Making minis isn't quite as hard - green stuff xp

So after trying out the bake pardo clay, my daughter and I decided to try out greenstuff.  

This was after a bunch of research to make sure it was safe and non-toxic.  And it seems to have been based on the putty used in aquariums for repairs(since it will cure even if wet), and if you have kept tropical fish, you know how sensitive some of the fish are, so if it is safe enough for them, it is fine to hold(don't eat it though... duh).

I was still a little worried it might have strong fumes or smell, but it didn't, even when mixed.

So the warnings on stickiness are completely true, green stuff is really sticky, and its really sticky

when it is still yellow and blue stuff.  The people who say to use water on your fingers to make it stick

less, are completely right.  You should have a small bowl of water next to you when you use this clay.

Now part of the making minis for me is I have very little natural artistic talent, but I try, and can usually

up with something interesting, or that matches what I am trying to create, even if its not super detailed, or

"pretty", and I am just good enough with painting w/acrylics after a couple years now to help out my bad sculpts.

After mixing my daughter and I both had a chunk o' greenstuff to work with, so we started scuplting....  And obviously the coolest thing for greenstuff compared to the bake clays is being able to apply it directly to existing minis or to work directly on the bases... this is not so good when you have the pressed cardboard bases and are using water to make the greenstuff not stick - the water dmg'd a couple of bases(6 year olds can get messy with greenstuff and a bowl of water)

The biggest problem we had is that it is a cool green color... so you find yourself wanting to make green things.... so far a tiny green fairy dragon, a tiny green wyrm, a green pudding, slimer, baby the hutt, those sorts of things, and you don't really want to paint it as much as it looks cool as is... as opposed to the white clay witch screams out to be painted for most things.....

The greestuff itself before mixing - got this on amazon

made a tiny dragon head on the card board

bow for the mini in the below pic and a bow tie for a certain Doctor

tiny green fairy dragon(my daughter wants to paint it red though, as red is her favorite color) if she had told me that before hand, I would have made it a red dragon.  ;-)

a tiny huminoid

tiny green dragon before his head was added... testing out how the clay stuck to another mini(very well)

tiny huminoid, key shaped like a cobra, baby the hutt, small altar bowl, mushroom

tiny huminoid, key shaped like a cobra, baby the hutt, small altar bowl, mushroom all with flash

the pudding my daughter made, looking all creepy with no flash

the pudding my daughter made, she said the thing on the left is a little old lady... maybe I will see the little old lady better after she paints it.

I dub thee funny angled head dragon

my daughter made this - looks like cool roman armor on the dragon... I want her to let me paint it  antique bronze, but she wants to paint it her favorite color red....

another side

key

baby the hutts good side.. his arms are a little big

top side

backside

an aggressive pudding

slimer... sadly I had his arm just right before he accidentally got tipped over, then I just couldn't get it right again.


In conclusion greenstuff is great for making minis 4/5... it lost a point since it sticks so readily to skin and metal scuplting tools... it would be perfect if it didn't, and the water is an okay work around, but not perfect.

Made some more Pardo minis with my daughter

that little old lady doesn't sem happy with her company

The face on the pumpkin is one of the most evil things I have ever created....

Mario mushroom

trying to make a "poisoned" ginger bread man (GBM) for my game - the little guy already had his limbs bit off

GBM without flash

sad orange dude next too a lizrd, the loose brain doesn't know what to think

happier jack-o-lantern, and many mushrooms

mushroom, mushroom, pudding, baby....

a whole squad of babies

miniature babies don't cry unless you add sound effects..... we had sound effects provided by my 1 year old when we played today.  ;-)

a giant shadow is coming for the babies

pudding, dancing baby(disco), weird purple octopus

a face only a mother could love

Add caption

actually looks better from behind

he went thataway...

the colors that brought out the evil face

Making minis is hard - Pardo clay xp

Wanted to try and make some minis so ordered some Pardo clay....  Its made out of beeswax

Heres the jar, there were a lot more balls in it then expected...

Clay is fairly solid when you pull a ball out, you knead it a bit and  it softens up.  Once softened up though, its quite soft and hard to make stay in the shape you want.  Good for making golems, not so good for anything super detailed... now I'm sure someone with a lost of artistic skill could make something better, but the stuff turned out ok....  

So my daughter and I each got some clay and started making stuff, I had a list of tiny minis I wanted to make, so I started seeing what I could do... It was so soft I had a hard time making it stay in shape.   It was hard to work while holding, so we put it on bases to work on.... since its tiny's we used "gems" and heroscape tokens.  My daughter didn't have anything specific she was trying to make, so she made a doughnut and then tried to make better minis then I did.  I made a snowman, so she made a snowman.  I made a jelly, she made a jelly...etc  She eventually had to goto bed, and I made a few more

Penguin snowman, rock, doughnut on a plate, jellys, and golem, all uncooked

So, the big thing we discovered after leaving the minis out over night to harden to be easier to take off the bases and put on the foil to cook was... pardo reacts with plastic and stay soft over night, all the minis had a gummy mess on the bottoms and were stuck to the bases and once pulled off, there was still gummy mess stuck to the bases and a mark in the shape of the mini in the base.  I tried to clean off the gummy messes on a few of the bases, but it didn't come off with soap and water and some scrubbing, so I ended up throwing them out(what a waste).  Although once cooked, the clay is nice and solid but just enough bend, so I am not worried about it breaking.  any parts of the clay touching the foil almost had a polished look after cooking too.

The bunch post cooking at 266 degrees... small ones for 30 min, and the large ones for 45,  maybe could have done them a bit longer for the large ones, but after cooling I really couldn't make much of a mark with my thumbnail, so ok.  

ok, now time to figure out how to base them, as I threw out what I had been planning as using for bases.  I found some mage knight dungeons tokens that were just the right size and made out of fairly stiff card board, that was almost plastic-ee, so I tried that since these won't be seeing "rough play" hoepfully

the minis with their new bases, the rock and the larger snowman ended up on  medium bases, not shown here.  Also I should note:
I used Loctite Super glue control gel to stic them on, like I have been using for all the minis I have been gluing.  Its amazing because it has lasted so long... I am used to using superglue and getting 1 use out of it because the glue hardens in the tube, but this tube has lasted close to a year(and that was even keeping it in the garage where it got hot during the summer, and cold during the winter

with flash

I think of all the minis, the voodoo doll/small ghost on the left turned out best, and closest to what I pictured in my head . Mud golem is ok, gold golem is ok, and penguin snowman is just kinda goofy.  As far as painting - india ink stuck to the pardo not so good, but acrylic paint stuck great, so the minis were pretty easy to paint.  

I didn't make the mini in the middle, its heroclix Klarion, but he needed MOAR catz, so I made 2 catz to put on his base.  After I made them while the minis were still unpainted, I asked my wife what she thought they were - she guessed they were caterpillars.... after they were based and painted(and nest to a guy with a cat on his shoulders) I asked here again to guess what they were.... she still guessed caterpillars..    I gotz mad l33t sculpting skillz.  ;-)

Big head baby - I guess the head scale wasn't quite right, but he could be the son of the big head dwarf... or a baby Charlie Brown... Maybe thats why I picked the color scheme for teh swadling.  The other one is a rock/easter island head... I was going to make it grey, but I had a cooling mix of paint on my tray and just kinda splattered it on all mixed up.. I guess I should have turned it... the other side is its good side.

My daughter also helped out with the painting - she did our jellys and the doughnut on plate and the red rock and a snowman.  I think her stuff turned out pretty good.... I'll have to find something for the doughnut to proxy for, although I guess it could just be a really large doughnut for the minis.  ;-)


Up next I ordered some greenstuff, so when that comes we'll make some more, and I'll use up the rest of the pardo, but most likely will not be ordering anymore of the pardo if I like the greenstuff.....  but when I saw pardo was German and made out of beeswax, I had to try it.  ;-)  I will rate it the David Hasselhoff of sculpting clay.  ;-)