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