Oz Painters

nice.. it kinda reminds me a little of the old alchemists of dirz minis. I like how he is more round and not ripped, makes for a more natural feeling look, I think its so nice to see something slightly different in that reguard.

Thanks Venom, I did a few more hours work on him yesterday and this morning started to do some detailing.


A couple of close ups.


Hmm, might go back and tweak that eye a little.

Your sculpting is getting gradually better and better with each mini that your sculpt It will be interesting to see how this one turns out

Thanks Danny, He is almost finished I'll get some pics of him up once he is done. Almost finished.

Been working on the resin master casting last few days. I have it to a point were there is no bubbles. This is a second cast and Im getting quite a bit of flash. Might need to clamp a bit tighter, the pressure in the chamber seems to be forcing the resin seep and cause a thing excess. And there is a slight defect in the silicon mould causing a lump in the chest area. Will probably re do it and cast again, but I might try a couple more.

Excuse the lighting on the quick pic. The back has turned out excellent, the front is were most of the problems are.


Hope to have all this ironed out on the week end.

I redid the silicon mould for the body. I wasn't happy with the mould line being on the face on the previous mould and couldn't get a clean enough cast for a master.
The new mould has me pretty much there.
Here is the 5th cast the second from the second mould. Just gotta clean it up.

nice work mate, having seen these figures in the flesh today I can really appreciate them, the detail is amazing and the anatomy is pretty darn good.
I'd love to see the casting process in full one day if you have time to show me

Thanks. No worries. I'd be happy to give you a run down on the casting. We'll try and organise for a day when I have to pore some silicon moulds.

casting is awesome I have been playing with it a lot as well. I get everything from http://www.barnesonline.com.au

In my experiments I have been using Pinky Sil It is a really viscus solution for making the molds and has like NO bubbeling problems. So you do not need a vacuum chamber or pour it from a great height.

I then use Easy Cast to make the plastic version and use BJB Grey asa solution mixer... basicly the casting stuff comes out like a milky white.. so I mix in thi to give it that Games-Workshop grey plastic look. It is infact better that was as it allows you to see detail a bit better than the white.

Anyway I would be very keen to hear your thoughts on casting. This is how I have been experimenting....



I use this same setup for both "press casting" and "point casting" I have no idea what they are really called I just made them up though experimentation... anyway.. a press mold is like what you are doing, were you cast 1/2 at a time. In the image the red is the part, the black is nail, the green are knitting needle pins and the blue is some random plastic, I use the frame work from the bloodletters from games-workshop. Basically this produces the best results in my tests...

You pour the casting agent into one of the blue shafts, this means the casting goop flows down to the bottom of the model and then fills upward. Pushing all the air OUT of the mold though air shafts made by using the pins. (you need to block one side of the blue while pouring or only have one blue entrance) This also means you get near perfect molds of the feet and ground points... you only have the mold lines and 3 "points" to clip off and file.

I use the exact some thing for "point casting" but with out the blue stuff (though I have not perfected this yet)... this time standing up exactly like doing a pin mount. Though I have tacked 2 pins for air vents. Then you can cast the entire model in one go, with no mold lines, and only 3 points to snip and file.

I have also been playing with Banana Skin It is like super flexible. You can practically turn the mold inside out and it will bounce back.. this means when you do a mold of an entire object (without doing it in 1/2s) you can pull it off the original with out cutting it at all... So you can get 100% zero mold lines.

My end goal of starting this hobby is to do what some people here are doing and making my own minis form my own 2D art...

interesting post Jynks, next time you do a cast could you take some pictures so we can see exactly what you are doing?
I'm getting the general gist but may not be following you exactly at the moment

Here's one I did today. I like to inject the resin.

This is almost exactly how I do what I call "press mold" I have no idea bout real terms.. but the molds you do one for each side then press them together before pouring the goop... . the only difference is that I would add an exit on the right parts, like you did on the left parts. This way the goop goes down the green lines, then upward.. forcing out any air through the vents reducing to near zero the chance of bubbles.



What do you mean by "inject"... ?

<--- edit
This is turning into a thread highjack.. sorry... maybe a mod can split this topic... only started chatting about molds as KoS's cast looks really neat.

That's ok guys feel free to comment about casting.
Jynks, Sprue is talking about using a syringe to slowly inject the resin. Works great.
I use Barnes products as well. I have used Tufsil and Ultrasil. I like both Tufsil is a lot denser but takes 24 hrs to cure, where as Ultrasil is a bit easier to cut vents in and only takes 12 hrs to cure.
I have used Easy cast and while I favour it the working time is only about 3 mins and using a pressure pot I like to have a little time to do things and make sure I have injected the mould properly.
That is where 4pu comes in 5 mins working time demould is a lot longer it has a lot of elasticity and takes around an hour B4 it is reasonably hard. Easy cast hardens in a quarter of the time.

I have done single pours and 2 part moulds. Single pour moulds can some times be tricky. Making sure that you can cut open the mould down the centre to extract the figure needs to calculated properly.
2 part has less room for error.

Here is the Shaman master just about ready to go for casting.
Couple area aren't to my satisfaction. But don't really detract from the figure. Please ignore the arm position it is being held together by blue tack the arm.
The left arm looks a little strange from the angle the pictures are taken.
Thanks for putting me on to Art Rage sprue, I might buy it.

I ended up going over a couple of areas with some green stuff, and made some tabs for the arms to join the main body. He's being sent for casting today.

The next piece is just about ready to make the resin master. Couple areas to touch up.

I love this guy, he's really great! Nice face, and the little bits of chain and stuff are fantastic. I really like his feet too! haha

Good luck with the casting!

Cheers Seb, I cant wait to have some of my own little metal men.
Picked up the Fisherman from the GoH range at the painting day. Its brilliant, just gotta squeeze in some time to do some painting between all this sculpting.