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Post by tauster on Oct 16, 2014 18:22:51 GMT
I decided against the hotglue veins and just added bleached bone to the ridges:    And if you slot them together, they aren't even very stable - it's all wobbly and will fall down as soon as someone touches it on the battle map. Sure, you can always superglue them together, but then again paizo could have done that themselves (it would need a larger packaging but the result would at least be a playable, i.e. stable product. Let's brainstorm together and come up with our own design! The criteria are: - cheap materials (as always) - stable enough to be playable - easy to built (bonus points for quick, but that's not really neccessary because nobody needs more than a dozen of them, ever) - more bonus points for a pleasing design
Found an old massage ball in an even older plastic drawer:  The thing has been sitting there for at least 3-4 years (it was a consolation prize of a party) and had never been moved since it was put in the drawer. The chemical softeners in the rubber reacted with the hard plastic of the drawer, resulting in little craters where the balls' spikes touched the drawer. Suffice to say that I won't ever use that for a massage. So I'll probably cut it up and integrate it in some craft project. Covered under a thick layer of color, glue and/or gloss. Any ideas what this might be used for?
Plus, a piece of packaging that once held 4 small AAA batteries:  I guess it would look good if given the 'ancient copper' treatment.
..and in totally unrelated news, here's two kickstarter projects who offer great design inspiration for crafting terrain and monsters: Elegy for a Dead WorldI haven't played a computer game in the last ~14 years, but I just backed it. It's just too much of a temptation for me. Look at this design - it would be awesome if we could actually make such terrain ourselves!   Video
Human Ressourcesanother great new game idea, but I don't want to spoil it - just watch their trailer! I love their Ancient Ones (small wonder - they have tentacles...), but also the robots. |
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Post by beetlewing on Oct 17, 2014 5:45:53 GMT
OMG Human Resources is gorgeous - and looks like it'd be a blast to play.  |
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Post by tauster on Oct 18, 2014 11:06:50 GMT
Another shopping spree done!   Shop #1 The following stuff is from Nanu Nana, a chain store in Germany that has cheap craft materials (mostly premade stuff), decoration and chintzy presents - air dry clay, 1 kg for 1,95€ (the exactly same product was 6,95 in the 2nd shop!) - some exotic pods (still with loose seeds in them), 4 pcs a bag, down from 2,95 to 0.95€, so I took the remaining two bags - a bag of lumps flocked with static grass completely all around them. I'll probably cut them in half and glue the cut to cardstock, so I can double their number. Shop #2 The colors (500 ml each - lasts me a lifetime) were down to 2.95€ each (dunno their original price). Two purples (light and dark shade, the latter one glossy), a nice rich brown and a caramel-ish light brown tone. I've made some test-splotches on white cardboard which are drying atm. Can't wait to see how they look when dried!
A 5 litre- bag of juice...  the interesting bit of course is the valve. Painted in metallic shades it will look great.  And the little plastic cups (joghurt for kids) - stack them over each other, glue them together and form an arch. Paint them and you have a great technological-looking Mcguffin. At least that's the plan...
Some clay, rolled out flat and impressed with large bubblewrap foil. A few carvings...  ...to make something like a hivenest-ish terrain. Let's see how this one looks when painted. 
Found another miniatures kickstarter project recently where I gleaned the following design inspirations:  |
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Post by tauster on Oct 19, 2014 12:20:28 GMT
Progress on the Ancient Generator: I'll stack the smaller foamboard on top of the larger one, putting the generator on a plinth. But first I had to roughen the foamboard up:    ...followed by covering them in whiteglue to give them stability. The glue soaks into the upper layer of the foam, plasticizing it:  Next steps: -glueing the boards together, - adding some flock (rocks, mostly) - painting the terrain up - painting some poison-looking leakage from the pipes - glueing the copper pieces in, including the pipes To keep the momentum, I started coppering more technology-like elements: mostly packaging bits, plus a bit of styrofoam (the two squares with four triangles each).  |
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Post by tauster on Oct 19, 2014 12:27:25 GMT
I always wanted tentacle freezer magnets, so I finally started making a (first) pair! Place magnets in beercaps and form tentacles that will fit on top of the cap:  Completely cover the magnets with glue and the aluminum foil as well. Texturize the tentacles as much as you like.  Glue'em together.  Since I'm not sure whether to paint them with the flesh-colored theme or something more purple-ish, I did a testpiece that'll get painted with several possibilities:  |
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Post by tauster on Oct 20, 2014 18:15:15 GMT
I'm happily continuing with my recent projects. Nothing better than swinging the brush after dinner and bringing the kids to bed!  The test piece for finding a color scheme for the freezer magnet tentacle ...well, didn't find anything I liked, so far. Fresh paint  ...and the dried paint. Remarkable how different fresh and dried colors often look!  Next step was trying several washings and drybrushings out. And that's where it broke down, i.e. failed to bring results I like. The colors on the picture are not completely true to how it looks in reality, but here it is anyway:  Part of the failure was because I rubbed some of the priming color off while drybrushing. I'll have to remember that these colors are not as robust as regular acrylics - so the experiment brought something useful after all. Maybe I'll continue playing with the purple colors: For one because I suspect that purple tentacles look really terrific and secondly because I'd love to make a Day of the Tentacle-style tentacle. Heck, I even have a shirt woth this thing on! So since I can always make new tentacles when I found a working color scheme (and because I don't have the patience to wait until that day) I primed it with skin tone and add my usual purple plus gloss varnish after that. I know that this works and looks well enough. Plus, a tentacle that really looks like raw flesh seemingly crawling through the fridge door is better than a cartoonishly purple one!  The 'ancient copper ruins' test piece got rubbleflocked and is ready tobe primed:  Unfortunately I forgot to add the second layer of whiteglue and went straight on with the black priming. The result was that several stones came off, as would be expected. I hope that thats it and nothing more comes loose during play! Also, priming that thing without soiling the finished coper pieces was a pain in the neck exercise in painting exactly, and slowly...   The other copper pieces got their verdigris washing, plus one silver-ish piece got washed in simple black. Can't wait to see how that looks when done. Maybe I'll add a little orange/brown for more rust over tha black.  Last piece for today was priming the foamboard dais that will hold the generator. Nothing spectacular.  |
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Post by tauster on Oct 22, 2014 18:55:16 GMT
After another round of find-a-better-color-scheme experiments without results better than my usual color scheme, I gave in and washed the fridge tentacles with the usual deep magenta* * if anyone's interested: I use liquitex heavy body deep magenta, series 3, color code 114. this stuff is very expensive, but my small tube of 22 ml was a) cheap on ebay and b) is still 40% full after all those flesh terrain and monsters.  ...is it only me or do they really look hungry?  Another ancient copper terrain piece. Not sure what I'll put in the circular indentations... I could glue magnets on the underside, adding utility. Or I simply put some pillars in them. Whatever I'll do, it screams 'modularity!'...  One hivenest got painted. Here's the basepaint...   ...and that's the purple washing. I decided to do two washes for a change; the first is the light purple I hauled home recently (as seen on the left corner of the pic below), the second is the usual deep magenta.  The finished result is a deeper reddish tone than usual, at least that's what the test piece suggests. Can't wait to see it completely dry tomorrow morning! Here's something I rescued from getting thrown away: A very kitchy xmas tree. I was totally embarrased to walk the 20 m from the public dumbster to my car but took it anyway. Talk about obsessive crafting!   All bulbs are working - the reason it got thrown away (apart from being what it is - I can't imagine why someone would actually spent money for something that was already plastic trash immediately after production!) was that the terminal strip had a corner broken off, laying the electric cables open. Dangerous, but completely and easily repairable - just wrap some insulation tape around it and you're totally good! ...if 'good' means having a abysmally ugly xmas ...thing on your window sill.  I tried to come up with an idea to redecorate this abomination, but I couldn't think of anything that makes it less hurting to the eyes, so I took it apart. Which left me with - 7 working spare bulbs (some of our family's xmas decoration needs new bulbs anyway) - 7 rings of plastic grass tufts (plus some ugly golden plastic pine cones) - a working (if partially unisolated) cable set complete with bulb fittings - a nice large plastic plinth that will be reincarnated as a terrain piece - two plastic half-trees where I can saw odff 14 hollow hemispheres and have still some maybe-interesting-looking plastic parts left.  I'm toying with the idea if repairing the terminal socket and integrate the whole shebang into something that glows. Doesn't have to be xmas-themes; there are tons of 'glowing terrain piece' ideas... |
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Post by tauster on Oct 22, 2014 19:42:32 GMT
This will be the centerpiece of the 'ancient copper' terrain set... In April 2011, well before Scotty infected me with the craft bug I bought two dirt-cheap plasma balls. I never came around to making something steampunk-ish out of them (which was why I had bought them in the first place), so they just sat on my shelf and gathered dust. Literally - you can see the dust in the pic.  Here's how it looks with the still-wet copper paint:  Tomorrow it'll get washed, and that's that. Nothing more to do - the thing is perfect as it is. I ust have to test how long the 4 AAA batteries hold up, since I don't want to put it on a cable when putting it on the gaming table. In related news, the plinth of the copper generator is done, more or less. I really like how it turned out - so much that I hesitate to glue on the generator parts because it will hide much of the cracks in the rock.  I don't want anybody to see that they are just drinking straws, but the ends give it away so I have to bury them under something. Rock would be the easiest option, but I'm open for other alternatives. Here's how hiding the straw ends under rock will probably look:  Btw: This test piece turned out well enough to be actually put on the table. The rings in the copper area suggest that it's a top cover which means there's something below it - so the party might try to will find a way to open it. That way I can add another leven or at least another room to the encounter. I had the idea of giving the players a reason to reactivate the ancient machines, so this might develop from a combat encounter (survive and deactivate the defences) into a puzzle encounter: Find out what's what and activate the right things. Bonus points for not breaking it beyond the fubar point. I might add some icky-looking sludge to some of the pipe joints (for the PCs to repair; a few mending spells would be the easiest way), maybe even to the generator piece - the cracks in the rock just beg to be filled with something that looks slightly radioactive... or living. Or both. |
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Post by beetlewing on Oct 22, 2014 19:48:52 GMT
Looking at that Christmas tree, two things spring to mind: backdrop or floor... maybe for a temple or something.
It could also be cut up for broken arches in ruins.
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Post by tauster on Oct 22, 2014 20:03:31 GMT
Love the 'arches' idea!
And using this stuff as floor is great too - it's just broad enough for one human-sized miniature, so a fight above an abyss comes to mind...
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Post by tauster on Oct 23, 2014 19:41:55 GMT
Three projects finished, one started. Thats a nice result of a day!  The clay hivenest experiment is finished, but I neither really like the structure I imprinted with the bubblewrap foil (nearly not deep enough!) nor the sculpting job I did afterwards. And the darker color, well... that might be OK, it looks as if I might use that for future flesh-things. So it's not a completely failed experiment, as I could use at least the new color scheme.  On the other hand: Even if I wouldn't have got anything useful out of it, the experiment could still be considered a success - because I would now know what doesn't work. Whenever you come up with something you don't like, see it as a lesson learned. There is no failure in crafting.The plasma ball turned out exactly as planned. Quick, totally easy and great results: I love this ancient copper stuff!  I started another coppery thing, this time its an organic shape. I'm aiming for an effect similar to the two small test pieces leaning against the plasma ball. The combination of seemingly organic shapes made of metal will give the players some headaches: What kind of beings were so powerful that they could grow structures out of solid metal? The effect will be all the stronger if I place this stuff side by side with organic things that look as if still live (like the construction foam monstrosities, which actually are alive).  And the freezer magnets are done, yay! We have a magnetic whiteboard in our office, so tomorrow I'll probably produce some very weird looks from my colleagues...   |
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Post by SpielMeisterKev! on Oct 23, 2014 23:19:01 GMT
Howdy,
Are those trophy mustachios off a red headed dwarf?
Kev!
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Post by beetlewing on Oct 24, 2014 3:04:58 GMT
You need to make tentacles that attach on the sides of the doors, and pose them so they reach around the front... like there's a creature trapped inside... then sell them on Etsy. Even non-gamers would buy them |
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Post by tauster on Oct 24, 2014 14:54:52 GMT
You need to make tentacles that attach on the sides of the doors, and pose them so they reach around the front... like there's a creature trapped inside... then sell them on Etsy. Even non-gamers would buy them I like that idea, but almost all terrain pieces (doors, portals, etc) that isn't very well secured, has a very large base and/or is very heavy would simply topple over if you attach outreaching tentacles of this size. Of course when the tentacles touch the ground between their base and the tip, that would be ok. Hmmm,... I guess another design round just started! @ kev: I noticed the similarity to mustaches, but I shudder at the thought of having such a thing below my nose. Of course I shudder at the thought of wearing a regular mustache as well...  |
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Post by beetlewing on Oct 24, 2014 15:00:42 GMT
I like that idea, but almost all terrain pieces (doors, portals, etc) that isn't very well secured, has a very large base and/or is very heavy would simply topple over if you attach outreaching tentacles of this size. Of course when the tentacles touch the ground between their base and the tip, that would be ok. Hmmm,... I meant for refrigerators, not terrain doors |
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Post by tauster on Oct 24, 2014 15:58:36 GMT
OK, I see... [goes off searching for raw materials] |
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Post by tauster on Oct 25, 2014 12:35:14 GMT
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Post by tauster on Oct 27, 2014 18:28:46 GMT
Finally got the Generator done!  Lesson learned: Even if you have the rock texture completely painted, you can always go over parts of the area again with black basepaint and repeat all the drybrushing steps - in the end there's no difference visible; the newly painted areas blend right in. the same applies to washings. I had always suspected this but never actually tried before...
The brick fragment organic ruins are coming along nicely. I have 2 of 3 (which is probably only the first batch) done. I decided against giving the hotglue veins an individual color treatment, as the overall effect works fine (which of course translates into ' looks sufficiently gross' *g*).  The following pic was taken with flash. The colors are not quite realistic but much closer to the truth than the neonlight-lighted shot above.  |
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Post by tauster on Oct 29, 2014 19:31:03 GMT
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Post by tauster on Oct 30, 2014 22:29:57 GMT
...finished!  |
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Cheers!