First Post: Miscast Minis

These are the four miscast minis from smashbash. Mostly painted over one weekend (except a repaint on the red wizard’s glowy face and the washes on the perma death mini). 

I painted them about 6 months ago, and only photographed them a few weeks ago, but I think they make a good introduction to this blog. 

My main job is as an adjunct professor. Another professor at one of the campuses I work at, knew I painted miniatures and asked me to do a mini painting demo for their tabletop game design class. I got these miniatures around the same time as a gift from my partner, and I decided to paint them as practice before the demo. I wanted to be able to show them fully painted miniatures, and more importantly show them minis that were sculpted by an independent artist and hand cast. I think it’s always best to show students examples from independent artists so they have inspiration for what they could make if they end up being excited about a given process. I also needed to paint them only in acrylics as there weren’t many places on the campus where students could use oils and solvents. 

I often struggle to find time to build and paint. I also do organizing for an adjunct faculty union and do Palestine Solidarity organizing. This means that I often have very urgent and honestly more important things to do in any given week. It was great to have a deadline and an excuse to paint for work. 

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One of the things I like about miniatures is that—even if you can’t play with them as much as you like—they are ultimately game pieces. That potential of play often gives guide lines and inspires ideas. For this group, I wanted to split them up into two teams: each a wizard and their summoned demon familiar. I imagined a duel of wizards, where each would summon a sword-demon to fight for them. The wizards are busy contemplating the cosmos and don’t want to trifle with dueling themselves. Although I haven’t played either, I was thinking about mammoth miniatures’ super tiny skirmish and super tiny sorcery as I made them.

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The only conversion here was the basing. Because the miniatures are more cartoony and stylized, I wanted to put them in a more realistic environment. I used clippers to cut away the edges of the attached metal base at irregular, jagged angles to hide the oval base shape. Then I glued each of the miniatures to a broken up slab of cork and slathered the cork and metal base in woodfiller putty to be painted as mud and rock. 

I tried to paint these models very fast and loose. A maximum of two colors for nearly everything with high contrast between them. Red and Orange. Deep purple and bright magenta. I used stipples and dots to add texture to the skin and very rough wet blending for highlight. I’m excited to try similar things, with the addition of oils, to get a big backlog of models painted up. 

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Welcome to cave studies. Expect a lot of kitbashing wips, hopefully some painted miniatures, and maybe even some game and RPG writing.

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And just so we’re clear about the nature of this blog:

Free Palestine / Fuck ICE / Zionism is Racism / Nazi Punks Fuck Off.

Thanks for reading.