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.

Eddy and the Nobu Doll

For my first post of 2021, I wanted to show the last two scuplts I made in 2020.

The first figure is Eddy Amzel (エディ・アムゼル) aka Eddie Amsel, a polarizing personality in the Maschinen Krieger universe, beloved by some, despised by others.

I started out with a metal dollie which I believe was from Mega Miniatures. I forgot to take a picture of the dollie before I altered it, but I cut down the length of the torso and altered the arms.

Kneadatite was used for most of the sculpt, with his canteen taken from an Airfix German.

1/72 Eddy

1/20 Eddy

1/1 Eddy

The second figure is a Nobu Doll (ノブー人形) from the classic video game Splatterhouse.

My next step will be to cast the figure and modify it to make an alternate scrunched up version.

I thought this web comic was pretty funny — Sukiko and Famiko are enjoying BBQ, but when they get a plate of horumon for the grill, Famiko remarks that it reminds her of a Nobu, which upsets her friend.

ゲームスキコのプレイ日記 #7
by pixiv artist ネクミロ

Larval Stalker

The Larval Stalker is a ghost-like entity that comes from the original Silent Hill video game. They don't get much in the way of attention because they are harmless, and don't really play a large part in the game.

I've always liked them because of how strange and mysterious they were, so I decided to finally create a sculpt after years of toying with the idea.

The beta texture for the Larval Stalker offered the clearest image to base my sculpt on, since it is not transparent.

I carved the body out of plastic sprue, then used staples to make the arms and legs. The head, limbs, and details were fleshed out with Kneadatite.

Once things settle down a bit and I am able to get more stable with my finances, I'll try to order some mold making supplies so I can cast the sculpt in clear resin.

Part of the lore in Silent Hill is that Larval Stalkers eventually turn into Stalkers, but I'm more of the opinion that Stalkers are just a variant of the Gray Child (just more difficult to see).

Making Gray Children was easy because I planned on modifying pre-existing figures.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I received an order from Khurasan Miniatures at the beginning of the month, and part of the reason I made the order was because The Flayed from their Apoc666 line of horror minatures, looked like good candidates for Gray Children.

The miniatures are possibly a bit shorter and thinner than I would prefer, but they'll do.

There are two different looks used for the Gray Children (or three if you include the Mumbler).

In the Japan/Europe release, the Gray Child was changed to the Mumbler because of concerns that the final texture for the Gray Child was too similar to a human child.

In any event, I sculpted both the beta texture and the final texture versions of the Gray Children by building up the heads of the Flayed with Kneadatite.

I then drilled some holes into their hands and added some filed down staples to represent knives.

If you are wondering about the blue Sharpie markings all over their bodies, it's for an experiment to see if I can produce veining on the figures.

After spraying a coat of solvent based primer, the Sharpie bleeds to the surface. I think the technique doesn't quite work on figures that are this small, but the primed figures kind of resembles the Gray Children from the Silent Hill movie.

I'm not sure how well the blue will stay visible after I start adding my gray washes, but we'll see.

On a separate note, the other Apoc666 figures are also quite interesting. I got some Lurkers in Dark Places, and I would have gotten the Cercopyths as well except I didn't want to go over budget.

I'm thinking these guys can make great Bone Devil imps (while the Cercopyths would make great Demogorgon quasits) along the lines of what's happening in D&D with Yeenoghu quasits or Yeenoghu dretches in Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus.

The aforementioned creatures are available in the D&D Icons of the Realms line. Yeenoghu's Dretch (Baldur's Gate Descent Into Avernus #12) is on the left, while Yeenoghu's Quasit (Baldur's Gate Descent Into Avernus #01) is on the right.

The Lurkers are taller than the quasit, but I think they all look good together because they have similar builds.

Magic Mouth

I don't believe that it was ever explicitly stated, but I think that everyone understood that this iconic Trampier illustration was of a magic mouth.

I had some left over Kneadatite that I was using to fill some gaps in a minature, so I decided to put it to good use by trying to replicate the magic mouth from the picture.

I'm mostly happy with how it came out, but I'll probably do a bit of sanding to adjust some of the contours around the mouth.

I also need to figure out how I want to model the vaulted arches of the passageway without making things overly complicated.

As far as commercial miniatures go, there are two that I am aware of.

The first is the Citadel Magic Mouth Doorway (Fantasy Specials 2).

I stripped the old paint off of this model a long time ago, but never got around to re-paint it.

The other is the Grenadier Talking Door from the Dungeon Items set (Wizards & Warriors SS04).

This piece is pretty hard to find, but you do see it every now and again.

Boooooooyyyyyyyy!!!

For my Halloween post, I've decided to debut my near-finished first complete sculpt. The figure is the Tall Man from one of my favorite horror films, the 1979 cult classic Phantasm. I've always wanted a miniature of the Tall Man to use as one of the baddies in gaming, but I could never find a figure with the right look. I finally decided to take matters into my own hands and sculpt a figure myself.


More John Houseman than Angus Scrimm?


The arms are actually removable at the moment, because I wanted to cast up the body by itself so I could have the figure with different arm poses. I initially scaled the figure to 6'8" in height, because that was Angus Scrimm's actual height with 4" lifts, but I decided to go a little taller because he just didn't seem tall enough in 1/72 when compared to other figures. To go with the Tall Man, I rolled up some 1mm balls of Kneadatite to create sentinel spheres. The ball in his hand was glued to a short segment of clear sprue that was stretched over a flame.


Below is another silver sentinel spheres on a longer piece of sprue. Follwing it are two gold sentinel spheres which are just round head map pins painted in gold. I would have liked to find some 1mm round head pins for the silver spheres as well, but I couldn't find any (I know it is pedantic, but the silver spheres are smaller than the gold spheres). The paint was somewhat of an issue because I could not get the chrome-like finish on the spheres like in the films. I discovered that my "chrome" silver spray was not chrome silver, and that the metallic golds that I used was too dark. I gave the gold spheres a wash with a lighter colored gold, but it made the spheres lose their metallic luster.


This final picture is of Star Wars MicroMachines Jawas, which can be used as Lurkers - the compacted reanimated zombie slaves of the Tall Man. The first four poses of Jawas comes from the Jawas figure set (66076). The fifth Jawa came from one of the Mini Head sets, but I don't remember which one, and the final Jawa came from one of the large MicroMachines playsets, again I don't remember which one.


Now what do I do for a balding ice-cream man with a ponytail and shotgun?