homemade miniatures

alsih2o · Jun 13, 2002

5,183 members, and only 2 homemade minis?

c'mon now....

Barendd Nobeard · Jun 13, 2002

alsih2o said:
5,183 members, and only 2 homemade minis?

Uh, hello, there's 3 homemade minis. Don't forget the Twizzler Naga! OK, it wasn't hard to make, but it was tasty!

I once tried to make a mini. (Upper_Krust will probably remember this story from Mark's mini chats.)

My son had a wizard with a viper familiar. I thought, How hard can it be to make a snake?. I mean, we all used to make little snakes out of Play-Doh when we were kids, right?

So I bought the "green stuff" (which is really blue stuff and yellow stuff). I rolled some of the green stuff into a snake. I added eyes and a mouth with dental tools I bought off e-Bay.

And it was horrible! It didn't even reach the level of Play-Doh snake. I'm wiping tears of laughter from my eyes now, just thinking about it. I already had great respect for sculptors, but this experienced magnified my awe of those who can sculpt.

I'm sure that Play-Doh snakes everywhere were laughing at my miserable attempt at making a viper mini.

It was so bad, I vowed (while trying not to laugh) never to show it to anyone. Fortunately, my son (who hated it, becaues it was so bad that even a six year-old didn't like it) lost the mini and it was never seen again. Except in my nightmares.

All this to say, BUMP. And I think my next homemade mini will be....an ochre jelly. Yeah, I think I can handle that!

Upper_Krust · Jun 13, 2002

Hi Barendd mate!

Barendd Nobeard said:
I once tried to make a mini. (Upper_Krust will probably remember this story from Mark's mini chats.)

My son had a wizard with a viper familiar. I thought, How hard can it be to make a snake?. I mean, we all used to make little snakes out of Play-Doh when we were kids, right?

So I bought the "green stuff" (which is really blue stuff and yellow stuff). I rolled some of the green stuff into a snake. I added eyes and a mouth with dental tools I bought off e-Bay.

And it was horrible! It didn't even reach the level of Play-Doh snake. I'm wiping tears of laughter from my eyes now, just thinking about it. I already had great respect for sculptors, but this experienced magnified my awe of those who can sculpt.

I'm sure that Play-Doh snakes everywhere were laughing at my miserable attempt at making a viper mini.

It was so bad, I vowed (while trying not to laugh) never to show it to anyone. Fortunately, my son (who hated it, becaues it was so bad that even a six year-old didn't like it) lost the mini and it was never seen again. Except in my nightmares.

All this to say, BUMP. And I think my next homemade mini will be....an ochre jelly. Yeah, I think I can handle that!

The dreaded snake of death! HA HA! How could we forget!

You were so ashamed you wouldn't even photograph it for the chat night!

I take it, it made the Twizzler Naga look like Todd Lockwood's rendition of a Red Dragon!?

alsih2o · Jun 13, 2002

trust me berrend nobeard, i had forgotten another, not the twizzler!

Richards · Jun 14, 2002

I've created one mini in my life and appropriated a found object as another. They're both the same creature: a black pudding. My wife was doing some melt-soft-plastic-with-a-heat-gun arts & craft project, and I appropriated it just long enough to make a black blob as a black pudding. It flattened and smoothed as it cooled, so that one's pretty low to the ground. The other "black pudding" I found at work, when one of our printers started oozing out (how appropriate, huh?) this black gunk. This second black pudding is all blobby and lumpy.

Of course, my kids make their own PC miniatures out of Lego people. Not just swapping the right color pants, shirts, armor, and weapons, either - they've made cloaks with the appropriate heraldry emblems on them, an overcoat, and once even a plaid kilt and over-the-shoulder thingie. Pretty creative, those two.

Sure do put my black puddings to shame.

Johnathan

Barendd Nobeard · Jun 14, 2002

Upper_Krust said:
You were so ashamed you wouldn't even photograph it for the chat night!

That's right. The mini so bad that no one outside this house has ever seen it.

I take it, it made the Twizzler Naga look like Todd Lockwood's rendition of a Red Dragon!?

Click to expand...

Yes, it did. I was scared of Twizzlers for weeks!

d12 · Jun 14, 2002

really cheap

If you have NO money just go to the wizards site and copy and paste several of their PC Portraits to Word. Then cut out out a picture, trim to 1" on each side and tape it to a 1x1 peice of cardboard. Bach of instant minis for $.01.

Tewligan · Jun 16, 2002

So, I was just doing a little 'net browsing, and I came across www.lyonstudio.com It's got several articles related to sculpting your own minis, a sculpting FAQ, and links to a bunch of other related sites. If you're thinking about sculpting something, you should probably give this a look.

Oh, and I actually have a free day tomorrow, so I think I'm gonna take a crack at that putty. My goal is to transform a wad of putty into something resembling the high gorgon from the Creature Collection. Of course, that's subject to change, depending on how well I can translate sketch into sculpture - it may end up as a scenic green boulder if I get frustrated enough. Either way, I'll put up a picture of my handywork (handicap?) when it's done. Anyone else have a project started or in the works?

Mark · Jun 16, 2002

Do conversions count? I was working on taking some minis from Mage Knight ad converting them to something I would find more immediately useful. It's a fairly involved process that I can try to capture in photos if it qualifies...

"...it may end up as a scenic green boulder if I get frustrated enough..."

I know the feeling.