My friend Steve wanted a gorilla lich mini for a special Pathfinder Society module he is running at MACE West this weekend and he originally gave me a gorilla figurine he got from a craft store to alter. After staring at the gorilla and being too scared to cut into it, I decided to get out the Sculpy and armature wire and give a go at making it from scratch.
As per usual, I didn’t get pictures of the whole process but here are a few making of’s:
I started with an very basic armature that basically serves as the gorilla’s skeleton. A spine, hips/legs, shoulders/arms and an oval for the skull. I wrapped extra wire around the joints and down spine to make the chest part more substantial.. Then I put a thickish layer of Sculpy around everything. I didn’t want it to be too thick because I knew I wanted some bones showing through in the final product. I shaped an actual skull too for the same reason. I baked the clay before moving on to set what I had done before adding the next level of detail. Baking it in layers like this also helps the clay to bake thoroughly.
I started applying more sculpy layers, acting like I was adding skin but left parts off, added holes, gave him pecs, and scrapped up some fur with the pointy end of my sculpting tool. Baked him up again and started the paint.
For the base, Steve had given me a plexiglass disk he had cut out, but I didn’t want to leave it clear, so I piled some sculpy on, baked it and painted it to hopefully look something like the cave floor of his lair. I really wanted to put a nice 1d3 Creations sticker on the bottom but my printer decided it didn’t want to print blue today, even though there’s plenty in there.
In the end, I wish I had done a few things different. First of all, he needs more woundage. That back is awfully in tact for an undead. Second, I think I needed to make his head a little higher, right now he looks a little too hunched making it harder to see his face when he’s on a table. Third, I think a fiercer stance might have been cool too. Overall I feel pretty damn good about him though, especially considering he’s my first real sculpt. Hope you like him too!
1d3 creations 
When you’re doing something like an undead version of a regular animal, it’s pretty easy to take that craft store animal (it’s kind of a rubbery PVC, right?) and use an X-acto knife to carve away parts of his body, then use green stuff to insert exposed bones and muscles in the holes, then created ragged edges around the wound. It’s a lot quicker than making the whole animal from scratch. That said, this looks good, especially the paint job.
lol. I know it would have been easier, but for some emotional reason I didn’t want to “ruin” Steve’s figurine. 🙂 Thanks for liking it!