Re-Cutting a Toad Mold and Gluing Goblins Wrong

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.

Transcript

For the smaller models, it’s not a huge deal because it’ll being bonded to the filler material on the base is it’s not going to rip off. I just broke that one. >> Okay. 3 hours of sleep. Same shirt as yesterday.

Uh that’s just how it is sometimes with I’ve got I’ve got baby. They’re not babies anymore. They’re one-year-old. They’re still babies. Uh twins that decided they were going to scream all last night.

So, uh I got a bunch of errands I have to do today. But before I do them, I’m going to try to fix the mold for the toad and cast it like while I’m running around. uh doing all that stuff and then hopefully when I come back home uh I have a fixed fully footed toad boy. >> I was trying to think through this problem because after thinking about it I initially poking holes and making vents wouldn’t work. So I was looking at these ones that I actually got from Trent and you can see I cleaned the bottom of these up a little bit but the feet were just open open to the air, right?

So there wasn’t a chance for it to get trapped in. And this is the other one that I got. Uh he’s missing a toe. But you can see the same thing, right? Like this was opened.

So I’m just going to cut like if you look here, I’m just going to cut this part off. So with the toes are just totally open. Uh fresh X-Acto blade. This is now the third blade of the channel. Uh doing those goblins was brutal.

Just one more tip while I was doing this. If you don’t know, silicone is super hard to cut if you don’t stretch it. But if you stretch it out like this and then just touch the blade to it, it pretty much pretty much cuts itself. All right. So, this is where we’re at now.

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

Okay. I just got back from running errands and I’m sitting in my driveway. Uh, I’m not actually driving and I the whole time I’m thinking of driving and I’m driving around and I’m like, I need to buy sculpting tools. I need to like research what the best material is to learn how to sculpting. I need to find like a bunch of videos to watch.

And like Matthew, have you learned nothing from from the error of your ways when it came to the miniature painting hobby? Uh, I’m not going to look anything up beyond what I’ve already looked up. Uh, I’m not going to buy any tools. I’m not going to buy any materials. I already have miliput.

I already have green stuff. Uh, my blow is probably like 20 years old at this point, but who cares? We’re going to make it work. I have isopropyl alcohol. Uh, I have everything that I need to get started sculpting.

And nothing’s going to be better for me than just sculpting. Uh, and it’s just it’s just crazy that like there’s this new thing I want to do in my gut reaction is to go spend time researching it instead of doing it and to go buy for it instead of actually doing it. Uh, and really this is day 31. Uh, this is the one month for all of you guys that are watching videos. Uh, and I’ve learned that like my participation in something is not consuming it, it is doing it.

Uh, so I’m going to jump right in. I also want to learn digital sculpting. Uh, and I, again, I have all the stuff to do that, too. So, I don’t need to buy anything for digital sculpting. Uh, I might have to buy a program.

Uh, but I think that’s a little bit different. Uh, but I just wanted to get that car driving thought out now because I think it’s a good one. Hopefully, you do, too. All right, we’re back home. This is how the mold looks.

Uh, we definitely We got a big old bubble. I guess that’s good. It’s there, not in the in the figure. Um, tozies are definitely covered in. Let’s pop them out.

Look at that. Look at that beautiful little cutie. Okay, so the the peachy colored one is the original. The white one is the one I did. I need to do a little bit more cleanup, but like we’re in there.

I think we got it. Uh, I’m testing a live stream setup. Uh, I can’t live stream today, but I just wanted to do a a dry run. Uh, I just stole my my design from my Magic 3. Uh, I thought it’d be cool.

Uh, this black box below me will hopefully start a chat one day. Uh, so just testing testing things out. Testing the airbrush area setup. I’m a little bit worried about the sound. Um, I have a pretty good mic, but uh I I think it’s picking up too much of the exhaust fan, so gonna have to figure that out.

Uh, this video I’m going to start with the priming and just kind of test things out. Protrail black. This has become my favorite primer. Okay, I like it. Oh, great.

I’m not where you can see me doing anything. Okay, I like this. So, I get a lot of people say that this is just like your priming brush. Um, this thing chucks a lot of paint out in a good way. Um, there’s a lot I’m barely pulling back on the trigger.

So, I’m assuming it’s probably hard to do detail work with it. We should prime this guy. This guy’s been sitting our conversion. We’ll go ahead and prime him. And so, this is part of the thing I was thinking about of always having something to paint.

And since this is going to be an army painting project for the orcs, if I only have a few minutes a day to paint and I can’t like get dig into the army or if I’m eventually the army will be at a point where if I just have 15 minutes I can work on the army and make progress on it. But in the beginning it’s going to be a lot of batch painting. So if I find myself in a situation where I can paint but only got like two or three minutes, this is going to be the guy that I’m working on. That’s not a good sign. I probably But what’s great like see I just broke that one.

This is not good. I’m gonna have to address that. But back to what I was saying about the goblins. I didn’t put their shields on because I’m going to sculpt my own shield. I’ve decided uh I’ll probably do it digitally and then print them once I have the file.

Like I’ll make it an STL file. I’ll learn I’ll use the shields to learn digital sculpting or get started with digital sculpting and I will release that for free just for everybody to have and do whatever they want to do with it. But I think that’ll be a good like simple first project to just like learn the basics. And I’m probably going to use Nova Sculpt on the iPad because that way I can work on it like while I’m just on the couch hanging out with the kids and in the evenings or like before bedtime or something. the bases.

I for sure must have let them sit too long with before attaching the figure and it just it didn’t the super glue didn’t penetrate down to the plastic which is just my fault. I should have known better. I got to stop. I got to figure out a way to fix all this. Okay.

Pretty big pretty big oversight. Silly mistake. Uh I didn’t glue the figures directly to the base. I glued them on top of the basing material. And with this type of basing material, I should have sealed sealed this down.

Uh, really I should have glued the figures to the base and then put the base material around them. But now I I’m going to hope that if I mix I’m going to go like 50/50. This is Elmer’s glue and water. This is 70% isopropyl alcohol. Maybe 7525.

I’ll probably do 7525 that I can get enough to seep in. It’ll like these ones that the figures already broke off of will be fine. But I’m hoping that on all of these damn goblins uh with that much ice purple alcohol in it, it’ll seep into the mixture and cure it all together. Uh but otherwise, I’m going to have to bust bust them all off and I just really don’t want to. All right, testing here.

Oh, I didn’t shake it up enough. Look pretty terrible for a little bit. Uh, I’m going to do a couple of tests on these guys just to see if my idea is going to work of it seeping up underneath the feet and we’ll see. So, going to see how these orcs go. This should theoretically like really lock it in and we’ll be good and it doesn’t take very long, but uh I don’t know.

Just a little bit silly. Got way ahead of myself before of such a common silly mistake to make, but that’s okay. Uh, like I said, it it seems like a huge setback and I’m like whining about it, but really worst case scenario, it just adds another hour to the project and I’m already at 20 hours of mold lines. So, making these bases indestructible. I really in the scale of things isn’t that big of a deal.

Uh, this is something I’ll still be able to do today. I’ll still be able to get everybody primed. I still cast a toad. Like, this is still a great day. It’s okay.

I should have flipped the camera around to look at me instead of just shaking it out of the orcs, though.