Sci-Fi Craftee Teaser

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to post a quick pic of some of the sci-fi guys I've been working on.  These are going to be the human guys in powered armor.  I have some alien prototypes done, but not happy yet, and I have yet to tackle vehicles, but I hope to.  My original plan does not require vehicles, I was wanting to put on a game using the old Ral Partha Final Frontier rules.  But, this project is in the early stages and I'm sure things will change and I'll just have to do some vehicles.

Here they are ...

Leader in the front, private on the right side of the image in blue, heavy laser fellow in the rear, and a missile launcher guy in red on the left.  It's all wooden craft pieces for the bodies and the end of the missile launcher.  The guns are carefully cut tile spacers.  Then it's just paint and enjoy!

Matt

Molding Small Parts – Hussar Pelisse

Back in 2012 I wrote a post about making small, complex parts by using a product called InstaMold from Cool Minis or Not. In that article I made an modern automatic rifle for an AK47 game I was planning. In this article I will show the results of something I have been trying to resolve for some time: how to make and reproduce a Hussar pelisse (shown below).

As you can see, a pelisse is an outer jacket worn over the left shoulder. The way I created it was to use Crayola Model Magic to define the basic shape. (Unfortunately I cannot show that as I failed to take a picture before using it to create a mold. Creating the mold destroyed the master, which is a rather frail product.) To harden the part I covered the piece with several layers of white (PVA) glue.

I took that shape and made a simple press mold, where only one side is cast by pressing material into the mold. This took only a few minutes with InstaMold, but I decided to put the mold into the refrigerator in order to ensure the mold was hard. Simply press the piece into the mold, wait for the mold to harden, then pull the part as carefully as you can out of the mold. Note if you accidentally overlap InstaMold over the part you will create an undercut. This may require trimming the mold slightly in order to remove the part. Here is a picture of the trimmed mold.

Here are a set of quick-and-dirty instructions on making a press mold.

I mixed some Green Stuff and pressed it into the mold. After about four hours I was able to pull the part out of the mold without warping the part too much. As you can see there is a little bit of excess material around the edges. Press molding is rarely perfect because it is so hard judging exactly how much material needs to be used to make the part.



Note that there are a few cracks and pits. This can easily be covered with a thin coat of white glue. The gray spots you see are the remains of a failed attempt at using paper mache as the part's material.

Simply trim around the edges of the part and get rid of the excess material.



Looks great! The picture below shows a test fit of the part on the figure.



I can't wait to make the rest of the pelisses som I can finish the unit, which has been sitting on the workbench for a long time.

InstaMold works as advertised. Easy to heat up and create a mold. Easy to reuse the product when you are done with that mold. (Simply throw it in hot water and fuze all the pieces together again.) The great thing is that it is flexible enough to deal with minor undercuts, but not so flexible that the part loses shape when pressing material into the mold. The mold is also easy to trim to fix errors when making the mold (just a sharp blade is required). Finally, although some materials do stick slightly to the mold, it is usually not a problem getting the piece out. Model Magic is just a little too delicate though, so take those pictures of the master prior to using it to make the mold!

Matt is Joining the Blog

Last weekend I played the first miniatures game in a long time. Too bad the rules ... sucked. But it did help reinvigorate me to get back into miniatures gaming. So I started taking inventory of what I have and where I left off in my projects. As I was digging through some old rules looking for one particular set I ran across a copy of Arrayed for Battle!, which is the set written by Matt Kirkhart and was used for his Battle of Zama, which he ran at Cold Wars 2012. (You can see my battle report of the games I played.) I flew all the way from Arizona to Pennsylvania to play in those games and to meet Matt, whom I had met online through the Wargaming on a Budget forum on Yahoo. (I would link to it, but the forum has been overrun with posts about Warhammer 40K paper models.) I also competed in the 28mm DBA tournament with my wooden Armenian army. I lost badly as I did not really know how to play that army. But they sure looked cool!

Looking at the pictures of Matt and John's armies from Zama, and at Matt's armies depicted in the rules, I started wondering what Matt was up to. I emailed him and found out that he too had taken a hiatus of sorts from miniatures gaming. But, rather than moving away from making "craftees" Matt focused his energies into creating figures for fantasy role-playing rather than historical battles. He sent me some pictures and I thought that I just had to post them. Hopefully in the near future Matt – who has agreed to co-author this blog – will give us some insight into the components, construction methods, and painting techniques used to make the items below. See if you can spot the wooden shapes that he used.

– Dale

Hello everyone!  Good to be back, and I want to thank Dale for inviting me to make some posts to his blog.  It has been about two years or so since I posted anything to the Yahoo group about any of the Craftees I was making during this time.  In general, I decided to return to my gaming roots, mainly because I got into a gaming group that plays the games of my youth, mainly D&D.  As part of my nostalgic return to my youth, in terms of my Craftees I decided to try and make a Craftee version of the popular (back in the day) Heroquest board game.  I started to work on this project of creating a Craftee version of Heroquest and then decided that I would shift to doing more classic D&D monsters and dungeon pieces.  And then, of course, what happened is that I decided to write a set of simple rules inspired by classic old-school D&D and Heroquest that I could use to play games with my new figures.  I can write more about that later, but for now, I've included some shots of some of the Craftee fantasy figures I've done so far.  I put together a game set up using my new little fellows.

This first picture is a view of the whole board in the game so far.  The heroes have become a bit spread out, but down in the bottom room you can see a warrior priest and a dwarf doing battle with a couple of skeletons and a ghoul, with a halfling supporting them about to backstab a zombie.  The room has a closed single-wide door, a torture rack (I tried to directly copy the one from the Heroquest game), a wooden crate, and a mysterious collection of mushrooms growing over in the corner.  The heroes appear unaware of the vicious giant rats sneaking up the narrow passage to their rear.

Next we have the center hallway and turn section that also has an unopened single-wide door.  The knight (facing the camera) battles an evil chaos knight, while the elf shoots an arrow at an umber hulk who has wandered into the hallway (no idea how he got through the single-wide door!).  To the elf's left is a gray ooze reaching up to attack her by surprise!

Finally the far room is a burial chamber with a double-wide door, four marble pillars, a container of unholy water, a sarcophagus (also copied from the original Heroquest game) dominates the center of the room, and a carrion crawler opposes a barbarian and a wizard (who is not visible in this picture but will be in some of the pictures below).



This is a close up of the first room and the lower part of the hallway and turn tiles.  You have a good view of the monsters as well as the heroic knight.  The tiles themselves are pre-cut pieces of thin wood from a craft store that I painted to represent rooms, hallways, and turn sections.  As you can see, the squares in the hallway are not quite the same size as those in the room.  I tried to free hand paint everything, which gives it the "look" I want, but if you choose to do that, you have to be okay with some less than precise dungeon tile connections.  But hey, it's a dungeon, right?



The hallway and turn section, and the final room are shown here.  The gray ooze miniature is just hot glue that I pulled up in some places while the glue was cooling to make it look like it is "reaching" towards a hero in an attack.  Standard paint job and unlike most of my other Craftees, I actually put a gloss clear-coat on the gray ooze to make it look ... well ... "oozy."  You also have a pretty good view of the wizard in this picture, casting a spell to help out the barbarian fighting the carrion crawler.



And a close-up of the Burial Room.



Dale and I will talk about construction and painting of these guys in later posts.  I just wanted to give everyone an update about what Craftee project I have been working on over the past couple of years.  I also have some sci-fi figures that I'll post pictures of as well, sort of "Craftee Space Marines."

– Matt

New rules to boot!?! And Craftee Space Marines! I can hardly wait.

– Dale

Wooden Trees

First off, let me acknowledge that it has been a long time since I posted to this blog. I had abandoned miniature gaming in favor of PC gaming for more than three years. I did pick up a paintbrush and my wooden soldiers every so often, but honestly I had lost the inspiration. There are a number of things I could blame – the disintegration of the local gaming group, three separate local hobby shops going out of business – but the reality is that PC gaming is easy (little to no preparation or cleanup), visually pleasing, and you can usually find a game at any hour day or night. Hopefully this post is a sign that I have found my way back to miniature gaming, or at the very least, making more of my wooden warriors.

The one issue I am constantly faced with is appropriate terrain for my wooden warriors. Given that they are an odd scale (somewhere around 42mm, foot to eye), you are unlikely to find commercially available terrain. Furthermore, all of the "realistic" terrain seems at odds with the "whimsical" nature of my wooden warriors.

One day while strolling through Hobby Lobby in the wood crafts section and I spied these wooden trees on the bottom shelf. They are easy to miss, but look for them. There are usually three different sizes, the smallest being 4" tall and $1.99 each, the middle being about 5" tall and $2.99 each, and the tallest being about 6" tall and $3.99 each. You can see the three tree sizes below, alongside my wooden warriors for comparison. They look great and fit the part.



I feel like these trees are a bit on the expensive side, but I have not found a good source for them elsewhere. I found some 2 3/4" trees on Amazon, five for $13.20. (These would be great for DM Matt's 25mm scale fantasy craftees or his historical craftees, which are the same scale.) American Woodcrafters Supply has 2" trees for an incredibly low price of $4.95 for a bag of 12. It gets even cheaper if you buy in larger quantities. (Yes, this is the kind of markup you are paying for when you buy from Hobby Lobby or Michaels.) Woodworks Ltd. has 2 3/4" trees, 25 for $18.00. Woodworks, however, will make custom items, so I should contact them and get a price for 4', 5", and 6" trees.

Of course, you can always find a Chinese manufacturer on Alibaba and deal direct, but the minimum orders may surprise you. I found the 2 3/4" tall trees for $0.50 a piece, but the minimum order was 10,000 pieces. Even I am not that crazy to place an order like that! (By the way, the trees at Hobby Lobby are all manufactured in China, so it is not like going direct is all that different than what they are doing.) But no 4" or taller trees. Guess I am stuck with Hobby Lobby for now. I buy a couple every week or two and my collection grows.

At first I painted mine with cheap craft paints, but as always, it takes so many coats. Later I found that some of my unused, bought-cheap-at-a-sale Flames of War paints not only covered in 1 to 1 1/2 coats, but they looked nice too. Always nice to mix up the colors.

One final note: these trees are clearly not manufactured by machines, but by hand. There are a lot of variations in height and width. I even have one where the base was cut crooked so the tree leans. (That was a selling point.) Although I wish I could find a cheaper source, I think these trees perfectly fit the style of the figures. What do you think?

Hot Glue

Generally speaking, I stay away from Hot Glue and Hot Glue Guns. I inevitably burn my fingertips by smooshing it into the molten glue at some point. More importantly, I end up covered in thin glue threads. (If you have used hot glue, you know exactly what I am talking about.) All that said, hot glue does have its uses.

First off, it sets very quickly. It is not unreasonable to expect it to be fixed in place within 30 seconds. It also has a pretty good grip, and parts that do not take shearing stress will stay stuck. It is also fairly water-resistant, unlike white glue. If you ever do need to remove something glued with hot glue, however, an X-Acto knife will go through it quite easily.

Hot glue also has one other interesting property: it can easily and quickly create or modify shapes. Need a nose added to a sphere? A dot of hot glue will do, plus it can be roughly shaped about 15 seconds after application (note the 'burnt fingertips' statement at the start, however) and can be carefully carved with an X-Acto knife after it has set. Do not use a rotary sander, like a Dremel, unless you absolutely want to throw away that sanding drum, however. Hot glue will gum up sandpaper, sanding blocks, and sanding drums in a heartbeat.

When I went to Cold Wars 2012 it was to participate in Matt Kirkhart's and John Acar's recreation of the Battle of Zama using Matt's rules Arrayed for Battle! and Matt's and John's 25mm ancients craftee armies, shown below.

Seeing their armies online inspired me to create my own army, for DBA, in the same scale and style.

Note that these figures are 25mm, whereas most of my other figures are 40mm, as they are based off of the wooden "Boy" game piece. I started thinking about building a companion Seleucid DBA army for the Early Armenian army pictured above, so I went to the workbench and looked at the wooden shapes that I have on hand and started experimenting.

Mushroom Button    

Spool        

Disc                      

Toothpick

Helmet and Head

Body

Shield

Pike

Note that the above pictures are not to scale.

The button-and-spool build is pretty standard. In fact, John Acar was a guest blogger here and showed us how he made his figures for Zama, and he used those same shapes. I like the look of the figure, but what I was trying to avoid was cutting out all of those arms (usually from plastic tile spacers).

The first step I took was to hot glue the plug to the spool to make the basic body. From there I used hot glue to attach the toothpick to the spool, where the butt end would not touch the 'ground', and about where a person might grip a pike. I used a little extra hot glue to make the shape of a right arm and hand.

Next I used hot glue to attach the shield to the pike and to the spool. Where it connected to the pike, I added a dot of hot glue to represent the left hand. Where it attached to the spool, I put a blob of hot glue to represent the left arm. I was going for a look like below; a smaller shield on the left arm where the hand protrudes, so it can grip the pike.

Here is what the unpainted model looks like.

The glue is not very easy to see, so here is the painted model. From the right side and rear you can see the hot glue used to create the shape of the hands and right arm.

Two other views, allowing you to see the left hand and arm.

As you can see in the last picture, I am continuing with my new style for painting faces. By using a darker flesh color you can give the impression of 'five 'o'clock shadow' beards rather well. Something I have not really been able to achieve before. Maybe a painting tutorial on that, if there is any interest.

The shield design is a shield transfer scanned, shrunk down, and printed onto paper, then glued onto the wooden shield. (I did not do the scanning, however, as I found the design on the Hät website.)

All in all I think the figure looks pretty good. The figure also takes significantly less time to make and paint than the 40mm figures I normally do. Time to think about starting the entire army…

Wooden Trees

Welcome

First, let me start by welcoming new reader jimduncan779. I hope you enjoy the articles. Know that posting comments is welcome, as is suggesting future topics.

Simple Trees

I posted on the Wargaming on a Budget forum on Yahoo a link to a tutorial (scroll down) where a guy was making alien trees for his science fiction games with wooden shaker pegs and hot glue. I decided to give it a try, but with a little twist. I did not want to use the plastic flora from Michael's, but rather to use some wooden shapes that you can also buy cheaply from Michael's, called Woodsies 330ct Teardrops, Ovals, and Circles Pack by Loew-Cornell.

Let me apologize in advance for any blurriness in the photos. My workshop/man cave is unheated at the moment and we are hitting below freezing weather here in Arizona. I guess my shivering was causing more of a problem than I suspected!

I started off with a shaker peg (3"+ long), a 1 ½" disc for the base, and some of the shapes that come in the package.

Generally the pack comes with three sizes of teardrop, ovals, and circles. I started by hot gluing a ring of medium-sized teardrops to the top of shaker peg.

After that I used a series of small teardrops, ovals, and circles to cover the gaps on the top. I added a second layer of medium teardrops under the first to flesh out the foliage.

Once everything is in place, I squirt a lot of hot glue into the underside of the model to bind everything together and give the whole model strength.

As for cost, the greatest expense is the shaker peg in the center. I bought a two-pack for $2.00 off of the shelf of Lowes (a DIY hardware store, for those from other countries), which is hardly the cheap route. You can get them as cheaply as $0.16 in bulk (500; $0.20 each for 100) from craft parts wholesalers on the web. If you plan on making a lot in one go, this could be pretty cheap. More to the point (for me), is that it has that "craftee" look that goes so well with my soldiers.

Dark Ages Huscarls (1)

I started painting my huscarls for some 40mm wooden gaming of Saga. Some of you may have seen my previous Dark Ages Warlord, who is now no longer a Anglo-Danish Warlord (who must have a two-handed axe), but a Welsh Warlord. (I added a javelin to the left hand in order for him to qualify for that role. It was easier than working a two-handed axe into the figure.)

You can click any image for a larger version.

For my first huscarl I wanted to try a "spinning wheel" style with the shield. I have been seeing more and more 28mm painters use a two- and three-color scheme for a single "color" on their shields. A number use a "banded" style of painting, but my am not sure what it is supposed to represent. Painted leather stretched over a wood planked shield with the dark spots representing the low spots between wood planks? In any case, I like the spiral effect this gives. I may try it more. (I have five more huscarls to go for this army.)

Next up is the Warlord, and with the requisite two-handed axe, qualifies as an Anglo-Danish one. I gave him stripey pants and a plume on his helmet to signify his status better. Still no cloak though.

I am not really happy with how his shield turned out; the design just fell flat. The great thing about mounting figures singly, however, is to ability to go back and re-paint or touch up figures between gaming sessions. So I will leave him as he is, so I can get him on the field faster. But someday I am going to figure out how to fix that shield without simply re-painting it entirely.

My next huscarl is sporting fancy red boots and silvering on the axe. The shield's cross is hand-painted. I was going for slashes on the shield, but in the end I think it detracts from the cross. Oh well.

This huscarl has a lot of time in on the shield design. I hand-painted all of that criss-crossing for fun (it really was!) and I think it turned out pretty well. Note that I did not slash up the shield!

I put wrinkles in the pants along the line, front and back, separating the left and right legs. I think it looks okay, so I may do it more. Compare it with the figures above where I did not do it.

The Fab Four

Someone once said that what really makes these figures unique are the faces. I could not agree more.

The Warlord's face (far left) is painted a little more traditionally, with full flesh colors and painting the darker recesses. I did not realize at the time of painting that the black line makes it look like the Warlord lost one of his front teeth, but I like it!

The remaining three figures are painted in a new style. I painted a darker flesh color (more of a bronzed look), then the eyes and hair, and finally painted "spots" of lighter color for the nose, brow, cheeks, lips, and chin. I think it turned out pretty interesting.