D & D Monsters: The Rust Monster

Continuing with my collaborative video project with John Hankins, next up is this critter, which is really one of my favourite monsters in the world: The so-ugly-it's-cute rust monster. This creature will strike at your weapons or armour, making them corrode instantly so the monster can feast on the rusted remains.

The image to the left is the rust monster I grew up with; the illustration from the legendary 1977 "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual", complete with wacky propeller at the tip of its tail. The one to the right is the more recent, anatomically believable concept, perfect for a movie creature. Which is why I'm not using it. I'm going with the original version, and am making very few excuses for its cartoonishness when building the puppet.

D & D also released a line of hard plastic miniature monsters, of which I have a few since childhood. Among these is the rust monster. I had it sitting on a shelf next to me while building the rust monster puppet, mainly as inspiration rather than an exact guide.

I sculpted the main body in Monster Clay. This would become a shell cast in two pieces, under which the limbs would be attached. The eyes are plastic albino mammal eyes bought from a taxidermist supply shop.

Here are the two main body pieces cast in latex with a latex/cotton reinforcement. You can see some of the cotton sticking out from under the belly piece.

To add extra sturdiness to the shell parts I mixed the extremely fast-setting OOMOO plastic from Smooth-On, and poured it into the latex skins, creating a very hard interior, but keeping a leathery exterior.
The antenna are aluminum wires wrapped in soft cotton string, and dabbed with tinted latex. I use liquid universal tinting colours to dye my latex. They're a bit pricey, but last forever, as you only need a drop for each batch of latex. The eyes are glued in place with flexible super glue.

I already had an old plaster mould for a wrinkled, muscular tail or tentacle, made for a previous project. I covered a bit of aluminum wire with soft string, soaked that in latex, and pressed it into the plaster mould. I wrapped the latex skin around the tail, and used liquid latex to cover up the seam. The tail propeller (or whatever it's supposed to be) is a piece of cardboard covered in latex.

The limbs are starting to grow out of the rust monster. They're all attached to the plastic inside shell using Friendly Plastic thermoplastic. I've also added a jointed lower jaw with two latex tusks.

Using small bits of soft polyurethane foam the muscles are built up over the legs with flexible Casco contact cement, and then covered with latex skins. The legs are given a thin coat of tinted latex.

Finally, a thin layer of PAX paint (acrylic tube paint and ProsAide No-Tack make-uo glue) is sponged on. This creates a very good surface for Liquitex acrylic airbrush paints. A thin coat of transparent acrylic primer goes on lastly.

And here's the finished rust monster on my animation stage. I'm hoping he'll be a treat to animate!

A Photoshop mash-up of John as the intrepid questing hero, who is apparently unaware that swords and rust monsters are a bad combo!