on being a cheap ass

 ebay is a monster. It makes monsters of us all. 

 

I have been descending down a rabbit hole looking at oldschool citadel models. I think there's a word for having nostalgia for a time you weren't a part of, I don't know what it is off the top of my head and I'm too lazy to google it right now. These ebay listings hit that note. 

I've been looking at old the old Lord of the Rings line by citadel quite a bit. Not all of the sculpts hit for me, but there's specific Frodo (ME-13), Sam (ME-34), and Gandalf (ME-82) sculpts that really make me yearn. They're not overly expensive, but they're not cheap either. Also,  they're mostly available from overseas sellers. This hobby, man.

So, being cheap I haven't dropped the hammer on these yet (is that a phrase?). Instead, I've continued digging and browsing deeper and deeper into the inspirational depths of The Lost Minis Wiki and The Stuff of Legends (RIP Orclord). Also, just trawling ebay seller pages intently. There's a lot of just, sick as hell minis from back in the day, and they're all just a little pricier than I want to drop money on.

At the behest of my friend, I'm saving myself some money and sculpting my own. Here's the start (not the start), heavily heavily based on the Fantasy Tribe Fighters 43, Captain of Chaos figure.

 

no he is NOT tugging on his salami

lil face because I can't not sculpt a lil face

 And here's the original from one angle

 I'm debating adding some of these details and leaning on the side of Not adding them at all. Obviously I haven't added the plume, or the cape, or the end of the mace. The mace I will add after I bake it, likely with greenstuff. I didn't plan the armature very well. The plume and the cape add so much to the silhouette of the original figure, so if I do decide to add them it will also be post baking. 

It is very cool to be able to sculpt some kind of approximation of a figure you like. It's also cool to just own the figure you like. So, I kind of consider this an exercise in delaying the inevitable. Maybe I'll sculpt one of the hobbits next. 

 

casual update

 hello keeping it cas. casual. I have been a little lacking in hobby. sometimes that happens. It's not burnout just sometimes you take a lil step back from doing things, nothing wrong with it relax. 

 I started sculpting some mounted halflings to use for HAIRFOOT JOUSTING and that has been a bit less of a joy than I thought it would be. I'll get back to it sometime, here's a pic of what I have 

great pic, twabbis

 frog and a hare and a lady and man halfling. much work to be done still, motivation will return eventually. I really want to play hairfoot jousting. 

In another effort to get myself hobbying, I'm painting some more of my sculpts. trying to get my scamps done and I started on the meteor squig

 

 didn't mean for the flesh colored scamp to be flesh colored but I kinda vibe with it so I'll keep it. Demonic scamp... The red eye is kind of great too, unfortunately. scamps can be anything you want them to be it doesn't matter ultimately to me as long as it matters to you. 

 anyway, just an update. blogging is blogging. gonna steep some more pu-erh tea and finishing catching up on hobby youtube backlog 

It's time for a... POST

 This hobby is so strange sometimes. Sometimes really surprising and sometimes in really good ways. I probably should charge my digicam (Digital Camera) cuz I'm gonna need to take some pics for this post. Lemme get that going then I'll start writing some more.

 Ok, it's charging. 

One bad thing about using my camera from 2007 is that it's from 2007 and no matter what, the battery doesn't last like modern devices. That and, sometimes when the battery runs out it wipes the memory card. That and, when the battery dies I have to reset the date and time...

Every Tuesday I go to bar trivia. Some weeks I miss but usually I'm there. I don't always contribute a lot, but one thing that frequently happens is that me and my friends draw wizards on the scrap paper we get from the trivia host. Here's a couple of those. 

I tried to ad lib a poem and gave up so don't bother reading it lmao

 

It's fun to draw wizards. No one reading this is surprised. Last week, I had a bit of a divergence. Last week we had a different host and we didn't get enough pens so I borrowed my roommates micron. Something magical happened, dear reader... Last week, I drew little gnome-like guys. Then I got my friends to draw little gnome guys too. Here they are.

 

these are the ones I drew

all of them

I posted these on discord and people seemed really stoked about them. I decided to post them on instagram but, not all of them because it felt a little strange to share other people's art without their knowledge. But, I asked people to sculpt one of them if they wanted to, FOR FREE. This isn't a challenge I just thought it was funny to shift the burden of sculpting onto someone else in a Non Challenge way. Got a couple replies from people I wasn't expecting, which was fun but I didn't expect too much to come of it. Everyone's got their own stuff going on, no one really was going to take the time etc. Well, yesterday while at trivia ( a week after sharing) I got a message from a hobbyist who almost exclusively customizes tyranids for Warhammer. And he had sculpted one of my guys! That man is frankendoodle65. I think you'll understand my surprise with just a click through. He knocked it out of the park too, I mean my jaw dropped. I showed everyone in my group, my friend who sculpted the fishnet gnome asked if anyone was gonna sculpt that one and I had to kind of awkwardly try to explain my earlier reservations when sharing the gnomes. I regret that! Anyway, look at this. 

 

 

I mean c'mon, that's cool! It's perfection! It kind of pissed me off, so I had to sculpt one too. Now, let me check my camera and see if I can get a good pic. 

 

 I think I did alright! So, if you want to, go with my permission and sculpt one yourself! And if you sculpt the fishnet one send me a pic so I can send it to my friend, I think they'd really like that.

 

 

 

Extra Extra!

I drew a wizard with eyeball minions the week before last and sculpted an eyeball minion. I have to revisit this concept because it's not Quite What I Want but here it is. Nothing super special just something else to blog about!

 

just making an effort to blog...

 I'm gonna post this on instagram too... but...

Here's Hobby Update for the Blog:

Snails.

 Sculpting snails in cheap polymer clay is the best here's some of those mmk?

 These were done in Fimo Effects clay. I forgot exactly what effects they were until I baked them (this is not entirely true, I knew used the green on a different snail) so when they came out of the oven I was pleased to see what they became!

 

delicious JADE snails :)

Let's keep ESCARGOing. I'm sure you noticed there's a guy in the middle, and a door. Well, the door I didn't take any process pics of. I was looking at old citadel models and they had some cool dungeon doors and I wanted to sculpt a door. I'll try again sometime. One more thing on that topic actually: old citadel had a LOT of weird models of ladies being tortured for some reason??? They were going crazy back in the day no wonder moms were so against tabletop stuff!

Ok ok sorry, so. The guy in the middle is I drew a picture of a snail like Solid Snake. I've been trying to figure this out for a while, since I read through the Wanted! Reward cc 10k rules the first time.  I did this drawing and it was exactly what I wanted so I sculpted it.

can you even see the drawing in this oh well

a bit o' wip

I'm amazing

 One final update because, well, this is what I've been up to. I sculpted the coolest orcy face of my life yesterday using colored polymer clay in a way I haven't really before. It was very worth it, you should give it a try!

 Ok so that's pretty much it that I can share. Thanks for reeeeading 

bye

twabbis 

short and SHweet

 Been painting a lil bit...

 It turns out, it's pretty rewarding to paint minis. All of these except the middle one are my own sculpts, and it's rewarding to paint them. It's rewarding to paint your friend's sculpts. Must get better about doing that! The real Wanted Reward CC10k was to finish painting a mini! 

 

One more thing!

 

I'm working on The Tower v1.3

 

I'm (slowly) figuring out mechanics for Envoys to kind of settle down a little around the tower and to form some kind of narrative interactions with them. Each Envoy now has a little card which will have dice assigned to the Suits and Faire and there is gonna be like, a favor mechanic that determines if the Envoy likes you depending on your last Faire rolls. I'm still figuring out exactly what that looks like!

Ok like I said, short and SHweet. Have a good weekend, hope it's at least 3 days long for you! holidays, baby!
 

Lies That Wizard Will Tell You

 I'm working on this zine and figure I should keep track of the progress in some way. So, I'm doing like I did for Mishiev and cube waltz and updating this post whenever I make significant progress. It is the 30th of April.

 

I keep editing this post and reuploading things lol

I've been adding to my little sketch version of the zine. I wrote my ideas in a google document first and was planning to only use the ball point pen doodled version as a reference for when I made the zine in photoshop. Once more I've learned the lesson, I hate working on a computer. I think I've made the decision to write the whole thing by hand. I started working on drawing the zine at a bigger scale, each page being half of a folded piece of paper (hamburger style). It turns out, I hate drawing at large scales too! So, unfortunately I'll be making this zine at a 1:1 scale. Ideal? I really don't think so. 

 

may first mayday m'day.

Scanning in sketch. While I was doodling At Scale I started adding borders to each page, then kind of went "oh, I could make it look kinda like a book" and so... 

 

my reference/sketch version

omg... it's genius

I have a lot more stuff to write onto each page and I want to adjust the spacing/layout a bit. Though, I do think it feels nice where it's at it just needs more info per page. 

 

May... the 7th...

 

I haven't worked on this for a few days. Here's where it's at and you'll see... I decided not to hand letter it. Also, the page borders being book pages are gone. 

 

 Well, the page borders are mostly gone. I need to print this out perfectly without text and trace my art on a fresh sheet of PAPER. big sigh. My printer doesn't like to print things flush and I'm too dumb to figure it out, so if you can believe it I've hit another wall. As you can also see, I did the text with digital text. It looks good I think actually, really nice. 

 I have one more problem though, from switching to digital text. I'm able to fit more stuff onto a page. Ergo, I have a lot more room on page 2 than I did before. I have an idea of what to do for the empty space I just need to come up with a bunch of silly wizard lies. Difficult to be funny. 

 

5/12/2026

OK that's it I'm calling it, I am calling it.  It is done. I inked it, scaled it fit it to the text. Decided to leave the text that I chose ultimately for that one page. Future zines will include more lies I think. It's kind of messy and cluttered but who cares, it's a zine! haha!!

 So download it from here or whatever, I don't care! It's one of those micro zines, print it out and fold it up. I numbered the pages for you! I'm so kind, thank you, myself! Edit: Also included a Read Only version for the computer of phone!

 

Ok so there's another post. thanks for reading, goodbye again!

 

twabbis 

 

 

good to make a habit of blogging I supporse

hey

 

I'm in the fiddly stages of sculpting my giant. I'm still a little stuck on finishing my ZINE project, I'm a little worried the well is running dry, actually. Fear is setting in... Actually, I've been socially busy this weekend and on top of that I've been HOME ALONE AAA for the last few days. I deleted instagram again. Thus, blogging.

So, in order to blog (which is the most important thing) I'm blogging. I actually don't have a lot to report but, before I left insta again I suggested that everyone sculpt a snail before the end of 2026 with the hashtag #sculptasnail2026. 

 

 I of course, have no chill. Sculpted a snail within 24 hours (in a matter of minutes due to my skill and techniques) and got 'er posted. I also sculpted another giant/Ogre type head and a little guy. The little guy is actually kind of 28mm scale so it's just a standard little guy. Computer, show me the digital camera heavy flash picture of those sculpts now. 

very nice ugly snail shell face

 Fimo rules. Cheapo store craft smart clay is fine. 

Ok one more giant update and then that's a post done and dusted. I chopped the giant arms off for better hand sculpting.  I really enjoy sculpting hands don't you know?

 

aaaand a lovely top down. I've had a couple people ask me if I'm going to get this giant produced. Idunno idunno... Maybe... shake a magic 8 ball about it

 

Ok goodbye!

 

-twabbissssssss