Friday 9 August 2013

Instant Mold - Satyr Conversion

We're back with another tutorial from the prolific John Dulle whose Amazon warband has received yet more reinforcements. This time it's a female satyr, or faun as the Romans called them, involving assorted plastic bits, milliput and Instant Mold.

Having seen Eddie play a faun in our wargame, I thought it might not be a bad idea if my warband had one as well. The only problem is I wanted all my characters to be female and to look extremely similar. To remedy this, Eddie traded me some GW beastmen bodies for some of my Amazons.

Finished  conversion using Instant Mold and plastic bits

Finished conversion using Instant Mold and plastic bits

To start, I was running out of Amazons and wasn't sure how well the conversion might work, so I used a handy product called Instant Mold, which is a reusable material that can be used to create molds very easily and quickly (highly recommended). After melting the Instant Mold with boiling water and then putting it in the rough shape I needed, I created molds of the top half of a couple of my Amazon warriors; the top half is all I needed for a faun and a centaur (a separate project).

Once cooled, I used GEDEO brand resin plaster (similar to plaster of Paris but much harder when fully cured – I got mine at Hobby Craft) to cast two new top halves of my Amazons. Once cured (says 30 minutes to de-mold on the box but I suggest 2 to 24 hours to prevent crumbling), I then cleaned up the mold lines and set them aside for a few seconds while I hacked off the top half of the Beastman.

I then checked to see how the top and bottom halves would match up. After deciding on a good facing, I super glued the two pieces together. Because the two pieces had slightly different musculature, I needed to use a bit of filler to make the pieces appear to be seamless. I chose to use Milliput to do this (the choice was based on the quantity of the stuff I have that is beginning to get old).

Finally came putting the arms and head on the Amazon and deciding which weapons to outfit her with. Because I had a bit of left over Milliput and I'd chosen to outfit her with javelins, I decided to create a quiver for extra javelins and super glued it to her back.

Primed, painted, varnished, based and ready for battle.

Amazon satyr

Amazon satyr

Amazon satyr

Amazon satyr



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