EucBowl Monster Dice - good pics

So EucBowl has been run and won and I have it on good authority that the one and only GreedySmurf, part of the Zlurpcast team itself, took home the monster dice. Congrats to Greedy, and many thanks to all attendees who had such nice things to say about them. I'm just glad I was able to be a part of this event, even from such a distance.

Virral, the Commish, managed to get some excellent pics of the dice, so I thought I'd put together a bit of a collage and post it up. I really need to get myself a light box!

EucBowl Monster Dice #5

So, with EucBowl happening as we speak, these five dice have winged their way to Burwood to be placed on the prize table... or have been sequestered for Virral's private collection!  :)

Either way, they are finished. The final element to add to them is number five: "Fatality".

EucBowl Monster Dice #4

Well, I woke up to myself with a start the other day when I realised that Eucalyptus Bowl was two weekends earlier than I had thought! Not to worry though, I have been getting close to finishing these guys and the fourth Monster Dice has been completed.

This one is named "Tentacles", obviously as an homage to the skill of the same name. It has a little bit of a different palette to the others, I was aiming for a more pustulent and slimey feel.

Anyway, I hope you like it and, like always, please come along to EucBowl (6-7 August at Burwood RSL in Burwood, NSW) to check out the action.

EucBowl Monster Dice #3

OK, so my brushes have been running a little bit hotter than usual. Being sick and off work means there is little time (or inclination) for much else!

Number three of the EucBowl Monster Dice I have dubbed "Always Hungry", for reasons that should be obvious. With this one I tried to get as smooth a blend as I could from the white of the dice itself to the fierce red of the monster.

Just the one pic of this one (and it is my "promotional" pic too), but I hope you like how these are progressing...

EucBowl Monster Dice #2

It seems like forever since I updated this plog. You know the story, real life gets in the way. But I recently finished the big BB project I've been working on (BL!TZ magazine issue 1) and am in-between pracs for my study, so I finally managed to get some desk time with my paints.

Of course, first on my list of stuff to get done is the EucBowl monster dice commission, so here I bring you number two: "Red Card".

This one is little bit subtle in the shades around the face, with a much more human skintone than the previous one. Obviously the stripes are supposed to represent a Blood Bowl referee.

EucBowl Monster Dice

OK, so in the wake of AusBowl I was approached by Virral, the Commissioner of this year's Eucalyptus Bowl (EucBowl) to paint an extra special set of prizes he had organised: the CMON Monster Dice!

I had seen these dice before, and the amazing painting jobs that the pros at CMON had done on them. Suffice to say, it was an honour to have been asked in the first place, and I was just itching to get my hands on them.

They arrived a few days ago and I eagerly opened them up and had a good look. They are resin pieces. I've had a little bit of experience with resin, but nowhere near as much as with plastic or metal. I don't know if it's my small sample size, but I find the casting of resin can be a little variable. In this case the casting was a little bit strange in some places and, even after trying to sand it down to smooth, once I undercoated I still found some small imperfections.

Having said that, these were fairly minor (only to be brought up by a pedant like myself).

I thought long and hard about how I was going to present these though. My brief was fairly simple: each one mounted on a seperate base to be used, potentially, as re-roll counters. Beyond that the creative process was open.

So, obviously my first thought, and probably a novel one for these particular minis, was a Blood Bowl theme. So the first set was assembled with this in mind. You will find out exactly what this means as I post some pics, but for the moment, my working titles for the first set are:
"Not the Skull"
"Tentacles"
"Dead"
"Red Card"
"Always Hungry"

The second set are still forming in my head, but will be less BB themed. In fact, they will probably be based around five elements (air, water, earth, fire and life). But these are still in process.

So I guess you want to see some pics though, right?

Well, the first one from the list is finished, so without further ado I present "Not the Skull":

I'm really happy with how this turned out. I have yet to varnish the piece, and looking at it now I'd like to put a white line on the base (a sideline) to give it a bit more. The pics don't show it up as well as I would like, but there is a decent amount of subtle shading on the white areas. You also can't see in this pic the yellow POW symbol on the outside face of the block die, or the POW-Dodge (orange) or POW-block (red and yellow) on the inside and bottom respectively.

Remember above how I noted there were some small imperfections in the casting? Well, this actually gave me an idea. I needed something to provide a little bit of extra interest on the vast white areas, and I also needed to incorporate some of these small imperfections into the final piece. The solution - the greenish-grey 'cracks'. I really like how these have turned out and, while I didn't want to over-do them, I feel I have struck the right balance between not enough and too many.

Anyway, I hope you like them and, having shown them to Virral, I was very glad he liked it too. More to come as I do them... next up, Red Card!



Oh, and get along to EucBowl if you can. My budget is not up to it unfortunately, but it is one of the biggest and best Blood Bowl tournaments in Australia. And if you go you just might win one of these sets of monster dice!