Creating Flat Miniatures

I start making my flat miniatures by making sketches in a book. These are a combination of ideas from my own head, or ideas from other miniature manufacturers, see the list later. These are all ideas  for my DnD campaign set in Ghastminster which I may be revisiting next year.

Some of my drawings never get past this stage because I lose interest or because I don't like them, but others get to be developed into physical miniatures eventually. 

This is not a quick process and takes me ages to complete. I often get stuck at a point and have to revisit at a later date.

At this stage I  am  not always drawing to scale, although most medium size creatures /monsters are, as I have  a 30 mm template I use to get the proportions right.

Some ideas are huge.

I mostly try to create pages of flats that have many of useful figures, as opposed to just one or two, although that is unavoidable at times. I started trying to draw them at 15 mm scale but I found that I got far more detail at 30 mm and I could use them in a variety of different games.

So after the initial sketches are done, I progress onto organising my drawings onto an A4 sheet of paper.

Here is a sheet I worked on recently to create Roman troops, with their allies that I could use for two separate uses. Primarily these are going to be printed up at 33% and used as 10 mm flats.

However I also use  them as random models at 30 mm for use in roleplay, they'll make some lovely guards or barbarian adversaries. 

After drawing them in pencil, at the right size, I fold the page in two and use a light board to trace the outer image, which I can later fill in with pencil. Then I work over the lot in ink, using Pilot or Uni-ball pens or something similar. Finally I thicken all the outer lines and emphasize some others as I see fit. 

Finally I photocopy the black and white version and colour it. I never colour the original just in case I cock it up or I don't like the colours I chose. Sometimes I use acrylics and paint them, but recently I bought some reasonably nice pens and used them instead, as with these below.

Here we have Legionaries, Spanish infantry, Numidian light infantry and Gallic infantry.

I tend to colour the reverse side at the same time so as not to get myself in a mess.

These can then be colour photocopied, cut, glued to black card and based, ready for use in a game.

Next post I will show some of these in 10 mm based up for Warmaster type games.

Influences include: Games Workshop, Foundry Miniatures, North Star Military Models, D&D Dungeon Masters Book, there will be many more ideas that have seeped into my head but can't recall them all.

Goblin 3mm Army

This is my handmade 3mm Goblin army that I have used to play Fantastic Battles on several occasions...but all solo occasions. Another story for another time.

There are a variety of goblin  troop types, lets explore them quickly. 

There are wolf riders, axemen and battlewagon companies above.

Below we have a general on a fantastic beast, the big spider, trolls, warriors and spider riders.

Below the battlewagons is a Hero miniature.

The spider riders look more like frogs TBH.

Bat riders and a second Hero miniature.

May need to repaint the bat riders, they are not really doing it for me now I see them pictured here.

Spearmen and a shaman.

Wolf riders and axemen again.

Trolls and goblin warriors and their general.

These are all made from cereal packet card in the manner I described in last months post. They are on 25 mm card bases (cereal card again, layered up) and all the troop strips are 15 mm long, so they sit nicely on their base. Fantastic battles uses 40 mm bases, but as my troops are so small I decided to take liberties. 

 

Frostgrave in 10 mm

This is my 1 foot by 1 foot board for playing Frostgrave at 10 mm scale. It makes setting up and leaving very much easier than in 25 mm and I can have a very large number of buildings and ruins on the board.

These buildings I have been making over the last couple of weeks, had great fun doing them and will do some close ups of the more interesting builds in the future.

There are some rough ground obstacles shown here built on 2p pieces for weight and my initial attempts at treasure markers, which will have to be used as something else as they are too large. 

Here are the 10 mm miniatures I'm using to play with, they are all homemade and if you caught my last post about 30 mm flats then these are some of them reduced on my printer and cut as they were.

Group of skeletons above.

From left to right we have:

Hudson the thug, Eschiva the infantryman, Anselem the enchanter, Hafiza the man at arms and lastly, Brice the thief.

I'm playing solo and with only half a warband, so no apprentice, and all my soldiers are non specialists.

I'm trying a system where bye all the models receive xp and progress. Lets see how that goes?

A bit concerned that at this scale it could be a bit fiddly to say the least, only time will tell but the first practise game seemed ok to me, so will plough on. I'm hoping to sort mix in some Mordheim vibes and create some other game controled warbands that my motley lot have to combat in a narrative way. Will be playing about with some of the rules to suite my needs.

Found some Battle of the five armies terrain ruins yesterday so will be repainting those to use here too.

Dungeons and Dragons Flats

These are a selection of miniatures I've created for my players I've used in games this last year and a half. There are two separate groups of characters all playing in my city games set in Ghastminster, my homebrew setting.

These are all drawn by me and then coloured, copied, printed and cut, glued and based.

I got my players to create their PCs on Heroforge or sketch them, then they sent me the image and I created the drawing.  

I also draw out the backs using the same method, my players liked how personal it was to have a one off drawing made.

I always mount the design on black card and ink round the edges to get rid of any white paper I may have missed when cutting. However with lights used to illuminate the miniatures the varnish picks up the light and gives a sheen here... what  can you do?

I try to separate as many parts of the miniature out so that they look a bit more 3D and bend the whole mini when I glue it to the base, partly for stability and partly for the 3D aspect mentioned earlier. 

They are all drawn out as 30 mm miniatures with variances for species and this is how I make my 10 mm miniatures as well, will discuss this more in another post.