Tauster's Casting Show

[erho]

Dire Gelatinous Cube!!

[The Brave]

Very cool cube.

[tauster]

I've become a fanboy of sunflowers.

There you have it. Confessions of a crafter.

No, seriously: When I sow or plant something, it either has to be edible or healthy, or repel insects. 'Just flowers' had a hard time getting space in my garden. Until this year I decided I wanted to have some sun flowers. And boy are those buggers cool!

Here's one batch dated 25th of june:

And that's what happened previous saturday. That's 47 days later.

...and then there was our sun flower queen, a plant that simply appeared in my boy's raised bed. The flower was almost 20cm in diameter, and we had to harvest it today because 1/3 of the seeds were already gone.

We'll have a little army of these giants next year, but what's more important to us crafters was how cool the back of the flower looked:

What a beautiful organic structure. Giant mushrooms, weird tech artifacts... the possibilities are endless. So I made one of my largest molds ever:

I hope I got the mixture right, but just to be sure, I slathered it with a layer of pure silicone on top, to avoid any holes in the mold. That way I might be able to pour epoxy resin in and make a lamp, which is one of the reasons I made this thingie. Not sure I really sink that much money in that project - I guess that would be 20-30€ just for the resin - but I'd love to do so. But even if it's only hotglue or some other cheaper material it's OK.

[tauster]

'nother quick project that took only two short crafting sessions so far: The first piece for my planned-for-years Battle of Bones terrain set.

Started by making a mold of a pair of (yes, identical) bone crunch plates. I couldn't get rid of the ridge in the middle, but that can be solved easily later.

I made a hotglue casting by pressing the mold in a box smaller than the mold itself so it curved upwards, and glued the hill on. The open end was covered by two of my fist-made bones (I'll ad a link to how they were done later). The ridge got covered with a giant spine (cast in a mold made from a cheap plastic spine key fob). A few self-cast skulls were added here and there for more realistic looks.

 

PVA glue over the edges, some pebbles and sand between the bones.

Blackbomed and drybrushed white, as per @deadnala's method, to get a first idea of the general look. Pretty good so far.

Basepainted with two different browns, watered down, and a beige/yellow/grey on the larger structures. 

Two layers of drybrushing over all bones, first a light beige, then white with a tad of the beige mixed in:

 

[tauster]

Forgot to share the finished sun flower mold...

The biggest mold I ever made. I'm out of my usual resin but researching for a new type (ecopoxy - anyone heard of it or used it?) so this will have to wait for a while.

But that doesn't mean a crafting break. There's tons of other projects happily running along, getting pushed back by newcomers or old ones that are done with waiting.

Here's something I made already some years ago but never used it in an actual project. Which didn't stop me from making a twin, with no real clue what to do with it.

A dungeon tile silicone mold, squeezed in a container to give it a curve. You can get those dirt cheap on ebay, and you'll be having a hard time finding something that will give you more crafting bang for your buck. Whether you're making giant turtle carapaces or hotglue dungeon tiles (just fill the mold with glue, wait a few minutes to let it harden and paint. Make complete sqares or smaller ones for corridors. You can do a large stack in one evening. You don't even have to glue them on a cardstock base you can live with the irregular underside (which wont be seen by anyone anyways).

 

The finished carapace:

I'm still lacking a reptile head that would fit, or an oddball monstrous head to surprise my players. A mostrous skull would be nice, and bone legs, so I could have a giant undead riding beast for a group of underdark natives.

...or.

I could make some more and use them as armor plates on another giant beast like the Giant Purple Worm. That would finally be some great looking belly plates, better than the hotglue ridge version of my first GPW.

So many options.

What else? I started, and am almost done, with another giant plant monster. See next posting.

[tauster]

Making giant plants seem to be a hit recently, and I felt that urge myself. Helpless to resist, I got some flower bulbs out of a pond and made silicone molds. No shots from the molds, they just look like silicone blobs anyways.

I wanted an unexpected color so I went for blues and greens/turquoise.

I had some pre-made leaves made from hotglue with silicone molds (dirt sheap china stuff from ebay, originally used for cake decoration) and painted them identical. I'll base them on giant washers, to give them weight and more important because of the hole i the center.

I added two large rings of hotglue underneath to get the washer up from the ground.

Why? because I want to place a small ball LED (see here and here) underneath to give the bulb an unnerving glow:

The washer got decorated with hotglue to make uneven ground and roots, and painted up.

I might add some little extra decoration like tiny mushrooms or a skull between the roots but I'm not sure on that. Sometimes less is more, and keeping it as generic as possible has its own charm.

[erho]

Looks prime for a 40k Death World table

[tauster]

Here's yet another plant project, started at the same time as the one shared yesterday night.

I recently made molds of some cool-looking stickies (similar to those) and one of them is a carnivorous plant. I only needed a stem, a magnetized base and some hotglue sculpting.

I stumbled over a reference in DnDPaladin 's Giant Spore Rose thread that seemed to ring a tiny little bell somewhere deep inside, in a dusty corner of my movie memory, and a quick picture search and one or two video clips later I knew exactly what colors to use - for me the hardest part of painting. So thanks a million for that 'Feed me, Seymore!' quote guys!

Inspired by the plant from the movie, I added small leaves (again, made with cheap chinese silicone molds from ebay) and roughened  up the head a bit more to give it some veins. Hadn't known before that purples and greens go together so well...

That's just the first layer of block painting with a little wet blending, both techniques I don't use too often so this is great for practising. can't wait to see those three finished, and used in game!

[update]

A first pink wash on the tentacles (probably have to do more than one) and some bright green drybrushing on the head and stem veins:

[erho]

Cant wait to 'See-more'....



I'll see myself out.

[factoriatabletop]

wow...
your abilities using castings are amazing!
...time to study this way to craft
regards!

[tauster]

Aug 29, 2018 23:18:55 GMT factoriatabletop said:

wow...
your abilities using castings are amazing!
...time to study this way to craft
regards!

Thanks for the praise, but I disagree.

This way of casting is so ridiculously simple (and cheap, too) that literally everybody can do it. There are tons of tutorials on youtube, and I have described the process in this thread several times in detail - even if there aren't so many details to write about. It takes a tiny bit of trial and error, but if you don't make some huge mistake, even your very first batch should come out a success.

On my first few castings, I waited until I had collected enough stuff to justify the effort of making a new batch of silicone-and-cornstarch mass, but I quickly realized that there is not very much effort. The largest timesaver was to wear disposable rubber gloves to keep the hands clean.

Seriously, try it. This method is one of the true gamechangers in crafting, like using a Proxxon Thermocut (or similar brand, if there is one) for working with styrofoam, or using Greenstuffworld's rolling pins to mass-produce great textures. The latter two might cost a few bucks but they aren't consumables but tools that (should) last forever, and the bucks you spend on them will not only save you tons of time but also allow you to do stuff that would be almost impossible to achive without them. Being able to quickly make very true copies of  something with cheap and durable materials (hotglue, milliput, epoxy resin) brings your craft to another level.

Btw: No, I don't get anything from greenstuffworld or proxxon. There aren't any kickbacks from producers of cornstarch, silicone, acrylic paint or baby oil. Sadly.

[factoriatabletop]

"...brings your craft to another level"
well said, i am agree! like i told you, i am going to start to study this way to craft...i saw already a couple of tutorials and you are right, not so much dificult ( speaking about the cheapest way...)

Kind regards!!

[Sam]

Cornstarch kickbacks? Does the government know about this? I am sure they will want their cut. Or, maybe you can get a subsidy.

[Draklith]

Once again Very cool creations bro, U R such a credit to this board, thx for sharing, and being cool

[tauster]

Not sure I shared this one already...

I got an anatomic human head model (about 10 cm total high)...

and made a mould of it. Then, simply squirt hotglue in, fill it completely or - much better for gross-out effects: fill it only partially. The resin version is made of leftover resin from another project. I will put a small LED under it and probably give it a drybrush to have the details pop out more.

Pop it out of the mould, add some more hotglue strings in the inside, paint. You might or might not add a wire with a strong magnet as a base to get a semi-flying head.

These beauties will be used in a 'city/cavern of living flesh' encounter where the party will meet Torog's servants. Whether it will be a combat or social encounter is up to them. Both would be fun, and having both is absolutely an option.

[tauster]

Last night I tried out some new molds, and the CCERCS (cheap chinese ebay resin color set). After a good night of sleep for me and curing for the resin it si time to unwrap them. Seing the cured castings for the first time always gives me that childhod xmas & birthday feeling, when you are unwrapping your presents.

The results are encouraging, even if some pieces didn't work out well.

Reasons were that I have mixed the two-part epoxy not thouroghly enough so that it didn't cure in some places. That can't be corrected, so those areas have to be either removed, covered or cast into fresh resin so they are covered. Also, some colors don't let the light through if too much is mixed in, so the resin becomes opaque instead of translucent. Here's a crystal that combines these two mistakes. I have cleared as much as I could with kitchen paper,  but the bumpy area is still goey with uncured resin.

 

I decided to simply stick it into another crysal with a slightly different coloring and see what happens. I filled the mold only partially and pushed the miscast crystal in until the fresh resin had risen to the top. I hope that the heat won't cause the fresh resin to bubble out through the edges. In theory that shouldn't happen, I expect much less heat because the mold was only half full.

I always have some mossy wood pieces and painted tentacles around so I can make Tentacle Cubes with leftover resin. don't ask me what the TC's are for, I just love the look of them. Any ideas welcome!

Two shots of the same TC in different ligh situations:

 

One of my favourite pieces. Blue and green colors mixed in, plus light blue glow-in-the-dark color that almost sank completely to the bottom before the resin cured through. The gas bubbles were a pleasant surprise, because there was nothing in the cube that could have held air (like the wood or bark). I guess they developed because of the heat of the curing resin.

 

In general, the striations are much less visible than before the curing set in, and the color seems to have spread out more evenly during the curing. Next time I'll mix the colors much less.

 

New crystal molds. I love those shapes!

A crystal gem light that's going to be a gift for my boy's girlfriend (7 yrs). He chose the colors (pink and yellow) and we set a battery powered stick'n push LED on top into the fresh resin so it permanently bonds to the gem. It didn't turn out perfect but that's OK. We'll paint the white plastic with a dark bronce.

Unfortunately the very top of the gem didn't cure, so we can't use it as present for a child.

...meaning that we had to make aother resin light for her.

I decided on a different concept and my boy chose different colors this time.

 

I hope the Curing heat won't kill the LED chain, but we just have to wait and see. If this works, I'll make a little crafter's jig - casting cheap battery-powered LED lights in resin is too cool!  

[update]

The cube is cured:

 

The heat did not kill the LEDs. The corners are a bit softer than the rest, so the mix of resin and hardener was less than optimal there. No idea how this happened exactly in the corners, or what can be done against it. The color has mixed through the resin during the curing process, so next time I'll mix it even less.

I'd call it a success, and we'll do more such lights in the future. Any ideas how to modify this design are welcome!

[tauster]

This should have been posted in the Casting Show thread all along, rather than in Miniatures...

TL;DR: Silicone molds can be filled with expanding construction foam.

The result is

- more or less true to details (not as good as with hotglue but good enough)

- more or less stable (hotglue is much more resiliant to wear and tear and much more stable)

- dirt cheap

- much quicker to fill large molds than with hotglue.

The last point is where expanding foam truely outperforms hotglue. Filling a large mold with hotglue can take half an hour (see my crate stack in the link above). With foam, you can fill a mold in seconds. Yes, you'll have to wait a few hours until it has cured and you have to give the foam a way to expand into unless you like your molds get bloated, but that is not a serious issue anymore once you have done a few experimental batches to get some experience.

Here's my latest batch of stuff looking like some magical-technological relics. I'll combine them into one or more very large terrain sets, and use them either in the dwarven terrain set or in my aboleth city terrain collection (which is still very much underdeveloped).

 

[tauster]

...'nother batch of molds, this time:

- two giant LED-backlit snowflakes

- a LEGO motor case

- a small Cthulhu statue (I'm aiming for an illithid facility with a dozen of these statues standing between strange apparatuses)

- the head of a (Audrey II -like) carnivorous plant miniature

- the front of a cool dwarven mini (I'll glue this guy's copied front on a piece of dwarven terrain as a statue, or put it on the ground as a half-fused dead (victim of a weaponised melt into stone spell)

- some parts of a robot mini

- a cool rock that I want to use on several pieces of terrain

[update]

The motor came out quite well. The imperfections were caused by the hotglue being not hot enough. Waiting longer until the gluegun is hot enough will make a better copy.

The other shapes turned out good as well.

The bone terrain did lost some detail but that is ok because it looks like eroded.

[tauster]

A wood log that should go to the ofen. It will, eventually, but not without first immortalizing those beautiful tree rings that were exposed to sun and rain for two years.

The log is a bit over 10cm in diameter, so in the context of roleplaying terrain, it would be a giant tree stump. It can also be a stand-in for a whole tree; the idea is to put only the lowest part of the trunk on the table, ending with the copied tree rings. Just take a large cylinder (pringles roles are not large enough but would make a good stable core, adding paper mache or other texture around it until the desired diameter is achieved.

Smaller trees might be possible as well when the hotglue copy isn't spead to the outer edge, making smaller circles and thus smaller trunks.

[tauster]

I made another mold from our kids lawmover as the old one started to fall apart (apparently I had used too much cornstarch and not enough silicone and oil when I made it, so it started to crumble after 3-4 moldings and several months of storage). Plus, I wanted to make a mold of a wall decoration carp (why on earth would people put figures of golden carps on their walls...?!?) and last but not least a pockmarked lilly root that I want to use as a giant monster's tonge, or a giant fungus. ...oh, and a piece of bark that looks like a monster's body, or a rock.

I needed a whole pack of cornstarch and a whole tube of silicone, mainly because of the lawnmover. There wasn't enough left for the bark piece, but that's not a priority.

Before it set, I cleared out the center to make room for the expanding foam. Last time I filled a similarly sized mold, the foam expanded while curing and blew up the mould, giving me a blown-up crate stack that became a giant mimic - which was wonderful, but not what I wanted. By making room in the center of the cast, the foam from the walls can expand inwards without pressing against the soft mold.

Always remember to wear at least one rubber glove. That foam is sticky stuff and not easily cleaned off your skin!

One or two hours later I checked back on the whole thing and found that the foam had again filled out everything inside, so I had to repeat the process. Only this time there was a surprisingly strong 'skin' of already-cured foam on the surface, which had to be pried apart. As the foam below the skin was still soft, it tended to move back towards the center, so I used some scrap wood pieces to keep it apart.

Today, when the foam had set, I had to saw through the wood because it was too well glued to the foam to be pried out.

Some parts of the mold didn't disconnect at all from the foam, so I had to cut the mold open.

Never happened before with construction foam, no idea what I did wrong... Lesson learned: Next time I'll give the mold a proper oil treatment, so the foam doesn't stick.

The underside of the foam cast will be used as a giant fungus terrain piece, a hole in the ground from where all kinds of fungoid goodness sprawl. Can't wait!