Darktentacles Miniature

I received a really nice surprise from the blog last week. Jan Groeneveld sent me a link to a miniature he made based on one of the pieces that I made for the Halls of Undermountain, the Darktentacles. Readers of the blog will know that I have designed my share of minis and that I love just about everything about minis. It is incredibly humbling and a huge honor that Jan took the time and effort to make a mini of one of my monsters. I could not wait to share it with you here on the blog. To make it better, Jan sent me additional images so I could really show off the mini...

Darktentacles mini by Jan Groeneveld and his friend Hilko 

 Now that is a lot of tentacles! RAWR!

 Another shot to show off their great work!

This is the image that Jan originally sent me. SO COOL!

Jan sent me a really nice email and told me about the creation of the miniature. I hope he won't mind if I share it with you here...

"I play Pen & Paper RPGs for over twenty years now, being the DM most of the time. At the moment my playgroup plays D&D 4th Edition and we wanted to try out (the excellent!) "Halls of Undermountain". I have quite a large collection of prepainted D&D miniatures and so normally I have a fitting miniature for every monster/NPC the heroes may meet. When my collection doesn't yield a needed adversary, I either buy one or - if there isn't one to find - I just build one myself.

This was the case for two monsters from "Halls of Undermountain". The Crawling Claws were not difficult (get two sets of minotaur hands from Warhammer Fantasy, glue to base, get ghastly painted - ready), but the Dark Tentacles made me really think. I am a fan of the Undermountain modules since the original one (Ruins of Undermountain) and the Dark Tentacles were always part of the setting. The version in Halls of Undermountain allows it to be encountered ashore, which I like because it makes it more "accessible". So I decided that your artwork should be the basis of the miniature to be created. I got a printable version from your website, printed it and discussed how to proceed with my friend Hilko, who works with miniatures as long as I am a Dungeon Master. In the end we decided that we would put a polystyrene "body" (about as large as a thumb) on a large base and add tentacles. Lots. Of. Tentacles.

Warhammer 40K to the rescue. A single Chaos Space Marine Spawn bit has 33 tentacles, which I glued to the body. This was not as easy as it sounds, because polystyrene and plastic needs quite some time until the glue dries. After that chore it began to look like there was a Dark Tentacle somewhere in it. Hilko added a leather cord for additional tentacly feeling. This is the one thing which we would do differently if we made a second miniature: we would use more leather cords and probably even leave out the polystyrol body altogether (using tightly wound cords instead).

Hilko painted the miniature with a gray base, added purple for the tentacles and liberally applied Games Workshop washes. For the eyes, he put paste (not sure about the word, the German word is "Leim") on the tentacles to create round protrusions. These he painted as seen on your artwork.

I asked the photographer of my company to make some better pictures for you. He applied a little bit of photoshop because he was not satisfied with the lighting, being winter and all." 

Thank again to Jan and Hilko for sharing their awesome miniature with me and honoring me with choosing one of my monsters to create! I will leave you today with the art of the Darktentacle...

Darktentacles

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

That is all for another exciting Monday on the blog, see you back here on Wednesday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Darktentacles - Process

I have for you today the thrid of the process posts for the recent work that I produced for the Halls of Undermountain. Today we wrap things up with the Darktentacles!

Thumbnails started things off as always. This time around there was not a lot to draw from immediately for reference, the big balls of tentacles usually come out of my head and that is were these manifested from. The Darktentacles was described as possibly lifting itself out of the water with a few if its tentacles. The tentacle are black and studded with eyes. There is not visible head, it is simply a mass of horrific tentacle goodness.  I can do that! The goal of the thumbnails was to come up with a pleasing mass that showed movement and allowed for a good reveal of the creature. I was on the fence on all of these and did not have a preferred choice, I would leave that up to production. In the end, "B" was the lucky winner...
 

 Darktentacles - Thumbnails

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

There was one request, they wanted to see an element added to show the scale of the Darktentacles. Cave fish were suggested and I worked up a couple quick comps showing some options for some cave fish joining the party. This time around, "C" was the winner...

 

  Darktentacles - Revised Thumbnail

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

Now it was time for the drawing. This was again one of those situations were once I was well into the drawing I pause and thinks, 'man, that is a lot of tentacles and eyes I now have to paint...' This is said mostly in jest, I do not mind working of complex forms with lots of detail, it just takes time and I need to approach the piece in such a way that I do not focus on all that detail too soon. I need to deal with the over all form first and make sure all the ground work is there before I go nuts with all the fine details. I left the background purposefully vague and empty. I planned on making sure there was cave interior back there but that was all going to come together in the painting stage once I see how the creature was coming together. The drawing was completed, turned in, and approved...

 Darktentacles - Drawing

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

Now it is time to for the bulk hard work, the painting. Nothing has changed from my usual progression. Manipulated drawing, under painting, main paint level, adjustment and fix layers. You can see more detailed break downs of all this HERE, HERE, and HERE.

I mentioned earlier that I didn't shoot any reference for this piece since it was a ball of tentacles, I did of course use a lot of gathered images for reference in the painting stage. Cave interiors, animals with slimy dark skin, rock and water images were all used to make sure my decisions were all influenced by the world around us. Even when something is completely alien to the world, just a little real world added in will make it that much more believable. This piece did go very quickly and just like magic the images appeared before my unbelieving eyes...

 Darktentacles - Painting progression

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

This piece has several elements that have appeared in other pieces that I have created in the last couple of years... dark cave, water, dark creature. I have been working to better envision these elements together... the black creature in the black water in the black cave... just use the paint bucket to cover the canvas in black and turn it in. I kid of course. The challenge for me has been to create a scene that on paper is completely black and to give it light and color while still making sure it feels like it is in a deep dark place. This is probably one of my better attempts at it. It gets to the point where if I think too much about it I will make it worse, so I just let myself go, have some fun and make sure the image as a whole is working...

Darktentacles

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

This is the last of my pieces from the Halls of Undermountain adventure book. I still have two more recent D&D pieces that I have process information to share with you in the coming weeks.

That's all for another exciting Wednesday on the blog, see you back here on Friday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Halls of Undermountain

Halls of Undermountain is here! Halls of Undermountain is the newest adventure supplement for Dungeons and Dragons and I am extremely pleased to have been a part of this project. Enough talk already, here are my contributions to the book...

Wroot the Goblin

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

 Snake Curse

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

 Darktentacles

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast

I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to Kate Irwin for including me on this project. She continues to be an amazing art director to work with and I look forward to every chance that I have to do so. As you can see I produced a total of three pieces and had a blast on all of them. I will share my thoughts and feelings on all of them in a future post when I talk about my process and the steps that went into each of these. There will be lots of sketches, drawings and most likely some extremely silly pictures of me posing for reference! I am happy to say that this is not the end to my Undermountain fun, I should have another related piece to share with you later this month! To see all these things and more be sure to stop back by the blog in the coming weeks!

That is all for a new art filled Wednesday, see you back here on Friday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com