UNK SEZ: All that STRANGER THINGS watchin' has got me wanting to do something I never thought I would- share my very own D&D figurines! I hand painted these die cast puppies myself around the same time STRANGER THINGS took place (1983)! I even sold them at a local mom & pop hobby shop and made approximately zero dollars!
Here's my favorite! He's some kind of swamp monster. I think I fell in love with such creatures thanks to the KOLCHAK episode "The Spanish Moss Murders" (1974) and wasn't it just a couple years ago when I went mad for that NIGHT GALLERY episode "Brenda"? And then just recently that LAKE NOWHERE kind of slapped me a swampy high five too! Swamp monsters are my pals.
This guy is a "Mind Flayer" I had to look up what the hell color "mauve" was before I could paint him. Maybe I should have dusted him off before I took this picture? He's my second favorite cuz he's Lovecraft-y lookin'.
Hey, a traditional mummy! Gold paint takes the longest to dry, folks.
Who is this? A goblin? I think this is a goblin and he eats dead people. Sad!
These are shabbily painted I admit but who doesn't love harpies and skeletons?
You can't tell from this angle but the dude on the left has an excellent pornstache. I think the guy in the back fell off of a MOLLY HATCHET LP!
Satyrs! They are the coolest! They've got some lady taking off her robe with them! This is scandalous. I could get kicked out of school for such a thing!
Oh boy, it looks like creature from PROPHECY is going to kill that ginger dwarf or maybe they are friends just having a disagreement. I dunno.
Here's a rat guy hanging out with a boar-face, let's sneak past.
Finally a dragon (!) on the right, a troll (?) on the left and a Minotaur missing his axe blade. Oh wait, that's the end! Below is a demon of some sort and look how sad it is that his bottom legs broke off and I glued him to that base anyway. Oh well, at least I kept him!
Boy Unk, were we ever kindred spirits back in the day…
I remember so many of these, and the whole thrill of buying a set of Ral Partha miniatures; most of which would never be painted.
I also remember the bummed feeling when the best miniature wasn't cast properly, and either would topple due to a mold crease or just bad weight distribution, and the attack with a nail file to somehow salvage the day. I painted quite a few though, not that we ever really used them, and just had them lurking about here or there.
My crowning glory was a 2-headed giant…whatever they were called.
Those were the days…
(oh, and I never know what color ochre was…I always thought it to be like grape jelly)
You had better get ahold of a stick of bayou gum and be ready to stake em when he comes for you. Peremalfait will squeeze the life out of you, if you aren't careful. lol
The Bigwig
I had trouble getting a couple of these to stand! It looks like I glued fake grass on a lot of their bases. I actually had a big diorama on a desk top with astroturf as a base and rocks for mountains and mirrors for lakes but it was one of many things that was trashed by my parents when we moved. I'll never forget painting a very large dragon that came with glass jewels and selling it to a kid up the street for 20$! I thought I was rich and he gave me 20 singles and I still remember the weird smell of that money because they were crisp brand new bills! I also had GAMMA WORLD figures. I'm sure I permanently damaged my brain from all those paint fumes!
Chairman,
Peremalfait is the coolest! Whenever I watched Kolchak in reruns I would be crossing my fingers it would be the sewer monster episode! I was so surprised when I saw it on DVD as an adult that they hardly even show the monster because he was so humongous and clearly defined in my distorted memory. A friend on Facebook (Thanks Gordon!) told me the D&D figure is actually known as a shambling mound.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambling_mound
You won't get any disagreement from me about Peremalfait being the coolest! I thought your Swamp Creature was actually a repurposed Marvel's Man-Thing. Clicked on your link and it isn't Man-Thing and indeed a Shambling Mound. I'd hate to have to differentiate Man-Thing and a Shambling Mound out of a line up. lol
http://72-multiverse.blogspot.com/2012/01/shambling-mound.html
Oh man! I know that my miniatures were in a box somewhere in my closet when I moved out of my parents' place – but if my brother ever found them they went on Ebay.
I never painted my miniatures – I tried a few but was terrible at it. I turned my cool metal monk into The Man with No Face.
I was more of a Grenadier guy than Ral Partha. The Ral Partha just seemed a little too good – I liked for my DnD art to be on the strange side.
I'm surprised that we don't see more Traumafessions by people who came across their older brother's DnD stash – there was so much wild artwork – Erol Otus, Dave Sutherland and David Trampier.
Amen to that.
I had a much older cousin who came back from Carnegie Melon U. and got us all 6-7 th graders into fledgling D&D…just one perusal of the Monster Manual had me hooked, specifically the art of Trampier (DAT). I am still debating a tattoo from one of those illustrations; I can think of about 10 that would look great, but I don't want to be judged as a middle-aged geek Satanist..
These are actually amazing. Reminds me of spending my time ten years later (1993) methodically painting undead Warhammer miniatures.
As others have mentioned, I too loved eyeballing the artwork in various RPG manuals – did anyone have Out of The Pit, the bestiary for Fighting Fantasy? That was incredible, with a cover by Christos Achilleos.
I only played D&D very briefly in the mid-nineties. My favorite thing was painting my character. I had a lady elf of some kind and I remember all the detail I painted on such a tiny figure. I have absolutely NO idea what happened to it. We were just talking about it a couple weeks ago. My cousin's husband is trying to get my boyfriend and me to join his group.