Rodents of Unusual Stench

Welcome back once again, to the blog with the unsolicited advice and the very questionable minis.  Yeah, there's just the one.  This post is going to involve what is obviously my favorite crafting material at this point: hot glue.  It just works for everything in my eyes.  It's the perfect craft item.  And it's super cheap!

I'll get right to it with this one because it's fairly straightforward.  My players went to a sewer.  A sewer dimension really.  Sewers have rats.  I needed a rat.  But not a good ol' adorable sewer rat.  I needed a dire rat. A big, gross, nasty, slimy, pokey, all-american dire rat. I needed this thing:

  Yech.  I made this and I'm still pretty grossed out.  But it's also kinda cute?  But that’s coming from someone who’s had many rats as pets.  Tiny good bois.  Either way, you can have a functional dire rat to toss at your party.  Need a bunch of them?  No problem, this was super quick to make since it's almost entirely one ingredient.  If I had to guess you could crank out half a dozen of these in an afternoon.

All you'll need for this one:

• hot glue
• toothpicks
• something for ears (scrap plastic, cut Popsicle sticks, foam, whatever)
• paint and sealer
• whatever you use for a base

  Hardly anything.  You're basically going to sculpt this rat out of hot glue.  First find or make your base.  With mine I was really pressed for time and ended up just using Popsicle sticks.  I cut them to "large" size which is 2" x 2" on a grid.  I don't recommend this.  It worked okay, but it's not as clean and harder to make the mini sit perfectly flat.  Now the hot glue.  Start with a smaller blob, let it cool, rinse and repeat (don't actually rinse.)  You'll build up the body layer by layer.  Then the same technique adds the head, legs and tail.  It might take some practice but hot glue is forgiving (just melt it again with the gun) and soon you can churn out a small army of these.

  Attach your ears, use the tips of toothpicks for fangs as well as any of the telltale dire beast spikes, and you're basically done.  Paint it up however you'd like.  I personally used a glossy sealer to make it seem extra wet and slimy.  An hour later my players murdered my creation.  Anyway, enjoy your new pet!

Hi.