Today is another two-fer post day as I attempt to catch up with my painted stuff. Another D&D model once again, this one is a Death Tyrant from the Dungeon of the Mad Mage set. A Death Tyrant is pretty obviously an undead Beholder of some description, but it wasn’t immediately obvious to me that the balls all around the head were disembodied-but-glowing eyes. Because Beholders have all those eyes on stalks, you see…
Now, if you were to purchase this model from the Nolzur’s range, the “flight stand” as well as that “crest around the head would be in transparent plastic, as would the eye socket area – sp you could then paint those eyes in and ahve them appear to be floating. The models that come in the Mad Mage game don’t have the transparent plastic, and so you’re stuck needing to paint them. I (obviously) leant right into the obnoxiously huge crest and painted it as a glowing green magical aura. It also coincided pretty much with my new Citadel Terraract Glow technical paint arriving, so this model provided an experimental canvas for that, so this is what it looks like, slightly thinned with Contrast medium over a yellow base coat. I did both the front and back seperately and laid the figure flat to allow the Terraract Glow to dry to avoid having it all just flow down with gravity and pool at the bottom. Gemstone Spiritstone Red for the eyes, and gloss varnish to complete them.
Once again we have the same deal with the putty-flagstones, and here’s a scale shot to wrap things up for today!
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Great work on the undead beholder mate, and great way to use it to test out your new paint ! I prefer your version than the clear plastic.
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Thanks Dave – it’s certainly a lot more colourful this way!
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That flying skull certainly seems a happy sort…. 🙂
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I think skeletal undead are contractually obliged to wear an evil grin, despite not having any lips or even skin…
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I hope those beholders have minions with hands or at least decent telekinesis abilities because otherwise how are they going to sign the contract? “Make your mark here,” it ain’t happening! 😦
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They sign contracts in the old fashioned way from movies. They just need to make a mark, which I’m sure they can do by skidding their… erm.. skull-butts on the parchment.
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That’s come out very well indeed (really nice does not seem an apt description for this one)! 🙂 I’m not sure I’d have liked the clear stand/aura version.
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Given a choice, I’d have preferred that one. After all, I then have the choice on how to paint or not paint the clear bits, but this one did come out okay at least…
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Looks great. While it is too bad that the flight stem portion is not clear, I actually think that this version of the magic effect is better than clear… although maybe it would be interesting to see the Tesseract glow paint on clear?
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That would be interesting. Now you’ve got me thinking… I have some magic user figures with clear “spell effects”. I reckon I’ll have to give that a try!
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Well, this is going to haunt me in my nightmares. Brilliantly done!
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Cheers, Mick. Just make sure you wear sunglesses in those nigthmares! 😉
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I would never have guessed those were meant to be floating eyeballs on that model unless you had mentioned it! I like your version better!
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Yeah, I honestly had no idea what they were supposed to be until I googled a picture of the thing, and had an “ohhhhhhhhh, so THAT’s what those are supposed to be” moment. Followed by “so how the fuck am I supposed to do floating glowing eyeballs in a magical aura?” 😀
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Now that is a wild looking sculpt/idea. I like the way you painted him with bright colors. It is a garish design so why not embrace it with bright and eye-catching colors 😀
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Yeah, this is a model where playing it straight wouldn’t work for me, so best to lean right into the ridiculousness of the concept.
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That is one psychedelic looking mini! I’ve been thinking about picking up some Tesseract Glow. Figured it might be interesting to use for Warpstone.
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I could see it being useful – Warp Lighting Contrast is also a good one for Warpstone. 🙂
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Thanks, that’s another one I had thought about using. I guess I’ll have to try some test models with the different approaches to see which I like best.
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Warp Lighting is a lot darker, while this is a lot lighter (and use over yellow for the richer greens like I’ve got here).
I did some green crystals as maybe-sometimes-Warpstone here, alongside the recipe:
https://azazelx.com/2019/08/30/small-scenics-reaper-bones-4-fantasy-scenics-fountain-dreadmere-raft-mantic-terrain-crate-crystal-formations/
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Nice technical painting but I have to admit that I hate the miniature and the effect of the magical stuff supporting the eyes / juggling balls / whatever they’re supposed to be. I think that you’ve done as well as possible considering the seemingly dire material to work with.
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Some of these models have potental, and then some very odd choices. While I was working on this one I was thinking about just how different it would be if it were a GW-produced model for the same concept/type of monster…
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For all that it seems to be fashionable to criticise GW, I just love their miniatures. If only they could produce a game system I can get my teeth into, I’d probably never look at another gaming company.
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I must admit I’m not a fan of that model but I like the way you’ve steered into the skid, played up a lot of the weirder elements and made a feature of things I’d have wanted to play down. It works too, the end result looks really good (in a crazy, psychedelic kind of way).
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Yeah, I don’t think playing down really works on a model like this. If you just imagine the whole thing in purple (or was it green?) plastic, with the weird looking bobbly crest bisecting the skull… short of surgery, and then needing to deal with the mess that would leave where thet crest was…. all for a D&D boardgame model that’s being painted pretty much *soley for use* in that boardgame, and not a cool 40k, etc conversion…. paint and move on!
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Wow, that’s certainly gonna stand out from the crowd!
Great job.
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Cheers, mate! Who says undead need to be drab and dreary, right?
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Nice- if a wierd one.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete – the most important thing is that it’s done and boardgame-table ready. 🙂
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I saw this a few weeks ago but did not catch that there was yet another contrast paint (turns out its the only one I do not have AND it’s sold out!!).
Lovely work on the model down to the teeth.
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you are very good and thanks for all the ideas you give me
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