Daily Hobby Vlog: Fixing Some Problems and Causing More

Running on Empty

Three hours of sleep. Same shirt as yesterday. That’s just how it is sometimes with one-year-old twins that decided they were going to scream all last night. Got a bunch of errands to do today, but before I do them, I’m going to try to fix the mold for the toad and cast it while I’m running around.

Fixing the Toad Mold

I was thinking through this problem—poking holes and making vents wouldn’t work. Looking at some casts I got from Trent, the feet were just open to the air, so there wasn’t a chance for bubbles to get trapped in.

I’m just going to cut the bottom part off so the toes are totally open. Quick tip: silicone is super hard to cut if you don’t stretch it. But if you stretch it out and then just touch the blade to it, it pretty much cuts itself.

So I filled the feet up nicely, been tapping it, banging the table a little bit. You can see the air bubbles coming out to the top. I’m okay with a little bit of air bubbles at the very bottom.

A Lesson from the Driveway

I just got back from running errands and I’m sitting in my driveway. The whole time I was driving around thinking: I need to buy sculpting tools, I need to research what the best material is, I need to find videos to watch.

Matthew, have you learned nothing from the error of your ways when it came to the miniature painting hobby?

I’m not going to look anything up beyond what I’ve already looked up. I’m not going to buy any tools or materials. I already have milliput, green stuff, my flow is probably 20 years old but who cares? I have isopropyl alcohol. I have everything I need to get started sculpting. Nothing’s going to be better for me than just sculpting.

Participation Is Doing, Not Consuming

It’s crazy that there’s this new thing I want to do and my gut reaction is to spend time researching it instead of doing it, to buy stuff for it instead of actually doing it.

This is day 31. I’ve learned that my participation in something is not consuming it—it is doing it. So I’m going to jump right in.

The Toad Success

Back home. We got a big old bubble in the mold—I guess that’s good, it’s there and not in the figure. Toesies are definitely covered in. Let’s pop them out.

Look at that beautiful little cutie! The peachy colored one is the original, the white one is mine. I need to do a little bit more cleanup, but we’re in there. I think we got it.

Testing Livestream Setup

I’m testing a livestream setup. Can’t livestream today, but wanted to do a dry run. I stole my design from my Magic the Gathering stuff. Testing the airbrush area setup too—a little worried about the sound. My mic might be picking up too much of the exhaust fan.

The Goblin Disaster

I just broke that one. This is not good. I’m gonna have to address that.

I didn’t glue the figures directly to the base—I glued them on top of the basing material. With this type of basing material, I should have sealed this down. Really I should have glued the figures to the base and then put the base material around them.

The Fix Attempt

I’m hoping that if I mix Elmer’s glue and water with isopropyl alcohol—maybe 75/25—it’ll seep into the mixture and cure it all together. Otherwise, I’m going to have to bust them all off and I really don’t want to.

Keeping Perspective

It seems like a huge setback and I’m whining about it, but worst case scenario it just adds another hour to the project. I’m already at 20 hours of mold lines, so making these bases indestructible isn’t that big of a deal.

I’ll still be able to get everybody primed. I still cast a toad. This is still a great day. It’s okay.

Digital Sculpting Goals

I also want to learn digital sculpting. I have all the stuff to do that too—I might have to buy a program but that’s different.

The goblins don’t have their shields because I’m going to sculpt my own shield. I’ll probably do it digitally and then print them. I’ll use the shields to learn digital sculpting and release that STL file for free for everybody. I think that’ll be a good simple first project to learn the basics. I’m probably going to use Nova Sculpt on the iPad so I can work on it while on the couch with the kids.