I Created My First Miniature Thing

Transcript

Welcome to the Hobby Nomicon. It’s day 162. I have a lot I’m excited to show you today. A lot of stuff isn’t quite ready for a video yet, but I have something very cool that I’m very proud of. I kicked my ass trying to get it to work, but I finally did.

Casting Troubles

So here’s the problem. Twelve hours later, the castings are squishy and bubbly. The inside didn’t actually cure. I was able to pop out some pieces, but the toad and the thing I actually wanted cast are the same way. I’m guessing maybe I got a bad batch of resin.

My plan is to put them in the deep freezer, let them sit for the rest of the day, and hopefully they get hard enough to pop out of the silicone. I managed to save the molds—got to do some cleanup on the frog mold. I’ll try again, and if it doesn’t work this time, I’ll know something went bad in the resin.

Forty minutes later, things are looking and feeling much better. I poured a little resin into the frog mold—didn’t really plan on making a frog last time.

My Oldest Possession Becomes a Miniature

This is the first thing I’ve brought into the world that didn’t exist before I made it. And it comes from something deeply personal.

This rock is probably my oldest possession. It used to be connected to a bigger chunk, and it just fell off one day. I’ve had it sitting on my desk ever since I was a kid. Even the very first miniature I ever painted, this rock was on the desk. It’s just always been there, surviving every move and life change.

I was looking at the daemon prince because I didn’t feel like I’d really done enough to customize it myself. Then I wondered—can I put something on its back? Look at how perfectly this lines up. It’s almost crazy. There’s a little wiggle room, but it’s nearly perfect against the back I sculpted, completely unintentionally.

The Monolith Bearer Comes Together

So here’s the plan: it’ll be the monolith bearer. The monolith will be chained to his back, and he’s been blinded because he doesn’t need eyes, ears, or a nose—the monolith tells him what to do and where to go. It just adds so much flavor.

It’s really cool to recast this, and eventually I’ll get a setup to throw these up on the site and let other people have them. Getting a ton of my hobby rocks out into the world would be really cool—kind of like how the Miscast toads and daemon prints work.

What’s Next

I made some tweaks to the cast temporarily. Because the first one failed, there are bumps from the uncured material I didn’t get fully cleaned off. I’ll need to sand those down before attaching it for real. Tomorrow’s video will be locking this in—getting the chains on, doing some work to the arms, priming it, and then it’ll be time for the board.

This is the filler anime episode, but it’s a pretty big update for me because I made this thing. It didn’t exist before—I mean, the rock did, but I brought it into the miniature world. The mold is perfect. This week is the last week before I turn 36 on Friday, and I’m using that as my deadline for getting a lot of things I’ve been wanting to do into motion.