Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Green Stuff Crimson Fist Terminator Shoulder Pad Mold

Hey all, so a couple years ago at the adepticon bitz trading night i picked up a super sweet deal on 15 Forgeworld Terminator shoulder pad upgrades. Was so excited to upgrade all the excess amounts of old metal (shooty) terminators i had stored away for just such an occasion.. well i was gravely disappointed that first time a broke one out and noticed that the FW upgrades were meant only for the newer style terminators, so with a sigh, i put em back in their coffin and forgot about em until recently... I've been experimenting with making AdMech green stuff stamps lately (with some good success and some miserable failures) and noticed the upgrades just sitting in their bag and thought i would give a go at making a decent green stuff mold.. it really only took 2 tries to get this one to work, which totally surprised me as i'd try to do Mechanicus shoulder pad molds and found it pretty difficult to work with a curved surface... Anyhow, you'll have to forgive me for the slight blurriness of the photos as it was hard to just focus on such small pieces..
First photo is just the FW shoulder pad..

i had to kinda ruin this one to get a nice full circle around the fist as there were purity seals molded into it, but nothing a sharp x-acto didn't take care of...
I then mixed up my green stuff, rolled it into a ball big enough to cover the fist, then dampened the ball and pressed it slightly against a small piece of glass. This makes for a nice clean surface (getting rid of finger prints and folds) for pressing against whatever you are trying to mold. I then applied liberal amounts of saliva to the pad and carefully wrapped the whole thing in green stuff... making sure to press evenly and solidly around it...

I then let this set up for bout 1/2 hour and very very carefully pealed it away taking care not to change the curvature of the shoulder pad.. I then let this piece dry over night. The next day i added a bit more green stuff to the back to make a handle of sorts.

and let that dry again for another day. Now i was ready to give it ago with one of the older plastic shooty terminator arms.. You have to applied lots of saliva to the new mold (or other lubricants) when doing this next part as the green stuff really likes to try and stick into all those small nooks and crevices. So i ball up a small bit of green stuff and put it directly on the arm itself, then slowly (yet firmly) press the mold onto the arm, making sure to press hard enough to squeeze out the excess green stuff and on my first go i got this one!

and finally here is the painted up test arm, will definitely add some purity seals and some other bling with doing this on the rest of my old terminators..


I do recommend patience when trying to make molds with green stuff as i had many many failures when first starting out..
ps, i recently heard about this stuff and am excited to give it ago!
Cheers,
Brose

6 comments:

Scott said...

I can't wait to see these all done. They're going to look great.

xNickBaranx said...

Great stuff.

I need to get my hands on that instamold crap. That video got the creative juices flowing!

Scott said...

Ugh! Stop talking about your juices!!

Dasanton said...

You're on path to have both armies done this year... So what's next???

Pedro Kantor said...

I honestly want to get back to finishing my orks after i've gone through all the un-built models and terrain i have in storage and either ebay them or put em together.. I have so many converted loota's...

Grokka said...

You can get kneaditite (greenstuff) pretty cheaply online or at a lot of hobby shops. I used a sculpy to make a mold of an Inquisitorial "I" icon from some terminators using a similar technique except that you bake sculpy to get a hard mold. This is a great trick for getting surface icons and such...if you can find or make the original and get a clean casting.
sculpey is super cheap too. I def liked the tip about using glass to clear the surface before taking the mold though good ide.