Otyugh 2.0

I really like the first Otyugh I did a while ago, but with all the different wooden pieces glued together to make the arms, I have been feeling that it might be a bit on the brittle side and not be able to stand up to being transported and used in some game location other than my basement where it "lives."  So I decided to give another go at making a more sturdy Otyugh.

I will admit it, unlike Dale and some of the really good fantasy rpg crafters out there like DM Scotty or DMG, I suck at using a hot glue gun.  I find it messy, I can't control it, and the style of product it produces in my hands anyway is not as neat and "clean" as I like in a crafted figure.  But, the one point that I cannot argue is that when used in large quantities more like as a sculpting medium, hot glue figures are very strong and durable.  The Otyugh is sort of a "blob" of a monster, so I thought it would be the perfect figure to try to do a hot glue inspired version of.  Here is the end result.

I painted him and posed him more or less like the first one I did.  I also used exactly the same pieces as I did before, except I used more beads on the arms rather than the plugs.  But essentially wooden construction wise, this figure is identical to the first figure with lots of wooden bits glued onto the large lady bug precut wooden shape serving as the body and head.  But as you can see, after gluing all the normal beads and such to make the arms and everything with white glue, I went back over the whole figure with hot glue to make the creases in the skin and to strengthen the arms, sort of like what I did with the tentacles for the Lord of the Rings project about a month back.  After the hot glue dried, this figure is quite strong and I am sure very durable.  I even used the hot glue to strengthen the toothpick spines and the tile spacer "teeth" on the two arms.

Here it is from a couple of other angles.

It isn't as "neat" looking as my other figures, but it is far, far sturdier than the original version of the Otyugh I did a while ago.  I also put this guy on a larger circular base so that it would be even less likely that during play it will bang up against other figures.  All in all, I'm pretty happy with it.