May of the Dead Mummy

Wooo! Today is my day! Welcome May of the Dead carnivalers and other table top terrain enthusiasts. My undead contribution will be Egyptian themed. Because if anyone knows how to treat their dead, it was the Egyptians. Basically the idea was to have a mummy busting out of his sarcophagus.






To start I found myself a dead Egyptian from Reaper miniatures, and crinkled up some aluminium foil large enough to realistically fit his body if he wasn't so gun-ho. The foil is just going to act as a place holder for the cavity of the sarcophagus.

Now for the casket itself, I pressed some Sculpey oven bake clay evenly around the foil.

Added a dog head to it for a more Anubis-y feel.

For the head dress, I rolled out a piece of clay cut it to shape and added the lines before adding it to the main box.

A pair of arms were added with decorative sticks, then I shaped in the details of the face & some hieroglyphs down the body.

Once I had everything satisfactory, I baked the sarcophagus in my toaster oven according to the Sculpey directions. Then taking a sharp paring knife, cut the clay in half all the way around deep enough to hit the tin foil. It took a couple passes, but the clay released easy enough.

I took my mummy & chopped off the box he was standing on so he would fit better.

Next, it's time to paint my dude & his fancy box. I wasn't too worried about the right arm & leg because they would end up hidden by the cover anyways.

For the floor, I took a piece of foam core, removed the paper cladding, and drew on some more hieroglyphs with a ball point pen. 

 After painting the floor, I attached the bottom half of the sarcophagus. Also, no respectable Egyptian gets buried without their riches, right? So using this handy trick I learned at TerraGenesis, I laid the foundation for some gold piles using hot glue.

After brushing on some PVA glue, I dumped on gold glitter to cover it. Ideally the glitter would be perfectly round & not the hexagons I have, but whatevs. No one is going to look that close.

Using that same idea, I took some more hot glue and added lines for a mass of scarabs escaping for the sarcophagus as well. 

My buddy Neil has some awesome examples of using grains of rice as maggots, so I thought I'd check out using split peas or lentils as scarabs. Unfortunately they were both far too large. Fortunately, I had some plastic beads that were easy enough to crack in half that were a good size.

I attached the bead bugs to the trails of hot glue & painted them.

Then it was just a matter of getting my dude glued in & the cover glued on top of him. I added a couple more bugs by his foot for good measure.

There you have it folks. Here's some final pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks everyone for following along! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Also, check out the rest of the May of the Dead participants. They've been gathering all month long for your one-stop-resource for all sorts of undead articles for gamers.

Fantasy Windmill

I've got a game on my phone called Dragonvale which has lost it's appeal but it does have some pretty neat buidings in it. The hibernation cave was the inspiration for this windmill.

I basically took the shape & added blades

For the building structure, I took 5 pieces of scrap foam, stacked them, and smoothed them into one shape with a hot wire cutter. The door & window area were cut with a hobby knife.

 For the roof shape, I cut three different sized circles and cut wedges out of each to create cones. Then I attached them together cock-eyed for a goofy effect.

I added a dormer face using some foam core, shingled the whole roof & spackled the sides of the building. The spackle was smoothed using a wet paper towel.

I used some skinny craft sticks and toothpick-sized dowels to make the windmill blades.

I cut the rest of my wood pieces right away as well so I could stain them together to get a similar color. I use the good ol' Minwax wood stain, but your typical washes or inks would work as well.

To bring some texture back to the building, I mixed some sand with glue & brushed it on.

A little bit of paint and a couple of bricks made out of foam core that shaved in half with a hobby knife bring us to this:

 The wood planks were cut to a point & before I pushed them into the foam building, I added Titebond glue to the ends. The strengthening additive in the glue is more than enough to hold the wood plus plenty of weight.

I had intentions of making metal frames for the window & door, but the curve of the building made that look stupid, so I covered it in ivy instead. Using my glue I drew on the ivy lines & sprinkled it with parsley.

I painted my shingles using a slate blue, a 'true' blue, then used blister pack foam & stippled on a green color, and finally a mix of a light blue & light green stippled with a sponge as well.

After attaching the roof I added more parsley and patches of fine turf.

The blades were a bit tricky.  I found this neat nut that had a spinning attachment on it. I don't know what it's called or what it was for but it worked out nicely for this. I glued the blades to the normal flat front of the nut. Then I needed something hollow to fit on the part that rotated without touching that inner ring that held the spinny part on. Lucky I had a wooden dowel the right size.

(Hindsight Note: I used 3M Gel Super glue to join the wood & the metal thinking it could handle the different substances; at first it worked great. The blades spun like a champ. About a week after I glued them together the wood part snapped off, though. I used a replacement piece & different glue the second time, but the glue was much runnier & got in between the nut and the spinning ring. So, it still spins, but not without being pushed all the way around... I don't know what the proper lesson is here, but I'm sure there is one.)

Ok, so for some extra support, I drilled a hole into the end of the dowel with a pin vice and attached a small dowel.

I did the same with the building before adding gobs of glue on the end & shoving the rod through the hole.

For the ground cover, I covered the base board with spackle & sprinkled it with gravel & sand

I painted the spackle with a grassy color & lightly sponged the rocks with white.

Using a mixture of random ground stuff I have, mostly static grass & fine turf, I covered the green areas. Then added patches of grass tufts.

Lastly, for the fabric on the blades, I used Viva brand paper towel, cut it to shape, soaked it in water,  ripped some holes in them, then dabbed on random spots of a sepia wash. I also did a coat of white PVA after it was dry to help make them durable.

I think that's it. If you have any questions, let me know. Otherwise enjoy these photos of the finished product! Thanks guys!

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This windmill was donated to the fine folks at Coulee Carnage to raise proceeds for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada. You can see more about their tournament on their website.