Making tiny skulls

These tiny skulls are fairly easy to make and have many uses in my D&D game. I've used them to make a flameskull, convert minis into skeletons, decorate bloodstained altars, and provide some atmosphere in lairs. I start with white polymer clay. It's cheap and available at any craft store and most big box stores. The only tools I use for sculpting these skulls are a flat-head sewing pin, a pinch of poster adhesive putty, and a wine cork. Full instructions with pictures are below the break. 

Klarg the Bugbear

With a slight modification of the goblin instructions, I also built the boss for the first chapter of Lost Mine of Phandelver, the bugbear Klarg. I made the head similar to the go
blin heads, but bigger, and in a teardrop shape rather than a sphere. I cut off the narrow end of the teardrop before baking to make the flattened face of the bugbear.

I made the body and neck as described in the previous instructions, then cut two pieces of pipe cleaner and formed each into a U-shape. I used hot glue to affix both to the back and sides of the body. I cut down the upper pipe cleaner to form the arms, then added hands made from dabs of hot glue and glued on a club made from a broken wooden skewer. I bent the longer bottom pipecleaner section forward then down and made legs and feet. I lightly painted the pipecleaners brown and the body in a black leather.

I added a black kilt/loincloth to cover the odd joining of the legs with the body, making it out of paper mache like the cape. The cape itself I made a bit larger than the goblin capes. I used a 1.5-in washer for the base and again glued down sawdust, then painted it black with a tan drybrush overcoat to simulate a straw-covered floor.

Goblins!

To start my Lost Mines adventure, I need plenty of goblins, and I needed to make them cheaply. I took inspiration from the simple lines of the goblins in the D&D comic Order of the Stick. The red-cloaked lieutenant is also inspired by the same comic.

I bought a box of wooden pushpins in the office supplies aisle of my local grocery store for under $3. Plastic pushpins could be okay, but may be more difficult to work with. A standard pushpin has a dome-shaped protrusion near the pin, a cylindrical shaft, and a smaller reversed dome at the end away from the pin. For our model, the pin will form the neck, the large protrusion will form the shoulders, the shaft will form the torso, and the small protrusion will form the feet.

The head will be made from clay, but sculpting tools are not needed for this model. We'll use papier-mâché to make the cloak. The base is a disc about the size of a U.S. penny. The cheapest discs I could find cost over 1 cent, so I just used a penny.

Instructions

Supplies:
Map-style pushpin (I used wooden pushpins)
Polymer clay
Wood file or whittling knife
Wire cutter
Paper bag or any paper
Scissors
White glue
Superglue
A penny or similar-sized disc
Acrylic paint and fine paintbrush

1. Take a pushpin and cut off all but 2-3 mm of the pin using a wire cutter. Using a knife or wood file, cut down the larger protrusion around the pin on two parallel sides until it is even with the shaft of the pin. The cut sides will be the chest and back; the uncut sides will be the shoulders. On the sides not cut, cut or file down the smaller protrusions even with the shaft, leaving the protrusion to front to form the feet.
2. Form the head out of a tiny ball of clay. Look at another miniature to gauge the size of a head. Put the head down on the neck to form the neck-hole, then reshape the head to your preference. With a separate piece of clay, flatten and cut our two
   
   tiny triangles to form the ears. Press the triangles to the side and back of the head. Remove the head from the pin and bake according to the package directions to harden. Sand down any seams where the ears meet the head.
3. Paint the body and head. I went with brown for the body, green for the feet and head. I used two different shades of green to distinguish different goblins.
4. Superglue the body to the base. If you use a penny as the base, add extra superglue to cover the raised engravings on the penny, then sprinkle baking soda, salt, fine sand, or sawdust on the superglue to give it a rough texture. Paint the base a ground color.
5. On a paper bag or piece of paper, draw a circle about 1.25 in (3 cm) in diameter. I traced a plastic soda cap as my template. Draw a dot in the center. Draw a pie
   
   piece of about 1/4th of the circle. Poke the pin part of your pushpin through the center dot. Draw a line where the chest of your pushpin figure intersects the pie piece. Cut out the pie piece up to the tip where you drew this line.
6. Make a thin paste of 2 parts white glue and 1 part water. Dip your paper cloak into the paste and then arrange over the body with a toothpick. Make folds with the front of the cloak to suggest arms under the cloak. 
7. Add a dot of superglue to the pin and put the head onto the body. Draw a face on the goblin with a fine brush or a  extra-fine tipped Sharpie and white-out.
8. Optional: Use spray polyurethane in a flat finish to coat the figure in a protective layer.