A blog detailing my completed projects
I’ve finished laying out forum hoard 90, turned out to be very small. I scaled my two guys to Sanity Studio’s scale which is slightly smaller than standard One Monk size.
Pick the files up here:
Have fun with them and drop by the other artists forum boards to give them a little bit of feedback as well if you like what they have been doing.
Took me a bit of time to get this one together and I had some issues with getting some of the miniatures scaled correctly. However it’s finally finished the Cardboard Warriors Forum Hoard 89, the theme was Robots and Androids. Once again this is not my work but the work of all the people across at the Cardboard Warriors Forum
Links to the files:
or from this Forum Topic:
Jim across at the cardboard warriors forum is taking a short break, while he’s away I volunteered to compile and post the forum hoards. I’ve now compiled two hoards on behalf of the contributors on the board. It should be noted these are not my work, well I did submit the parcel mimics in the Nov hoard:
The Forum hoards are a great way to get started in paper miniature creation so feel free to head over to cardboard warriors forum and submit something :).
The above miniatures as well as a bundle of others can be downloaded from this thread.
I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Great New Year and I look forward to producing some more paper miniatures in the new year and stay safe if your traveling.
Dave Graffam has just released a Patrol boat model, basically a small skiff. I needed a break from my terrain building so I put one together. Dave releases all his models as layered PDF’s so you can get quiet a few different looking boats out of the one product. Dave does however include some print and go models ie no layers to tick on and off you just print and build. Unfortunately no GSD’s but there is something soothing about hand cutting a model now and again, I’m always surprised at how enjoyable I find hand cutting stuff.
The Patrol boat is a fairly simple model, there are a couple of free hand curves but nothing to worry about. I was able to cut out all the parts and edge them in about an hour and I had it fully assembled an hour after that. Assuming I can count the model consists of 16 parts, here are mine all cut out and ready to assemble:
I went with a blue theme so that it matched with my Pirate Bear Cog. Once you get all the parts cut out it’s a simple matter of gluing them together, make sure you follow Dave’s instructions as there are a couple of spots were if you glue things out of order you will be reprinting parts 🙂 . Here is my finished patrol boat:
You may have noticed the little piece of string and magnet at the bow of my boat in the above picture. I made one little change and that was to add a small piece of metal to the base of the boat and place a magnet in the mast. This allows me to remove the mast for storage making the boat much easier to store:
It’s a great little boat and I plan on making 2 or 3 more. The only minor issue I have with the design is that the front sail is mounted offset, however I plan on adding a few little tabs to the sail on my next one and gluing these inside the mast through some slots I’ll cut , similar to how the rudder is mounted.
It’s a great little boat and well worth the $3.95 price tag Dave has on it.
I better get back to building the WWG terrain I’m doing.
I’ve finished the Turtle Clan, which means I can sort of play through to the end of scenario 10 in Song of Fur and buttons, I really need to get those picnic bears done. I haven’t added any extra troop types this time although there is an extra musician. I haven’t designed any flags but I might add a flag or two later on.
On with the show as they say, here are the pictures of the Turtle/Terrapins:
Turtle Command with Musicians
Terrapin Spears
Turtle Rifle
Turtle Bow
Turtle Snipers
Turtle Giants
Turtle War Anklyosaur
The files are below, you will need to rename the GSD files after you download them from .odt to .gsd(feel free to grab some bases from Onemonks site):
Turtle Clan Page 1 – PDF
Turtle Clan Page 1 – GSD
Turtle Clan Page 2 – PDF
Turtle Clan Page 2 – GSD
Turtle Clan Page 3 – PDF
Turtle Clan Page 3 – GSD
I’m going to be taking a little bit of a break from creating miniatures for fur and buttons as I need to get some terrain built. At the moment I have no gaming board to play Fur and Buttons on :). I will be coming back to these miniatures it just maybe 3-4 weeks before I get a chance to work on them again :).
I’ve spent the past 4 -5 days working on some Worldworksgames terrain. Primarily I’m working on a largish Tlinx Hinterland (pending release)and Mayhem city layout. I will make separate posts for both those builds. To go with the Hinterland (out door type terrain) I wanted some drop down tiles. Pieces of terrain that stand independent of the surrounding game board which can be used with my Hinterland table or if we need can be scattered onto a more conventional tabletop. I’ve also converted Tlinx to use magnets but I’ll detail that more in it’s own post later on.
This is my first standalone tile a small ruined keep, which has turned out to be significant amount of work, a lot more than I originally intended (hence the lack of turtle miniatures 🙂 ). The additional work was mostly caused by the fact I had to convert Castleworks ultimate (CWU) to the Tlinx format or at least those bits I wanted to use.
First up I cut a base out of depron (straight foam), using my hotwire cutter to this I added some sloped/beveled edges to give the appearance of the ruin sitting on a slight rise. Once the foam was cut I inlaid some metal mount points into the tile and then covered the tile edges in hinterland grass texture. For the top of the base piece I created a custom graphic which combined elements of Castleworks Ultimate and Hinterland. The two texture types fit together very well which is a credit to the quality of work the WWG crew put out:
Depron Base with mounts inserted
(Yes those are old craftknife ends 🙂 )
Base Ready to Go
Next I started converting CWU textures to the Tlinx layout, I had to do walls, mounting posts and create a custom 1st floor destroyed/damage tile. I ended up creating a few other custom parts such as a “3 inch through wall” it hooks through the mid sized post and pokes out the other side to create a more solid destroyed wall effect. I also bashed some parts using Streets Of Legend-Destroyed as a guide but replacing the textures with CWU. Below you can see all the parts laid out and the through walls:
Through Walls
Laid out ready for assembly
The above may not look like a lot of work, but it took a fair amount of time to create those pieces. The good thing about Tlinx is it’s very flexible and with the parts I’ve created I could easily build a none destroyed keep. The downside is it’s very flexible so when you want to change elements or use different textures you have to convert a minimum number of parts so whether it’s one building or 10 the workloads about the same. Still I’m going to do a second stand alone outpost but undamaged and I wont need to bash any parts (okay maybe 1-2) so it’ll be much quicker. Here’s some pictures of the keep from 4 angles fully assembled and ready for gaming:
I know building the above sort of defeats the purpose of Tlinx as it’s not very flexible but for me being able to disassemble the whole thing and pack it easily for transport makes it well worth the while. Packing and carting air around with you is no fun 🙂
A few points of note, I’m using very small magnets 6mmx1mm these are plenty strong enough to hold the posts and building up, If I find I’m having problems I’ll drop a 2nd magnet on top of the first. The metal piece’s I’m now using (base used old craftknife ends) are square shade cloth holders I cut them into 4 or 2 depending on whether I’m doing corners or mid points, these save me from any polarity issues I might have with magnet to magnet joins, they also allow me to adjust the post locations a little if I need to (read build inaccuracies 🙂 ), I’ll cover this a bit more in later post :).
If you often travel for gaming or even just have limited storage space check out Tlinx terrain across at WWG :).
I finished the Green tree Frog Clan today this means I’ve finished up enough miniatures to play through to the end of scenario 9 in Song of Fur and buttons. I haven’t added any extra troop types this time although there are two extra musicians. I did create flags for the standard bearer but I don’t like the way they look so I didn’t glue one to my standard bearer but left them on the page as I thought someone might still get some use out of them :).
I have some idea’s and thoughts for some other troop types later on which I’ll add once I’ve finished all the mini’s I need to finish the Song of Fur and buttons scenario’s. Below are the pictures of the Green Tree Frog Clan:
Command Group: Standard Bearer, Major and Hero
Spearfrogs
Turtle Crusher
Musketog’s or Musket Frogs 🙂
Musicians: Piper, Tambourine Player and Drummer
Toad Rider Cavalry
Onemonkeybeau’s daughter across on the cardboard-warriors forum asked for some Pink frogs. So I did I full set of re-colours to pink of the above frogs:
I learnt a lot doing the re-colours in Inkscape. The biggest issue was that when I changed the gradient fill colours in Inkscpae to the pink scheme I had to also change all the line colours, this was much more time consuming as I had to click every object and adjust the line colour. In future I’ll set all the line colours using a gradient with the same colour at both ends to make re-colours much faster and easier. I have now set the above frog files up in that manner and I can produce any colour I like very quickly :).
The files are below, as usual you will need to rename the GSD files after you download them (feel free to grab some bases from Onemonks site):
Green Tree Frog Page 1 – PDF
Green Tree Frog Page One – GSD
Green Tree Frog Page 2 – PDF
Green Tree Frog Page Two – GSD
Green Tree Frog Page Three – GSD
Pink Versions:
Pink Tree Frog Page 1 – PDF
Pink Tree Frog Page 2 – PDF
Pink Tree Frog Page 3 – PDF
I’ll get the turtles laid out as quickly as I can, until then have fun :).
I’ve finally finished the Pirate bears that I need so I can finish Scenario 7 in Song of Fur and buttons. It’s been bit of long time between posts but I’ve been working on several things in tandem which has slowed me down a little but less risk of project burn out. I have expanded the troop types a little so that in the long term I can use the pirate’s as a general full faction for Song of Blades and Heros. I haven’t had a chance to stat up all the additional troop types yet so for the moment no stats but I will get to it.
I have tried as much as possible to give the pirates a ragtag appearance, so they are equipped with different looking muskets and clothes. I’m planning on using the fanciest sawshbucklerette (the one above on left) as a female pirate captain if I need one. I was a little stuck for musicians in the end the banjo player and Sea Shanty singer worked out unfortunately the Harmonica player didn’t look like anything. A picture is worth a thousand words as they say:
1st Mate Shagpile, Captain Longfur and a Banner bearer
Three Swashbucklerettes
Banjo player and a Sea Shanty Singer
Hulking Brutes, wielding small cannons
Cutlass Pirates
Musket Pirates
With these out of the way I’ll get onto the Frogs and Turtles, I’ve finished drawing both sets I just (can’t believe I said just 🙂 ) need to lay them out, create the GSD files and then test build them all. The files are below, as usual you will need to rename the GSD files after you download them (feel free to grab some bases from Onemonks site):
Pirate Bears Page 1 – PDF
Pirate Bear Page One – GSD
Pirate Bears Page 2 – PDF
Pirate Bear Page Two – GSD
I’ll get those frogs done asap 🙂
This was another project from late last year a paper Dunebuggy. I was working on it while I was sick so the progress was slow but I did get it finished. It was a much tougher project than I initially thought it would be and took a significant amount of time to complete. In the end the Sand Gecko was born, although with much trial and error.
The reason I started this project was that Jim over at One Monk Miniatures put out a very nice card tank. It was simple to construct had some really great texturing and a wide variety of colour schemes. If you need a paper tank for wargamming even as a proxy until your real metal/resin one turns up. I’d recommend heading over and grabbing the Wolverine. I found 95% print out to be a slightly better sizing but thats more my own personal taste.
Under Defiance or pretty much any generic Sci-fi wargamming rules I needed a more diverse range of vechiles than just a tank and troopers. I checked over what Jim had planned for the future of Terra-force and no dunebuggy was listed as a potential build (no point in doubling up). I had also been thinking about designing a paper dunebuggy for a long time but hadn’t been able to come up with any viable way to attach the wheels to an angled chassis.
First up came the design phase in the past I’d always tried to design papercraft items in blender/3d max. Those two programs always seemed to me to be massive overkill in terms of features and functionality for rather simple meshes that are required for paper models. After looking over a few options I decided to simply use sketchup as it was something I had used extensively for another project and I was most familiar with the interface at the time.
I had some problems initially with sketchup locating some of the more advanced options and sometimes the lack of fine increment control can be annoying but overall it turned out to be a great tool to use for designing the model and I’ll probably stick with it for all future models. With the design process I go through the scale of the object in sketchup is unimportant but the size and proportions of the objects on the model had to be correct. Also with grouping you can easily scale things up and down in sketchup if needed and once I was happy with the design I scaled it down to what I thought would be good size. After a few aborted designs I ended up with the below (This is exploded into parts):
I solved the Wheel to body issue by using a full length axle which interlocks with the body the wheels then attach to this. The mesh was exported as a Google earth file and imported to pepakura for unfolding layout and printing. Initially this was done at a 1:1 scale and the below was constructed, version 1:
A few problems became apparent with this model during assembly;
Most were minor issues and I doubled up the rollcage and eyeballed an internal liner while building version 1. The half round axle really worried me as it was a complete nightmare to build and very fiddly, additionally trying to build the axle at 15mm would have been near impossible.
Back to the drawing board, well sketchup. I thought a hexagon might be a better shape, easier to construct while not losing the perception of a round axle. The entire model was decreased in size to about 85% of the original and I duplicated the rollcage bars and drew in an internal liner. Version2 was born in all it’s glory (V1 Left, V2 Right):
I was much happier with the size but the axle although easier to build was still in the realm of annoyingly fiddly. I decided to try a square axle but mounted as a diamond shape so that a point was pointing upwards and forwards, again to give an illusion of roundness. I was also happy enough with the rest of the design that I decided to add the panel lines and detailing. Version 3 was born
I was very happy with the square axles, easy to assemble and they didn’t detract from the design at all, the panel lines were added in inkscape but this ended up being a partial waste of time as later I had to texture in Gimp and I ended up drawing/painting over all the inkscape work, it did however provide me with a design guide.
At about this point I thought I’m nearly finished just a few textures to slap down and I’m done…Boy was I wrong, I have nothing but the utmost respect for Onemonk I have no idea how he can texture so fast. He had the Wolverine textured in just 3 days, I ended up taking over 2 weeks on the dunebuggy. These were the issues I had to overcome during the process:
Most of the problems I had seemed to relate to workflow with a lot of double work occurring and finding free software to do what I needed to do. I completely underestimated how much work instructions are. Needless to say I learnt a lot solving the above issues and I was able to apply a lot of what I learnt to the dragonfly. I’m not going to detail all the problems and their solutions as that would make this post to big but some of the key points:
Below are some final pictures of the Dunebuggy dubbed the Sand Gecko. For my first from scratch design with textures, I’m very happy with how it turned out. I learnt a lot during it’s development. The people over at one monk’s forum provided heaps of feedback and motivation to keep going. You can thank them all for the alternate rollbars and the racing versions 🙂 :
Files below as usual rename the odt files to .gsd. The PDF’s are layered so you can turn options on and off. The 15mm version is build-able (see above) but you’ll need tweezers, consider yourself warned :). The PDF’s are very big 20mb’s so best to do a save as rather than try and view in your web browser
You can use the dunebuggy with Jims Terraforce marines or Slicks NCC Troopers. I did a test and a plastic/metal driver will also fit.
Terra Force Marines
NCC Troopers
Have fun….the bears are coming I promise 🙂
(This model is release under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported)
This is not exactly a project but it was a fun wargaming weekend and it is what a lot of my projects work towards. I also used a significant amount of time preparing for the weekend over the past 10 days. As we had a long weekend I headed to a friends place for 2 days of wargamming slaughter (mostly me being slaughtered).
First up was Defiance vital ground, which is a skirmish based sci-fi game which you can use any models for. So the lego clone army was broken out for this game although I had managed to lose my troop list and had to use the generic star marines list. We had an 4000pt army on each side so I got to field a TX-130 for the first time as well as a couple of AT-PT’s and of course some scout and regular clone troopers. I don’t have any scout helmets so the clone troopers with no helmets represent scouts.
After the glory and excitement of the setup I proceeded to get my butt handed to me by the opposing UNE force. I did have one very nice maneuver were I killed of about 8 of the UNE infantry with an AT-PT but after that it was all downhill. Some lucky shots by some UNE infantry took out my AT-PT’s. Normally in defiance destroying vehicles with infantry weapons is very very difficult so to have both of them destroyed by infantry was pretty unlucky. The Tx-130 likewise got unlucky losing it’s 2 best weapons in the first point of damage it took. After that it was all downhill, a couple of pictures from deployment:
(Sorry about photo quality)
After the UNE troops had finished giving the clone army a pasting they moved on to issue an even more humiliating defeat to the Space thugs (Orks). Making the UNE army the undefeated army of the weekend. Lessons learnt from the above make sure your infantry have some kind of anti-vehicle weapons.
We also played a giant game of Songs of Blades and Hero’s. This was one giant game of 300pts a person and 6 factions we had Barbarians, Kobolds+Wyvern, Goblins 1, Goblins 2, Adult dragon + Rat wolverine’s and Lizardmen. We actually made the table a little big with about 6footx6foot playing area. Most of the players were learning as they played and I forgot a few rules which made for some interesting situations. The game was ended in the end by adding an impromptu goal as we had to get up early the next day to clean the location and drive back home. The Adult dragon was virtually unstoppable although it had some issues actually delivering a killer blow, the rats with it had no such problems dishing a quiet a significant amount of death.
The first goblin warband dealt a significant amount of death to the lizardmen before being caught between the Wyvern/Kobold and the remaining lizardmen and being almost wiped out. Goblin2 band kept the dragon and rats busy although ii cost quiet a number of goblin warriors to do so. The barbarians quit the field early on due to problems with their general (player had to go home). Due to the size of the board and some very unlucky rolling the poor kobolds spent the whole time trying to move into combat range. Fun was had by all even with the rules mistakes and board size issues. A few pictures:
Goblin Warband 2 facing the Dragon
Goblin Warband1 facing the Lizardmen (Wyvern moving in, in background)
Dishing out and receiving some pain
Wyvern on oneside, Lizardmen on the other…time to run
It was great weekend and hopefully I’ll be able to do another one soon by then I hope to re-write my clone army list for defiance, My Onemonk marines will be done and I’ll have my WWG hinterland layout ready to go as well as some more SOBH warbands + all my frog/bear/turtle warbands.
I better get back onto those Pirate bears now 🙂
Sirrob01 