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Okay, so I SHOULD be working on my really important articles, but I
found that working on each little by little doesn’t get much done. SO
I’ve decided to make this little article on my own site just to give
some people new to the mini field info on miniature preparation and how
important it is, especially with the Mid Nor Cyclops.. Well, without
further ado, lets get to work!
First, I got the stuff out of the kit, cut everything off the sprues
and went over all the mold lines with a new, sharp hobby knife and some
400 grit Sand Paper. The sandpaper’s finish should say “Mirror Finish”
on it.. this is the stuff you want to use because it’ll give a nice
finish without any scarring AND you can use it to polish pewter for
realistic metal! Well, One of the Major things to do while sanding down
mold lines is to sand down the sword hand so the blade is sharp,
otherwise you’ll have to paint that edge and the blade will look
blocky, and not sharp and menacing. And up and down motion along the
edge on both sides as if you were sharpening a real blade does a great
job.
After sanding everything down, go ahead and dry fit everything (that
is, fit the pieces together without any glue for you REALLY new
people). I noticed the two torso halves wouldn’t go together without a
piece of flash, so I cut it and it fit snugly, everything went together
without a hitch.... Except things wouldn’t glue like that.. For one,
the legs and torso pieces are hollow, and secondly, they rely on each
other to stay together.. I envisioned one swipe from my cat on to the
floor and this would be in pieces again. So, I took some Milliput and
filled them in after I had scored them (you can see on the inside of
the torso where I did this) to help the putty adhere. I tried to make
sure I had just enough to fill, then mashed the pieces together. You
can see that some excess milliput leaked out from the legs, but they
stayed in place and that was their glue.. I also cut off the pipe
running to the back, because I hated painted ribbed pipes and only the
very end supported anything. The torso was not so easy. I first pieced
it together and come morning when it had dried, I found the pieces were
not together, and that I needed to cut some Milliput off to make them
fit. Then I used some Super Glue Gel and the main pieces were together
solidly.
Since the other piece fit so well, you should just glue them, right?
Well, I still like insurance my Cyclops will not break on impact, so I
would pin all 7 areas that needed it. Pinning with me is very easy.
First, you make an indentation with your knife where you want to drill,
like so:
Then you get out your trusty 8,000-18,000 RPM hand tool, I use this low
setting because anything more and you’ll chomp through the whole thing
in a second. I have a more powerful one with three different settings,
but that one is bigger and I only use it for cutting. I use a #68 Size
drill bit (that’s 0.0310 of an inch for you technical people), which is
small enough for hands and feet on 28 MM figures (well, not Rackham
hands and feet) and big enough to drill a sizable hole for strength.
Now, for a pin I use some so technical, so rare it is only known to a
very few elite miniature converters, who must swear and oath to....
Okay, it’s a small paperclip. :P These things are just smaller than the
0.0310 hole, so the gel glue will fit with them in it. I also use these
for putting them in:
A trusty pair of pliers! You can use needle nose, but I like the
stability of these regular ones. I do this so: 1) I don’t skewer my
fingers pushing the sharp ends in, 2) hammering the pin will just bend
it and C) they can rip the pin out if it’s not set right. Now, Rackham
decided to put their own “Pins” on the mini for support, but it
basically comes up to a ball and socket joints.. Y’know, the kind
that’s in your shoulder.. the kind made for WIGGLING STUFF AROUND! If
you just glue them, you’ll first have to stand totally still because it
can rotate around, despite not being in the right place. So, my
solution was this; first, you can drill into the hole part (like on the
top on of the head).
Then you can cut off the round end on the opposite end and drill into
the middle of it. This’ll give you a nice support like below:
Thought it was all together? Think again!
This is how I envision pinning with parts. I’m not a fan of the method
of putting paint down on one part and squishing it into another to get
where the pin will go, I use my imagination to see where it will go. I
did this on the arms, but on the head and hands, I had the ball sockets
to tell me where it should go. And on the head what I did was to work
from the bottom up. I did the above where I drilled the hole, cut the
rounded end, and then I drilled through the lower mouth piece
completely.
I then pieced the lower mouth to the upper head and put the drill
through the hole in the lower mouth. That gave me the exact hole in all
three pieces in the same place, making for a smooth transition.
You could go ahead and pin everything and use Super Glue Gel to glue it
all up. If you do that, put smaller pieces to bigger ones, since the
torso is done if you glue the hands to the arms and then to the body
you will not have to worry about snapping the arms off of the body
while placing the hands. BUT, I was not done yet, because though the
kit from the factory was amazing, I wanted some more character to him.
So, I got the weapon from Wolfen Zombie 2 an thought how cool it would
be if he had a scythe..
I sanded and sharpened the scythe blade just like the sword. I wondered
if I had enough room, but when I saw the hand position, I had more than
enough. I started but sawing off the head of the club, trying to keep
the wood and bindings texture (which will soon become a great boon) and
cut the scythe blade from the haft. Notice how well the blade and wood
from the hand fit together.
I pinned the blade to the hand and I noticed though the club looked
like wood, it did not give the effect of a broken scythe I wanted
because it was too small, so I hacked that off as well.
The scythe haft was next to face my jeweler’s saw’s fury, as I went and
cut off a section from the middle. My original plan was to just sculpt
on an end, but then I saw that the part from the middle’s end matched
the width of the end piece of the scythe! I cut that off too and pinned
the whole thing, coming up with this weapon:
I intentionally left a little space between the end and the middle so I
could put some putty and make sure it looked good, and didn’t have any
abrupt cuts showing.
My Cyclops was still baseless, so I got some Cork and ripped off a big
piece and a slightly smaller piece to be the rock he was standing on. I
cut out the middle of the smaller piece because I would sculpt
something in there later, which would give weight and support to the
heavy Cyclops (heavy with Milliput filling! Yum!). The smaller piece
was fitted on top of the small piece, then I used some watered down
wood glue to harden the cork, although it looks too runny and will
slide around, just brush it on and walk away. Wood glue straight is too
thick, and you’ll get rounded edges where it ran, you could use super
glue, but expense, fumes, and common sense stop me from doing it that
way.
At this time, you’ll think I neglected the little Cyclops Puppet. Not
so, I made a special base for him, I used only a little bit of cork
which did not cover the entire base. I also tried to make a wedge shape
by putting a smaller piece on top. Same thing, use a little watery glue
and walk away for a while. Then, I took a Griffon shield and figured
out the slant of the cork and cut it so it looked like it was embedded
in the ground.
On the back, I also used a Griffon Templar helmet so the shield had
something to “rest” on. Sure, you can stick a shield in the ground, but
if it’s leaning like that, it’ll need support. Taking extra steps for
realism is what good basing is all about!
After I let everything dry, I went back and messed up the shield with a
knife, hand tool, files, etc, for battle damage. Then I used SnowTex
(the stuff you find at craft stores for snow texture.. never works for
snow on minis, but it’s good for basing), and some Renaissance Inks
Coarse flocking gel for basing, also making it look like the shield was
buried even more. I also used a file on the two upper tips of the
shield to make them level (somewhat), and glued the puppet on. Now he
has his own base and it’s just as good as the big guy’s!!
Speaking of which, by now the big pieces should be done drying. Now,
the reason I wanted the middle cut out of the upper cork was to add
milliput for strength and weight. BUT since one flat surface was really
boring, I decided to make the base look like shattered rock! Luckily, I
where I park on campus is really shoddy asphalt:
So, using this as a guide I knew that is kind of made a spider-web
pattern, but with triangles and a more semi-random pattern. I made the
middle shallower than the edges when putting down the Milliput for
realism and depth. Then I etched several bigger main lines before going
over them and making smaller ones branching out. Most of the bigger
ones were done while the clay was still quite soft, since that’s the
only way to get really good depth on them. Some of the smaller lines
were made with a knife after it had set, but you won’t have very good
control with these or depth, so try and make as many lines while it’s
still wet. After all that mad sculpting and gouging, it came out like
this:
As I said, the Milliput makes for better stability and weight
distribution. Once I was done with that, I made holes for the pins by
standing the semi-assembled Cyclops on top and marking where they’d go.
You can pretty much just poke the pin through the cork, but the bigger
pin Rackham made on the other foot needs to be cut from the cork or
drilled into the milliput.
After I knew where everything was, I glued the feet down with super
glue gel. Then I added the flocking gels to the base and the snowtex to
give texture. Now, I still wanted some more bits on to make it look
REALLY EVIL, so I went to the hobby store, looked in the jewelry
section and got some various widths of fine chain. If you do this, make
sure you get the steal or brass kind, that way you won’t be covering up
silver or gold. Now, the problem with chain is you can’t just stick it
on anywhere. I had to cut through a link so it would look like it was
hanging. Then you put regular super glue on the links. I’ve given up
trying to stop it flowing into the loops, but you could use the rotary
tool or a knife to clean them out (probably get filled again when you
prime it, anyways).. I used a skull from Sophet Drahas’s base and a
Lion Swordplayer’s head hanging from them and also hung a bit of bigger
chain from his arm, like so:
Now, the icing on the cake was to threaten my hated Tir-na-bor cousins,
so using a Soldier of the Plains, I filed the back so it fit along his
belt.. The topknot came off, so I had to use some GS on his head, and
made his tongue lolling out, while I was at it!
Here he is in his Zenithal Primed glory! Shots of him painted hopefully
soon!
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