First 28mm Miniature Finished (Hand-Sculpt)

 I finally sculpted a 28mm size miniature, to completion.  

The sculpt is pretty rough and ready but I'm quite proud of it.  While I've finished some larger monster sculpts in the past, all of my attempts at 28mm size and smaller have never made it past the wire armature stage.

I knocked it out in only a week, with an average of one hour's working time each day.  The figure is a bit thicker than originally intended, and his gun will obviously need to be replaced with an epoxy version.

What I particularly like about the figure is that it has an old school feel.  I specifically combed both internet archives and my personal minis collection, measuring figures from the late '80s/early '90s to determine which proportions to use.

The figure is exactly 32mm to the top of the head, about 28-29mm to his eye.  His head measures just a hair above 6mm, making him about 5.2 heads tall, just a bit more cartoonish than the 5.5 head height I was targeting.

He's intended to be a Wild West gunfighter type.  As I said, he's a bit chunkier than planned, as I used the polymer clay over epoxy putty technique, and I laid that initial layer of epoxy on a bit thick.  I also intentionally didn't give him the typical cowboy hat, as I planned on casting him in metal and then sculpting the hat on directly to the metal figure.

I'm already working on the next figure and hope I can keep the momentum.  I'm surprised at how much better I feel on any day where I spend at least 30 minutes in the morning sculpting.   

Super-Robot Sculpt (Scratchbuild Really)

~150mm tall

I finished this guy back almost eight months ago but I'm just now getting around to showing him.

Sometimes I just want to make things with no relation to gaming, just craft for craft's sake. Actually, this guy did have a purpose, as I was trying to draw some robots and realized I didn't have a good grasp on the light and shadows. So, I decided to make a maquette, to help me understand how the light falls on a robot from various angles.

The figure was also an experiment to answer a couple of questions: 1) can I make a robot purely out of polymer clay, without kit-bashing any plastic refuse into it; and 2) can I make a figure without an armature? The project answered those questions definitively: Yes to the first, a loud and clear NO to the second.

The sculpture is purely polymer clay, but calling it a sculpture is a bit pretentious; it's more of a scratchbuild. I wanted to ape the super-robot style of Go-Nagai, so I started making simple polymer clay shapes, individual spheres, cylinders, cones, etc. After joining them all together with CA glue, I wrapped it all with thin sheets of polymer clay and styled it to shape the outer body. I did sculpt the head and face "traditionally" and am happy with how that turned out.

The lack of armature means the robot now lies in pieces on my hobby desk. He's served his purpose though. Not only did I get a number of good photos from a variety of lighting angles, I also learned some valuable lessons for the next robot I make.

Creative Pallet-Cleanse (New Scratchbuild Spaceship)

I've got a lot of creative energy recently, but I've stalled out on each of my projects.

A creative pallet-cleansing should help me refocus my hobby-brain. And that means going back to my old favorite and making a spaceship.

Back to my old techniques: pasta for the master shape, impression molding, then dental plaster casting.

I'll clean it up with files tomorrow, then plan to add some extra details/fix air bubble blemishes with epoxy putty. The ultimate goal is to get back to pewter drop-casting. 

New Epoxy Putty Oven

I made a new putty oven for curing epoxy-based sculptures quickly. I’ve always found that when I try to sculpt in epoxies, I lose my focus while waiting hours for the epoxy to cure. Not to mention that the other demands of life don’t give me the luxury of waiting, even if I had the patience.

I typically have a little quiet time each morning after the dog gets his walk and is finally docile and asleep on the couch.  I probably have somewhere between 60-90 minutes where I could realistically get some hobby time in before the rest of the day's tasks come calling.  Hopefully, this oven will allow me to work on two figures at once; while I'm building up a putty layer on one, the other figure will be curing and by alternating between figures, maybe I can sculpt for a full hour.  

Originally I planned to use only three tins for this oven, but the figures I’m currently making are ~60mm high and the lid rested on their heads. The extra two tins provide plenty of space, and probably better serve to create a chimney effect.

My previous putty oven used a light bulb for a nice, steady heat source, but I’ll be damned if I can find an incandescent bulb here in my new home city. OK, to be fair, I have located expensive specialty infrared bulbs. Add to this the cost of the bulb socket, properly safe electrical leads, and the time sink of wiring everything up, and the project cost would be out of hand. The electric hot plate cost €19, puts out far more heat than I could need for curing, and is useful for other media (like melting wax).

I’ll need to figure out how to best set the heating element. My first experiment saw me spread out an epoxy/polymer clay mix on a glazed ceramic tile, which I placed in the oven with the burner set to 4 (of 5 maximum) for five minutes. I then turned the burner off and let the putty stay in the oven for five more minutes. Upon inspection I found the putty bubbled with browned edges, and required scraping to get off the tile. The tile of course required a tool to handle safely, and retained its heat for some time. The putty required only one to two minutes to cool and then was rock hard.

The stove certainly gets hot enough and cures the putty in minutes. I think the timing was actually OK and that the ceramic tile acting as a heat sink resulted in the “overcooked” appearance of the putty.

I’ll probably try mapping out the burner’s duty cycle after a three minute warm up on the “5” max setting. I think maybe 30% on, 70% off might be the right duty cycle, and no ceramic tile. 

Feeling the heat of the tile makes me think my original idea of heating sand would work. Looking for an ultra cheap option, I thought about heating sand in one of the aluminum tubs, and using that for a heat source.

Man O' War Proxy Ship WIP

I've been trying to revive this blog, however the recent uptick in activity leans heavily into nostalgia and introspection.  I enjoy doing those posts and will continue recounting my Hobby Origins, but I figure it's time to talk actual hobby.  

I recently purchased the Man O' War boxed set, Games Workshop's 1993 rules for sea battles amongst the nations of the Warhammer Fantasy setting.  Despite the absurd prices for old MoW miniatures, I also secured two partial fleets.  Unfortunately limited luggage-space meant I had to leave the models back in the US for later retrieval.  The silver lining to this situation is now I have motivation to get me back into scratchbuilding: I decided to make a proxy MoW vessel.     

Polymer clay probably serves as the best medium for something inorganic yet curved like a sailing vessel.     I still need to build a new dedicated clay oven though (and refuse to put polymer clay in the food oven), so I went with epoxy putties instead.

I didn't want to waste expensive epoxy, so I made the innards of the ship out of cereal packet card, cyanoacrylate glue, and baking soda.

Top-down views, both of the upper deck and the waterline, as well as a planform view, were first drawn on thin paper; folding the paper twice and only drawing one quarter of the top-down templates ensured lateral and longitudinal symmetries.

I then transferred the paper templates to cereal packet, cut these out, and assembled them as shown here.  Baking soda then filled the gaps between the waterline and upper decks, with CA glue liberally applied to cure the mixture into a solid mass.  Defining the hull shape required only minimal sanding.  

I next coated the basic ship form with epoxy (a mix of Knead-a-tite, Milliput Standard, and Sculpey Firm), providing a smooth, sticky base onto which I could apply the "beauty layer", which would feature the sculpted details.

Actually manipulating the detail layer onto the form proved a lot harder than just typing it here.  Unlike pure polymer clay, getting a very thin but uniform sheet of the epoxy mix was frustratingly difficult, as the squashed putty would stick to the non-porous kneading surface, no matter how much water I used.  I can't underestimate the amount of respect I already had for the commercial sculptors of the 80s and 90s, but if the Citadel/GW folks used epoxies to make 1/1200 ships for Man O' War, and similarly small units for Space Marine (Epic), hats doubly off to them. 

I probably could've spent a lot more time with file and sanding block to create crisper edges, but I just decided to throw the masts on.  My old standby, pasta, makes perfect masts, with small strips of masking tape giving the structures a little more character.  Attaching the yardarms (also pasta) gave me no end of frustration.

I still need to add crows' nests and pennant staffs to the masts (as well as another yardarm to the main mast), then paint up the ship.  Finally, I'll throw some sails and pennants on, just to finish the project.

Is this the first ship of a fleet?  Nah, really just a proof of concept to try out different techniques and reacquaint myself with epoxy putties.

Will I make more ships? Yeah, it was fun!  I'll probably use polymer clay though, which hopefully will give me tighter details.  It's motivation to reconstruct my putty oven!       

Tabletop Wargame Building Scale: Figure or Ground?

Subtitle: 

...or neither?

FASA's Battletech wins the honor of being my first tabletop wargame but we only played with paper markers (were they stand-ups or chits? I honestly don't remember). My junior-high chums and I soon discovered proper miniatures wargaming with Rogue Trader and with it the curious difference between ground and figure scales.

Despite our dutiful reading of Mr. Priestly's every word, we accepted that the ground scale compressed greatly compared to the (back-then) 28mm figures, but we failed to similarly compress the dimensions of our terrain features. Of course, those were the days of seemingly limitless free-time and negligible responsibilities, giving us ample opportunity to construct 3 to 4 meter (!) game boards that wouldn't be dominated by our figure-scale buildings.

Returning to wargaming in my time- and space-poor adult days I discovered that figure-scale buildings seemed massively bloated on my typical meter-square battle mat. I chalked this up to the 28mm scale; in fact, avoiding this apparent "parking-lot battle" spurred me to explore 10mm and 6mm figure scales.

Looks great but too big???

Preparing for a 10mm campaign saw me scratchbuild some 10mm buildings, true to figure dimensions, which I've only now started painting. Looking for a paint scheme, I popped on over to the Pendraken site, since I'm using their figures and hoped to find some in-progress game pictures featuring both buildings and troopers. Instead of those I found the dimensions of their buildings, immediately noticing their two-story layout measures maybe 2/3 of my two-story farmhouse, proportionally.

I double-checked my math and found no errors, leading me to look to the internet for answers. Mel, the Terrain Tutor, came through like he always does. In the linked video he explains how most commercial wargaming buildings are scaled down proportionally to the figures, except for the doors and windows which remain figure-scale to produce the illusion of matched size. The doors and windows, of course, brilliant!

Further internet rabbit-holes, mainly discussion boards, suggested that many wargamers match their scratchbuilt structure proportions to the ground scale. That left me wandering: do the commercial manufacturers use an intermediate building scale, between ground and figure? Perhaps 2/3 of figure scale for the buildings and trees, and 1/3 figure scale for board size?

I'm not sure of the answer but I've decided to try it out for myself. In the coming months, when I finally get all my terrain done and figures painted, I plan to repeat a platoon vs. platoon 10mm game (one figure = one trooper), playing it once with my figure-scale scratchbuild farmhouse, and then again with another scratchbuild sized to Pendraken's offerings.

Figure scale (left) and "commercial scale" (right) scratch builds

I'm not done with the smaller farmhouse yet but I've blocked out the basic shape in polymer clay and included a comparison pic with my (primed but unpainted) figure-scale farmhouse. It'll take a full game with other terrain and figures to determine exactly which one "feels" right. 

Kars for Kaiju

Howdy.  Things have been a bit slow around here, at least on the gaming front.  Real life in the way, too much to do, blah, blah, I've said it all before and I'm sure everyone reading this is just as strapped for time.

So, I've yet to play my second game of Super Mission Force, despite having such a great time with the first one.  I rolled up Rooftop Rumble for the second scenario and I don't have that table ready.  A silly excuse really, as I can (and probably will) just put some gray rectangles down for the rooftops.  I prefer detailed terrain though, and building some good rooftop scatter scenery has stalled my campaign.

Anyways, let's talk tiny cars...

I mentioned giant-monster gaming a couple of posts ago and that's really what's consuming my minimal free time.  In accordance with my personal rules to stay focused, I'm trying to stick to a few scales, or paint figures I can use across multiple scales and that plan includes using 28-32mm figures as giant monsters (kaiju).

Making 28mm figures appear colossal requires scenery to force the illusion so I've started making buildings and tiny cars.  I sculpted 11 sedan type cars with plasticine and then made a silicone rubber mold of the lot.  The pictures below show the first casts; I figure if I fill up the mold every night this week, I can have ~50 cars by the weekend.  Plenty of things for kaiju to smash!

The pics also show an (unpainted) scratchbuilt office building for the kaiju to smash.  It was extremely easy to make, technique-wise, but a bit time-consuming.  I've also experimented with doing a structure that represents an entire block thinking it would save time but initial indications show it takes just as long.

      

Scratchbuild Future Micro-armor: Heavy Tank (Complete)

I finally finished assembling and painting the platoon of four heavy tanks I fabricated (sculpt, mold, cast) last January (2019!).  I'm not planning on any micro-armor games, I just want to clear off the workbench of these unfinished projects.

I only show one tank here because as I experimented as I applied the various dry brush layers.  It wasn't until I got to this fourth tank that I was happy with the results.  Or maybe not happy, more like tired and beaten, resigned to accept the crap job and just call it done.

About 35mm long

I started out with a bad-ass futuristic turquoise tone but as I piled on the paint it slowly evolved into a pretty mundane looking drab green.

I still love this sculpt though, especially the little touches like the notches in the main-cannon muzzles.  The turrets are removable and feature a small disc (not shown: forgot to photo) that sits perfectly in the central ring on the hull.

Scratchbuild Spaceships: Space Trucks Complete

Complete!

Very happy with the results on these, even if the pics don't do them justice.

The camera on this iPhone is incredible: it's too good.  The miniatures look great on my little phone screen, just like my eye sees them.  Then I transfer the pics to this computer and on the big screen I can see every gory detail, every errant brush-stroke and glue blob.

Tried to do a checkerboard pattern on the antenna... tough!

iPhone generates a moire pattern on the hex mat... not perceptible to the naked eye thankfully.

Giant Monster (Two-Headed Dino) WIP Continued...

The sculpting is finished on my first figure for use with Mighty Monsters.  I still need to paint it up but I'm pretty happy with it.

The creature is obviously two-headed and also has two bony, spiked, sail-like structures (not wings).  The right sail is white because I was experimenting with Milliput Superfine.  The Milliput is good for some applications but I find it too sticky for straight up sculpting.  I much prefer the polymer clay.

Polymer clay oven in operation

The obvious advantage of polymer clay over epoxies like Milliput or Kneadatite, besides the manageability aspect, is the indefinite working time.  Of course, this requires an additional baking step but the solution is a simple oven.

I've found the typically recommended toaster oven results in burned sculptures, as the heating elements lie too close to the polymer clay piece.  Luckily I found this great oven design on the internet years ago.  Based around a simple hot plate and aluminum baking pans, it cost hardly anything and works beautifully, getting up to 500 degrees F no problem (although I only bake my figures at ~250).  

Just big enough for these monster figures

The creature swelled in size from the initial armature I showed last post.  Still, I'm quite happy with the creature.  Sure, it's rough and crude but I think that emulates the rubber suits of 1950s-70s Japanese monster movies.

Giant Monster (Two-headed Dino) WIP

I'm in the process of creating a couple of monster sculpts so I can try Ganesha Games' Mighty Monsters.

I bought the game ages ago but never tried it out due to lack of figures.  As the holidays and a major life transition (hopefully a slow-down) approach, I'm finding myself with more time.

I had planned to finish writing up my 1/600 jet game, Our Space Age Air Force, this weekend but got distracted by a new(ish) sculpting technique.

Anyways, the pic above shows the first of two creatures I'm hoping to finish by week's end.  The two-headed beastie is next to one of my scratchbuilt future tanks, which is about 33mm long.  I'm trying to keep all these little (giant) monsters to around 60mm tall.

The goal was not to try for perfection but instead for rapid prototyping.  The plan was to use readily available and CHEAP materials to knock out maybe 5-6 creatures.  Still, after finish my initial few stages in this first guy's production, I couldn't help myself.  I had to make it more complicated and try to do a proper (but still crude) sculpture.

Next to 60mm humanoid for scale

I start out with twisted aluminum foil for the armature.  I use foil at this scale because it's insanely cheap, strong enough to support itself (but barely), can be cut with normal scissors, and when twisted has a lot of tooth for putty-like materials to grab on to.

Of course my putty of choice is Durham's Rock Hard Water Putty, which I use to make a ~40mm base.  About three spoonfuls of putty makes around 5-7 bases.  The putty cures enough to handle in about two hours; during this time I'll twist up the foil into my monster armatures.

Cyanoacrylate glue fixes the armature to the base.  The foil figure then gets a heavy brushing of Elmer's Wood Glue (Interior water-soluble version) to give it a little more rigidity.

Once the PVA glue dries it's time to bulk out the figure.  I mix Durham's with a few drops of blueing liquid to give a nice green color, just so I can see where I'm working better.  I'll add just enough water, using a spray bottle, to make a chalky, sticky paste about the consistency of icing or peanut butter.

The paste then gets globbed on at a few strategic locations, and then spread around using a slightly wet paintbrush.  This technique allows me to "paint" the flesh on the creature, which is super quick and lends a nice flowing, organic look to the figure.

I add putty like this at least twice, allowing at least an hour, preferably two or more, between layers for curing.  Then I brush the figure with two heavy coats of wood glue with just enough water so it spreads.  I'll wait about an hour for the first coat to dry but wait overnight to ensure the second coat gives me a nice plastic shell.

The miniature still looked very crude after this second coat of wood glue dries, so I decided to coat it with a thin layer of polymer clay.  The polymer clay doesn't stick well to the figure, so I first rub a pre-sculpting "slime" on.  I take some basic Sculpey and mix it with a small pee-sized amount of petroleum jelly.  The resulting slime is incredibly sticky and gets smeared onto the sculpture.

Once the whole figure is covered in slime, I thoroughly wash my hands, then get the "glamor-shot" outer layer of polymer clay ready.  I use a mix of Super-Sculpey and various colors of Premo, in this case yellow.  I simply roll the clay out into paper thin sheets and press it right onto the figure.  The previously applied slime ensures the outer layer stays in place.

Ideally I would finish covering the whole figure before detailing but as you can see in the last picture, I deviated from that good practice and started working on the right leg detail.

I hope to continue on this figure tonight and see how far I get.

Two 6mm Scratchbuild Future Tank Platoons: Finished

I completed two platoons of future tanks last night, finally finishing up the detailing.

Overall I'm pleased with all aspects of these except the tracks: I dry brushed so sloppy that in general I obscured the detail I painstakingly sculpted.  Oh well, that's learning.  Next time I'll paint a lighter base color on the tracks/wheels and then hit it with a heavy wash.

(WIP) 6mm Scratchbuild Future Tanks: Painted

Got the base coat, wash, and drybrushing on two platoons of future tanks.  Managed to get some details on one tank, shown here.

I'll put a few more details on this little guy and then hopefully finish the other seven in a similar manner by the end of the week.

EDIT: Thanks for the kind words guys!  I tried to reply the normal way but for some reason Blogger isn't allowing me to comment on my own posts.  Weird.

(WIP) 6mm Scratchbuild Future Tanks: Heavy Tank

I finished a new sculpt a few days ago, this time a heavy tank, and have been steadily creating copies since then.

The first pic below is a full life cycle shot from sculpt to duplicate cast.

I've managed to create a full four-tank unit as shown next.  I still need to clean the flash off of these and add the barrels but I think they turned out well.  I really like this design.