Dire Piggy

Welcome back to my semi-regular and semi-talented blog.  This time around we're doing a simple monster for your simple DnD players-  a dire boar.  Normally encountered at lower levels, they can do some serious damage to an unprepared party.  If not brought down early they can grow to ridiculous sizes and challenge a higher level party.  They're also easy to make, so you can stampede your PCs to death.  

That's a big'un alright.  Super simple too, since most dollar stores (at least as far as I know) sell bags of toy farm animals.  I've seen them have a large variety of random farm animals of all kinds and sizes.  Normally they get cut up and used for pieces in my builds but in this case we're just using the whole pig.

What you'll need:

• a pig (duh)
• toothpicks
• a cotton ball or pom-pom
• scissors
• dollar store super glue
• dollar store paints
• a decent primer and sealer (optional)
• dollar store craft knife
• basing material

I recommend a primer since the cheap paints don't like to stick to the type of plastic that the cheap toys are made out of. I'm not sure why, maybe it's the cheap paints.  But any old primer will do.  Also, as always, WASH THE TOYS FIRST with soap and water.  I keep repeating this for my own sake as well as yours.

First things first, take off any obvious mold lines with your knife,  The cheap toys sometimes have very large, obvious lines.  Next, super glue some pieces of toothpick to the face for tusks, as well as any other protruding spikes depending on how you want your dire creatures to look.  In some worlds dire creatures have jutting bone all over their bodies.  Others, not so much.

Next cut the cotton in half and superglue it to the boar's back for a mane.  Once it dries you should be able to pull the loose pieces off until it looks less poofy and more like actual fur.  This is annoying and messy but the more thorough you are, the better it will look in the end.  Now whip put your shears and cut and style to desired shape.

Pick a boring boar color like grey or brown and go to town painting it up.  Drybrushing can actually bring out some impressive detail in some of these cheap toys, but that's all up to your personal preference and painting skill.  That's pretty much it.  Prime and paint, stick it on a base, proceed to gore your party.  I used a large base size, that's 2"x2" on a grid (please ignore the glue I still need to clean up) for a massive monster.  Enjoy!

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