Rising Sun - more monsters!

hi all

First of all, i'm really sorry for the continual postings about this game. But, in my defence it is a good one and it is (sort of)a miniatures game.

Secondly, before I forget, my board games group are hosting our 5th convention - Uncon 5.0 on the 6th and 7th of April.  With over 300 unique tickets sold in November, up from last April, the event is getting bigger and bigger and I cannot wait for this one.  I will be hosting 3x games this time around - "Blood, Sweat & Horses" my chariot racing game, "Rising Sun" hence all the love and frantic painting of miniatures and "Rise of the Kage" a GCT Studios board game that I have made a rather splendid (if I do say so myself) 3d board for.  Those of you who subscribe to my YouTube channel will have seen the build and the finished article...

If not, why not? ahhhh here's the link anyway - https://youtu.be/VP1qok2v6t8

Anyway, along with the "Daimyo Invasion" expansion, I also bought the "Monsters Pack" expansion.  This gave us 4 more monsters to add to those in the base game.  The first of which is this one...

The Jinmenju - aka creepy face tree 

As has been my want during this series of posts, I have made lazy, cursory searches through Japanese Folklore and posted them directly here...

Jinmenju (人面樹, Jinmenju) is a strange tree with human faced fruits called jinmenshi, human-faced child. The tree is said to be found in remote valleys from the south of Japan and China.

According to the Edo period Hyakka Jiten encyclopedia Wakan Sansai Zue (和漢三才図会; A Collection of Pictures of Heaven, Earth, and Man from China and Japan), the Jinmenju trees are found in the south, and the fruit of the tree is called the jinmenshi, or human-faced child. They ripen in the fall, and if you eat the fruit they have a sweet/sour taste. It is said that the Jinmenju seed also has a human face, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

In the past however, it was said that people planted great orchards of the laughing Jinmenju.

The legend of the Jinmenju comes from China, and was passed onto Japan where it was considered to be a yokai due to its peculiar nature. There are also stories of trees bearing human-faced fruit from India and Persia, usually with the faces of beautiful girls. Even now, when you walk through the forest you can see trees whose roots bear a resemblance to human and yokai faces.

Toriyama Sekien included the Jinmenju in his collection Konjyaku Hyakki Shui (今昔百鬼拾遺; Supplement to The Hundred Demons from the Present and the Past). All Jinmenju stories have their origin in a Chinese book Sansai Zue (三才図会; A Collection of Pictures of Heaven, Earth, and Man).

so here it is...

the paint job is remarkably simple and deliberately so with layers of brown and grey, for the "woody" parts.  I included the faces "hair" in the woody scheme for ease as well as to blend the branches and the fruits together.  The faces were given a coat of Vallejo - dead flesh and shaded with purple and green washes.  I also used some of the green wash to create "mossy" areas.

Next up is the Oni of Plagues.

Now I've kind of exhausted my Wiki links for Onis and other cursory searches repeat the information I've already used so...

lots of white and grey for this monster, so I wasn't sure how he would turn out, but actually it wasn't too bad in the end.  A lovely sculpt, I tried to bring out the detail without making it too fiddly, foregoing the artwork where it showed the patterns on the arms picked out in gold but more or less picking out the rest.  In the end he looks fairly striking!

two down, two more to go!
hope you enjoy
dGG