Classic Monsters: The Phantasm (Death Shroud, 02546)

[Rigel]

The Phantasm. This figure invokes all kinds of dread. Unlike a ghost, which is understandable to the extent it is an echo of a human personality, this thing is just plain SPOOKY. Monstruum horrendum, informe, ingens. Logic won't help you, interpersonal skills won't save you, instinct will be actively harmful. An Outside Context Problem, unnatural in every sense.

The Death Shroud here, 02546, is an excellent example of the use of negative space.
The sculpt reminds me greatly of the magnificent M. R. James ghost story, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad." 

"There was something about its motion which made Parkins very unwilling to see it at close quarters."



"It would stop, raise arms, bow itself towards the sand, then run stooping across the beach to the water-edge and back again; and then, rising upright, once more continue its course forward at a speed that was startling and terrifying...


"Now it began to move, in a stooping posture, and all at once the spectator realized...that it must be blind, for it seemed to feel about it with its muffled arms in a groping and random fashion..."


"...what he chiefly remembers about it is a horrible, an *intensely* horrible, face of crumpled linen."

[Glitterwolf]

Good story!

Well done, simple but effective!

[Rigel]

Thank you! I'd love to be able to take credit for the story, but it's all quotes from Montague Rhodes James, a man who truly knew how to do ghost stories.

[Pochi]

I like that little bit of red on the raised places. Very creepy. You kept it dark and foreboding but also gave it that little bit of color that draws the eye.

[Peithetairos]

On 10/21/2019 at 11:55 PM, Pochi said:

I like that little bit of red on the raised places. Very creepy. You kept it dark and foreboding but also gave it that little bit of color that draws the eye.

I second this. It makes a good paint job into an excellent one.