Tauster's Miniatures

[tauster]

The plant trio got continued, and will be finished, here, in case you missed it.

Aaand off it is to a new miniature!

---

Aquarium filter balls:

I love those shapes and got myself 50pcs on ebay. For whatever reason they were packaged individually, each in a small labelled ziploc bag. Now I have not only lots of cool-looking balls but also a heap of useful bags (always great to have them around when you have lots of miniature bits!), but still... wasting plastic and energy that way is simply disgusting. I didn't know they come in single bags but still feel bad.

My first thought was to make an army of monodrones, the sphere-shaped modron type:

forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Monodrone#cite_note-MM5e-p224-1

Description
Monodrones were simple spherical constructs with two mechanical arms and two legs. They had a single eye and rudimentary (but functional) wings. They also did not require any food, and drew sustenance from the air around them.[2][3]

As barely intelligent creatures, they were capable of only one task at a time. They could communicate, but were only capable of delivering a single message consisting of no more than 48 words.[2][3]

Personality
Like all modrons, monodrones had an absolute sense of hierarchy and order, and could not be persuaded to disobey their instructions or betray their purpose in any way.[2]

It was possible, however, for a defective monodrone to go rogue and start acting in its own interests or no longer in accordance with its instructions, sometimes even becoming violent. Such rogues were relentlessly hunted by other modrons, although, unlike their properly operating fellows, they could be reasoned with.[2]

Combat
Monodrones were capable of wielding weapons and were competent combatants, although, due to their single-task nature, they were only capable of performing one attack at a time. If destroyed, a monodrone disintegrated completely into dust.[2]

Society
Monodrones could only communicate with other monodrones or with duodrones. They were incapable of comprehending more advanced modrons.[2]

As the base of modron hierarchy, monodrones were created directly by Primus in the Great Modron Cathedral in the plane of Mechanus. They were the source for all other modrons, filling the upper ranks by successive promotions when their superiors were destroyed or otherwise promoted.[2]

As described, they are of limited use as single NPC (too dumb for real conversation), but a group of them with a more intelligent leader would be a cool encounter.

They should be easy to built: Just put some miniature arms and legs on, a small bead for an eye, some wing-shaped steampunk jewelery beads, and you're done.

Two (Eldar?) arm bitz and a round glass bead for an eye. I had to hack & file away some stuff behind the eye an arms to get a flatter surface to glue them on. I used hotglue to fixate the parts, then superglue (acrylate nail glue) to make the bond more permanent.

I have a bag full of LotR minis, some of them in advanced states of decay:

The warrior of Gondor(?) donated his legs, as the poses of the other guys didn't fit.

Looking great! The pose of the staff arm was a bit luck: I had the staff more vertical first, but when I had to re-glue the arm after breaking it off, the staff became tilted. I think it looks better that way, more dynamic.

I can't get to the steampunk beads without waking the rest of the family (bad idea, 1hr before midnight), so we'll see tomorrow how the little guy turns out.

I'm sure you'll come up with other ideas for those balls, so do fire away!

[tauster]

Primed with bronce, then washed with verdigris:

Then the modron got wings, and additional upgrades.

I have several wing designs...

...and these got chosen. Oh, and I couldn't resist putting some exhaust-ey bead on the lower behind.

Almost finished. The little bugger already started exploring it's surroundings.

I like the little guy, even if the Lady Forscale seems to be taken aback by its appearance.

[sgtslag]

I saw those filter balls in the pet store, around three months ago... Tried, but failed, to come up with ideas to use them for. Brilliant work!!! Love them. Glad to see them used in a crafting manner, as they just screamed that they were useful, in some way -- which totally escaped me. Cheers!

[tauster]

Inspired by DMScotty 's Agnar video, I started making myself such a beast in a while back (see here, here, here and here). By end of January, the sculpting process was almost done... and so was my motivation. It somehow fizzled out when painting loomed on the horizon, as it is often the case.

No more.

Blackbombed, then block painted:

 

Drybrushed white. I think I'll call this step the Alan treatment (adjective: alan'ed), as deafnala introduced my to making a preliminary drybrush layer after priming to get a first impression of the details. Even though it would be painted over later on, it is tremendously useful to see early on how it will look when you're done, before you're done.

I have to work on this smooth part and add more detail:

The maw got the flesh and blood treatment. I might add some layers to make the inner surface darker (as per Scotty's video), and of course a dark brown and/or black wash.

The tongue. Happy nightmares, ya'all!

[tauster]

Sept 1, 2018 21:36:07 GMT sgtslag said:

I saw those filter balls in the pet store, around three months ago... Tried, but failed, to come up with ideas to use them for. Brilliant work!!! Love them. Glad to see them used in a crafting manner, as they just screamed that they were useful, in some way -- which totally escaped me. Cheers!

How about a spellmarker? It looks mechanical, so instead of a fireball*, how about using a filter ball, but it on a fly stand and give it a trail of small gears glued together? I'm sure gears can be bought, but you'd just need a few broken mechanical watches, disassemble them (hammer them open if you don't have the patience; the broken bits could be used anyways!) and glue the gears together. Paint over everything and presto, you're done.

I might try that actually...

* fireball is a bad example because it is an instantaneous spell, so spell markers are useless.

[Sam]

Wonder if they would work as: will'o'wisps, sphere of annihilation, dancing lights. Wrap them in aluminum foil for use as boulders, trebuchet stones.

[sgtslag]

I like the Will O' Wisp idea, along with the Sphere of Annihilation. They could certainly be used as an armature for sculpting rocks/boulders.

Matter of fact, I remember looking at a "How to Draw Figures" book, in my youth.  They had you draw ovals for body sections:  head, torso, arm joints, leg joints, etc.  They even took this approach for animals.  I could see adapting this concept, using these filter balls, for sculpting armatures.  Interesting food for thought...  Cheers!

[tauster]

So here's the 'flying gears' spellmarker.

A few steampunk beads, but mostly old bits and pieces.

Painting this thing will be difficult: It is too small to paint the details up individually, but I have to cover up at least the hotglue, and the black plastik of the filter sphere beneath the junk:

 

I might paint it all over completely with a 'rusted iron' color scheme and then pick out some details that get a bronce, silver and gold look.

...oh, and I need a good and stable base. This thing is a bit topheavy, so the base has to compensate for that.

[edit]

Primed with GW's Leadbelcher and based. A large nut (M10) is heavy enough to provide the required stability and fits right in the theme. Much better than having a thinner steampunk base with a larger footprint on the table.

 

[2nd edit]

Paint job's almost done. Just need a black wash, but I want the other colors to be thoroughly dried before adding that.

[tauster]

Finishing a project the same day I started it is rare, and this one was a true joyride. I'll take some shots in daylight asap, to give you a better idea of the colors. And yes, the Modron will get a better base.

[tauster]

Just stumbled, by complete accident, over a giant miniature called Boromite Brod Mother mady ba a company called Antares:

...boy is that a cool design! I'm instantly in love and will definitely try my hands at scratchbuilding one such monster myself. I don't know when, because these bigatures need huge chunks of crafting time and have limited use on the table, so this is more out of love for the design and the challenge of seing if I can pull that of myself. Plus, those large projects can quickly become frustrating when you're out of motivation and the thing waits on your table for weeks and months until you decide to continue working on them again. Lets see...

[tauster]

After the little sidtreks to Mechanus and the Elemental Earth, let's return to the Agnar.

Painting the earth colors was THE step I dreaded the most, as simple as it might look. I don't know why, call it painter's block or whatnot, that thing is happening to me quite often: I'm happily crafting along, progress is great, ...and then painting looms on the horizon and I lose steam, until the motivation train grinds to a halt, screeching breaks and all.

So I thought I better get over with this, took a quick refresher on Scotty's tutorial to get the colors about right and took some browns and a grey.

I wet blended the colors like Scotty, but with less water because I didn't want them to run into the already finished maw areas.

I started with the grey, stippling it over about 80% of the surface. I left some areas free, especially the dark recesses where shadows would be expected. When the 'hill' version turned out well enough, I did the large monster, taking care with the transition between rock and flesh on the 'lips': They shouldn't be completely free of earthen colors but also have a few stipples on here and there.

While the colors were still wet I did a not-too-light-but-not-quite-heavy drybrush with a warm olive green, mixing a dark blue-ish green into that color to get a middle tone that was drybrushed over the first green with a lighter stroke. I took care to leave the lower half of the complete Agnar free of greens because that part is supposed to be buried beneath the earth.

So that is where we stand:

 

I'll leave everything overnight to dry before the black wash. I might go over the dark green in some places with a bright green and maybe add some flowers. A skull half-buried beneath the greens would be cool, but that isn't a logical place for a skull as the monster would eat it's victims, so no edible leftovers should remain on it's head. Yes, this critter is able to reach on it's head without arms. Remember the tongue? So, sadly, no skull.

Oh and the mushrooms need a cool paint job. Something that really sticks out. Any ideas?

[erho]

Nice!!

I do like the Modron idea

[tauster]

The promised daylight shots.

[tauster]

I grabbed a set of four Necron Scarabs on ebay and made a mold. Now I can start creating a little army of those buggers.

I'll probably do a second and third mold with modified models, as the first aren't totally to my liking. They're good enough to serve as the base for large swarms, but I want more diversity. For once, they don't have an underside. I'm still working on how I have to place them in the surrounding silicone mass to be able to pop them out and still have texture almost everywhere...

Long story short, here's a few pics.

To speed up the cooling, I drowned them in cold water as soon as they're filled.

The first batch where I try out which color combos work and what doesn't. I don't like the rust combined with the glow underneath, but both the bronce and the 'bronce + gold' work well. I favour the blue glow over the green.

Add some milliput mini-bases.

Foreground: I tried to make bases with flat patches of almost-hardened hotglue, but the center is always too gooey and sticks to the texture rolling pin, while the edges are already too hard and don't take the impression anymore. It would have been a quick solution, but I can always make some styrofoam bases with the Thermocut, texturize them with the pins and glue them on a washer for weight.

Background on the right side: Mass-producing robo-beetles!

I want to do a scarab wave where they are stacked over each other so I need a few of them.

Two of the partially textured hotglue bases, plus more playing around with colors for the glow effect.

[tauster]

Not so much a build but more of a repaint: I had some old Gutsoup Golems from the Dreamblade series around and didn't like the black-and-purple and the plain base,...

...so I put some hotglue texture on the base and used my flesh-and-blood two-tone combo, plus a heavy coat of arcylic gloss varnish.

 

(Sorry for the blurry pics!)

[Sam]

I was looking at some Dreamblade minis on a recent auction. 1st time I really looked at them. Did not bid, they were interesting, but not enough were readily convertible. I like the purple color scheme better.

[tauster]

I proudly present the Scarab Swarm, Serial No. 2018-09-18_001.

Two dozen individually painted hotglue scarabs on a neodym base, a flying scarab trio and a magnetized single scarab.

There's already a background story to these three:

My character, a gnome cleric of Gond/Nebulun and passionate clockwork crafter is researching a spell to summon a mechanic ally. If my DM allows it, the first casting will be OK, but later on, the casting will go out of control, unexpectedly summoning initially the three beings and then a wohle swarm, which might or might not be under the gnome's control. The other players will be in the dark about that background, so I predict fun times when the DM puts the minis on the table and lets us fight to bring the buggers back under control or destroy them. Additional spell research will finally result in a correct summoning formula, but until then the table will shiver every time I summon an ally.

[tauster]

The DM likes the plan with the summonings gone awry, so we'll battling the swarm-wave soon. During the fight it will break into smaller swarms - a perfect excuse to make some more.

Two glamour shots of all the swarms together.

(no flash)

(flashlight)

[tauster]

After I made the Modron and the Flying Gears spellmarker, my minicrafter wants his own modrons. So we plundered some bits boxes and glued the pair together.

It is great fun giving hem ogre-sized arms. The look is just hilarious!

I'm especially happe with the postures, and if the painting goes right (I think I should do most of the detail work myself), the two will be almost too good for a six year old to play with. I'm seing myself already repairing them after someone stepped on them, but thats life.

[tauster]

The Agnar looked a bit too dark for my taste, so I gave it another light drybrush with a bright green, then finally touched the funguses. Hmm, thats a weird plural, but fungi reminds me too much of pizza, and that beast is nothing I want to associate with pizza. Anyways...

As usual, painting fu... mushrooms is hard because I never really know what color combos will look decent in the end. Purple & violet worked well, and I even like the glow effect (practising OSL wherever I can). The funnel mushroom on the other hand... meh. It gets the point across, i.e. if you see it, you know the painters intention, but it doesn't look good.

So what. I declare the Agnar finished. I might give it another glossy varnish over the tongue and maw, but that's about it. Time to let it loose in the ruins of Marw, a fallen arcane empire where the school of animation magic was en vogue for centuries. Lots of animated remnants lurking under the rubble. and even the rubble can animate into giant walking figures. Some of them even lurk in the early pages of another thread, I've heard...