Star Wars objectives WIP

For a while, I'd been thinking about making some objective markers or small pieces of scatter terrain for my Star Wars project, and so finding myself with a few minutes spare I had a dig through my supplies...

These round flat bases (from a box of Frostgrave soldiers iirc) I thought would be perfect for this - they're about the right size (being roughly the same size as the bases that I use on the rest of my Start Wars miniatures), but as they're flat, they won't look like the objective is on a little platform (looking more like a piece of scenery than a miniature per se)...

What objectives would the armed forces of the Star Wars universe be after? Probably some damaged droids containing secret plans or some such...

I also had 75% of a sand trooper knocking around:

(I think he was a casualty of my search for a rifle for my scout trooper sniper, and his head later went on to decorate Chewbacca's base)

I'd originally planned to scavenge his backpack to spice up a miniature, but playing around with it and one of the bases I decided to use it for this:

Maybe it's the body of a trooper on a top secret mission carrying dastardly secret Imperial plans, maybe you're just scavenging the body for supplies, either way, it's a stormtrooper's butt as an objective and that makes me laugh because I am a mature adult...

I thought four was probably a good number of objectives to aim for, and so had another dig and found another droid:

Then, out came the Instant Mould - you didn't think I was going to cut these long out of print bendies up did you?

(Side note- I currently have serious concerns that I might have burned my thumbprint off incautiously transporting a ramekin of boiling water)

They might look like chewed and squashed jelly tots at this point, but hopefully they're actually a useable mould...

It turns out my milliput isn't the freshest, so there are no pictures of the next step, as it was somewhat mucky...

And then the morning after:

3P0 might be useable with a bit of carefully applied battle damage, but the other two certainly aren't (although admittedly R2 came out better than this, but this picture is taken after me going 'hmm they still look soft I wonder oh dear' as I squished it) so back into the moulds they go for another try!

Some time after this last picture was taken, C3P0's head seems to have been interfered with (potentially by someone with tiny hands, but equally likely it could have been me) so this particular cast will need even more battle damage if I'm going to use it!

The next batch came out looking like this:

R2 might be useable with a lot of battle damage and targeted burying in sand, whereas the R5 has disintegrated and C3P0 looks like something from the Eva graveyard:

So I think it might be back to the drawing board for these in this form until inspiration strikes again - maybe only one destroyed droid, and acouple of differnet objectives - maybe a crate of credits, or some bacta, if I can think of a way to make them less visually boring than just a box!

Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell

So, amidst converting some more Stark warriors, I thought I should probably make a start on converting a miniature of the guy that they're going to be dying in droves around: Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell, ably portrayed in the telly series by Sean Bean (spoilers - he has the life expectancy of a character played by Sean Bean).

The base of my conversion was a Lord of the Rings Boromir miniature, as it had a tiny Sean Bean visage and  I quite liked the coat. The whacking great shield on his back had to go though, as did his somewhat cricket bat shaped sword and the horn of Gondor:

Which left me with this, Boromir looking slightly 'armless (teehee).

I read an interesting online discussion about who would win in a straight fight out of Jaime and Ned, had their duel not been interrupted, which raised the point of whether Ned would be carrying his Valyrian blade Ice while he's mooching around King's Landing. Conventional wisdom suggests no, but I reckon he would probably keep it with him at all times, for fear of losing it or needing to swiftly despatch some justice with a personal touch, so he got a new sword from a Ral Partha fighter (who is pegged to become the basis of a  Vargo Hoat conversion at some point):

Some gentle bending was required to reposition the sword arm to get it to fit. He also got a new left hand (from the Perry Mercenaries command sprue) - in the end it came down to a choice of two hands, a clenched fist from the Gripping Beast Vikings or this one, and my other half voted for the 'Bitch Please' / 'I Need Everybody to Just Calm the Fuck Down' hand...

As I'm sure you can't fail to notice, Ned also got a new cloak, to cover the scars left from removing the shield that was originally moulded to his back:

Instant Mould + Mordheim Middenheimer sprue + Greenstuff = new cloak! Truth be told, this was probably the result of the seventh or eighth attempt, as I was a little overkeen and kept trying to attach it before I'd left it to cure for long enough...

Once the cloak has finished curing overnight, I'll go back and use liquid Greenstuff to fix the slight gaps at his wrist and hand, as well as adding some detail into the indent that I made to show the cloak being affixed at his shoulders.


A while back, I mentioned to Rob that I was looking for some Warriors of Rohan to use as a basis for some Stark conversions, and he said that he might have a couple of spares knocking around. Then this week he brings me this:

You wouldn't think it, but you can fit fifty miniatures into an old GW box it turns out... as well as half a skeleton and a Lizardman shield. Also pictured is the replacement Legolas I'd been waiting for, which takes the tally to:

19 vs 431 = -412

Stark shields - one part moulding continues...

As you may have seen in my previous post,  the shields I'd ordered for my Stark troops turned up, so it's moulding time again:

Instant mould and boiling water leads to the usual unappealing looking Turkish Delight:

Which trims down to a much more appealing looking stamp:

Unlike previous attempts, with this mould I was able to transfer the greenstuff wolf head directly onto the recipient shield:

I think my previous attempts failed as I was trying to transfer detail that was too thin, but this wolf head is oldschool gw - nice and thick! Plonk the filled mould straight onto the shield, pop out the greenstuff, and then a quick clean up round the edges with a sharp knife and pow, the shield is ready to go. Multiple shields are ready to go, in fact:

Well, that was last night. Today was an unusually sunny day, and as my mother told me so often during my youth, you should go outside and get some fresh air - so I did:

Alas, some of the neighbours were enjoying the pleasant weather more traditionally, with thumping drum n bass, but I had Les Trucs to try and cancel out the noise... Much (much) filing of integral bases later (oh how I hate integral bases), a retreat indoors for dinner and some cutting and glueing later, and we have the beginnings of my House Stark warband:

Fireforge Men-at-Arms bodies with converted Gripping Beast Viking arms (my favourite being on the leftmost spearman, carefully removed from the body it was originally attached to to get the pose I wanted) and a mix of Fireforge and GB heads. The bowmen were already done (Fireforge bodies with Perry arms and accesories), I only actually got four miniatures built. Not a load, but it's a start - I'll probably add another chap with a sword and one with a spear, as well as a couple of guys with two-handed weapons, and maybe a knight or two (even though in the North they don't really have knights, but you know what I mean). Then I should probably start working out some stats and points values for these guys, before adding an Eddard Stark miniature so I can game the Ned/Jaime showdown:

I know, it was added for the TV series, but it's cool and easily gameable at skirmish level, what's not to love? As previously alluded to, I already have a miniature lined up for a Jaime conversion, and it turns out I forgot to add to the tally the miniature that arrived to be the basis for my Ned:

Oh Sean Bean, how handy it is that there's a readily available tiny metal version of your face. Alas, [spoilers] this conversion won't get much use [/spoilers], but still. Also pictured is a Rohan chap that was cheap from the same seller, that may or may not end up as the basis of a Robb conversion.

Actually remembering to include these two brings the tally to:

19 vs 382 = -363

Experiments in one part moulding: the end, I guess...

So, some careful cutting and filing later, and we have a cutesy little lion that we can glue onto a modified shield donated by some Roman chaps:

Not just one, a whole bunch:

 For some I used green stuff, others a mix of green stuff and milliput. I think the green stuff casts feel like they've captured the detail better initially, but feel a little softer as I was handling them during clean-up, whereas the ones made using the milliput mix are rock hard and unlikely to deform, but lack the flexibility of their green stuff counterparts... Either way, I'm using a mix of both, as I'm trying to be less fussy. Less fussy, in that I discarded the rest of the casts of my converted Lannister guard helmet, as they all either broke or had imperfections that it was more work than it was worth to fix whilst cleaning them up, leading to making a couple of new moulds to cast some fresh ones, in green stuff this time:

Yes, my beloved finally gets to sit down at her sewing machine and I stick a bunch of tiny heads on sticks under her light, that's perfectly acceptable behaviour isn't it?

Quick, here's a pic of the bodies awaiting their new heads and shields to distract you from dwelling on my ungentlemanly behaviour:

Although the finecast hornblower needs a whole bunch of fixin' (not to mention a new weapon, as his flimsy original one didn't survive the journey to me...)

Experiments in one part moulding part 2.5

As the green stuff designs still felt a little soft last night, I thought I'd have a crack at some using a mix of milliput and green stuff:

Organised chaos, that's how I'd describe my cutting mat...

These ones seem to have dried a little harder, so we'll see how they take filing...

Experiments in one part moulding part two...

So, the previous mould ended up like this:

So, having sought advice from the collected wisdom of the chaps over on the LAF, I tried again. The suggestion seemed to be that Blu-Stuff wasn't the way to go, and the liquid green stuff wasn't ideal either. So, scratch everything I'd previously done! After a bit of a search, I managed to dig out my instant mould and green stuff (it had been tidied away after my young lady had requested that there be a flat surface available somewhere) and set to making a new mould:

Preparing my instant mould the usual way, results in a mould that looks a little like the world's most unappealing Turkish Delight:

However, it looks a lot better on the other side:

But then again, so did my Blu-Stuff moulds... Lubricating the mould with vaseline, I mixed up a small batch of green stuff and had at it - the green stuff is a bit old, and a bit tough, but nevertheless I'd soon churned out these:

A little thicker than I'd hoped, but still not a bad result for a few minutes work! Overall, it seems like using proper green stuff rather than the liquid variety has made all the difference, as I can churn out a few in very little time at all. Fingers crossed I can trim these down once they're dry and glue them onto the receiving shields, but that's a job for another day... In the mean time, I might have a go at doing a thinner scraping of green stuff, and trying to stick it straight onto the receiving shield while still wet...

My first SPNKr

No, not a toy for small children, but the result of my first attempt at using Instant Mold:

It still needs a bit of cleaning up, but it's come out quite nice- if anything, the fiddly underneath bit needs less cleaning up and fixing than the fairly plain top...

A winner is me! And also, instant mold and SPNKRs

Yeah, I used to play KOL, sometimes I lapse back into their syntax...

Back to the point at hand, Chris over at Sippin' On Paint Water ran a little competiton, to guess what the next thing he'd be casting would be. I guessed right, and Chris very kindly sent me some goodies:

A lovely little selection of crates, boxes, and the prize-winning pallet. I've been thinking about making some urban barricades for a little while now, and these will be perfect for that.

Onto the second part of the title, my Instant Mold came!

I'll save you the advertising spiel, which I'm sure you've heard before, but for the less geeky followers of the blog, the premise is this: you can heat it up and mash it round an object to make a mould of it. So, having only a single SPNKR rocket launcher for the Halo project, I thought I'd have a crack at making some more. I grabbed two glasses of water (one boiling, one chilled):

And then squeezed it round the SPNKR I'd liberated from an clix figure:

Technically at this point I dunked it in the cold water to harden it, but then when I tried to cut it open it went tits-up, so I started again. We'll pretend that everything went right the first time though, and jump to hardening the mould in cold water (I cut the excess off this time, to make it easier to cut into):

I then ever so carefully cut around the lump to free the original mode, stuffed it with green stuff (a little at a time, to make sure it got into all the nooks and crannies) and then squeezed the bejeesus out of it. As I couldn't find any elastic bands, I had to turn to hair bands to provide some continued pressure:

I swear, there's a mould in there somewhere. So, fingers crossed when I open it again there will be a useable 28mm scale rocket launcher in there. We shall see.