Flotsam and Jetsam

[tauster]

I made a couple of rock spheres several months back, with no specific goal in mind, just to play around with paint schemes. I made some magma-balls, some rock spheres (Indiana Jones, anyone?) ...and then forgot about the remaining unpainted ones.



Primed white and washed


Then some drybrushing, plus a bit of pearlescent (no pic, sorry).

While drying, I was adding the red fez on the second of the smallest snowmen (it was a present for my kid, who absolutely loves it but wanted it to have the same fez as my model has). When I finished the superglue-job and was just about to leave the room, I realized how funny the scene on my desc looks:



The fez-capped snowman stares at the levitating ice ball, while the rest of the group stared at him dissaprovingly...

The ice sphere will be a spellmarker: One of the snowmen will be able to summon it and then direct it against the PC, who'll have to deal with cold and blunt damage.

I removed the nail and wanted to glue a neodym in, but then decided to leave the hole open because it is more functional for me. I've made different fly stand versions which would work well with it:

   

...or for a little more action, my moduilar stand for minis with the Fly spell:

---

I now have snowmen and ice flyers, but for a cool fight, I need a boss monster.

I have that Rift Drake whose ugly paint job I absolutely don't like, but the mini was cheap and I bought it specifically for the purpose of repainting it when I have found a color scheme. Well, it seems like I've got one...



Basecoat with a very light grey / off-white


Second coating


First wash


Three different drybrushes, plus another washing



Pearlescent finish and some base modelling



I painted the eyes in black and the talons in GW Bleached Bone (a kind of beige). Now the base needs to dry, then it gets a washing, a little drybrushing, plus some pearlescent. Shouldn't be too hard.

[kgstanley81]

Awesome work

[tauster]

Jan 2, 2016 20:57:19 GMT kgstanley81 said:

Awesome work

Thanks for the kind words.

At the moment I'm putting together all winter-related monsters and terrain I made so far, which isn't as easy as it sounds, given that most stuff is stored away in boxes. Here's what the party will meet:

[tauster]

...another thing that I had cluttering up my desk for months now: An old (and rather ridiculous, if you ask me) action figure that I want to turn into a Kuo Toa Leviatan.



I know it looks more like a humanoid hammerhead shark than a Kuo Toa, but I'm sure my players will complain about other things than the design - most probably about the ungodly amounts of damage this guy will deal, and the unfathomable hit point reservoir.

For easier painting I took it apart. The torso is thankfully already painted in metal, so if I'm lucky, I just have to add orange for the rust effect and be done with it. If this doesn't work, I'll start from scratch with black priming.

[tauster]

Just watched Drunken & Dragon's New Year's vid called 'Everything I crafted in 2015: An Oath'



What an awesome speech. What a great collection of crafted artwork.

I'm almost tempted to take a similar shot of my stuff crafted during the last 12 months, but it is all boxed away and I don't really have the time to sort it all out (it would probably take half of a weekend's day, and I need this time either for the house or my family). But the temptation is still out there...

[kgstanley81]

Or crafting

[tauster]

I got two pipe wrenches, and those two plastic plates came with them:




Looks like giant key holes!

Any ideas for an encounter featuring terrain made out of these?

[tauster]

I got lucky recently and found a couple of semi-cheap high quality, painted metal minis from the Warmachine line on ebay. I didn't have to craft anything with them (apart from regluing one shoulder spike), but since they look so cool, I just have to share some pics with you guys.

Three Cryx Defiler and one Cryx Slayer Hell-Jack:






Take some close looks - there are lots of shaped on their bodies that could be easily replicated with crafting materials:
- cardboard for the shoulder pads
- self-rolled tentacles for the flexible tubes
- tiny punched-out cardboard circles for the welding spots
- ...

The lesson is that even stuff that looks extremely complex can be easy to make.

---

And while we're at it: Inspired by these minis, I searched for more Warmachine stuff and came up with an apparantly self-crafted bone hill terrain piece:



The auction ends tomorrow, so if you really fell in love with it...

...or you craft one yourself. It should be quite easy: Make a mould by pressing whatever bone and sekeleton parts you have into the mould material (as posted several times before, I use @rouseau 's silicone and corn starch recipe). When cured, cover the inside with hotglue. For such large pieces, I would probably make a thin coat of hotglue and then use PVA to either glue some paper maché beneath it, or use crumpled aluminum foil to fill out the inside.

The downside of this way is that you'll turn up with identical hills, which isn't good for suspension of disbelief. So another idea would be to make a flat mould - you'll still make hotglue casts, but when you make them thin enough, you can them bend them into individual hill shapes and glue them into shape from below (maybe you'd have to make a few cuts to take out the tensions in curves).

I'd love to see someone take that idea and run with it!


[update]
Sold for 13.09 €, plus 6 € shipping. Just in case anyone thought to get rich by selling terrific and easy to make terrain pieces. Just not possible.

[kgstanley81]

Or add bits after

[tauster]

When I opened a gingerbread box today, I took a closer look to the little cardboard strip I just had ripped off. It looked suspiciously like the spiked back of a giant snake or dragon. My son agreed, so we started crafting a Naga this afternoon.

That's what we decided how the critter should be painted up later:
 


He loves watching me crafting, and finds endless joy when he drybrush or do some other easy things. He lost interest after a while (which was to be expected at an age of almost-four), so I could shift into higher gears and get this thing ...well, almost finished.

Here's almost all the stuff it takes to make a Naga:
- said cardboard strip, already bent and curled
- some metal to give the whole thing stability without losing flexibility
- a large washer for the base
- a small selfmade tentacle for the stinger
- a head. Actually two heads, because initially I couldn't decide...
- three neodym magnets (one large and two small in my case)
- loads of hotglue,
- some PVA, construction sand and a plastic skull. Or whatever you want to use to decorate the base.




I glued the metal under the cardboard strip, bent the whole thing into shape and glued it on the washer.




Next: Deciding which head to use: A skull bead for an undead (spirit?) naga or an Ogre head from warhammer. Hard decision... actually too hard for me to decide, so I...



...magnetised the heads and the neck (taking care to chose the right polarity!) and called myself a happy crafter.


Initially I wanted to ignore the back spikes, but then I cut an old plastic card into shapes ...




...and glued them on. Hotglue is ideal to give the spikes some texture, so this step took a bit longer, but it was well worth the extra time.




I covered the washer in hotglue,




...whiteglued one piece of scrap metal on so I can individualise the base




Then I remembered that so far I haven't used the skulls from Dragon Forge Design much... One should be enough to give the players a hint that, yes, this critter is probably evil.





And that's where the project is at the moment. I'll add a protective layer of whiteglue in the morning and maybe, if I'm really lucky, will have a bit of spare time in the evening to start painting.

[kgstanley81]

Awesome can't wait to see it finished

[tauster]

Basepainted with dark purple.



After the paint had dried I realised that the belly section is slightly translucent. Cool!
I'm playing with the idea of modding an LED to make it flat enough so I can position it under the washer. It would illuminate the lower section of the snake-body. It's something I haven't done beforre, and I have many other projects to finish (...as always), so this might take a while.


Drybrushed white




With the ogre head. After the white had dried, I gave it a wash with the same purple, only watered-down. That mutes the white shades a bit so that they don't stand out too stark.




The scrap metal piece blends right in. Carefully stipple the flat survace with a stiff brush, and it looks like the drybrushed sand & pebbles around it. The skull got a GW Bleached Bone drybrushing and then, like the complete base, a washing with a watered-down 1:1 mix of Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil.




Finished. I'm more than happy with this one!

[tauster]

Some progress with the Instant Bones project I started in the week before xmas:

One of my pet peeves is painting (I've whined about that enough in the past, so this shouldn't be a surprise ), and this project is not different in this. Faces are especially hard for me, and this guy really has a lot of face...

I basepainted the face with GW Dwarf Flesh and highlighted with GW Elf Flesh ('highlighting' means a heavy drybrush). Between the two steps I painted the bubbles/holes where the hotglue didn't reach the mold during the casting with brown and then added small amounts of watery red.



I have no idea where the many cracks come from, and how I can replicate that effect. I absolutely love it!

I experimented with a thin 1:1 mix of Nuln Oil with Agrax Earthshade (i.e. black and dark brown) and washed the underside.



The reason for the washing is that I want to give more structure to the bone, which is almost totally free of any interesting cracks or textures so far - something I hadn't figured out when I made these first prototypes. These giant bone pieces are simply too smooth... I have made three more, but this time with paper maché. I'm pretty sure they will be much better, i.e. feature much more cracks. They're drying on the heater overnight, so maybe tomorrow evening I can share the results.


I'm a bit unsure how to go on with the face: One idea is to use the same washing, to give it a dirty look, the other is to give it a red washing, which would accentuate the cracks... I kind of favour the red, as it would give the face a far more painful look due to the cracks.

[tauster]

Inspired by jdubs ' Rock Golem, I set out to blatantly copy that critter create one myself as a tribute to the original creator...

I carved all pieces before putting them together. Not wanting to trust only the hotglue, I used wire to stick all blocks together (two wires for each link, so there won't be any rotating pieces).




My first attempt to make a face failed, but head no. two was Ok enough to be used. I'll use all leftover green foam blocks to make some scatter terrain pieces, and that first head will poke out of the rubble. Let's see which one of my players will be the first to spot the face.




The head is shaped and positioned so that the top is more or less level - I want to be able to have minis balance on the giant lumbering golem!




Glued together:




At first I was unsure whether or not to glue it on a base (it won't stand on it's own)... but then I remembered the magnets. Problem solved. Now all I need is to make it a custom base that's large enough to keep that giant stable, and that problem is solved.

Next steps:
-  giving it a good layer of PVA glue,
- then another that will hold the construction sand (and some small scrap metal pieces where I can put magnetised add-ons later)
- prime with black, several grey & white drybrushes,
- making that base(rinse, lather, repeat)
- Be happy with the result and throw the creature at my hapless players. Not literally. You'll get the meaning...

[tauster]

Not really a terrain or miniature project. Heck, this one is not even roleplaying-related. That having said, here's this evening's craft project:

I always wanted to make some of these...watchacallit... smartphone-cinema-boxes? You know, that kind here. Private Theater Box, that seems to be the correct word. Anyways.

I just had a cardboard box that seemed sturdy enough and had the right dimensions. Instead of using my smartphone, I went for the 7'' tablet - the bigger the better.




This should be an totally easy and quick project: Just mark the outer dimensions of the tablet, then inside that, the cut lines (a bit larger than the display). Don't forget to cut a hole for your neck - you don't want to be choked to death by a cardstock box while watching videos on your tablet. Imagine the poor people who'd find you on the couch... 




Cut it out, but the tablet on and position something stop the device from sliding off. Take care not to block any buttons on the device. I used 5mm strong cardstock pieces.



Before glueing everything together, I tried it out and realized that I needed a larger distance between my eyes and the display, so I had to glue some extra cardstock on the three sides, which have to be upright, which in turn means that I didn't need tha hole for my neck to go through - so I re-taped that back into place.

Hotglue everything in place and you're done.




Finished.

After trying it out, I put the whole project straight into the garbage. Why? Because it sucks. I have a 50' TV, and even watching videos on my computer screen is way more fun than this. It is inconvenient, extremely wobbly (which is due to my shoddy design, granted...), and simply feels stupid. The viewing experience is absolutely NOT like in the cinema. YMMV, but for me it was a total fail. Which isn't so bad, because I learned something - a found a way how this isn't working. And the next time some hipster tells me how cool that is, I'll ask him if he actually tried it and made a private theater box. No? Oh, I did and it sucks!

[tauster]

Another non-roleplaying terrain entry... But there's a level of awesomeness in that stuff that I just had to share it:

makezine.com/2016/01/21/get-lost-miniature-test-tube-cities/

[bluecloud2k2]

Talk about your fiddly bits...

[tauster]

Yeah, but on the other side: You could make literally hundreds of these projects and still display them on one wall. Try that with our typical project sizes we have here arounds!

[tauster]

The Giant Rock Golem almost started sliding down on the list of unfinished projects, but I found a bit of time today to work on it.

I need a heavy and magnetic base for this beast.

First of all, with 17 cm from head to toe (without a base) this is a true giant. Lady forscale is only 3cm high, meaning that in-game, the golem is about 10 m high. Pretty impressive!

Second, it is leaning slightly forward, so I need a strong magnetic bond to keep it from toppling. Remember that I want to place minis on top of the head, so accidentally toppling this giant is quite probable without countermeasures.

Long story short, I took a large washer, added a lot of hotglue and two magnets, plus several small rocks. The two megnets on the giant's soles are slightly angled to get the posture right and the top of the head horizontal.




Rubbleflocked the base...




...and started painting.




After two brush strokes it dawned on me that I totally forgot to flock the whole body...



So now the bigature is drying on the heater. If I' lucky, I can get on with painting tonight.

[tauster]

One advantage of making magnetized monsters: Saving space when drying.



...and priming.




Primed the base black, then added extra dips of PVA to protect the magnets, because the cheap neodym I bought so far on ebay have a tendency to shed their skin and then rust and crumble.




Drybrushed grey, then highlighted the edges white: