Welcome to the 25mm Crabby Crab Sculpting Page

So there I was minding my own business when I received the following message via my membership of The Miniatures Page website.

"Hey Germy, I was wondering if I could commission you to do a single sculpt--a cranky hermit crab, in your inimitable Germish style. I had in mind a 28mm figure for something about the size of a small dog, with a skull for his shell."

Now how could I possibly refuse a request like that. So first off was to do a search for pictures of Hermit crabs to see what they actually looked like. I found lots of pictures but since a Hermit crab has quite a lot of it's boby in whatever it chooses for a shell I wouldn't need to sculpt a whole crab. Plus this was for a Pirate game and intended as a semi-funny piece I had some artistic license to create something of my own.


Pic 1

First up I made a couple of skulls and chose the best one for the crabs shell. A simple wire armature later and I was all set. Pic 1 shows that although the crab has more than four legs the rest are normally tucked into the shell. As part of the armature I included a piece for the two claws. I stuck the skull to the armature with superglue so that I could better visualise creating the rest of the crab.


Pic 2

Next up I added to the body of the crab and created the two claws. This was fairly easy to do and I made bothe claws open to give the crab more of a dramatic pose. In further correspondence with the client I discovered that in the game it was for it would surprise those playing the Pirates and prove to be a dangerous foe.


Pic 3

I quote "Make him both cute and crabby. I want players to underestimate him right before he lops off their toes with a fiddle claw pinch! Buahahaha!"

So with one of the other skulls I put one on a base to represent the sleeping (or hiding) crab. You can see this in Pic 3.


Pic 4

Next up I started work on the legs. Again these were simple to place around the armature. What was more difficult was getting them to taper to a point and still leave enough exposed wire for me to be able to slot the ends into the miniatures base.
It was also at this point that the client pointed out that 'Male' hermit crabs had one claw much bigger than the other. They arm wrestle eachother over women or something :)
So I removed one of the claws keeping the armature intact and sculpted a new large claw back on. You can see the new claw in Pic 4.


Pic 5

The last piece of detail was to add the eyes. For this I rolled up some putty into little balls and let it cure. I then added a bit more putty to the body of the crab and pushed the eyes into it. And there we go. One Crabby Hermit Crab with a Skull for a shell and a mean disposition towards Pirates!


Pic 6

And here we have the crab himself in action. Pic 6 and 7 are from the actual game Pete Murray comissioned the miniature for. Apparently it was at this point the crab took his first victim.


Pic 7

A picture of the gameboard used by Pete. Very impressive I thought.

Jeremey (AKA Germ)