Formless Spawn painted

The paintwork for the Formless Spawn by Avolak Castings is pretty much done, All that is left to do is spray the whole thing with glossy varnish, and then apply matt varnish on the cobblestones. Not having done much painting recently, as this blog can also testify, I just wanted some quick and easy colour scheme, and it came out pretty much like I visioned it. In fact, the most time consuming part of this figure was building the cobblestone base. I usually tend to keep my bases minimalistic, and to that end cast them myself from a Hirst Arts Fieldstone pattern floor tiles, but here I wanted to go a bit scenic, to create the impression that the creature is bursting from beneath the  pawed street of the town. So I filed a couple of tiles to about 1/2-1/3 of their original thickness, cut them up to separate 'stones', and built the basing from those bricks. Now the base both match my other minis, and yet conveys something about the creature. I'm quite pleased with the result, although there could have been a bit more movement about the placing of the stones. Then again, it is meant to slowly emerge from beneath the surface, not to burst out violently. A bigger base might have helped, too.

But man, it was so nice to paint something for a change.

Formless Spawn by Avolak Castings

I haven't really done much at all with miniatures recently. But as I was making some random browsing for Deep Ones/Kuo-toa in miniature, I came across this guy, and was instantly smitten. Available from Avolak Castings, who have a small but impressive range of Lovecraftian miniatures. Officially it's depicting a Formless Spawn (of Tsathoggua), and I have great plans for it.

The body is tow-part resin cast, the hands and some tentacles are from metal, and everything fitted together very well. I mostly ended up pinning everything out of habit rather than need. There was some minor flash on the resin parts, actually hardly even worth mentioning, and if my aging eyes did not deceive me, a couple of air bubbles on the resin body might have been worked over with some clear filler, which was quite impressive dedication to quality. Despite all that, the whole miniature cost 12 euros, so there's tremendous value for money here. There was no real webshop on the site, but everything worked out via a couple of emails, and a professionally packed figure arrived from Spain to Finland quite speedily. And the postage did not cost arm or tentacle, either.

The figure fitted neatly on it's 50mm round base, but it would not look off on a 60mm base either, especially if one intends to do some scenic work with the base.

There are good miniatures, and then there are great ones. I had not thought of Ruins and Ratmen for a while, and yet as I saw this miniature, I a) knew that I needed to have it, and b) I instantly thought of an endgame scenario for R&R. So welcome, little guy. I hope my meagre skills can do you justice.