Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Cheap fantasy minis!
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="1Mac" data-source="post: 6096535" data-attributes="member: 48998"><p>Quick question: would anyone be interested if I started blogging on the topic of cheap fantasy minis? I'd like to, but I want to make sure I'm not whistling in the dark.</p><p></p><p>I messed around a bit with body swapping this weekend. Below are an Arcane Legions lion rider and jorogumo, a Caesar Miniatures knight and elf, and the resulting body swaps. For now I've crudely filled in the gaps with wood glue; I'll later use some Milliput to better sculpt the new figures. The result is a more drow-like drider, and another female warrior PC/NPC.</p><p>[ATTACH]56676[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>A quick bit about how to do figure modding, for those who are interested: For some reason, I'm intimidated by advanced painting techniques like blending and highlighting, but not by cutting my little plastic people up and rearranging them how I please. It's not as difficult as you might imagine, and since one of the drawbacks of minis in 1/72 scale is a relative lack of variety of creature types, fearless miniature-bashing is a great way to make up for that deficiency.</p><p></p><p>The simplest mod is probably just using a hobby knife to chop off weapons, headgear, or other extraneous bits. Often figure sets contain multiple models of a limited number of poses, so this is an easy way to get more poses for your money. If a pose has two weapons, for example, you can chop off one or the other, and effectively get three poses for one (weapons in the left-hand, right-hand, or both hands). Some of the orcs and goblins in an earlier post underwent this treatment.</p><p></p><p>Another easy mod is to bend limbs and appendages into a new position. Sometimes you can simply bend the figure into a new pose. Other times, try dunking the figure in hot water for a minute, bend the softened limb, and dunk in cold water to set the new position. Usually you need to bend the limb a little past where you'd like it, as it will want to reset to its original position. I recommend spreading a little woodglue with a toothpick over the bend joint to strengthen it and give it better shape. The bugbears in the first post of this thread were reposed copies of the same two figure models.</p><p></p><p>The more advanced modding trick is actually swapping heads, arms, and torsos between figures, but even this isn't too difficult. Read <a href="http://paulsbods.blogspot.com/2010/11/head-swops.html" target="_blank">this tutorial</a> to see how it's done: I do everything Paul does, except I never had much luck just shoving a pin through a figure part without preparation. Instead, I use a pin vise, which is like a tiny handdrill, with a very small bit to make pinholes. For head swaps, I brace the head in a needle-nose pliers and drill from the neck through to the top of the head--this way I can better control where the neck of the head joins its new body. I then drill a hole a few millimeters deep into the new body. I impale the head with a pin, put a little superglue in the hole in the body, and push the pin a little further into the body so it grips. I then glue the head in place, trim as much of the exposed pin as I can, and use the side of the pliers to push the rest of the pin into the figure so it's flush. A drop more superglue in the top of the hole makes the whole thing solid. Some forum poster somewhere said that this procedure is like rebar, where the pin is the iron bar and the glue is concrete. That's a useful way to think about the construction of a modded figure.</p><p></p><p>In some ways, torso-swapping is even easier. Just drill a hole into each body part, put glue and a pin in one hole, trim the pin, put glue in the other hole, and shove the two parts together. The tricky bit is making sure the two body parts match, but some wood glue and Milliput or Kneadatite ought to blend the seams between the two halves.</p><p></p><p>Not quite as quick a guide as I thought, but I hope it's useful. Let me know if you have any questions.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="1Mac, post: 6096535, member: 48998"] Quick question: would anyone be interested if I started blogging on the topic of cheap fantasy minis? I'd like to, but I want to make sure I'm not whistling in the dark. I messed around a bit with body swapping this weekend. Below are an Arcane Legions lion rider and jorogumo, a Caesar Miniatures knight and elf, and the resulting body swaps. For now I've crudely filled in the gaps with wood glue; I'll later use some Milliput to better sculpt the new figures. The result is a more drow-like drider, and another female warrior PC/NPC. [ATTACH=CONFIG]56676._xfImport[/ATTACH] A quick bit about how to do figure modding, for those who are interested: For some reason, I'm intimidated by advanced painting techniques like blending and highlighting, but not by cutting my little plastic people up and rearranging them how I please. It's not as difficult as you might imagine, and since one of the drawbacks of minis in 1/72 scale is a relative lack of variety of creature types, fearless miniature-bashing is a great way to make up for that deficiency. The simplest mod is probably just using a hobby knife to chop off weapons, headgear, or other extraneous bits. Often figure sets contain multiple models of a limited number of poses, so this is an easy way to get more poses for your money. If a pose has two weapons, for example, you can chop off one or the other, and effectively get three poses for one (weapons in the left-hand, right-hand, or both hands). Some of the orcs and goblins in an earlier post underwent this treatment. Another easy mod is to bend limbs and appendages into a new position. Sometimes you can simply bend the figure into a new pose. Other times, try dunking the figure in hot water for a minute, bend the softened limb, and dunk in cold water to set the new position. Usually you need to bend the limb a little past where you'd like it, as it will want to reset to its original position. I recommend spreading a little woodglue with a toothpick over the bend joint to strengthen it and give it better shape. The bugbears in the first post of this thread were reposed copies of the same two figure models. The more advanced modding trick is actually swapping heads, arms, and torsos between figures, but even this isn't too difficult. Read [URL="http://paulsbods.blogspot.com/2010/11/head-swops.html"]this tutorial[/URL] to see how it's done: I do everything Paul does, except I never had much luck just shoving a pin through a figure part without preparation. Instead, I use a pin vise, which is like a tiny handdrill, with a very small bit to make pinholes. For head swaps, I brace the head in a needle-nose pliers and drill from the neck through to the top of the head--this way I can better control where the neck of the head joins its new body. I then drill a hole a few millimeters deep into the new body. I impale the head with a pin, put a little superglue in the hole in the body, and push the pin a little further into the body so it grips. I then glue the head in place, trim as much of the exposed pin as I can, and use the side of the pliers to push the rest of the pin into the figure so it's flush. A drop more superglue in the top of the hole makes the whole thing solid. Some forum poster somewhere said that this procedure is like rebar, where the pin is the iron bar and the glue is concrete. That's a useful way to think about the construction of a modded figure. In some ways, torso-swapping is even easier. Just drill a hole into each body part, put glue and a pin in one hole, trim the pin, put glue in the other hole, and shove the two parts together. The tricky bit is making sure the two body parts match, but some wood glue and Milliput or Kneadatite ought to blend the seams between the two halves. Not quite as quick a guide as I thought, but I hope it's useful. Let me know if you have any questions. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Cheap fantasy minis!
Top