Tauster's Miniatures

[tauster]

Do you know that feeling when a new inspiration doesn't simply hit you but continues to poke your brain cells until you put every other ongoing project aside and start making that thing?

Just happened to me. Yet again.

Fan-made Bone Swarm from Tome of Beasts (Kobold Press)

A simple creature concept, and absolutely beautifully made!

WIP:

  

 

I'll use crumpled tin foil for the body instead of that much hotglue, but both ways should work. The base will be a large washer to keep the center of gravity as low as possible.

Instead of covering it with individual skulls, bones and skellie parts, I'll use a hotglue mold of a bone field. Hotglue is flexible enough to be bent into shape and glued onto the tin foil body. The seams and other parts will then get decorated with additional individual pieces. Not 100% convinced it will work, but that's part of the fun.

I haven't read the creature's write-up so I don't know the details of this creature, but I'll probably let the swarm break apart into smaller sub-swarms during a fight, giving me one more excuse to make multiple versions of this beastie, as I did with the necron scarab swarm a few days ago.

[tauster]

Wee, this is fun!

I used a washer as a base, shaped a 'crashing wave'-like tin foil body, went over the tin foil  with hotglue and added some thick wires.

I collected all kinds of bone-themed bits and pieces I had: crunch-plate castings skull molds, giant skeleton molds, leftover pieces from scavenged dinosaur skellies, etc.

I started to glue on small plates of 'bone walls' (hotglue castings made from a crunch-plate). The challenge is to glue everything in place so that there are as few gaps as possible:

 

The gaps will be covered with other, larger bones so that in the end you have almost no seams. One great technique is to take larger skulls, squirt a large dollop of hotglue on an area you want to cover, push the skull in the glue and draw it out so that it looks like the skulls are flying away from the main body (dunno how to describe it any better). I also realized that I'd better remove the wires because they make more problems than help.

 

Based with a bright beige, then drybrushed with a grey-ish beige/white (almost the same color, so the effect is very subtle at best, if visible at all). When that is dry, a dark brown wash will go over everything and the swarm should be finished. Lets see...

So far the build took about 2 hrs.

[update]

A first wash. This is actually an ink; the difference to a wash is that a) it has more pigments in it and b) it is much harder to get your fingers cleaned.

[skunkape]

That is just too cool!

[deafnala]

That is a TERRIFIC way to use up some of the extra skeleton parts I have had kicking around for years. GREAT IDEA!

[tauster]

Glad you all like it.

Using the ink was a grave mistake: No matter how much white I drybrush over it, it creeps through the color layers everytime. I think I have to give the whole thing a solid layer of spraycoat and start again with another, less agressive, wash.

[sgtslag]

I suspect the ink is water-soluble: applying acrylic paint activates it, causing it to mix into the paint. Try a solvent-based clear-coat to seal it. Cheers!

[Sam]

Oct 11, 2018 15:56:15 GMT deafnala said:

That is a TERRIFIC way to use up some of the extra skeleton parts I have had kicking around for years. GREAT IDEA!

Or a bone golem. Thinking of making one from oversized skeletons.

[erho]

Buy up those $1 skeleton packs before they pull them until next year!

[tauster]

Some flying creatures appeared on my desk. No idea where they came from... *whistles innocently*

This design is anything but new, it was among the earliest things I made.

And then I wanted to finally use the cast-with-hotglue pods I made weeks ago .

I put a few resin-cast wings, two beads for eyes and bristles from an old brush in the mix, plus strong wire for the legs and a piece of scrap metal glued on the but so that I can put the poor, twisted creature on a fly stand.

Mind that 'ugly & warped' was the explicit objective of this built. I'm not saying I could make a beautiful bird, but I wanted something that looks comical and twisted. So far I am happy with the result.

[tauster]

It all started out with 'hey lets do a classic treasure chest mimic!'.

Then I decided that a small army of mimics would be cooler than only one.

Lesson learned: Rice corns work absolutely great as teeth for critters of that size.

And yes, that milliput tonge is a magnetized tentacle.

And then I realized that those guys would have to hide somewhere. So I'll need regular chests and crates. Lots of them. A whole warehouse full.

And that is how small projects spiral out of control.

Making silicone molds of crates is a real game changer. This stack wouldn't have been possible, financially wise, with commercialy cast resin products. At least I haven't found anything that cheap. Yes, DM Scotty's painted wood blocks would do (and I will probably make a stack or two, just to see how they look), but the wood grain and banding texture on these crates adds just so much more detail. I hope that Painting won't be as painful in the behind as I fear (I don't really like painting, but I repeat).

I absolutely love how the stack came out. It has lots of imperfections, but I hope that after painting these won't be visible as much as they are now.Even then I might be able to hide them behind something. Rope for example.

Building that stack took about 2 hours. Before priming, I will make a silicone mold of the whole stack so I can have a whole warehouse full of stacks. Yes they will look the same, but I can always add a few more hotglue crates and barrels here and there and alter the appearance of each stack.

[margaret]

No! Not a warehouse swarmed by mimics!

On another topic, I missed your earlier post with the winged thingies. What were the bracts from? I thought maybe Arucaria but it doesn't seem to be monkey-puzzle or Norfolk Island pine. I like the use you found for your radish pod clones.

[tauster]

Nov 11, 2018 5:47:45 GMT margaret said:

No! Not a warehouse swarmed by mimics!

On another topic, I missed your earlier post with the winged thingies. What were the bracts from? I thought maybe Arucaria but it doesn't seem to be monkey-puzzle or Norfolk Island pine. I like the use you found for your radish pod clones.

Certainly no Arucaria, but I don't have that tree in the garden, I just pick those thingies up when I walk by those trees. I'll take a pic of the tree next time.

[tauster]

I started painting the fleshy parts, first the orang-ey base paint (called 'skin tone'),...

...then the dark purple wash. The wash is mixed from watered-down acrylic paint with a bit of dish washer rinse aid. It still has some larger solid pieces of paint in that form small dots when dried, adding to the 'yuck!' factor.

 

I simply dipped the pieces in the wash. It will take a day to dry, then I can add the usual layer of glossy varnish, and continue painting the wooden parts.

Thats how the prototype looks like. The wash isn't completely dry yet, but it won't change much.

I had some pieces waiting in in a box that will do greatly as scatter terrain in a warehouse. I intend to make moulds of them, lets see how this works out.

[tauster]

Moldmaking of the small sets has been a success. Below are the first castings. They have still a number of flaws where the glue failed to fill some nooks and crannies, but that was because I didn't wait until the gluegun was hot enough (because my boy wanted to see some castings before going to bed and we both were impatient). I will simply use those imperfect casts to make more mimics.

Painting goes better than expected, and it is even more fun than I thought. Two pics, one with and one sans flash.

The large stack did go well too, although I still have to make a first copy to prove that. At least the mold didn't rip or tear when I drew the original out.

I could simply make a cast with hotglue, which would take quite a while considering the size of this thing. Still it would be much faster than building the whole thing from ground up.

The alternative will take even longer: I could pour each side with clear resin and wait each time until it is dried to continue with the next side. The resulting cast would be much more solid, even with a thin wall thickness. Much more important: It would be much more transparent! Yes, I would paint this stack the same I would a hotglue stack. But. I could leave some cracks unpainted and put a flickering and/or color-changing LED under it. A stack of crates where light pulses out of the inside? I beg my players wouldn't take long to start cracking Indiana Jones jokes!

...oh, and bonus points if you recognise which miniature the head is made from!

[update]

wooohoo!

My right hand hurts like hell from squeezing about 10 20cm glusticks through the gun, but I'm totally thrilled. It worked! [cue Frankenstein laughter and thunderstorm]

A look under the hood

original vs. copy

It took me about half an hour, which is better than the 2hr of scratchbuilding. But still... I want half a dozen of those stacks, which I couldn't do in one evening without permanently damaging my hand. Also, 10 gluesticks per copy aren't exactly cheap either, and the stack is less stable than the styrofoam-filled original (obviously).

I wonder whether construction foam sticks to silicone molds, If not... now that would be a great way to make large moulds!

[rubs hands, cackles gleefully]

[yet another update]

Blockpainted with several brown tones. I like the result, but I'm not sure the colorful pallette was agood idea - because all my mimics have the same dark brown base color... I might need more mimics and basepaint them in the missing base coats.

Close-up. Looks quite like DMG's comic-like style.

Next steps:
- painting the metal parts, then an orange drybrish for rust
- drybrush everything
- dark brown or black wash

[erho]

really cool!

I need to revisit the hotglue casting, and invest in a hotter bigger gun to avoid creases.

Whats your hotglue setup like?

[tauster]

Nov 14, 2018 22:50:54 GMT erho said:

really cool!

I need to revisit the hotglue casting, and invest in a hotter bigger gun to avoid creases.

Whats your hotglue setup like?

I have a cheap 100W gluegun. Pretty standard I guess, but sometimes chosing between high and low temp would be great.

[tauster]

Nov 13, 2018 18:57:14 GMT tauster said:

It took me about half an hour, which is better than the 2hr of scratchbuilding. But still... I want half a dozen of those stacks, which I couldn't do in one evening without permanently damaging my hand. Also, 10 gluesticks per copy aren't exactly cheap either, and the stack is less stable than the styrofoam-filled original (obviously).

I wonder whether construction foam sticks to silicone molds, If not... now that would be a great way to make large moulds!

[rubs hands, cackles gleefully]

Guys, it worked!

OK, the foam doesn't make a 100% perfect copies, but even very small details are replicated within the limits of my personal good enough to game with standard. I haven't painted the prototypes yet, but I can already say with confidence that this is a disruptive innovation which will take my personal crafting to the next level. And yes, that makes for several 'X' on today's buzzword bingo.

Long story short, here are the prototypes:

After making certain that the foam doesn't attack the silicone mold, I simply filled those molds with foam and didn't care that it expanded well over the mold itself. I just wanted to see how well it copies the fine details. See for yourself:

I'm impressed with how well it worked. Sure there are a lot of imperfections, but most of the copies I make can handle a but of corrosion / aging well.

But the coolest thing was the giant D20 mold that has some kind of amorphous critter sitting on the die, or emerging from inside the shape:

[tauster]

My boy watched me making the crates stack and naturally wants his own version, so we fired up the Thermocut and dusted off the 'wooden planks' texture rolling pin, and made him a box full of crates of different sizes. The picture doesn't capture the texture well, but that pin has a very 'flat' texture to begin with (definitely not my favourite pin). I hope drybrushing will bring out the details better.

He already started basepainting the first batch. I'm curious how well the crates made with that method will look when painted. Certainly not as good as the hotglue casts because the originals from which they were cast have much more details, but getgw would be totally OK since this probably the fastest way of making crates (we made about 100 in less than 45 minutes, cutting and texturing added together).

[tauster]

The second experimental batch:

Left to right:

- a square piece of dungeon floor with an intentional foam heap on top because I want another flying island (windmill, windmill for the land...)

- the crate stack

- a great scallop (my underdark campaign will have an encounter with sentient clam creatures, with focus on comic relief to break the dark mood)

- a partial case from an old electric shaver that will feature in the dwarven terrain set

- another giant d20 (those things will get compulsively mass-produced, I fear)

Right now I'm totally hyped. If the foam takes paint well and doesn't deteriorate (based on past foam stuff, I don't think so), this method would be so much cheaper and faster than making large objects with hotglue, allowing me to make much larger terrain sets!

[skunkape]

I would think that if you put some cardboard over the opening after spraying in the foam, and taped it down, the foam would expand into the recesses of the mold better, until the pressure was great enough to pop the tape, then would continue to expand to it's full volume after. I'll have to try that on one of my cheap push molds and see if it works. If it does, I'll bet I could do the same on my Hirst Arts molds.

I have some mold release that I'll spray on the mold first though.