get it off my desk. It's a Cthuhlu mini titled "Hound of Tindalos" and looking it up online, it appears mine is missing a big long tongue. Dunno, but I don't think a big long tongue would improve it much. Maybe a zombie in Barrowmaze will make this his Ol' Yeller. Woof woof.


Hope your own leaden pursuits are ticking along smartly. Take care, brethren.

4 comments:

  1. That Catoblepas is a hideous-looking thing! You've painted it superbly though and the blending between the different textures is genius.

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    1. Thanks much, Gaz. It always surprises me how well the paint job seems to turn out when the miniature in question is really fun to paint, like this one. I was giddy going from color to color while painting the Catoblepas- total blast. I think it shows here. That dog, on the other hand. . . well, like I said- I just wanted it done so that it would stop staring at me from the lead pile.

      Thanks for stopping by. I did want to tell you- I've had a look now at your Trapdoor ruleset and I must say- I am impressed. If the family ever wants a quick dungeon hack-through without the campaign trappings, I plan on giving it a run.

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    2. I think the zombie hound turned out great, despite your dislike of the sculpt.

      Thanks for picking up a copy of Trapdoor. I was aiming for an rpg-meets-fantasy wargame vibe and hope I have to some extent achieved this. I have almost finished off a supplement (Trapdoor: Companies of Chaos) which provide amendments for using the core rules for skirmish wargames, with an in-built campaign system similar to Mordheim or SBH. This will be available shortly through Wargames Vault for free.

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  2. Outstanding job on the catoblepas. "Loathsome beyond description" never looked so good.

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