October 27, 2014

scary goblin ice sculpture design from Ron Meyn

this is not Spiderman’s Green Goblin, that’s for sure. Too many muscles!

updated 7/11/23 with seo tweaks mostly. btw, previously, this was just “goblin design from Ron Meyn.” Trying for better seo dictates that I make the title more “emotional” and make sure you read over and over that it’s a goblin ice sculpture for the keyword. Might change it again later 😉

Ron Meyn's goblin ice sculpture design

As we near Halloween, I thought it would be a great time to share a creepy goblin ice sculpture design that Ron Meyn (of Millennium Ice in California) shared with me recently. Ron is very open about sharing his ice sculpting knowledge. There is another one of his designs on the site: his peacock on a column.

Back to the goblin, he carved it in 2013 around Halloween for a party. Even though, according to him, he had to rush it a bit at the end, it still turned out pretty awesome because he put the time into the design work. In his case, he used about a block and half of ice and used his CNC to help with the initial cuts.

To get the oversized goblin out of a 20” wide block of ice, he welded extra chunks of ice on to either side of the sculpture to widen it and make room for the goblin’s burly arms. He also welded another piece of ice on for the head, which is important because the figure is facing forward.

Ideally, when you carve a figure in ice, you want to carve its head in profile so that the facial features are easy for the viewer to immediately distinguish. When you carve a figure that’s facing forward, it’s often difficult to immediately recognize the facial features since they are often easily lost in the silhouette of the sculpture. However, Ron has pretty much solved this problem by adding the goblin’s head instead of trying to carve it from the original block. As the viewer moves around the sculpture, the head and face stand out because of the added ice.

Obviously, you can’t use this trick for every figure, but it works particularly well for the goblin, which you would expect to have a thick neck and hunched posture anyway. (Well, you’d expect it if you’re a fan of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, anyway. More on that below.)

Ron’s goblin ice sculpture design depicts a heavily muscled goblin wearing rags and a nasty expression.

goblin vs. orc vs. ogre

Now you might think that this goblin got ahold of some serious steroids: way too muscular and intimidating for a goblin! If you think that, then you might be going with the pre-LOTR goblin definition, which often paints goblins as nefarious elvish types. However, since J.R.R. Tolkien is frequently considered the last word when fantasy-creature-controversies erupt, I’d be inclined to go with his point of view.

From what I can tell, Tolkien basically decided, sometime before The Lord of the Rings, that goblins and orcs were the same thing. This may not have always been the case; apparently he had them as separate creatures for a while, but then changed his mind. Since I can’t ask him, I’ll go with his last word. And besides, now you’re getting two ice sculpture designs for the price of one: a goblin AND an orc.

As for ogres, you might notice a certain similarity, especially in the top photo, to a DreamWorks ogre character voiced by Michael Myers. Aside from the green lighting, the main reason for this is that you can only see the sculpture in photos.

What looks like Shrekish ears are actually the sides of the goblin’s ragged collar. Shrek’s ears are those weird stalked, suction cup-looking things anyway. If you were able to move around the sculpture and look at it, you’d see that those definitely aren’t ears, again largely because Ron welded on the head piece.

That said, this design probably could pass as an ogre too. But here I mean the classic version; the kind that would more likely eat a donkey than make friends with it. Ogres are generally described as ugly, nasty giants. The monster Grendel, from the classic poem Beowulf, is sometimes described as an ogre.

you can see right away that the goblin’s head really stands out because it’s welded on.

since he was able to use the CNC to cut the the silhouette and various lines into the ice, Ron is able to quickly carve out his goblin.

some sculpting tips for the goblin

I have not sculpted this piece myself, but several things come to mind as I look at Ron’s drawings and photos. To start with, use the aluminum welding technique to get the best welds that you can for the arms and head. The head weld is hardly visible, but you definitely don’t want that to fall off. (Or maybe you would, since it’s Halloween?) You want very clean welds for the arms so that the weld lines are hardly visible when the sculpture tempers. (Look at the final green-lit photo. They’re hardly visible there.)

I’d also think that you’d want to leave the fingers attached to the main body of the sculpture, at least until the sculpture is all set up. That makes it much harder to break the arms while you’re moving the sculpture around. It’s very easy to cut them free with a small handsaw after the sculpture is in place. It looks like Ron left them attached, but either way.

And here’s a tip that I’ve learned the hard way. Please be OH so careful that you make his hanging loincloth look like fabric. Getting this right could be the most important thing that you do with this piece. If there’s any question as to whether it’s something other than a loincloth…well, just try it and see what happens.

Finally, a couple of other tips. You might have noticed that there’s no base on the goblin in two of the photos, but then suddenly there is. Ron added the base. I decided to incorporate the base into the overall design because is simplifies things. But if you want to add an additional base for stability, that’s also a good idea.

Also, Ron was nice enough to include a side view of the goblin’s head, which gives some idea as to how it’s connected to the body. Again, since I haven’t sculpted this piece, I can’t say how well the side view works out (We don’t have a picture from the side either.), but it looks like a pretty good approach and it offers some guidance on the goblin’s profile.

Ron’s goblin ice sculpture is all done, sitting in the freezer

Ron was also nice enough to include a backside view of his goblin with nice extra details.

a big ice sculpture means more templates

If you’re going to try to create this goblin ice sculpture by hand, you’ll have a fair number of templates to create. As mentioned before, you’re looking at one full block plus the extra ice for the arms and the head. I like using scrap ice for this sort of thing, rather than cutting into a fresh block.