Outpost 206

I’ll try not to drone on as long as I did in the first Random Resin Recasts article but if this is YOUR first Random Resin Recasts, I’ll briefly explain what I do here. I basically just take random figures from my bits bin and/or my personal collection, make a mold of it using either Composimold or my DIY gelatin-glycerin reusable molding compound, extract the master from the mold, fill the mold with resin, and see how they cast. First up are two mini vinyl Transformers figures (about 1.25” tall each) of Starscream and Megatron that used to be sold at the Dollar Tree a few years back. The one pictured here was a two-part mold made with Composimold but I made a second mold of these same figures using a “hybrid” two-part mold that was one half Composimold and one half ImPressive Putty. The results were…not great. The purple Megatron was the only one that came out kind of good, but I would encounter really rough, bumpy, generally awful finishes and loads of nigh-unsandable flashing

Hot off the heels of my Ax Battler custom resin miniature comes the third entry in my Barbarian series , the Saurian Plunderer. Unlike Ax Battler, this barbarian is an original character though it too started off as a resin casting created from the same silicone mold of an Eternia Minis He-Man figure. This one in particular was cast in epoxy resin dyed a transparent blue. The head on this miniature didn’t quite come out, so I swapped it with that of a Jurassic Park tyrannosaurus rex mini figurine that I found at the Dollar Tree since I had it lying around and its cartoony style meshed well with the exaggerated look of the Eternia Minis base body. I then exchanged the He-Man feet with the t-rex's feet and gave him its tiny tail as well. And like many of my customized resin figures, I glued it to a G.I. Joe stand (that I also duplicated with epoxy resin). For the weapons, I wanted to go with a more sci-fi fantasy theme for this character, so I gave him a blaster that I think

While I there’s about four or five projects that I’ve completed this month, I still need to do write-ups for them. In the meantime, here’s what’s currently on my desk. You might notice that a few mainstays from the last couple What’s On My Desk entries are conspicuous by their absence… Starting from the front row, going from left to right: A resin duplicate I made of a Robot Heroes Sunstreaker from my first Random Resin Recasts article (the second one coming soon). Since I’m going to recede him as his police car variant Cordon, I primed him with Army Painter Matte White and sculpted him a lightbar. One of the four Robot Heroes Mirage recasts (again from my first Random Resin Recasts and seen in previous What's On My Desks ), which I’ve begun to paint as Decepticon Fracture (aka Crasher from Go-Bots). I’m almost done, I just need to touch it up and clean up the lines. Which is easier said than done on these because it wasn’t the cleanest resin cast, the two halves of the mol

It’s time to unveil the second entry in my Barbarian series of custom miniatures created from epoxy resin recasts I made from a He-Man Eternia Minis figure. Instead of going with an original character like I did for the first entry in the series, I felt the urge to go with another video game inspired build (officially turning my Barbarian series into a crossover series). Since I’ve been on another retro arcade-style beat em’ up kick, my mind immediately went to the barbarian Ax Battler , my favorite character from the classic Genesis game Golden Axe. Not only is he a cool Conan-inspired character who would be a natural shoe-in for this project, I always dug his blue and silver color scheme. I thought I had a decent starting point shot of the resin casted figure prior to all of my over-sculpting and other modifications, but unfortunately the only surviving picture I have of it is the one seen in my What’s On My Desk update from 2/16/22 . And even then, its already been sanded down a

I enjoy experimenting with making molds and resin castings of random figures picked from either my collection shelves or (more often) the bits bin where I keep my customization fodder, so much so that I’m launching an ongoing series detailing my experiments in seeing which items I can successfully cast and which ones end up being total duds. This will be presented in a style similar to the test pieces shown in my DIY mold making article . The first subject is this 3” figure from what I’m told is a line of Medieval fantasy toys by Chap Mei, a company that is largely known today for their generic soldiers, vehicles, and those weird dinosaur/animal playsets you might stumble across on Amazon. I believe this figure is from the early 2000’s and I have no idea when I got it or where I got it from (most likely a garage sale, thrift store, or random Ebay assortment like most of the things you’ll see featured here). In any event, here it is in the mold. I used the Gelatin-Glycerin mold compou