I've been messing around with making cheap minis again (well, I've never really stopped, but I did go on vacation). Besides the origami dragons I've also been playing around with lizard miniatures. At first I was putting costly resin wings on them, or using even costlier epoxy putty to make the wings. I decided that I could make wings from some 2mm thick foam sheets I've had for a long time that I purchased at a dollar store. I originally bought them to punch out foam circles to indicate different effects on miniatures in encounters, but I've punched out hundreds of foam circles and I've barely made a dent in the foam sheets, so I've got a ton of it left over.
To make my dragons I take the lizards, dump them in hot water, bend them into more "dragony" poses (as well as I can, they don't bend all that wel) and then do a quick hand cutout of a wing using an exacto knife, and then use that wing to make a copy so I have two nearly identical wings (I deliberately don't make exact copies so each wing is unique). To stiffen them up a bit I glue a bit of extra foam where the "arm" would be and then I glue them to the lizard. Then I paint them.
Here is a lousy photo of some I've done (plus another spider-crab, this one made with crawfish claws).
I am experimenting with some lizard body mods to make the lizards more dragon like. I've cut off the legs of one and epoxied them back in a more upright pose and I've extended the neck of one using some epoxy putty. I wil try to post a better pic when I get home tonight.
Not bad. Can you post a close up of one of the wings? in this photo it is hard to tell what is foam and what is lizard. I hope that stays true RL. :)
I took some photos tonight but I can't find my USB cable to upload them. I'll try again tomorrow.
I don't want anyone to get high expectations about these ultra cheap dragons (and other things). This is just a way to make decent 3D miniatures on the cheap.
I do think that a sufficiently motivated person could do some amazing things with this foam, but I'm not that motivated. I'm mostly just wanting to get the shapes and colors right. It is my personal opinion that the result of adding these foam wings to cheap lizard or other minis is comparable to some of the lower quality D&D minis, but doesn't match up to high quality minis from any source. The foam doesn't have any real texture to it and I haven't made any effort to add texture beyond trying to make some visible wing bones on a few of them. Also they aren't as sturdy as the plastic used to make minis, so you would have to take care of them.
But if all you want are usable dragon miniatures, or usable pegasi, or flying monkeys or angels or succubi or any of a slew of creatures that are non-flying animals with wings attached, this is a way to do it on the cheap. You could have an entire army of dragons for just a few bucks. Especially if you already have the paint and exacto knives, etc.
Tomorrow I'm going to try dipping the foam in varnish to see if the foam soaks up the varnish and the end result is a stiff and durable set of wings. If so I might try to do a bit more with this stuff.
OK, here are the photos I promised...
Remember, they are only prototypes, With a little more work with the epoxy putty, I could make these look much better. I am considering cutting off the back legs and sculpting longer and bigger legs to replace them. Or maybe just frankenstein in some legs from a dinosaur mini... Lots of ways to skin these cats...
OK, last post on the cheapo dragons...
Here's the white dragon with the long neck buffed up a little. Basically I repositioned the arms, bulked up the chest and added horns. Plus I put a base paint job on it.
I think it looks pretty nice for an el cheapo hack job...
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OK, last post on the cheapo dragons...
Here's the white dragon with the long neck buffed up a little. Basically I repositioned the arms, bulked up the chest and added horns. Plus I put a base paint job on it.
I think it looks pretty nice for an el cheapo hack job...
Looks good. Where did you find the base minitures?
I don't remember where I found the lizards. I either got them at a toy store called "US Toy" or else I picked them up in one of the dollar stores I frequent. Either way I got a bag of a dozen little plastic lizards for either a buck, or no more than three bucks. So the maximum cost of one of the lizards is a quarter.
This isn't my favorite of the lizards either, the best lizards in the pack have a horned frill on their neck that is just perfect for a dragon.
What I did was to take the lizard, cut out the wings from a foam sheet (2mm thick), glue the wings to the lizard's back, cut the head and front legs off the lizard then made a neck, chest and shoulders out of Apoxie Sculpt, then made wing "arm" muscles and wing rib bones out of the same Apoxie sculpt. (Update, I also glued the original arms back on well in front of their original position, but where they should be based on the wing shoulders.)
The Apoxie sculpt was no doubt the most expensive part of the effort, but overall the cost of the dragon was well short of a dollar.
The dragons are either large or huge, depending on how you want to base them. In the pose I am using for this one, I would call it large, but its head does stick out a bit past the general "large" limits, so there might be times you would have to accommodate the dragon by repositioning it to allow another mini to stand adjacent. For comparison purposes, the base the dragon is mounted on is actually a cheap plastic poker chip, which is what I use for most of my large minis.
Aye those are on or above par with the bottom end DnD minis or MageKnight. They look great. Nice job. :)