alonso
Member
Me: $30 for a miniature? Don't know if it's worth- Friend: HERESY! *BLAM*
Posts: 4
|
Post by alonso on May 20, 2016 14:24:01 GMT -9
Hey! I recently took up the papercraft hobby since I have been GMing a RPG which is open world, so I have to muster up NPC minis on short notice. My first thought was 3D printing miniatures, but that is expensive and time-consuming. So I bumped down a D and went with 2D models. However, since I had to muster up a huge amount of minis to fill the board, color ink was out of the picture, since it would be ridiculously expensive to print around 50 full color sheets. And suddenly, eureka, black and white silhouettes. I know, these may sound just too underdetailed or ridiculous, but hear me out. I went into this on a budget, a tight one while we're at it. Black and white impressions are inexpensive, and to keep with the low cost, I bought 19 mm binder clips to use as bases. It is dirt cheap and quick. It is also very flexible as well. Personalized miniatures are not hard to make, and you can take any image from the web to use as a miniature. I have miniatures ranging from costume models to anime, and since it's all balck and white silhouettes, the art style becomes (almost) uniform. You can also mix and mash images to make your own miniatures or whatever. I chose to buy some of David Graffam's models to compliment my miniatures, and kept the 3D stuff in gray scale, just to not butcher the details David has added to his models and not to look out of place with just black and white minis. Probably the most expensive thing to do was to buy the David Graffam models Well, tell me your opinions? Total rubbish or good for gaming on a budget?
|
|
|
Post by Vermin King on May 20, 2016 14:28:40 GMT -9
Couldn't you just print out the mini's in gray scale? Doing them as silhouettes uses a lot of black ink. Printing in gray scale should be less expensive and more visually interesting ... at least to my eye
|
|
|
Post by wyvern on May 21, 2016 2:46:33 GMT -9
I agree with Vermin King, that greyscale would look more interesting, as well as being less heavy on the black ink usage. Also, I noticed you'd coloured-in the backgrounds of some minis, I'd guess because you needed a way to easily identify them on the tabletop - key characters, maybe? So wouldn't it be better to print the few such minis in full colour? You can always use a mirror silhouette for the back if you're making your own minis from images. Personally, I prefer my paper minis to have distinct back and front views, and I find the colours (and even different base styles) helpful in easily identifying who is who in use. I have tried greyscale minis, but they just don't do it for me, as I seemed to waste too much time trying to identify who the different characters were (so it became a false economy to avoid colour printing). In the end, I found that route carried me on to simply replacing the minis with information counters - like in the classic SPI-style hex-map board wargames - because they were so much easier to make and use than standee minis for larger tabletop games. If cost is a concern, you might also think of reducing the figure scale you're using, from circa 30mm to 15mm, for instance, which approximately halves the paper/card size needed, and reduces the ink volume used accordingly too. Many of the Dave Graffam kits have a scaling table in their instructions to help your planning, if so. Another thing you might try is making A-frame minis, rather than the current flats, because they stand up on their own, without needing any kind of base. If you're unsure what "A-frame minis" are, take a look at the Arion Games minis on the OneBookShelf websites, like RPGNow and DriveThru RPG. This link is to a Pay What You Want Old School Fantasy Set they produce on RPGNow, for example, and which has a Quick Preview option - the A-frame minis are on page 2 of that, the trigonal ones on pages 3 and 4. [The Arion website's currently undergoing a major revamp, so much of it's currently offline, and a lot of their preview links on the OBS sites are broken as a result - and apparently, it's still Christmas discount time for them according to the OBS pages, but sadly not according to their current prices!]
|
|
alonso
Member
Me: $30 for a miniature? Don't know if it's worth- Friend: HERESY! *BLAM*
Posts: 4
|
Post by alonso on May 23, 2016 12:14:21 GMT -9
My original plan was to use full color, but that was a bit expensive, so I decided to bump it down a notch with grayscale. The one problem, however, is that the RPG we're doing is not a traditional DnD, it's based in a (weird) homebrewn universe.
So figures that fit into the universe are scarce. That's when I decided to go full on silhouette, since it gave me so much more flexibility. Like the massive beast I have in the back of my collection was made using snippets from the arena bull(?) in Star Wars Ep II, a rhino photo, spears, tents, banners and basic image editing. I also used characters from anime, WH40K art, costume models (lol) and DnD characters, so there would be heavy dissonance in artistic styles if left in grayscales or colored.
I would definitively buy and print colored miniatures for maybe a wargame or a DnD campaign, but for such a weird world like the one we're running, flexibility is slightly important. I also go to my local Office Depot where I get the prints, but apparently colored printing in Mexico is more expensive.
|
|
|
Post by Vermin King on May 23, 2016 15:39:30 GMT -9
Office Depot charges per page, so I guess this works. If you were printing at home, I was going to suggest turning these into very bold outlines instead. You could copy the shape, reduce to 75%, center this in your silhouette and either make it white or delete. But since all the black ink isn't an issue, it isn't necessary. Although it might be a nice way to differentiate between Players and NPC's. Just a thought.
|
|
|
Post by cherno on May 24, 2016 14:12:38 GMT -9
|
|
alonso
Member
Me: $30 for a miniature? Don't know if it's worth- Friend: HERESY! *BLAM*
Posts: 4
|
Post by alonso on May 25, 2016 13:29:53 GMT -9
Wow! The black and white works amazing with the Noir setting, as well as the stark contrast of the red blood. I'll be sure to pick this up.
|
|
|
Post by paperpusher on May 26, 2016 2:08:45 GMT -9
They are awesome. I have mentioned before about different art methods in paper miniatures these are a great example!
|
|