maiji: Many many minis (Project LHIA)
[image: Photo of a finger pointing at a bunch of 1:48/quarter scale miniatures in progress lying across a plastic sheet and old wax paper covered in paint and resting on a cutting mat. You can see a tiny oil lamp, rectangular board, three different swords with sewing thread wrapped or being wrapped around the hilt, potatoes, eggs, boots, and round objects.] I've expanded my repertoire from being Dias and Claude's contractor! Have been busy making lots of different miniature things to fill their cabin up. Here are some of the completed ones so far! Lots of fun photos under the cut: a broom, a painting, swords and a sword rack, and food!![READ-MORE][Photo of hand holding a tiny broom.]Here's the broom mentioned in the previous Project LHIA post! I thought the original kit instructions from Petworth Miniatures were rather clever. The base of the broomstick is small rectangle, you apply glue to it aside from the bottom edge, then wrap thread around it and snip out the bottom to flare the ends of the broom. Unfortunately I found my attempt with the wrapping didn't look very good close-up, so after it dried, I undid it by pulling the thread off, snipped them down into segments and manually glued and shaped them on the sides. It's more mop-like now, but I prefer it to my previous attempt. I haven't decided if I want to bother making the second broom in the set yet, or if I might take the idea and make a totally different broom that's much more old school looking, with stiffened threads. Another option is to take the base and turn it into a pizza peel with a long handle, since that's what it looked like to me, haha.[Photos: 1) Waterbrush pointing at a tiny wooden easel on cutting mat next to a tiny sketch of Dias. 2) Hand holding assembled easel with a watercolour and pencil crayon portrait of Dias.]My eternal headcanon for Claude is that he's very artistic (gameplay-wise, he has high chance of coming with or learning a lot of the creative talents), so I knew I wanted to have him making some art around the cabin. The joke here is that in Star Ocean 2, your characters can paint portraits of other characters you have in the party. There's always been a lot of theories with the portraits and relationship levels (that you can use the portraits on characters to increase their affection for each other; that if characters have high affinity for each other, they're more likely to paint each other, and so on). I think most of them were disproven or never confirmed. As far as I can tell, the item creation of the portraits seems random. But anyways, in the inventory, Portrait A is Claude, Portrait B is Rena, etc. The above is 3.65cm Claude's version of Portrait E (Dias). I was terrified I would mess up his face at this tiny scale and almost did at one point but I think I salvaged it. Probably didn't help that I don't keep my pencil crayons very sharp.[Photo of the second floor of the log cabin, with the broom leaning against the wall, pillows on the floor, the easel with DIas' portrait in the background, and the treasure chest still blocking entry from the ladder.]I staged the bed-less bedroom with the new items. The easel only just fits right at the highest point of the room, by the way; I had to tilt it to get it in. When I finished, I laughed. The second floor is now giving me boudoir vibes. I think I might need to move the treasure chest downstairs and block the ladder at the bottom. They'll have no room for anything once they actually get a bed. Or should I go for a roll-uppable futon instead?[Photos: 1) Hand holding out three swords and a sword rack. 2) Collage of two photos showing the three swords handing in the rack from two angles, with fingers peeking in from the side to show the scale.]I'm so proud of these swords and this sword rack!! The swords are all closely based on the swords from the Star Ocean EX anime. In the first photo, top to bottom, they are: Claude's sword (Kouma), Dias' (unnamed) sword, and finally Gamgee's sword (Ouma). I used sewing thread to try to create the effect of leather wrapped around the hilts. The sword rack looks so basic, but I had a heck of a time trying to glue it together without everything constantly falling apart. It's actually all made from scrap pieces of other furniture kits. Reuse reduce recycle!Claude's sword is so tiny that it keeps sliding and falling out of the rack. Wah wah.[Photos of hand with paint on the fingertips holding up a fine point brush and a tiny cutting board with three chicken skewers on it.]And my current masterpiece!! Dias' favourite food, yakitori!! I hope he appreciates it. The skewers are faked; it's just the ends and then I glued the painted air-dry clay in place. The cutting board is actually the support base for Dias' 3D printed boots, repurposed after I thought the shape looked perfect. [/READ-MORE]I still need to coat the oil lamp, sword blades, sword rack and yakitori with my glue+water sealer, but am waiting a few more days to make extra sure the acrylic has dried to avoid/minimize melting like what happened the first time I coated the treasure chest. The sword hilts are already coated to help the thread stay in place, and I actually coated Gamgee's sword once already and realized I didn't wait long enough and had to repaint the blade again.I have these things in progress right now:
Potatoes waiting for some kind of container. I'm thinking to make a little burlappy bag and have them peeking out at the top.
Eggs waiting for some kind of container.
Claude's steak and accompaniments are in the midst of being painted. I need to decide if I'm going to put them on one of the round plates I already have done or do a rectangular sizzling steak plate.
Dias and Claude's boots/shoes are in the midst of being painted and driving me bananas. I might just give up on detailing and make them as close to solid colour as possible.
I have a bunch of old dessicant bags of different materials and am experimenting with the contents. One was basically dried clay bits so I used some of that with the air-dry clay for the food too (I think, it's hard to tell which pieces I ended up using in the yakitori since they're all so tiny), and another has these round silica gel beads that I'm seeing if I can make semi-decent apples and Asian pears with. I have another that's activated charcoal from coconut shells too. Hopefully some of them might be good for the plants I want to create on the outside of the house?
I also went to the Little Dollhouse Company with my sis recently! Walking around the store with my sister was a lot of fun as we made random nerdy conversation together. It's honestly quite fascinating because I've been working in quarter scale long enough now that when I look at miniatures in other scales, I'm like, "Whoa, that is huge!!" but it's obviously tiny (to us in normal scale). Quarter scale item selection tends to be pretty limited everywhere compared to more popular sizes (1:12 is the main one when it comes to dollhouse miniatures), but it resulted in a lot of hilarious comments. Me: What I mainly need is a bed.My sis: How about this kit. If you don't mind them sleeping separately.Me: *indignantly* THEY DIDN'T WAIT THIS LONG FOR TWO BEDS, WE NEED ONE BIG BEDAlso, another challenge is that popular demand seems to be for fancy European furniture styles, like Victorian era and whatnot. So my sis would point things out for me to consider getting for them (because it was amusing to her) and I'd be like "No! Do you see Dias with this?! This is not his aesthetic!!" Or she'd suggest something from a larger scale and I'd be like "That's massive!! It's going to crush them!!"Dias: Why do we have a dog and a frilly canopy bed and these huge tomatoes and what the hell is this.Claude: That's all they had at the store!!My sis also wants to point out that one of the frilly canopy beds was technically on sale, so that's another reason Claude might have gotten it. But he didn't.I came home with 13 hot cross buns and a basket. [Photo of hand with open palm holding up a tiny round clear case with tiny clay hot cross buns, next to a tiny woven basket.]Everyone says the tiny hot cross buns look like growths in a petri dish, hahaha. The nice lady checking out my purchase was like "I can barely see these" hahahaha. There was also a quarter scale chicken and some pretty impressive quarter scale tacos and sparkly donuts (the latter two made by the same artisan as the hot cross buns, but the staff did not have their name). I passed on them as I didn't really have a place to put the chicken (it was already attached to its own tiny house) and I didn't think it made sense for them to eat tacos and donuts hahaha.My sis: So many carbs!!But I did make yakitori for Dias so he better not complain.After I got home I realized the choice of buns is especially perfect, since Arlia Village is in the Kingdom of Cross! So it makes a lot of sense for Dias and Claude to eat buns with little crosses on them!The basket is technically not the right scale, but since baskets can be all sizes, we can pretend it's just very large. I stained it a darker colour and I want to fill it like it's Rena's little housewarming gift to them and stick it on the porch :D
maiji
