Some random items after a long period of inactivity

The first two miniatures are the androsphinx, Kamaljiori (Monsters of Exandria Set 1 #2), and an Adranach (Monsters of Tal'Dorei Set 2 #1) from the Critical Role Miniatures line.

Sphinxes from the Critical Role universe have both lion and eagle tails, but I'm not a fan of the design choice. However, as it turns out, the unwanted tail feathers were a perfect fit for the Reaper peryton that I bought 8 years ago.

The next miniature I've been working on is the Reaper Graveyard Golem (Bones 77526).

The miniature consists of five pieces in the newer Bones plastic. One of the parts was short shot, but I didn't actually notice until I was already finishing up with painting.

One of the things I didn't like about this sculpt was that it didn't have a right hand, so I did a bit of modification to make it fit my vision of the figure.

I was thinking about adding some crows perched on the "wings" of the golem, but it didn't feel quite right with the new, more action oriented pose.

The final miniature is Azael the Unfaithful from Rackham Miniatures. I think that in the Confrontation lore she is supposed to be some sort of undead, but I thought she would make a good fallen angel, so I decided to add some wings to the figure.

I based her look somewhat off of Nanael from Queen's Blade, with one withered wing, and one normal wing.

The right wing is from the Radiant Idol (Eberron: Rising from the Last War #32) from the Icons of the Realms Miniatures line.

While the left wing comes from a Deva (Snowbound #15) from the Icons of the Realms Miniatures line.

Snowman

Evil snowmen have been a staple of pop culture horror for a long time. Most people are probably familiar with them through the direct-to-video movie Jack Frost, or from Dr. Who, or even from Scooby Doo cartoons.

The Snowmen (2012 Christmas Special)

Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays, 2012

A Scooby-Doo! Christmas, 2002

Jack Frost, 1997

One of the earliest depictions of the evil snowman however, is in the cartoon The Snowman from Ted Eshbaugh Studios.

Atlas Obscura hosts an interesting article on the history of snowmen (which may provide some insight to the source of the resentment motivating these snowmen).

I don't think there was ever an official snowman monster in D&D, but a snow golem first appeared in Ship of Horrors for 2nd ed. AD&D.

The 2nd ed. version of the snow golem is described as an 11' tall armored figure sculpted from snow, which seems like something requiring the skills of a trained sculptor to create.

Giorgio Vasari writes in Lives of the Artists
(Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori,
ed architettori) that after an unusual
snowstorm descended upon Florence in
January 1494, Michelangelo was tasked
by Piero de' Medici (his patron) to create
a statue made of snow in the courtyard
of his palace.

By 5th ed. however, artistry seems to have gone by the wayside, and snow golems became crude anthropoid figures.

It is this version of the snow golem, that appears from D&D Icons of the Realms (Snowbound #28), and Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures (WZK90417).

I don't really care for the use of blue and silver to represent snow on prepainted miniatures, so I will repaint the Icons Snow Golem at a later date.

Some other figures that fit the snowy theme include a couple of chwinga miniatures from D&D Icons of the Realms (Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden #3, #16).

One chwinga is throwing a snowball, while the other holds an icicle (or rather, an "icicle staff"). I included a space chwinga from a previous post for comparison purposes.

Last up are a couple of frost salamanders from an older post with a pair of extra arms added on.

For the snow on the bases, I originally wanted to try some of the various commercial products described at Meandering Shade, but for expediency, I went with white glue and baking soda.

Generic brand sodium bicarbonate

Baking soda has small reflective crystals in it, unlike Woodland Scenics Scene-A-Rama Snow which is perfectly matte white, and requires the addition of some embossing powder, or extra fine glitter to give it that sparkly snow look.

Ohh Chuma chabela mitwe

The Ruga-ruga were mercenaries of East Africa who were used as armed guards along caravan trade routes, and later employed in various European colonial militaries. Members were typically displaced peoples, and included Ngoni warriors uprooted from the south by the Zulus. They rose to prominence under the leadership of Nyamwezi chieftains like Mirambo and Nyungu-ya-Mawe.

In 1/72 scale, Ruga-ruga are manufactured by HäT Industrie as part of their WWI line, but I think they can just as easily be used for the 19th century.

The box consists of 48 figures in 9 poses, but if you look at the illustration on the box, there is a 10th pose which apparently did not make it into production.

I was originally not a huge fan of the type of rubbery plastic used for these figures, but it's grown on me because it allows me to use a hot knife to sculpt the plastic and create practically seamless conversions.

For the fighting poses, I did some simple head and feather swaps to add variety to the figures.

For the porter figures, I altered some of the baggage being carried, and also modified two figures to carry elephant tusks.

I'd like to have more ivory porters, so it may be necessary to perform the Dark Art on some of these conversions.

NYPL Digital Collection

Lava Children

Lava Children are often scorned as one of the absurd joke monsters from the Fiend Folio, and people have laughed at the illustration for bearing a striking resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman, but something about the harness it wore had a vaguely Polynesian look that made the association with lava work for me.

On the other hand, I didn't care for the 5th ed. incarnation of the Lava Child, which looks like the unholy spawn of Carrot Top and Pennywise.

There are no miniatures of Lava Children, and I doubt that there ever will be, so I took it upon myself to make my own version based on the original Russ Nicholson illustration.

I started out by sculpting the face out of Kneadatite.

What– Me worry?

To make things simpler for myself, I decapitated one of the Deep Fire Dwarves from Sgt Major Miniatures (now sold by Battle Valor Games) to use as the basis for a body.

I'm guessing that the miniatures are supposed to be Azers from the Monster Manual II, which are probably even more obscure than Lava Children.

First the head was attached, and some lines were scribed onto the kilt.

Then I sculpted the harness to the best of my ability.

My plan for painting is to undercoat with black, and then use a foam brush to dab gray and white over it to replicate the appearance of a charcoal briquette after being used in a barbeque.

A closely related monster for which there are three miniatures is the Magman (Magmin). The first miniature is from the D&D Miniatures line (Angelfire #56), while the next two miniatures are from the Icons of the Realms line (Elemental Evil #01 and Monster Menagerie 3 #1).

The Angelfire miniature was my original candidate as a proxy for a Lava Child, albeit undersized. The Elemental Evil miniature was rather underwhelming, but I liked the Monster Menagerie miniature so much (because it is made of transparent plastic), that I bought a whole bunch of them.

Another lava related miniature is the Magma Mephit (Monster Menagerie 3 #02a), which has an alternate paint version that is the Mud Mephit (Monster Menagerie 3 #02b).

I really like the look of these miniatures, and if you don't want to use them as mephits, they could just as easily pass for imps or homunculi.

Rakshas

Rakshas (ラクシャス) is a character from Kentaro Miura's Berzerk, and I immediately thought of him when I first saw this HeroClix figure of Phantazia (X-Men the Animated Series The Dark Phoenix Saga #032).

I don't know much about Phantazia since I pretty much stopped reading Marvel X-titles after Chris Claremont's tenure on the X-Men ended, but she was worth the entire 79¢ I spent on her.

Phantazia towers over 1/72 scale figures at 32mm, but since she is just going to be the foundation for my Rakshas figure, it doesn't really matter.

I cut off the upper portion of her torso, then cut out her face to use as a mask. The body was filed to scale down the proportions, and the face was filed to round it out. I should have just sculpted a mask from Kneadatite though, because it would have been faster and easier.

The mask was pinned to the body, and a third eye was carved in the center of the mask. The teeth at the bottom of the mask were created with some dabs of epoxy.

百円玉の人

I painted the mask referencing the colors used in a limited edition figure set manufactured by Art of War. However, in the anime, the eyes of the mask are yellow/gold, while the official color art has shown all the eyes as being orange/red.

Nuckelavee

James Torrance, 1901

The lower part of this terrible monster, as seen by Tammie, was like a great horse, with flappers like fins about his legs, with a mouth as wide as a whale's, from whence came breath like steam from a brewing-kettle. He had but one eye, and that as red as fire. On him sat, or rather seemed to grow from his back, a huge man with no legs, and arms that reached nearly to the ground. His head was as big as a clue of simmons, and his huge head kept rolling from one shoulder to the other as if it was meant to tumble off. But what to Tammie appeared most horrible of all, was that the monster was skinless; this utter want of skin adding much to the terrific appearance of the creatures naked body.

– The Scottish Antiquary, or Northern Notes & Queries, Vol. 5

Nuckelavee is a supernatural creature originating from the Orkney Islands. During summer, it was confined to the sea by the Sea Mother, and I assume it became free to rampage on land after the Gore Vellye and the return of Teran from the bottom of the sea.

I picked up the Nuckelavee miniature from the Pathfinder Battles line (Ruins of Lastwall #28) because I thought it was an interesting sculpt, and it seemed like it might be large enough to look like various artistic representations of the monster.

Unforunately, the miniature was not as large as I thought it would be, and the humanoid portion of the monster is actually similar in size to a 1/72 scale human rather than the 28mm human I was expecting.

To fix the miniature up a bit, I decided to replace the humanoid portion with the upper half of a necrotic warrior from the Arcane Legions game.

I also drilled out the existing eyes of the horse head, and added a new eye to the center of it's forehead.

I may replace the head later, since the humanoid part of Nuckelavee was described as being akin to a monstrous bobble-head, but I like the necrotic warrior head, since other accounts mention that it had a protruding muzzle.

There's still a bit more work to be done, and I'm playing around with the idea of incorporating parts of the design from the RWBY Nuckelavee in my conversion, but I think what I have so far is a pretty good start.

RWBY, Vol. 4 Ep. 10