Steampunk Grenadiers - Magnetised Bases

 Having completed printing the remainder of the first unit for my 'Invasion Mars, 1899' project I realised I had made a bit of a boo-boo! But, first of all let's have at the progress so far...

So far so good - although I am still working on the arms and weapons - and this is when I had a bit of a 'duh-oh' moment. I like to magnetise war game figures so I can easily move units in unit trays, this entails fitting a small magnet into the base of the figure - guess what I HADN'T done! 😖

I didn't really want to start drilling or carving out holes in the figures' bases so I could insert magnets, this would be quite messy.  SO... Plan B, I decided it would be easier just to glue steel washers to the bottom - then I'll magnetise the unit trays with magnetic sheets.

This is a bit of a fudge but it does have one positive effect - it gives my PLA printed figures a little bit of weight - which I prefer. Every cloud has a silver lining!

NEXT: I finish the construction and painting of my Grenadiers.

Innsmouth Bad Boys - Completed

 These little guys were a bit of an experiment so I'm not 100% happy with them, but they gave me a bit more experience in designing 3D figures. till, they expand my 'Assault on Innsmouth' collection and have given me some ideas for future fantasy projects.

'The Snapper Brothers' - Frog Man
A swivel-gun totting amphibian psychopath - the elder brother of this duo, his toxic bite is as deadly as the bark of his canon-ette !

'The Snapper Brothers' - Shark Man
He never sleeps and his search for prey is ceaseless! He'll get you, by tooth or he'll nail you...

These models take me slightly away from my original peg format with their modified bodies. I think I could have made something similar out of wood, but the great advantage of 3D modelling is it allows a lot more latitude for on the fly experimentation which encourages trying new ideas.

So, that's my monsters and now I'll have to finish off this small series with a few more human cast members. It'll be fun, though, setting these up against 'normal' figures in a skirmish game! 😁

Link to all posts in this project series: Innsmouth Bad Boys/Assault on Innsmouth.

Innsmouth Bad Boys - Progress

While I'm getting there with my 'Innsmouth Bad Boys' I wanted to show the intermediate progress rather than simply going straight to the completion photos (which are about a day away). That would be a bit too much like those frustrating Blue Peter 'and here is one I made earlier' reveals! 😁

While most of these figures have been pretty straight forward. I have topped the project with some painting that is a little more involved than usual...

In particular, my 'frog-man' has been given a facial that is more detailed than my normal cartoonish peg figures, with some graduated tones and textures.

The reason for this little departure from my usual super-simplified style is that I wanted to emphasise the monstrousness of these characters as compared to the 'normal' human peg characters in the series.

They are still - obviously - not 'realistic' by any means, but it was an interesting small departure for my painting style, if only to see what I could do for fun.

A Sunday Stroll into 28mm Territory

 Really, while planning and designing my next figures and trying to use up the last of a PLA filament spool, I decided to experiment with scaling down my normal 50mm designs. I was intrigued to know how scaling would effect the detail that I had on my peg sized soldiers - would it disappear or deform beyond recognition? ...One way to find out (I thought)...

So, I reduced my 3D Steampunk figure using TINKERCAD to what I considered an equivalent of 28mm scale (according to a web search that is 30mm form foot to eye level of the figure)...

As I said, I made no concession to the effects on detail by shrinking the existing model so I had no idea whether some of the finer detail would simply disappear during printing. Also, I have never printed out a 28mm scale miniature using my Flashforge Adventurer 3 so that was a bit of an unknown too (although I know a lot of gamers regularly print out 28mm miniature using such a 3D printer and are happy with the results).

In any event, I was sort of pleasantly surprised by the what was spat out! Bear in mind - because I like to tinker - that I decided to print this small figure out in one-piece (the body anyway) instead of three pieces like I did with his big brother. The arms and the sword I printed the usual way and separately...

Not too shoddy eh? (But it did need a clean up.) 😁

Here's a comparison photo of the 28mm fig with the original 50mm soldier. I haven't worked out the percentage reduction of this but it looks like it's about a 50% down-scale-ish...

As you can see, it's a little rough round the edges of some of the smaller detail I created for the 50mm fig. But it's not too bad and would probably look better once painted. If I'm honest, I've actually had worse plastic soldier figures from commercial companies and not complained! (I'm looking at you Airfix!) 😉

So, what have I learned here? Well, I do have to make some concessions to the smaller scale, perhaps by making some of the finer detail a bit chunkier so that it holds itself in the reduction. There has to be a balance in robustness of the design when I think I might be doing both a 50mm and 28mm version of the same figure.

Useful experiment.

Invasion of Mars, 1899 - Grenadier Officer

Well, I completed my first prototype figure for my 'Invasion of Mars, 1899' series. It was a bit more involved than my normal 50mm peg soldiers but I did enjoy making it.

I can now get on with the rest of this unit (six figures total) with the 'ordinary ranks' carrying heavy rifles with under-slung rockets. 

Unfortunately, I didn't take into consideration the magnetising of this unit which would have been handy as the air tanks make it rather top-heavy. I am now wondering if I can modify it with a tiny magnet which I could fit into the shallow base. ???

If I can manage to fit a magnet I could then make a unit base with it's own small magnets. Hmmm (today's project).

Invasion of Mars, 1899 - Part 1

 I'm juggling projects at the moment (yet another reason it takes me forever to get a job complete) and I've even started a new one! 😆

I've always been a bit of a closet Steampunk fan and particularly like the fantastical yarns by the likes of H.G Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jules Verne where the conquest of space began - fictionally - in the 19th century! Typical of this type of early science-fiction were stories like 'The First Men in the Moon' (H.G Wells) and the Barsoom Stories (E.R Burroughs) where 19th century adventurers managed - in various ways - to journey to other planets in the Solar System. 

Above: Bedford (Edward Judd)  and Cavel (Lionel Jeffries) land on the moon in 1899.
Picture from 1964's British movie 'First Men in the Moon'.

Aside from the fictional stories I have always been tempted by the RPG 'Space 1889', a tabletop role-playing game of Victorian-era space-faring, created by Frank Chadwick...

"The game presented an alternate history in which certain discredited Victorian scientific theories were instead found to be true and have led to the existence of new technologies. In the setting, Thomas Edison invented an "ether propeller" which could propel ships through the "luminiferous aether" (the universal medium that permeates space, based on a now outdated scientific theory)...By the time of the game's setting in 1889, the great powers have used Edison's invention to extend their colonies and interests to the inner planets of the solar system. Venus and Mars have been colonized by the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Russia. Belgium has only colonized Mars and Italy has only colonized Venus whilst Japan and the United States maintain economic and scientific enclaves on Mars. ..."['Space 1889', Wikipedia.]

The Invasion of Mars - A Table-Top Skirmish
When I started my Molatero blog the original idea was to journal my making of a H.G Well's 'Funny Little Wars' army and it's subsequent use in a war-game. This never actually came off as I was repeatedly disappointed in the figures I acquired for this use. Gradually I moved towards the idea of - first - converting figures to my own liking and then - eventually - to actually making my own figures. This has finally ended up where I am today, making my little 'peg figures' - a style of cartoony looking little chaps that suit my less than serious tongue-in-cheek attitude to the hobby.

However, for a long time now I've been making single stand-alone characters while I perfect my current style of model soldier, so I thought that its a bout time I get back to my original idea - making a little army for use in a table-top game.

Above: There is plenty of inspiration, reference material and even game rules for a
Steampunk/Victorian interplanetary campaign. Osprey Publishing has a few books
that provide a great source of ideas.

The idea for 'The Invasion of Mars, 1899' - although still generally a concept which I can attribute to H.G Wells - allows me to work on a limited one-off project, while still gaining some experience of making multiple figures and units which I can then later use to make a full blown FLW war-game.

I'll be restricting my armies to limited units of three infantry, one artillery and one cavalry on each side, which I deem achievable even at my slow pace of construction! 😁

Making a Prototype Soldier
As usual, I start working out a new concept by making a prototype figure. In this case I jumped straight in by making one of the central figures for my Victorian Steampunk army by creating a 1889 Aether-Grenadier for my British expeditionary force...

This design is very much influenced on the models I had just created for my 'Assault on Innsmouth' series, where I had created a larger body so I could mouth an oversized head on a modified 'peg' body.

I really liked the idea of making a unit based on the Victoria diving suites as worn in 'The First Men in the Moon'. Game-wise, my notion was this would be a 'heavy, elite unit' which is why I am calling them Grenadiers. These would be armed with heavier weaponry and could add some variation to the look of my British forces.

While this design added a bit more detail than I usually apply to my cartoon-style of pegs, it's still quite simplified and didn't posed much problem to make in TINKERCAD...

Satisfied with the look of this model I 3D printed the component parts out on my Flashforge Adventurer 3 printer. The multipart 'kit' took several individual prints to make as I prefer to try and make print 'jobs' in smaller groups so that I can get the best quality I can (in theory, I could have - perhaps - have printed this model out in one go by using a LOT of print supports, but this could've got quite messy).

This would be a officer figure, so I created a little 'ray gun' but - as a nod to the Victorian Steampunk style - also gave him a sword. 😁

Above: My Space Grenadier (left). You can see how my recent Innsmouth mutant
inspired this bigger than usual 'peg' design.

Having constructed and primed my 'kit' I noted some things I might change for the rest of the unit but was generally pleased with the way this was going. The rest of my British units would be based on my original, slightly less bulky, peg body design and have different uniforms and equipment - just to mark my grenadiers out as being 'special' (elite).

I then moved onto the painting. Again, this is a kind of prototyping too as I have to work out the colour palette that I will be using. NOW... I don't usually like showing my painting in progress, mainly because it shows off just what a sloppy painter I really am! BUT... I think it's only fair I should show you my process.

Here (above pic) you can see how I apply blocks of colour working from the back (or bottom) most part of the model and work outwards. At this point you can see how I am a bit slap-dash, going over 'lines' and not exactly being very precise! The idea here is that, as I add each additional layer - working outwards - I gradually work a little more neater and effectively cover over any over-painting I may have done on the previous layers. AND SO... In theory, by the time I get to the outermost - top - layer I should end up with a nicely painted little model! (Sorry to disappoint anyone who thought I was - by nature or skill - a good painter. I'm not!) 😂

NEXT: I finish off this prototype and start banging out the rest of the unit.

Edit (17/4/21): The day after I posted the above entry I came across a set of gaming rules that seem absolutely pertinent to my idea of a Steampunk skirmish, these are Osprey's 'In Her Majesty's Name', by Craig Cartmell and Charles Murton and published by Osprey...

Annoyingly, these rules seem to be out of print now (typically) BUT there still seems to be some support and updates for them here: The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare

Innsmouth Bad Boys - Part 1

 Moving on from the 'good guys' I made for my 'Assault on Innsmouth' scenario (a H.P Lovecraft inspired pulp-horror skirmish game I have in mind), I have designed two of the townsfolk mutants. These are intended to be two of Innsmouth's heavies and will provide artillery support for the town faction.

Above: 'The Deep Ones', undersea demons that the the followers of
Dagon aspired to interbreed with. Source: The H.P. Lovecraft Wiki.

For those that haven't read Lovecraft's story, the inhabitants of Innsmouth displayed a spectrum of mutations culminating in their final change into immortal fish-like humanoids called 'Deep Ones'. In their abdominal worship of the demi-god Dagon, the townsfolk interbreed with the Deep Ones which culminated in a range of aquatic hybrids.  

Designing a Mutant Peg Figure!
So far I haven't really taken my peg figures into the realms of the horror genre, so what I am doing now is a bit of a jump into the unknown for me. In other words, I am - as I have done in the past - making this all up as I go along, I don't have any templates for these new designs.

My first attempt to create a mutant creature was simply to modify my usual peg body by adding a hybrid head...

But this first attempt at a 'shark-man' was not satisfactory at all, I needed to create something a little more monstrous - in both look and mass. So, I decided to create a new, slightly larger body and by doing so I would be able to mount a larger head on it.

Above: By simply upturning the normal body and enlarging the normal
component that I use I was able to create a base for more massive heads!

The massive heads do lend themselves to a cartoonish horror quite nicely, especially as I am trying not to let my monsters look too out of play against my other peg figures. Hopefully, I have maintained a balance here - I can't goo too wild or 'realistic' (relatively speaking).

First to be designed in TINKERCAD was my 'frog man' cannoneer. It's a bit tongue-in-cheek and a sort of cross between Lovecraft and 'The Pirates of the Caribbean' but it makes me smile...

Happy with my 3D design I printed out all the various parts in the form of a kit. Every time I make one of these 3D figures they do seem to get a tiny bit more detailed or have more components to them...

I was particularly please with the cannon and I think I will try to scale this component up to make a proper canon for my normal peg soldiers. That done I moved on to the second of my Innsmouth heavies - my new and improved shark-man (the cocktail sticks are just place-holders until I could fashion better harpoon spears)...

I'm quite pleased with how these little monsters turned out. I think I'm starting to get to grips with this 3D figure making malarkey (even for saying that my cartoon style is fairly simple). 

They are quite intimidating and should give the townsfolk a bit of a chance in their defence against the Federals and their puny human weapons! 😉

NEXT: Scratching my head over the colour schemes and painting.