Making Your Own D&D Miniatures

I’m sure plenty of people who play D&D, and perhaps paint miniatures and terrain for the game, would never think that they are capable of making their own miniatures. The idea of creating a wire armature and sculpting a figure on it or creating a digital model for 3D printing might be intimidating to many (including myself). But that need not stop you from creating your own custom miniatures.

In two recent videos, Jeremy of Black Magic Craft explores making several of his own minis, a rock golem (or earth elemental) and one of new D&D monsters, the very creepy Cadaver Collector.

The rock golem was easily made by simply gluing chunks of foam together and carving them until he got a shape that he wanted. He actually was going for an earth elemental look, like the creature had just been summoned out of the ground, so he added flock and foliage to his monster’s back.

The Cadaver Collector is a D&D monster from the new Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes manual for D&D (which I happened to review today on Boing Boing). As the name implies, this lumbering beast goes around collecting corpses and impaling them on spikes on his back. Charming!

To create the model, Jeremy hacked up some existing models, moving around legs, repositioning arms, and then using Green Stuff (two-part epoxy putty) to create the look he was after, based on the illustration in Mordenkainen.

Watching these videos, it’s easy to see that, by working off of existing models, using some modeling clay, and your own imagination, you can create some pretty cool miniatures, even if you’re not a sculptor.