Flotsam and Jetsam

[tauster]

I have done quite a lot with pasta in the past, never sealed anything and nothing has gone bad so far, as I kept everything totally dry. Of course if I get considerable amounts of dampness in my storage areas, the noodle-crafts would go bad. But that would be my least problem.

[sotf]

Feb 28, 2015 21:42:28 GMT tauster said:

I have done quite a lot with pasta in the past, never sealed anything and nothing has gone bad so far, as I kept everything totally dry. Of course if I get considerable amounts of dampness in my storage areas, the noodle-crafts would go bad. But that would be my least problem.

The thing you really need to worry about with it is if your players have drinks with them.

Pretty much everything I use on my table is sealed up so that I can wipe it off easily for a cleanup...there really isn't an easy way to handle drinks further away with where I actually play than having them at the edges of the table or floor around it (Where you'll still have spills when someone's drinking off and on).

Noodle bricks or any dried pasta/noodle option is made to absorb liquids, and that's good for some things such as how easily they absorb colors with the little bit of liquids in paint, but becomes a nightmare and a half if they get much on them because it will wreck it.

It tends to be worth the 5-6 seconds and couple bucks to have a can of spray seal around to hit things with in the end, a decent varnish is cheap and lasts forever.

[tauster]

Yesterday I took apart two StarWars collectible miniatures (yes, kind of a sacrilege...) and made moulds of the lower half of the star destroyer and one side of general Grievous's wheel bike, plus some other things (among others a slime creature)






I glued 3 star destroyer moulds together (very sloppy glue-job! ) to form a trilateral floating monolith (point down, of course)






black washing --> the details are quite good. In fact, the holes in the glue make it look eroded, which I couldn't have done better if I had intended it.
just wait until your base color is really dry or you'll get that mess I got in the upper left corner...



next steps:

- somehow close the open top side (still waiting for an idea...)
- finish washing all 3 sides
- orange drybrush --> rust
- put it on a fly/levitate stand

If I feel extra motivated, I might try to hide an LED inside. But that would have to be done before closing the topside, and I'd have to make a removable lid... Dunno if I want to go all of these extra miles. Maybe in a second piece (where I worked better on the edges).


the wheel bike half:



the slime critter, primed silver. not as detailed as the original, but it's OK.
waiting for the paint to dry so I can blackwash and rust it...

[tauster]

Blackwashed...*

*... hey, did I just invent that word? that would be my 2nd contribution, after 'rubbleflocked'!

...and rusted:




As expected, it doesn't look slimy with that color scheme. What was probably intended to look like open pustules no looks like broken and chipped-off rust. It still emanates that sense of moving forward - which is kind of disturbing when you see it in a pile of rust. Exactly what I'll need to scare my players!

I'll try some other color schemes next: The time and again proven flesh pallette, and the neon green glowing through black/grey, ...and some others.

[michka]

That slime critter is looking awesome. Your molding skills are quite good.

[tauster]

That doesn't require skill, michka.

You just squirt hotglue in the mould and wait for it to harden. Making the actual mould is easy as well: Mix silicone, corn starch and acrylic color, knead it thouroughly and push the original object in. Leave it to harden for a day and carefully pry it out.

There are so few skills needed that it almost doesn't feel like crafting.

[tauster]

My giant package from Reaper's Bones II arrived. YEEEEEHA!

Contrary to reaper's first Bones kickstarter project, this time I didn't take the basic package, only picked and chose what I really wanted. It's still one giant pile of miniature goodness!




The contents of the Expansion Pack:



I couldn't resist and assembled the pair of hill giants (without glueing them together, just sticking arms and heads in the torsi). They are positively huge! Look at how tiny a human-sized mini looks:


Poor Lady Forscale... It's rare that the DM has pity with the players, but these brutes will put panic in some eyes on the game table. And these eyes won't be on my side of the screen.


It looks different when you put the players on the same side as the giants. A high level party might be able to summon or enchant them. Heck, even a low-level party with some very clever players (and charismatic PCs) can try to negotiate a temporary pact. Talk about boosting your party's firepower!



I haven't yet opened the Dragons don't share boxed set you see in the background. And what I can't wait to see the most is the DVD set with the miniature painting courses. 7 DVDs with 23 hours of instructions. Whoa!

[tauster]

The Stardestroyer-Monolyth is rusted and the topside closed with a cardstock triangle:
 


The former wheelbike-half becomes the top of a similarly floating construct:


...with a cone for the body.
 


And here you see two fails:


Fail no. 1:
The color on the felxible tube didn't stick. At. All. I'll probably wrap it with whiteglue-soaked TP (which will also add more texture).

Fail no. 2:
I glued the bike-wheel on the cone before I painted the lid inside - making it impossible to properly to reach all places with the brush.
I had to cut it off again, cutting in my palm in the process - talk about blood sacrifices to the craft... Now I wait for the neongreen to dry, as I spontaneously wanted to add a glowing effect. Beause what's worse than a ancient, rusted floating construct? A glowing ancient, rusted floating construct!

[tauster]

Those moulds* I made can also be used for making miniature bases. I had this in mind from the beginning but never really came to do it, until today. I made one base from each of these four moulds:
* or molds? native speakers?

Just squirt some hotglue in, as simple as that. The hotter (=runnier), the better.



Sometimes you get some air bubbles stuck near the surface of the silicone. If your hotglue is really hot, this will happen a lot less (or even not at all). However sometimes you actually want a pockmarked surface, which looks especially cool on dungeon floor cobblestones. It can also look great on a technology-themed base, driving the point of this being really decrepit stuff.



Based the stones in black and the technology-stuff in silver:


The stones have been drybrushed grey and white. The technology-themed bases were blackwashed and partially drybrushed orange. I intentionally left one half of each rust-free to have a comparison. Two pics, one with neon light and one with LED flash.





This took practically no time at all. My guess is that these four bases where done in less than 10 minutes (total time, including cleaning the brushes in the bathroom after each painting step *g*). This is a great example of economies of scale: If I were to made a dozen bases of each (i.e. almost 50 bases in total!), I could make them easily in one evening and would have time left to do the dishes during the time it takes for the base color to dry (big blobs of black take the longest).

Another cool thing with these mo(u?)lds is that each base can look a bit different, depending on where you place the glue blob.

[Deleted]

Beautiful work tauster!

[tauster]

thanks, noc. I'm quite happy with them. They're not perfect, for example some of the undersides are quite bumpy, making them not so ideal for bases - but that can be easily healed with more hotglue or less hotglue (i.e. cut the bumps away with xcato knife). But that doesn't matter. The point I want to make is that these mo(u?)lds are totally awesomesauce. Cheap, easy to make and sooo useful!

I've been thinking a lot about them lately, and in the future I'll probably take much more time when crafting an original piece that I want to make a mould of. Most of the stuff I made moulds with was OK, but far from perfect. The more time I spent crafting the original, the better the mould will be later.

One project will be a large-ish square piece of wooden floor (like in a tavern). It will have not only the usual scratches but probably also nails in the wood, knotholes (have to do some research how to sculpt them - does anybody know a wooden knothole tutorial?) and perhaps some broken planks - although the latter probably in a second mould, so I have one ruined floor mould and one with good floorboards.

Again: The important point is that making hotglue replications is dead easy, dirt cheap and brings great results. Other than rouseau, I have seen only few other mouldmakers here, that's why I'm banging that drum so much.

[Deleted]

Its a great idea and I'll be borrowing your idea. With that broken tile base in the decorating thread I posted I planned to make a mold of that and fill it with Durhams rock hard putty coated in mod podge matte. Built in perfect (30mm?) base with a decent texture on it(rocks/broken tile) I'm looking into making those little plastic traffic cones for base detail. Trying to make a little wrench out of sculpey is difficult for me.

[tauster]

I had this face-mould from a large monster, but I didn't really like it. I absolutely love the original monster that has been sitting on my desk for months, as I feel my miniature painting skills have to improve considerably before I touch this beauty with a brush. But the mould I made, not so much: Too rough, not enough details, only a relatively flat face that would be hard to make into a real head.

I made exactly one casting from the mould, and even that I didn't touch for weeks.

I combined the dungeon floor mould and a face-mould from the beastie you see on the pic:


Make two moulds of the dungeon floor. Cut one in half and roll it around the backside of the face's head, forming a neck.



Glueing the head and the floor halves together is a bit tricky, easpecially when you want to hide where the pieces join. In the end I used the tried and true streaking technique, which is not only easy but should also look like the thing is indeed morphing out of the floor. At least I hope so...



Carefully (i.e. step by step and not in one go) cut the neck at an angle you like. I briefly considered making the neck longer by glueing on another one or two pieces of dungeon floor on, but decided against it out of pure lazyness.




Glue the neck to the second dungeonfloor piece you made. Hide the seams by streaking the glue over both the floor and the neck. Take care to move the nozzle quickly or you might melt into either, leaving holes that you'll have to fill (which might be rather difficult - sometimes I make the holes I want to fill even larger...)



Basepainted black:



At the moment I'm waiting for the color to dry, but I probably call it a day and continue tomorrow. Right now I'm extremely happy with with this thing!

I'll paint the complete monster like the dungeon floor and will add only a very few color accents like a deep-red tongue or glowing eyes.

After it's finished, I'll probably make a few more castings and play around with different color schemes, so when I feel like I can paint the original monster, I have a plan.

[tauster]

Empty dungeon room.



Sir Gneld of the Four Scales knew that an empty room meant trouble. Always. Space is at a premium in dungeons, and an empty room was unoccupied for a reason. If it was unoccupied at all. You never kn... HOLY CLANGEDDIN!



Only a few steps ahead, the floor heaved - and a giant head exploded out of the old cobblestones! The thing was perfectly camouflaged: If it would have already been there when he entered the room and hadn't moved, he would have bumped right into it.




As I sad before, I'm extremely happy with this beauty. Although not a quick build, it was very rewarding and I hope the effect it will have on the players is worth the time spent.




I'm unsure whether to add more colors; perhaps I just leave it as is. I really don't want to ruin it with a crappy paint job, even if I could easily repaint it...

The underside:

[michka]

Please don't add color. It looks like it's part of the floor right now, and you wouldn't want to loose that effect.

[sadric]

MAybe I would try the tongue, teeth and eyes. Suddenly the eyes and mouth open and onöy then you identify the rest of the head.

[johnp]

What? Tauster, that floor looks amazing. I love the bumpmapping, great idea with the monoliths also. You have of course been exalted, super nice floor tiles!

[tauster]

Mar 6, 2015 13:47:17 GMT johnp said:

What? Tauster, that floor looks amazing. I love the bumpmapping, great idea with the monoliths also. You have of course been exalted, super nice floor tiles!

Thanks for the praise, all.

The floortiles I bought years ago, long before my terrain-building time.They came unpainted, so the only thing I did was basing them black and drybrushing them. They do look nice, but I have barely use them (we rarely do the classic dungeon delving). Which is a pity, because I have a huge box of them...

[johnp]

Oh, my mistake. Thought you'd mo(u)lded them from hotglue in one of your homemade mo(u)lds. A pity not using them, but the satisfaction in using stuff you have crafted, must help you forget;-)
Anyways, I really like the rest of what I've seen in this thread, I think you have some great ideas. But, that Star Destroyer...promise me you can put it back together;-)

[tauster]

Here's a comparison between the stone originals (hard and durable stuff, maybe some kind of hydrostone?) and my hotglue moulds. At a first glance there's not much difference, apart from the pockmarks that the airbubbles left - but those I actually really like, they give the floor an appearance of old age.