How I made the Grell

The process took a couple of weeks to make the Grell with most of the time waiting for bits to dry overnight.

Tools :

• Magnifier Lamp  - so I can get a good look at what I'm doing on the figure 
• Sculpting Tools - to push greenstuff around. 
• Gardening Wire - got this from the local hardware store. It's 1mm thick or possibly less.
• Greenstuff - blue/yellow epoxy, kneadatite
• Glue Gun - mainly to glue the wire to the stand so it didn't flop around
• plastic 25x25mm square base - you can use whatever base you want.

Process :

1. The base - I drilled a hole in a 25x25mm base with my pin vice and stuck a roughy 1 inch long piece of gardening wire into the hole just deep enough so that the base sat flush on the table. I glued it in place under the base with some hot glue. I used hot glue as it sets pretty quick.
2. The body - I put a blob of greenstuff on the top of the wire slightly smaller than I want the brain shape to be and shaped it into a roughly brain shape.
3. Tentacles -  I rolled some greenstuff into a long thin sausage with my finger (a bit less than 1mm?) and cut off about a 15-20mm length. I squashed the end of the sausage on low on one side of the brain shape and then grabbed the other end of the sausage gingerly with my fingers and twisted and looped it until it looked all tetaclely. 
4. I propped the figure against a cup at an angle so that when the tentacle drooped back under its own weight it dried at a funny angle helping it to look like it was lifting its tentacles menacingly. I guess you could also try using bluetack to prop it at whatever angle you like. I left the tentacle to dry.
5. I repeated steps 3 and 4 four more times down one side of the brain, sometimes propping it sideways or backwards against something to vary how the tentacles hung.
6. I repeated 3-5 on the other side of the figure until I had a total of ten tentacles, 5 each side.
7. The body cont. - I rolled some greenstuff into a *very* fine sausage and then cut of roughly 1 inch lengths and using a sculpting tool, attached the sausage to the brain shape, making sure to make a squiggly pattern. I made sure I didn't go over the centre line of the brain shape so that I left a slight gap between left and right hemispheres. I left each section to dry before I continued so that I didn't ruin the pattern by squashing it with my fingers.
8. I repeated step 7 until the brain was covered in squiggly bits and a slight gap between, running from the back to the front and down the middle.
9. The beak. - I squashed some greenstuff to the front of the brain and low down, and shaped that with a sculpting tool into the shape of the lower beak. I made this relatively small as I wanted the upper beak to overhang. I left this to dry.
10. I squashed a larger bit of greenstuff above the lower beak and shaped that with my sculpting tool until it looked beaky enough. I left that to dry.

Now to paint them :-)

Standing on the Corner watching all the Grells go by...

So I made some Grell (or is it Grells?) out of Greenstuff because they're Great. And I didn't have any and I like the idea of them.

The Grell are done as far as I'm concerned. Just need to get around to painting and basing them. The bases are 25mm square so they're a reasonable size. I guess I'll just paint suckers on the tentacles or whatever. I'm not keen on the spiky bits on the ends of the tentacles in the latest D&D monster manual. Doesn't look right to me - and hard to reproduce at this scale with out being flimsy or bulky :-)