Crafting for Hope 2025
In 2024 submitted a last-minute miniature for crafting for hope. For this year, 2025, I wanted to build an entire diorama and remembered the build challenge dates!
In my dungeons and dragons world I focus many threats around strange monsters with odd eyes. My artwork also reflects the multiple eye theme rather heavily, my Eye Pots and Eye Pads have been a favorite to build. In classic dnd lore there are two main monsters that pop up with the eyes, Gibbering Mouthers and Mimics.
The gibbering mouthers are masses of eyes and teeth that can cause blindness and madness with their multiple voices and screams. Good times. In mythology, anime, and just pop culture in general multiple eyed monsters pop up everywhere. In greek mythology we have Argus that was covered in eyes and set as a guard to keep Io away from Zeus, chaos ensued. There are many dark things spawned from the mythos of Cthulhu with thousands of eyes and mouths. Gibbering mouthers have been a fun monster to foreshadow with multiple groups finding strange teeth marks cut into the stone, or strange voices on the wind. The eventual encounter feels that much more meaningful when the party figures it out before hand or connects the dots before combat evolves.
Mimics can be anything, from a tankard of ale, an outhouse, a door, or the most common being a treasure chest. I have haunted adventuring parties with mimics to the point of characters now having their wizards use mage hand to slap suspicious surfaces with bacon with a light spell cast on it just in case the floor or walls come to life. It is my fault, there was a room in a dungeon that appeared to be the interior of a roadside inn, with comfy beds, a roaring fire, and what appeared to be warm tubs for bathing. They tossed in some bacon and watched in horror as the bed it landed on folded in half and consumed the meat as the entire room, full of mimics, charged the doorway the party was standing in. Mimics have been plaguing characters for over fifty years and have been appearing in video games, fantasy novels, and manga too.
For the Crafting For Hope art challenge, I wanted to incorporate parts of these monsters into my build. I started with my wooden wine box. Using insulation foam and air dry clay I roughed out a base layer for the lower half of the box, texturing the clay to look like a few of my other sculptures as well as leaving spaces for miniatures to stand. The airdry clay did end up shrinking and got caught in the inset area the dividers for the wine would have gone in the box, but I was able to use a fair amount of construction adhesive to lock it in place. I wanted the box to open and close as well as have a way to light the inside of the box so we could see the details and the miniatures. The miniatures were originally reaper bones minis that I had tossed creepy sculpey bits on too. I had made and handed out bits bags at Adepticon last year and met many talented artists and creators that I look up to in the miniature making field. The three minis i had a major head start on so I worried about the box first.
I knew I wanted to sculpt something inside the lids cover and ended up using over a pound of sculpey to make a wall of eyes. The lid was detachable and I was able to bake it right in the oven. Once the lid was baked, I noticed there was a crack right down the center of the lid, where there was already gap from the wood, which had also warped. I carefully got the nails back where they belonged and began the next phase.
The box had labels burned into the surface, which was not ideal. There also was a ton of empty space that was just wood grain. I went back to the first couple of terrain mats I tried to make and used paintable acrylic caulking, sand, the worst shade paint possible, and some isopropyl alcohol to make my own texture paste. The paste came out almost the same color as the insulation foam, which made it easier to find spots I missed when painting later. There were some parts I still missed but the green with a purple hue looked like cursed magic. The lid and every surface that was wood was covered in the texture paste.
The lights. I bought a ton of holiday spooky lighting one year after Halloween. I am not an electrician, I can fix some pottery kilns and usually troubleshoot when the breakers flip and why, but I am not splicing wires together to make a new circuit. So, I used purple and orange lights in the top section of the box. There was a large opening that I covered with clear plastic from one of the many blister packs from miniatures that were wildly and irresponsibly purchased around the same time as the lights. I wanted there to be a pale reflective surface for the light to bounce off so I made a series of teeth to hide the openings in the box light chamber. once everything was in place I did a few test runs of the lighting and realized I needed to block the light from coming out the chamber and blinding me as well as make the chamber fee like it was supposed to be there as a part of the piece. I hunted down some felt and used it to block out the light and also constructed another sculpey short wall of eyes to hide the chamber.
The next step was painting. I ended up spray painting in the snow, I do not recommend, but it was very Wisconsin coded and it worked. Everything inside the box was base coated black and sprayed lightly with white to make a cheap looking zenithal highlight and then the outside of the box was sprayed with a patina green. The inside of the box lid covered in eyes was also hit with the patina and dry brushed with metallic copper shades to feel like an old statue. The airdry and sculpey bits were painted in reds and flesh tones.
While building the box I was spot checking the miniatures to see how they would fit in. the giants were very top heavy due to their weapons and their sculpey faces. I flattened three pucks of sculpey and textured them like the inside of the box. I then took the miniatures and pressed them into the sculpey and made footprints to get an approximate read on resculpting needs. I tossed the bases in the oven after my adjustments and made even more adjustments once the clay was rigid. The bases kept everyone standing. I was able to match the colors on the bases to the box interior and touch up the painting on the minis themselves.
My three giant warriors have a generous amount of Milliput and superglue keeping their faces on. I sculpted a little bit more detail on each as well as added on a tail for the triangle headed mini. As I thought about these three armor clad giants with abstract faces, I started imagining what kind of role and presence these creatures would have in my world. I started to get more of an angelic vibe from them, as if worshipers had called out to the heavens for help but something else answered, strange otherworldly creatures with geometric heads or masks demanding their summoners be not afraid, but also do not look away as they fight your problems away.
I have plans to bring these creatures into a variety of adventures, possibly as bounty hunters or assassins depending on how my Spelljammer game evolves. The giants are also larger than my miniatures I made around this time last year, the Sons of Mother Goetia, and could serve as an opposing force to the plans of such a dangerous foe. Statistics are not an issue yet, depending on which game I will match giant statistics around the level of the party and graft on special powers that fit the flavor of the moment. If the giants are forces of the divine seeking to thwart powerful known enemies, they might get the paladin smite ability and a few spell slots and maybe auras to protect each other. If they are sufficiently high level, I might just use the statistics for angels, with the star headed giant as a solar angel, the blue triangle as a planetar, and the horned red-faced giant as a deva angel.
On Feburary 15th they announced the winners, and while I did not win I learned many things doing this project, got some awesome feedback to work with, and have some ideas for other boxes I have acquired. Look out for more cool weird things from me in the future.
