Craft Check: Make Your Own (Easier) Miniatures
March 2008 Issue
Features
- From the Editors
- Craft Check: Make Your Own (Easier) Miniatures
- Gaming in the Media: The Cutest Serving of Stereotypes: The NYT on Dating a Gamer
Interviews
- Industry Interview: Victoria Lamb
Articles
- Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics: Analyzing a LARP
Author: Stephanie Pegg
- Sculpting Player Expectations
Author: Brendan Davis
- Women’s Gaming Group: First Impressions
Author: Robyn Fleming
Stephanie uses a LARP questionnaire to examine the questions "What do LARPers really want?" and "How different are men and women gamers, really?"
Brendan shares tips on how to use Power Point to get players excited and into the campaign they are about to embark on.
Robyn discusses her first impressions of her all-women gaming group.
Gamer Stories
Reviews
Odds 'n Ends
Back in our very first issue, I told you all how to make your own miniatures. Since then, I’ve had lots of people tell me that they love the idea of sculpting their own miniatures, but don’t have either the time or the sculptural creativity. I just started running a new game and I wanted to use something a little more personalized than extra dice or plastic tokens on the battle grid, but didn’t have time to create elaborate new miniatures for every character. So I came up with a method for doing very simplified “miniatures” that may appeal to those of you who find the original “Make Your Own Miniatures” tutorial too daunting.
Cost: variable bordering on high. You don’t need many different colors of polymer clay for this craft check, but you will need some decent-quality acrylic paints.
Time: a couple of hours to complete the project start to finish. You’ll be able to do other activities in between steps.
Skill level: I’m fairly confident that almost anyone can do this craft.
Equipment:
- Polymer clay in as many colors as you’d like
- Tool for cutting the clay (a butter knife will work fine if you don’t have specialized tools)
- Glass baking pan
- Access to an oven
- Acrylic paints
- A fine paintbrush
- A palette for mixing the paints
- Water
- Some way of estimating scale for your miniatures (I used a piece of a battle grid for this tutorial)
- Optional: Brush-on sealant
Step 1: Squashing balls (of clay)
Choose the color(s) of polymer clay you want to use for your first miniature, cut off a good-sized chunk of clay and warm it in your hands before rolling it into a ball. Check the size of the ball for scale and add or remove clay from it if necessary. When it’s the right size, squash it lightly to form a fat disk. Repeat this process to form each miniature.
If you don’t want to work in monochrome, you can try mixing two or more colors together for a swirled effect.
Step 2: Bake and cool
Bake your miniatures in the glass pan according to package directions. Let them cool completely before the next step.
If you don’t want to paint your miniatures, you can stop here and have some unique colored tokens to use.
Step 3: Mix paint
Get some water handy (I just filled one of the wells in my palette) and then squeeze a tiny blob of acrylic paint in a color you want to use on your palette. Add drops of water, mixing with your paintbrush, until the paint is liquid enough to work with easily.
Step 4: Paint!
Now, paint designs of your choice onto your miniatures. These can be as simple as the initials of the characters each miniature represents, or more complex designs featuring multiple colors. Make sure you clean your brush between colors.
If you’re not a confident painter, you could try drawing designs on with fine-tipped markers, instead.
Step 5: Use
Once the paint has dried, your miniatures are ready to use! You might want to apply a brush-on sealant at this time, to keep the paint from rubbing off during handling.
Enjoy your new miniatures!
