If my posting of these things is annoying, let me know. I feel like I might be posting too much here.
Anyway, here's my first attempt to use Hydrocal (TM) a plaster of paris like material that is used for making terrain elements in railroad modeling. It's usually used for rocks, buildings and bridges and stuff. I will probably get around to that, this was just a quick test of how to use it.
And here's a quick wood hut I made at the request of a friend. It's tiny, but would work as a hut for a small peasant family. Took me about 30 minutes. I could make a whole village of these in an afternoon.
Don't know about others but I like seeing your creations. I dig the pile of skulls...always useful in gaming! We used a cast of a pile of bones in our game just last week (dwarf bones in Runelords #6).
Is that a cast of the D&D Minis mushroom guy or your own design?
You're inspiring me to maybe work on some scenery too. I'm, someday, going to run a L5R game and it'd be cool to have a bunch of Japanese-style scenery (that's something we have *none* of in our game room).
M
Yeah, it's the WoTC mushroom man, well, except the left arm, which I had to make from green stuff when the original left arm broke off while demolding and then got crushed accidentally.
Typically if I make a mold of a purchased mini, it's because I want to do some modifications like my "horned devil" which is a mold of an ancient troll that I've added horns, a tail, wings and repositioned the arms. But in the case of the mushroom man, I haven't done any mods.
I don't link every post I make on my game blog, but when I do something that I think I might personally be interested in if someone else had done it, that's when I will come here and link to it. I hope that's OK.
That devil's pretty awesome. I haven't looked through your blog in detail...do you detail your figure casting process somewhere? I'd be interested in learning how to do that. I have a ton of D&D minis but wouldn't mind being able to cast some copies that I could modify.
M
Hmm... perhaps I could do something with my next mold I make to show the process. But I dunno if it would do much good, there are some real good videos on Youtube which show how to make molds and castings, plus the companies that sell the mold and casting materials also have some very good tutorials as well. You can find some great ones just by googling "miniature casting tutorial" or something like that.
Stormthecastle.com has a whole series of videos on that and making terrain.
I've used three different molding materials so far, and what I'm using now is the best. It's a translucent silicon molding material which is great because I've discovered that it's not really necessary in most cases to go the the trouble to make a two part mold if you use the translucent mold material. You can do a single part mold and then because you can see the figure inside, you can use an exacto knife to cut it apart. In my case this has worked as well as the two-part mold process I used originally, and it's much, much easier. I went to that technique when despite all my efforts to avoid it, one of my two-part molds came out as a one-part mold and I had to use an exacto knife on it anyway, and I was surprised at how easy that turned out to be.
I've used a variety of casting resins too. Right now my favorite is from "Smooth-on" and it's a very low viscosity material which cures quickly to a somewhat flexible white result. It doesn't take paint all that well, but I haven't found any casting resin yet that does, so you really need to prime it to be sure your paint won't flake off.
It's really pretty simple to do this stuff. The only thing I don't like is the clear resin because it stinks to high heaven and has certain unhealthy chemicals. I did some casting in my garage with the window open and garage doors open, and my house smelled like that resin for a week. Plus it takes hours to cure, and I've gotten spoiled with the 30 minute curing resins. It's pretty awesome to finish your mold and within a couple hours have a handful of cast objects from it.
The Hydrocal says it sets in an hour, but my first experience was not consistent with that claim. I basically had to let it set overnight before I could demold, and they still had a wet, squishy feel to them. I may be doing something wrong though, because the web is full of glowing testimonials to the joy of Hydrocal casting. I'll keep trying until I figure it out.
I highly encourage you to watch the videos and give it a try. I will say that the molding and casting materials aren't cheap. Especially for making molds. You use a LOT more mold material than you think you will, so you'll run out of a $35 supply much faster than you realize. The casting material is about the same price per volume, but the final cast objects tend to use much less material than the mold does, so you end up making quite a few miniatures from one $35 supply. Still, it does mount up and you can end up spending a lot of money, and when you screw up a mold, or don't pour your casting material fast enough, it feels a whole lot like flushing money down the toilet.
