Title: The Summoning Date created: January, 2016 Description: Deep in the pit of a hidden cavern, five Priests of the Black Flame have just finished a ritual to summon and bind a dark force from the underworld. Each priest stands on a "pulpit" or platform and a single black needle shaped obelisk rises from the platform representing The Black Flame of their order. The platforms are arranged at the points of a pentegram that may have been traced in blood. At the base of the platform at each of the pentegram's vertices, is a large black tile on which a symbol has been drawn (in blood?). At the key vertex in the pentegram is the High Priest who has a Black Flame on either side of him instead of just one flame. Each of the platforms have steps rising to the top. It appears that an animal was sacrificed as part of the ritual. Notes: Created using a baked clay floor (Sculpey). Scale is N and HO (the priests are N scale and the devil is HO scale). Base is 9.6 cm x 9.6 cm. This piece was designed for the softball sized display cube (9.6 cm x 9.6 cm x 9.6 cm). This is the initial layout. The clay is still soft in this image. Originally I had thought to have each tile be occupied by a priest. The colors and scaling and didn't seem to work though so I kept trying... Here the base has been baked and I started working on giving each priest a pulpit from which they could work their craft. I wanted the tiles at the base of each pulpit to have some kind of greater significance so I tried all kinds of things. In this image you can see that each priests stands above some kind of energy sphere (or something). You can also see in this picture that the "black flames" have been glued into place. I finally realized that I did not like the color of the tiles in this setting so I painted the tiles black. You may noticed that the priests have yet to be glued into place. In this image they are being held in place with small amounts of clay. Another attempt at giving the tiles a greater significance in the scene. Also note that the devil and the priests still have yet to be made permanent. The final scene. The symbols on the tiles seemed to work best. The addition of the animal (an HO scale pig) helped make the scene a little creepier. Backview of the final piece. Copyright (C) 2016, Thomas Vaughn.