It is with great hesitation that I post this thread, as I don't want to step on anyone's toes, but after Nick Daring's awesome build; I began seeing more of these idols pop up. I don't know if it's a subconscious thing of me looking for patterns but, nonetheless, I am seeing these crop more frequently around the places I prowl on the internet. In fact, I saw it so much that I thought I'd give it a try, despite me not liking the works of Lovecraft.
I'd like to start with mentioning that I don't know much on the lore of Cthulhu other than the summaries I've read on from Wikipedia and images plucked from the internet. It's only with that, that I have a reference point to start from for sculpting the thing. I know there is a description detailing how it looks and a little doodle that shows what Lovecraft imagined and, that's a good as any place to start from, but I wanted something less traditional but in the lines of what he was talking about.
Problem was, I just didn't know what to do to get there. I just had some sketches on the shape that I wanted it to have and that was it. Everything else was just sculpting on the fly, adhering to the conventional aspects that the creature/statue was supposed to have that I've seen from various interpretations. From what I gathered: a chunky, octopus, man-dragon sitting on a block.
With that, I just dove right in and roughed out a shape and some details in an afternoon. I was afraid of not having enough clay to work with but, to my surprise, I had enough to where it comes close to 8 inches in height. What luck!
I knew I wanted to stray a bit away from convention with his base, a square block, and went with a narrow pedestal type deal (the base is sort of trapezoid-shaped). Like, it was chipped away from a single block of 'mystery' stone. Having the hands on the knees makes it look too human to me, so I opted for something more gargoyle-like.
I was really not sure at that point of what I wanted it too look like. I was playing with my dog outside and found a young grub on the ground and thought that would be a good look. Maybe with a hint of Rancor pit monster? Something Geiger-esque minus all the penises? At this point, I was just sketching out ideas. All I knew is that I wanted this thing to like more animal-like, really fat, and pathetic; hence the small, rudimentary wings. If this thing is fat and slumbering underground for several millenia; surely it'd lose some function of its wings, right?).
To be honest, though, throughout the entire sculpting process; I just kept thinking about Zoidberg. At one point, I was toying around with the idea of just scraping the whole thing and just slapping two big eyes and some claws and call it. But I didn't. I kept the Zoidberg fat rolls and just based everything off from that in terms of shape.
Oh, this came into being from just playing around, too!
Then some on and off work over the next few days led to this:
Little mumps came in to double for scales (I broke out in a rash not too long ago from some resin and thought it was a good, creepy look for the thing) and I saw an idol on this board with asymmetric eyes and thought that looked too good to not incorporate into mine. Apologies for ripping you off, if you're reading this.
I'm gonna play with some more textures and refine a few things but, for the most part, I'm quite happy with how it is now. I think after I nail the finishing touches; I'll call it done. For just goofing around with not knowing much in way of the creature's backstory, I think it's close to capturing the lumpy, grotesque, pathetic, fat sack-of-crap animal/gargoyle thing that I was kinda hoping to achieve while forming it.
Let me know what you think below and any/all input is appreciated!
I'd like to start with mentioning that I don't know much on the lore of Cthulhu other than the summaries I've read on from Wikipedia and images plucked from the internet. It's only with that, that I have a reference point to start from for sculpting the thing. I know there is a description detailing how it looks and a little doodle that shows what Lovecraft imagined and, that's a good as any place to start from, but I wanted something less traditional but in the lines of what he was talking about.
Problem was, I just didn't know what to do to get there. I just had some sketches on the shape that I wanted it to have and that was it. Everything else was just sculpting on the fly, adhering to the conventional aspects that the creature/statue was supposed to have that I've seen from various interpretations. From what I gathered: a chunky, octopus, man-dragon sitting on a block.
With that, I just dove right in and roughed out a shape and some details in an afternoon. I was afraid of not having enough clay to work with but, to my surprise, I had enough to where it comes close to 8 inches in height. What luck!
I knew I wanted to stray a bit away from convention with his base, a square block, and went with a narrow pedestal type deal (the base is sort of trapezoid-shaped). Like, it was chipped away from a single block of 'mystery' stone. Having the hands on the knees makes it look too human to me, so I opted for something more gargoyle-like.
I was really not sure at that point of what I wanted it too look like. I was playing with my dog outside and found a young grub on the ground and thought that would be a good look. Maybe with a hint of Rancor pit monster? Something Geiger-esque minus all the penises? At this point, I was just sketching out ideas. All I knew is that I wanted this thing to like more animal-like, really fat, and pathetic; hence the small, rudimentary wings. If this thing is fat and slumbering underground for several millenia; surely it'd lose some function of its wings, right?).
To be honest, though, throughout the entire sculpting process; I just kept thinking about Zoidberg. At one point, I was toying around with the idea of just scraping the whole thing and just slapping two big eyes and some claws and call it. But I didn't. I kept the Zoidberg fat rolls and just based everything off from that in terms of shape.
Oh, this came into being from just playing around, too!
Then some on and off work over the next few days led to this:
Little mumps came in to double for scales (I broke out in a rash not too long ago from some resin and thought it was a good, creepy look for the thing) and I saw an idol on this board with asymmetric eyes and thought that looked too good to not incorporate into mine. Apologies for ripping you off, if you're reading this.
I'm gonna play with some more textures and refine a few things but, for the most part, I'm quite happy with how it is now. I think after I nail the finishing touches; I'll call it done. For just goofing around with not knowing much in way of the creature's backstory, I think it's close to capturing the lumpy, grotesque, pathetic, fat sack-of-crap animal/gargoyle thing that I was kinda hoping to achieve while forming it.
Let me know what you think below and any/all input is appreciated!
