Eye Titan
Smashbash 2025 Entry, The Eye Titan
Last year I converted a kid’s pirate ship into a war machine as one of my first ever “kit bashes” and entered it into Smashbash Battle royale. It was an awesome process, and I have learned more about my art since then.
For this year’s Smashbash build theme they went with “Mostly in the Flesh”
Having studied last year’s entries, I decided to make my monster a little bit darker. I remembered an old build I started back in 2017 that was all sculpey and large enough that I had to take out all the shelves in the oven to bake it. not wanting to repeat that sketchy process I went with paper clay for the body and some air-dry clay for the base. I left room for the monsters’ feet on the base but I did not take into consideration how much the clay would shrink, which ended up being about a quarter inch.
For the body of the monster, I had a ridged strong structure of sculpey that allowed me to be generous with the paper clay. This formed a second skin on the body, allowing me to further sculpt in details. I made two texture tools out of sculpey and used them on the paper clay surface, giving the clay a reptilian mottled look. I allowed this to dry for a few days while contemplating how to fix the base as well as finish a short story for a contest my wife talked me into doing, which was super fun.
For the base I returned to the air-dry clay, but instead of making the entire base out of the clay I made three small sponge monsters with glass marbles for eyes, three cork board platforms, and this time untextured spaces for the monster’s feet. I made texture paste out of sand, acrylic caulking, and paint to fill in the rest of the area, again avoiding where the monster would be standing.
The monster needed eyes. I searched my bead collection and found I had a variety left over from another project. Using one of my wife’s animation tricks I used the hole of the bead as the pupil and used miliput to sculpt the eyes into place. I also took a glass marble and put that where the monsters should have a mouth.
Originally when I made the first part of this monster, years ago, he was meant to be an elder titan that devoured another pantheon of gods and would have been the foe for a larger campaign. he sat forgotten, the campaign stalled out. Thankfully I remembered him for Smashbash. Playing many different campaigns over the year I have learned to leave my miniatures open ended, or more to the point, not tying them down to one idea. This sculpt could still represent that hungry elder titan. He could also be a Hekatoncheres from Greek mythology, or a hundred handed one. His back bumps could be more arms waiting to sprout out at a moments need or the title was misleading.
I think my favorite idea is making him one of Mother Goetia’s lost son. Forgotten by time most of the world, a mother searches for her elder child hidden away on some vengeful world. He could end up being a campaign ending threat when paired up with Mother Goetia and her minions.
