The Fist
Posted by
MortiS-the-Lost
–
MortiS-the-Lost
–
The Fist is a joint project between myself and my good friend and local sculpting nut Messy - a little while back I had an idea for an encounter that involved the PCs running into a giant magical hand (I won't give anyway the exact details here because my players read this and I haven’t run the encounter yet), realising that no miniature of what I had in mind for the encounter existed I put together some rough images of what I wanted and asked Messy to have a bash at sculpting my idea. This was rather more difficult than you might think because I had to explain certain specifications for the fist without explaining exactly what the finished piece would be used for, because Messy happens to be one of my players!
Messy can almost certainly tell you a lot more about the sculpting process than I can, so I'll just say here that he's some what of a perfectionist and I had a long wait before I saw the finished sculpt - but it was worth it
Once Messy was for the most part pleased with the sculpt and I'd begged him to stop working on it because it was perfectly fine already, Messy went about making a mould of the piece and we then cast it in resin.
^Various work in progress pictures
After that it was my turn to begin work - First of all I cleaned up the casting using files and a sharp knife and also filled a few of the surface bubbles using Milliput and Green Stuff. Then I began work on the base - being a top heavy model the fist needed a weighted base, so I started with a large washer (about the size of a 40mm round base) and glued a layer of thin card to the underside to protect my Dungeon from getting scratched up by bare metal. The fist was attached to the base using a blob of Green Stuff which was stuck into the hole of the washer and then smoothed out to blend the bottom of the Fist into the base. To finish off the base I took some textured plastic that almost matches my dungeon floors and carefully cut chunks to fit around the fist so that it looked like it was bursting forth from the ground - in the area in the middle around the fist was textured using cheap super-glue and baking powder.
^ The Fist Shortly Before Painting
Finally I came to painting the fist, which began as always with a black undercoat. The Fist had a rock-like texture to it so I painted it (and the stone floor on the base) to match the stone of my dungeon - Citadel Charadon Granite, highlighted with P3 Ironhull Grey followed by Army Painter Uniform Grey and then Citadel Codex Grey.
The earthen bits between the stones were dry brushed with Citadel Scorched Brown and Graveyard Earth.
For the magical ectoplasmic tendrils I used pretty much the same technique I used on the equivalent parts of my Spectral Reapers. Starting with a heavy dry brush of P3 Cygnar Blue Base and working up through several highlights constituting of mixtures of P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight and Citadel Ice Blue followed by Ice Blue mixed with P3 Morrow White and finally pure Morrow White as an extreme highlight. Each stage of this was lightly dry brushed onto the surrounding stone to create a glowing effect and blended into the fist itself to create the effect that the stone of the fist gradually dissipates into the ethereal tendrils at the wrist
I'd like to make a slight side tangent here and say that because of the cracked floor and stone like look of the fist I also considered painting the tendrils and middle of the base with a lava theme which would have given the effect that the fist was being formed from cooling liquid magma erupting from the ground - I may still do another one this way in the future.
Although I'm not going to explain exactly what I plan to use the fist for (at least until I've run the encounter) I will say that the uses for this piece in-game are many-fold - In D&D it might represent Bigby's crushing hand, it could be used in Fantasy Warlord for the Severed Hand spell, the classic RPG computer game Anvil of Dawn had a spell called 'Iron Fist of Chaos' which looked quite similar and even Warhammer and Mordheim used to have some Orcish magic based around summoning giant magical fists too - I'm sure there are further examples I could mention also, maybe it could be a monster in it's own right rather than just a spell effect
As I briefly mentioned above a mould was made for casting the fist so if you're interested in having one of these for yourself let me or Messy know and we'll see about casting one up for you
You've scrolled down this far (and some of you might have even read the text too) so it's time for a bonus picture …
^Galladon the Wizard delivers some blunt damage to a Skeleton using a giant magical fist
Messy can almost certainly tell you a lot more about the sculpting process than I can, so I'll just say here that he's some what of a perfectionist and I had a long wait before I saw the finished sculpt - but it was worth it
Once Messy was for the most part pleased with the sculpt and I'd begged him to stop working on it because it was perfectly fine already, Messy went about making a mould of the piece and we then cast it in resin.
^Various work in progress pictures
After that it was my turn to begin work - First of all I cleaned up the casting using files and a sharp knife and also filled a few of the surface bubbles using Milliput and Green Stuff. Then I began work on the base - being a top heavy model the fist needed a weighted base, so I started with a large washer (about the size of a 40mm round base) and glued a layer of thin card to the underside to protect my Dungeon from getting scratched up by bare metal. The fist was attached to the base using a blob of Green Stuff which was stuck into the hole of the washer and then smoothed out to blend the bottom of the Fist into the base. To finish off the base I took some textured plastic that almost matches my dungeon floors and carefully cut chunks to fit around the fist so that it looked like it was bursting forth from the ground - in the area in the middle around the fist was textured using cheap super-glue and baking powder.
^ The Fist Shortly Before Painting
Finally I came to painting the fist, which began as always with a black undercoat. The Fist had a rock-like texture to it so I painted it (and the stone floor on the base) to match the stone of my dungeon - Citadel Charadon Granite, highlighted with P3 Ironhull Grey followed by Army Painter Uniform Grey and then Citadel Codex Grey.
The earthen bits between the stones were dry brushed with Citadel Scorched Brown and Graveyard Earth.
For the magical ectoplasmic tendrils I used pretty much the same technique I used on the equivalent parts of my Spectral Reapers. Starting with a heavy dry brush of P3 Cygnar Blue Base and working up through several highlights constituting of mixtures of P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight and Citadel Ice Blue followed by Ice Blue mixed with P3 Morrow White and finally pure Morrow White as an extreme highlight. Each stage of this was lightly dry brushed onto the surrounding stone to create a glowing effect and blended into the fist itself to create the effect that the stone of the fist gradually dissipates into the ethereal tendrils at the wrist
I'd like to make a slight side tangent here and say that because of the cracked floor and stone like look of the fist I also considered painting the tendrils and middle of the base with a lava theme which would have given the effect that the fist was being formed from cooling liquid magma erupting from the ground - I may still do another one this way in the future.
Although I'm not going to explain exactly what I plan to use the fist for (at least until I've run the encounter) I will say that the uses for this piece in-game are many-fold - In D&D it might represent Bigby's crushing hand, it could be used in Fantasy Warlord for the Severed Hand spell, the classic RPG computer game Anvil of Dawn had a spell called 'Iron Fist of Chaos' which looked quite similar and even Warhammer and Mordheim used to have some Orcish magic based around summoning giant magical fists too - I'm sure there are further examples I could mention also, maybe it could be a monster in it's own right rather than just a spell effect
As I briefly mentioned above a mould was made for casting the fist so if you're interested in having one of these for yourself let me or Messy know and we'll see about casting one up for you
You've scrolled down this far (and some of you might have even read the text too) so it's time for a bonus picture …
^Galladon the Wizard delivers some blunt damage to a Skeleton using a giant magical fist
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