Greetings traveler! Welcome to part two of the great raising of the dead that is & will be my triple blood bowl team. Last we left off I was putting together the pieces and planning out ideas. I have gotten a fair amount of work done, and gotten more than a couple goodies in the mail, but have hit a minor standstill, thus I turn to the hobby blog. Hoblog? Feels forced. Anyway, I go over what I have done, and gain inspiration from my progress to give me ideas and fire to push forward. It has worked before and shall work again I hope.
(So much for the pitch creation blog I have had sitting in my drafts for half a year now. Whoops. I’ll deal with that later. Probably. It warped a little which is breaking my heart, but I know how to fix it. It will probably work. Aghhhh. Back to the dead.)
Flesh Golems
So the flesh golems were my first main goal here as I wanted to get those bull ogors looking more undead asap. I made some fair progress pretty quickly. Filled in the massive tummy gaps with blue tack.
I repositioned the arms, stuck them with blue tack and then glued them in place leaving the blue tack since I planned on puttying around it anyway. I picked up a bit more quick dry epoxy putty which is my go to for more detailed modeling stuff and got to work. The main deal with the flesh golems is their frankenstein-esque appearance with the huge obscene stitches. I did them up with big bellies to match their large frames and did stitches with a variety of modeling tools. It doesn’t look like much now, but I am hoping with a proper paint job and different flesh tones it will sell much more. Such a fear and a thrill when doing this kind of conversion work as it looks like slop (And probably will regardless) but with some paint it will be much better I hope. So far I am happy with the arm placement and have some much better dynamism in their poses ready to throw blocks and toss foolish weaklings out of their path.
In addition to making stitches along the body, I also filled in the gaps and attempted to replicate some of the musculature of these brutes as well to questionable effect. We shall see.
After feeling confident that the main body was in good enough shape, I went to add in some details. I did the helmets out of space marine shoulder pads and some epoxy on the back (Not pictured yet.) and used some plastic rod of varying circumference to create something akin to the neck/forehead bolts. These guys don’t have much neck space so I went with forehead bolts instead. Call me a ruiner of tradition if you wish, but idgaf. It’s blood bowl and my necromancer uses magic to bring these guys back from the dead, not science. Regardless, electricity gets to the brain zone in any case so its all good. The flaps around the waist making the pants seem more natural against the gut was a tremendous pain in the ass and I am glad it is over with. The helmet chin strap on the right one came out so great I think. Reminds me of a proper hockey or football helmet chin strap.
There is a bit more to go on these guys and I will update as soon as I can if I remember to take pictures of these guys before I release this.
No Bones About it. (Bones about everything.)
Bones! Skeletons. Skeletons were a source of ire and concern for me in the previous post, but I have since remedied that issue pretty well! TT managed to show up with another set of of those skeletons I was after and they got snagged right away! But in the meantime, I managed to find a pair of D&D skeletons which I thought would be alright. Here is one next to a normal BB skeleton.
Size wise (And pose wise, hah.) they are fairly close! You can also see the heinous armor that I plasted on the back of the skeleton, but I shall talk about that shortly. First… BOOTS!
So, not shown here, but I snipped off a sword and shield from the D&D skeleton and they were pretty much just a straight up skeleton. While normally I would say just roll with it, no big deal, let’s play some blood bowl! I want to do these guys up and have them look a bit more cohesive so I saw the other skellies all had boots and went about doing some up with some leftover putty I had from doing the flesh golems. At first this was a tremendous pain in the ass, but I got it down to a pretty decent science. Took a kind of thick cylinder of putty and pressed it against the back calf and under the heel of the skeleton and then slowly using a modeling tool pulled it forward/upward around the leg/foot until I basically had it wrapped up like a blanket. Then I pressed in what I would describe as shoelace eyelets with a sharp flat edge of my tool and it had a really nice effect. I used the spoon-like scoopy bit of the tool to form and smooth the cap over the toe. Lastly, using the the flat edge of my modeling tool, I went around the bottom border of the shoe to create the sole and then again did a ton of straight lines on the bottoms of the soles to give the boots some tread.
They honestly look like gigantic high tops, like mario live-action movie jump boots levels. Regardless I was still fairly impressed with my work and found the process of figuring out how to ‘make’ sneakers/boots from nothing quite interesting. I ended up making a pair of boots for my two D&D skeletons.
Ghoulish Pants!
Ghouls! These guys are really important players on the team so I want to make sure to give them some TLC I’ve used ghouls before for players on a blood bowl team when I had a small boatload of them from a previous trade deal. They are the thralls on my vampire blood bowl team. Check more pics of them out here. (As well as a picture of the first pitch I made using the styro/foamcore technique. What a random coincidence, that.)
So I realized that the official BB ghouls are all wearing shorts and maintaining a bit more decency on the blood bowl pitch which is respectful, appealing, and allows a chance to add a bit more team color to what would otherwise essentially be a naked dude with bone & stake piercings. With the thralls I went for knees and elbows with like blocks of stone tied on to them with cloth since the vamps don’t really care for their thralls very much. In addition, the shoulder pads match my vamps and the helmets are cool too.
I decided to go for a more sporty-style look for these undead ghouls and am starting that with some shorts. They came out pretty well. There were a few spots where with fur/hackles near the nuttal zone got in the way, but I just said whatever.
So nut jokes aside, My favorite part about this, and one thing my (typically passive) partner noticed and complimented right away when I ran up and showed them was the gap in the pantlegs making them look like actual clothing being worn as opposed to epoxy flattened around the leg. I really made sure that this kind of stood out where I could. I also snipped some spinal junk off of these guys since I think it’s a bit much and some was going to get in the way of my armor plans undoubtedly.
Using magic of the Hot Water Circle
Indeed. The hot water circle technique is one where boiling water and the ancient ritual components are mixed and plied and the desired material is impressed upon them! With more repeated pressings and offering of the sanctified materials one can have an endless supply of almost anything! Yeah, so Hot water Circle is just a playful translation of [Oyumaru], a Japanese craft/toy/repair item which is absolutely phenomenal. It is sold also as ‘blue stuff’ which I originally bought, but the prices are grossly obscene compared to buying oyumaru directly. Also, I can get it at the damned daiso for nothing basically. Truly beautiful days when you can essentially get a full blown casting operation going from crap at the dollar store. That is junk magic right there baby. Red Magician’s specialty!
Anyway, that long intro to the game plan aside, feel free to scoot around youtube for how oyumaru/bluestuff casting and molding works because I am not going to go into it here. What I will go into is what I am making. Well attempting to make. SO I have those funky ghoul/zombie dudes and these D&D skeleton dudes and they need some proper armor to match their players in arms. So I decided to make a cast and crank out a few more sets. Currently all I have is the back part.
This is perhaps why my project stalled out since this is a setback. As you can see it’s not pretty and I am planning on doing sculpting on some putty to finish them off, but I don’t know… They don’t really seem to hit the mark so far and it worries me.
My first oyumaru molds were alright, but I wanted a proper two part, but it didn’t go down like that. I will need to spend some time making a few more molds from different angles that are easier to work with I think. That is the plan. Maybe I will rip off all those bits and start fresh. We shall see. That light blue putty is what I use to make casts of other models which I give away as gifts to my friends and when I have some left over I forged a few shoulder pads with it. So far it isn’t horrendous, but I am hesitating to progress since it doesn’t seem adequate enough. I shall report back in part 3.
Going forward.er.
As mentioned before, I need me some werewolves and they are actually on the docket. A good friend of mine and I will be throwing lots in together and snag some goodies off greebo and I shall be getting them soon enough. They are basically all sorted out as is and will need little work done to them anyway.
Also, as mentioned previously I got a set of those badass skeletons!
Snagged some of them and got to clipping weapons and shields on them and they are actually looking pretty good. I will need to do a little blade and dremel work to get the clipped bits looking like bones again enough to cover the rest with clever painting, but they are doing OK. I will add more pictures of them next article.
Finally, I need to finish my flesh golems, and solve the shoulderpad dilemma that I am currently facing. When I can get through the shoulder pad dilemma I have a feeling the rest of the project will start to fall into place quickly. That was it! That was what I needed to figure out through writing this and know I know. With a few more oyumaru casts of the shoulder pads are different angles I should be able to cast more than a few usable bits which will look great and be easier to sculpt into a cohesive thing than what I have going on right now. I feel foolish honestly, but don’t we all before we find clues to our troubles?
Dilemma solved, I shall move forward and hopefully take better pictures and return soon enough with another chunk of tasty hobby update for you to enjoy.
Until we meet again!
The Red Magician's Junk 
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