The Yithian from 'The Shadow Out Of Time'

The Yithian is a strange creature created by the mind of H.P Lovecraft and though I find it to be one of the more interesting of his creations, it unfortunately only appeared once in HPL's collection of stories, namely 'The Shadow Out Of Time', a personal favorite.

But I digress. The Yithians were a race of creatures that existed millions of years ago during Earth's Precambrian period. I won't got into much detail here but they had the ability to project their minds into beings (either in the past or future) that existed at those times and cull the knowledge from whatever culture they inhabited. Coincidentally, the displaced being's mind would be transferred into it's Yithian counterpart and would be encouraged to record their knowledge in the vast Yithian libraries. Here's a link to learn more about these curious creatures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Race_of_Yith

As for the build, this is NOT a kit but my take on how these creatures looked based on Lovecraft's description of them. There are many versions out there but the basic form is that of a ten foot tall fleshy cone with four appendages, two of which terminated in claws, one with four trumpet like features and the last with a tentacled globe with three eyes and flower like stalks above.

The basic form was set by a Styrofoam cone I picked up at the crafts store which I built up with a layer of Sculptamold. Before I added the Sculptamold, I inserted a roughly one foot length of heavy wire into and through the cone's mid section to act as an armature for the Yothian's clawed appendages. Two more shorter pieces were inserted at the cone's apex to act as the armatures for the trumpet and eye features.

I printed up a set of claws on my 3D printer downloaded from the internet and resized them to fit the scale of the Yithian. I decided to got with three claw parts per 'hand' to break a little from traditional representations of this feature. I made the eye globe with two part epoxy clay, making up a ball a bit smaller than a golf ball. I drilled three holes in the globe to accommodate it's eyes which were doll eyes I had in my eye stash. I made up seven tentacles from epoxy clay and attached them to the underside of the eye globe and finished up with four rather fragile features made from aquarium plants which were mounted on the globe's upper surface.

The general description of a Yithian is that it was a rugose (meaning corrugated or wrinkled) cone but I went with a scaly version by adding ¼ to ½ inch buttons of two part epoxy clay over the main body with broader vertical features on the front and rear.'

The four appendages were built up with the two part epoxy clay and, once cured, were wrapped in yarn to suggest a flexible structure. I then applied several coats of PVA glue to subtly smooth out the yarn to create a skin.

Finally, came the most difficult part which was what colors to paint this damned thing? Google provided many color pallets from which I could have borrowed but I decided to go with an overall reddish orange look for the main body and variations of the same for the appendages. The only color that is true to HPL's description is the yellow eye globe.

Since the Yithian's mode of movement was like that of a snail, I borrowed from Nature and went with a sand color for the base and moved up to a dark brown by speckle painting both colors for a transitional effect.

The base is simply an odd shaped piece of 1 inch thick foam insulation that I grooved randomly with odd angles to suggest mortar joints. I applied a dark green paint from a rattle can (be sure to seal the foam first since some solvent based paint will actually melt the foam!) and then I hand drew light gray veins to suggest a marble like surface. Once the marbling application had dried, I lightly misted it again with the dark green which resulted in a very pleasing effect. Finally, I used a gold acrylic to represent a mortar made of gold to suggest an alien mindset. The completed figue with the base stands about 13 inches tall. 4/26/17

This brief video of the Yithian display has NO sound track