Showing posts with label miniatures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label miniatures. Show all posts

Friday, August 29, 2025

Merchant house


 

I built this house out of food packaging and an old sock to see if I could. It's not exactly up to code, but looks a bit better on the table than the dollar store Jenga blocks to which it is functionally identical.  The upper story is a 12 oz/340 g raisin box end capped with corrugated card for the gables.  The lower story is a box for a dozen packs of chewing gum (we all have our vices). Both were wrapped in packing paper before adding the timbers.  It's just a more paintable surface than the plastic impregnated trade dress.

 

 

The timbers are cereal card, cut in 6 mm strips on a paper cutter.  The corners are 12mm strips wrapped around to hide the ends. The stucco texture between them is gesso.  I decided to assemble and paint each story separately before gluing them together and adding the roof.  This made things considerably easier than trying to shove a paintbrush under the eaves.  There's no chimney because between the local clowder and a gaming group that can't seem to go five gorram minutes without knocking a drink over, I just don't need the aggravation of an easily snagged protrusion.

 

 
 
The shutters are 20mm by 30 mm slabs with the slats cut into them and hardware cut separately and glued on. Similar technique for the door. The thatch is the inside of a retired white cotton sock, dyed with tea.  My Black Assam habit left permanent enough stains on my teeth and the occasional shirt, I figured I might as well exploit that.
 
 


Goldar the Barbarian and his long suffering associate Sergeant Cerulean serving the whims of their mad patron once again.  At least he let them stop somewhere civilized (or at least indoors) this time.  The cat's name is Prue.  She's here becaouse not every establishment can wait for low level adventurers to show up every time there's giant rats in the basement.

Friday, April 21, 2023

Gronk

"Look, if you put your teddy bear at the bottom of the bag you're just going to have to wait until we stop to get it out."



Number Appearing:  1 to lots

Size: Giraffe

Armor: Pack saddle

Resilience: As large herd beast

Intelligence: Questionable

Communication: "Gronk!"

Disposition: Domesticated

Violence: Variations of "trample"

Enemies:  Large predators, bandits, gopher holes

Aims:  Keep moving forward

Peculiarities: Dwarf sauropods are peculiar in the same way as jumbo shrimp

Treasure: As caravan

"Picked 'em up in Damascene.  Salt was cheap and almonds were dear and we needed extra beasts to haul it all home.  The man that sold them to us said that the merchant he acquired them from claimed they were from somewhere around Akka Arrh, but that doesn't make any sense.  That place has been lost for centuries, if it ever existed."

Gronks are "dwarf" sauropods used as beasts of burden.  They're fairly unusual outside their home range of "not here".

Format cheerfully swiped from They Stalk the Underworld

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Mreen

Original recipe next to very mild conversion.


"We're not sure about the new guy."
25mm Ouvre-boĆ®te (MegaMiniatures OOP), Cheap Chinese knock-off of Bandai "Gouf" (Rhode Island Novelty Company "Battle Space Robot"), Reaper Bones 77047 Goldar the Barbarian
Number Appearing: Never more than 4, usually just one, probably no more than a dozen exist at all

Size:  Ten feet tall and bullet-proof

Armor:  Nth generation self-repairing variable-albedo laminate

Resilience: That which does not kill them makes them stronger.

Intelligence:  Artificial

Communication:  Abrupt and lacking in tact.

Disposition:  Militant

Violence:  In spades.  Also *with* spades.

Enemies:  All who hinder the completion of their mission.

Aims:  Return the Crown Princess to the Capitol for Coronation.  There are unforeseen transportation issues.

Peculiarities:  Might be sort of dead.  Doesn't slow them down much.

Treasure:  Owed a budget-annihilating level of back pay.
Format cheerfully swiped from They Stalk the Underworld


Children are told ridiculous tales for their amusement about silly creatures known as the Mreen (one of the quirkier aspects is that the word "Mreen" is always capitalized).  Absurd constructs with necks of leather and jars for heads, a bizarre code of honor (including an annual requirement for cake), and what seems, at first glance, to be a decided lack of critical thinking skills.  Many of the tales are about a Mreen named Privet Shmucktelly and his hilarious misunderstandings and mishaps with assorted magical tools ("Privet Shmucktelly and the box of Grid Squares" is a perennial favorite).  These aren't like those creatures of legend.  They are the self-same creatures - older, possibly wiser, and definitely free of tale-tellers' distortions.  They are the surviving(?) Marine Contingent of the Imperial Cruiser Pandora, and they have been on duty for a very long time.

On the Island of Knossos, there is only one suitable place for boats to make landfall, inside a natural harbor on the southern side.  On the wall of the harbor is a message, carved in the stone of the cliff in characters a yard high and a hand deep, and rendered with precision that would not be credible if it were not also demonstrable.  The characters are readable to any scholar, over four hundred years old, and don't make much sense.  They are a distance, a direction, a date in the near future, and twelve words that most scholars assume to be names.  They are directions to find where the escape pod containing the Crown Princess will make landfall due to orbital decay.  That's when the trouble starts.  As Presumptive Empress, the Crown Princess can override any and all military orders and directives.

The Marines are trapped in their suits due to a Coronation Directive.  The suit AI is to keep them on duty until they can deliver their charge to the place of coronation or are relieved by an appropriately sized force of body guards.  The previous record for being under Coronation Directive is 273 hours.  Pandora's Leathernecks have been on duty for over 423 years.  Between their advanced age, suit AI, nanotech repairs to their failing bodies, and the fact that nobody has opened a suit in centuries, even the Marines aren't entirely certain if they're still alive in a strictly biological sense.  It doesn't matter.  What does matter are the factors that hamstring their mission: namely the need to barracks lawyer the suit AI to get anything done, and reliance on field expedient power supplies.  The first is what's kept them from building an empire and starting a space program (Coronation Directive is intended to be a short term emergency protocol).  The second is why they ride in wagons or on boats and whack hostiles with shovels instead of accelerated particles.  It's also why they sometimes take up causes with locals that can get them necessary supplies.



The outlaw Sergei d'Gisbourne was judged to be dangerous enough to require several Mreen for his extraction from Quaker Tower.  He ended up leaving through an arrow slit - involuntarily. 

Friday, December 29, 2017

A Bit of Culture (it grows on you)

"William", courtesy of The Met
This is a 3,800-year-old knick-knack from an Egyptian tomb. Over the last hundred years, it's become a mascot of sorts for The Met.  If you take a close look at the lotus markings, they're really just made out of triangles and dots.

Painting by Charles R. Knight
These things said "Hong Kong" when I was a kid.



Uintatheriums are a somewhat odd extinct mammal.  The tusks give them a certain resemblance to hippos (they're not meaningfully related to any modern mammal).  Uintatheriums started popping up in bags of chinasaurs around the time that Gary Gygax was playing with other cheap plastic critters in his basement, but never got turned into anything iconic, D&D-wise.

Reaper 77144: Mummy for scale.

This sort of thing is what happens when I play with cheap plastic critters in my man-cave.  Acrylic paint, an alcohol pen, and a paperclip used to wire him to the Magic-Sculpt base.  The biggest time consumption came from the cleanup stage - the molds have not aged well.  One big advantage over doing this in the '70s is that I can pull up a 3-d view of the original hippo's markings while I've got the pen in hand.  He's deliberately glossy because "William" was originally glazed with blue glass.  He seems to be perfectly serviceable as a statue, living construct, or magical critter.  I kind of picture him as an immobile oracle that speaks with a lisp due to the tusks.



Friday, March 11, 2016

The Immortal Heroes of Summat

There's a Frostgrave scenario with statues that these might be handy for.
I bought a bag of 2" "Army Man" knights.  Painting one of each pose as statues leaves me with 30 more for whatever nefarious purpose strikes my fancy.  Mostly attempting to rehabilitate my fine motor skills, truth be told.  I'm not really up to painting 25mm figures again just yet.  Raw Umber damp brushed with Robin's Egg Blue drybrushed with Seafoam Green yields a reasonable facsimile of a patina on bronze.

 Normally I don't like cast on shield heraldry, but the drybrushing works pretty well with these to bring out the designs.

Larger than life, but not into colossus territory.

Monday, August 3, 2015

Sandstone Outcropping



 So I've been mucking about with the Crayola Air-Dry Clay again.  Coated with Elmer's glue and painted, the final product is similar to resin.  And it smells a whole lot better while you're working with it.  I used a small rock to created the stony texture.  Fractals are nifty.  This particular bit of terrain is probably reaching the limits of my current armature technique, if you can count a pile of wet paper towels as an armature.  Wrapping the paper around something rigid might still keep the clay from cracking.
The beetles are from the first Reaper Bones kickstarter.  The spiders from the same set are a lot better.  I tried  to base the paint scheme on this little cutie:


Festive Tiger Beetle
Cicindela scutellaris

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Kitten Sphinx

The Lady in Red is confronted by a dessicated guardian by moonlight.  "Come back when we're open..."
So I picked this up from Goodwill for a couple of bucks while She Who Must Be Obeyed was foraging for handbag parts.  It was covered in white texture paint, the occasional brush bristle, and appropriately enough, cat hair.  I gave it a sandstone paintjob in homage to the ruins of the Kitten Kingdom from Epic Battle Fantasy 3, starting with a medium brown and drybrushing 3 subsequently more beige shades with a larger-than-usual brush.  Sealed with Ceramcoat Matte Interior Varnish.

Friday, March 6, 2015

Owlbear

No, that's a bare owl.
The first one was more disturbing.


Number Appearing:  One's enough

Size:  Too big

Armor: Fat, feathers, intense burning rage

Resilience:  Very.  Too angry to recognize lethal injuries.

Intelligence:  Not so much.

Communication:  Violence, mostly.

Disposition: Hangry.

Violence:  Very much so.  All the appendages end in sharp.

Enemies:  More or less everything, but especially wizards.

Aims:  Kill.  Eat.  Hopefully in that order.

Peculiarities:  Interact strangely with wizardry.

Treasure:  Not really.  Maybe a tacky rug if you're careful.

Wizards bend Reality in uncomfortable ways.  Owlbears are Reality telling them to stop.  The enormous eyes can see magic, even in complete darkness.  Especially in sorcerous darkness.  Magic is tasty.  Owlbears devour spells as they devour wizards.  If the wizard is particularly alert and starts casting before the chomping starts, they devour spells before they devour wizards.  The magic makes them stronger, angrier, and harder to kill.  Oddly, they'll get the same rush from devouring scrolls, wands, spellbooks, and potions (oftentimes plus the potion effect).  In the absence of sorcery, they are merely nearly silent nocturnal ambush predators that can out-sprint a horse.


Saturday, November 8, 2014

Lighting Fires

 So this is Reaper's large fire elemental that I got in the first Bones Kickstarter.


Turns out the bottom part is hollow.  Hollow enough for the LED from a tea light, anyway.
 This is a D&D Miniatures fire elemental, probably listed as some synonym for "really big fire elemental".  Unbasing this guy was a pain - there are several pegs involved.  Easiest way is to drill several holes in the bottom and break the base in half.  He isn't as nice a technical sculpt as the Reaper model. but the light can go a lot further up and the orange is more convincing than the Reaper red.
With The Lady in Red for scale.  They're not little in comparison, but the table footprint is the same as it would be without me hiding lighting infrastructure in a juice lid.  These are from the Simply brand.  Their Apple juice is really tasty if you like that sort of thing.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Beaky Beast


So Chinasaurs have a certain charm, mostly based on childhood nostalgia.  The printing said "Hong Kong" back when there were two Germanies.  Turns out that Magic Sculpt will stick to this plastic quite readily, making them excellent armatures/conversion fodder.  He looks big enough to be threatening without getting into kaiju territory next to this 25mm Grenadier figure.  Bigger than a Destrier, smaller than an elephant.

 I was kind of at a loss as to how to paint him - ended up with a scheme inspired by an online picture of a box turtle assaulting a strawberry.
I really need to add a Godzilla roar when this one gets clicked on.
Gamewise, he usually just gets the same stats as a Stegosaurus or a giant lizard, although Dragon Turtle wouldn't be so very far off if we needed a breath weapon critter.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Idol of the The Keeper of Portals

So Dollar Tree had "Monsters, Inc." figurines.  I figured it was worth a buck to give the group a giggle, although the technique would be entirely valid if I'd wanted to throw Cthulhu or something on top of the juice lid.  If I had it to do over I would have put a fake emerald where his iris goes, because Edwardian doggerel is fun:

The Green Eye of the Yellow God

by J. Milton Hayes

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

He was known as "Mad Carew" by the subs at Khatmandu,
He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell;
But for all his foolish pranks, he was worshipped in the ranks,
And the Colonel's daughter smiled on him as well.

He had loved her all along, with a passion of the strong,
The fact that she loved him was plain to all.
She was nearly twenty-one and arrangements had begun
To celebrate her birthday with a ball.

He wrote to ask what present she would like from Mad Carew;
They met next day as he dismissed a squad;
And jestingly she told him then that nothing else would do
But the green eye of the little Yellow God.

On the night before the dance, Mad Carew seemed in a trance,
And they chaffed him as they puffed at their cigars:
But for once he failed to smile, and he sat alone awhile,
Then went out into the night beneath the stars.

He returned before the dawn, with his shirt and tunic torn,
And a gash across his temple dripping red;
He was patched up right away, and he slept through all the day,
And the Colonel's daughter watched beside his bed.

He woke at last and asked if they could send his tunic through;
She brought it, and he thanked her with a nod;
He bade her search the pocket saying "That's from Mad Carew,"
And she found the little green eye of the god.

She upbraided poor Carew in the way that women do,
Though both her eyes were strangely hot and wet;
But she wouldn't take the stone and Mad Carew was left alone
With the jewel that he'd chanced his life to get.

When the ball was at its height, on that still and tropic night,
She thought of him and hurried to his room;
As she crossed the barrack square she could hear the dreamy air
Of a waltz tune softly stealing thro' the gloom.

His door was open wide, with silver moonlight shining through;
The place was wet and slipp'ry where she trod;
An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew,
'Twas the "Vengeance of the Little Yellow God."

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Fluffy Rex



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So I have some thoughts on feathered dinosaurs.  The ones that come to the backyard feeder are considerably more temping to the cat.  But the environments that they can live in are pretty much anywhere that you'd find a mammal.

 Weirdly, these Dollar Store toys are about the right scale for D&D type miniatures (25-32mm):

Tyrannosaur scale chart

They're also absolutely fabulous armatures for the money.  I had to do a couple of unsavory things with a knife and a couple of wedges to get him to stand like a proper theropod,  but otherwise that's just a texture layer.  Y'know, the fun part.  Well, besides plunking him down on the game table.




Sunday, September 7, 2014

Man's Best Friend

Julie Guthrie is a better sculptor than me.

Meh.  I've drunk out of worse.
So I went to the trouble of making this dog out of Fimo.  And I figured that maybe an adventurer's best friend deserves better than to be a 25 gp bit of disposable equipment.  Plus this. So here's an NPC class, ala Swords & Wizardry:
Faithful Hound: NPC only, XP and Saves as Fighter, HP and Tracking as Ranger, only surprised on a 1, doubled movement rate, all armor (natural AC 7/13), no shield, no weapons, cannot use magic items.  +1 to hit, damage, and AC per level (the last one only when fighting in a fur coat, i.e. sans armor).  Always does full damage to skeletons, bone devils, etc. because it's funny.  This is a Lassie/Rin Tin Tin type henchdog, so he can pull levers, open unlocked doors, laboriously climb ladders, etc.

It seems a little overpowered, but henchmen are running on half XP.  He can't activate magic items, although if he came across a passive item like a collar of fire resistance, or if someone let him lap a potion out of their helmet, I'd allow it.  There could also be a Paladin's Hound, as an alternative to the Paladin's Mount.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Buggalo


So these are the livestock for the Mouslings  of SWMBO.  Buggalo milk naturally occurs as a wobbly sphere about the size of a cabbage that can sustain one person for one day.  Buggalo yogurt and cheese (especially cheese) often have magical properties similar to potions.

The miniatures are made out of Durham's water putty, poured into a press mold made out of uncooked Sculpey from a Magic Sculpt original.  So I could theoretically start up production again if I decide that I need an enormous stampede.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Dracolich on a budget






So I picked up a 3-pack of dinosaur skeletons at some dollar store or other.  Turns out that they're made of the same type of PVC plastic as the Reaper Bones miniatures.  Thought I'd do some pinning just to test out the material.  Those are the pterosaur wings on the dimetrodon  body (yeah, I know, the upright knees aren't right for dimetrodon).  The neat thing about this stuff is that works sort of like the rubber in self-sealing tanks.  So when you pin it it tries to clamp back down around the hole  Which is a whole lot of words to say that you just need to sharpen the ends of a bit of florist wire and shove the whole thing together and you're done.

Friday, August 8, 2014

Column Tutorial

This is the lid from a bottle of Dole juice.  SWMBO is fond of the orange-peach-mango variety.
This is a 2-1/4" disk (I've got a circle stencil) of paper grocery bag.  Attach it using the old 19th century poster technique of saturating both sides in Elmer's glue.
Pretty self explanatory.  Gesso makes paint stick to plastic.
Gesso goes on pretty thick.  Don't dilute it.
It shrinks a lot as it dries.  This takes at least 24 hours.  They mean it - it'll peel if you try to paint before a 24-hour cure.

FolkArt Artist's Acrylics "wrought iron".  I like it better than black because it's plenty dark without being artificially sharp.  Real shadows are never black.


No need for a palette.  This thing's about the size of one anyway.
The FolkArt regular acrylic is slightly translucent.  This works in your favor.  Use a palette this time.  A medium gray would work just as well, I just like the slate blue effect.
The Dove Gray goes on as a drybrush coat.
Since you're going to game with them, sealing is recommended.  I like brush on sealers because they're thick, non-toxic, and can be used at my desk.
With The Lady in Red for scale.
What it looks like on the table.  For 2.5-d we usually let anything climbing the column like a squirrel on a tree just set on top and have cover.  It also obviously makes a good plinth for big statues.