Thursday 3 February 2011

Shoggoth....

Here's some pictures of painted shoggoths, the latest model I've sculpted for my Dark Foam range. Almost all of the shoggoths previously sculpted were done so low and flat so for this one I went for a taller more blob like version. The thing with sculpting one of these is you've just got to pick a shape and go for it because of the amorphous nature of the creature, described as constantly changing form with the green bubble-like eyes forming and unforming constantly. Any sculpt of a shoggoth ends up being a like a snapshot of the thing. Like the old Grenadier and Rafm shoggoths I went for toothless "mouths" mere pukered holes. In the story the creature came from it was not a host of toothy jaws the sent someone insane but from the suggestion that the thing could develop a rudimenty form of speech.

The model itself is a resin casting. Here's a pictures of my painted version of the basic model.



Now Lovecraft had a thing about tentacles so it would be poor form not to give one of these at least a few :)
Here's a second models with three tentacles from my Son of Yog-Sothoth kit.





I painted the models with Vallejo paints. Basic method was to drybrush the whole thing in progessively lighter shades of green. A little red mixed with green was painted around the mouths then the whole this was washed with thinned black acrylic. I kept applying wahes until the body was suitably dark. Once that was done the eyes were picked out with a progression of mutation, sick, escorpena and livery green. the the whole thing was given multiple coats of gloss varnish.

Finally a couple of pics of the shoggoths next to a figure for scale. "Tekeli-li Tekeli-li"






7 comments:

  1. Absolute sweetness! When is the store going to be back up, and when will this be available in it?

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  2. Cheers. Just putting the model on the site should take another 30 mins or so :)

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  3. Alright! Just put my order in for this and the son of Yog-Sothoth (which, I maintain, should be cast in clear resin!) Keep up the great work!!

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  4. Thanks for the order! Problem with a clear Son of Yog Sothoth would be the metal tentacles. I'd have to start casting those in clear resin too for the creature to have a kind of invisibility as the Dunwich Horror had. Even then you would see the pins joining the tentacles to the body.

    The Shoggoth however is something I'm planning to try in clear. I'm thinking of painting the eyes in a transparent paint with the body and tentacles in black so I could add some LED lights inside the body and have the eyes really glow green :) Would need to experiment with clear resin though, never cast it before.

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  5. Well, I was mostly kidding about the Son, but that's an awesome idea with the Shoggoth. It wouldn't be too hard, either. Get a forstner bit and hollow out a deep hole for a loose round LED flasher and a shallow hole for a glued rare earth magnet to hold it onto a base...or just wedge the flasher in with some blu-tack if you don't base it.

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  6. Yeah I spoke to Uncle Mike about a clear resin Son of Yog so we'd already worked out the problems :)

    I looked into a clear Shoggoth and like to say it's really do-able. Just the shape of the body means a large diameter hole could be drilled into it, big enough to take quite a few grain of wheat bulbs (not sure why they're called that). I reckon if the inside of the drilled hole was polished clear with really fine wet'n'dry you'd get a real strong light coming through the eyes. I could be possible to add a green tint to the resin so there'd be no need to glaze the eyes green.

    If I get round to casting some up I give you a nod :)

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  7. Nice model! I've linked your work in my article about the Shoggoth: https://alkony.enerla.net/english/the-nexus/miniatures-nexus/miniature/miniature-creature/blob-with-tentacles-in-1-56-scale-medium-shoggoth-from-fenris-games-miniature-creature-review

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