"MAKE Magazine: Custom Minis from Shrinky Dinks" Topic

It's interesting but I don't see how the result is any more of a 'miniature' than the counters that come with a board game.

Surely a 'miniature' is three dimensional and substantial in some way, not a counter held perpendicular to the playing surface.?

Puzzled.

John T

Surely a 'miniature' is three dimensional and substantial in some way, not a counter held perpendicular to the playing surface.?

Well, while I personally agree, many people appear to use paper illustrations as miniatures, and flats are in a way not a lot different from counters, though shaped like a man (or bugbear or whatever).

In fact, on this forum are often announced new releases of paper illustrations that people seem to use as wargaming miniatures.

I guess it's all a matter of how one defines miniature, an interesting question.

Doesn't matter one whit if they aren't three dimensional. They look cool and I'm sure there are other applications as well. Fun article.

David

There are such things as flats. These can be found in tin, paper and even wood. I think shrinky dinks might work well.

Try stacking a bunch of infantry on one hex with those counters.

I don't quite get the idea of why one would use shrink plastic as opposed to digitally scaling the image and printing to 110 paper.

Nice idea and nice article though.

Used to do it al the time with the cardboard counters. The stackability of shrinky-dink plastic will depend on whether it flattened out properly after shrinking.

Interestingly subtle blurring of trademarks on that map, by the way…

My son did this in the late 1970's at age of 9-10. He would trace pictures from fantasy figure catalogs on to the shrink stuff, color them, and bake them in the toaster oven. They were small and all over the house :) THe binder clips are a great idea as a way to get them to stand up. Below is a quote from SD company showing why these are better than just cutting out paper. Note that ours were cut out figures, not just a rectangle with a picture.

SHRINKY DINKS SHRINK to approximately 1/3rd their original size and actually become 9 times thicker. Simply place the SHRINKY DINKS piece you created into a Home Oven or Toaster Oven for 2 magic minutes. Watch as your creation gets smaller and smaller.

Looks like a good idea, although I'm not so big on the metal clips for bases. Something a bit flatter would appeal to me a bit more, especially if they are used to represent human shaped figures with feet.

Something like this link although I have no need for 1000 of them…

Forgot to add how much I love MAKE magazine.

Try stacking a bunch of infantry on one hex with those counters.

I don't think you need to stack in OGRE, do you?

A neat idea to make durable one-off/custom (as in not needing 1000 and special ordering) plastic counters. I'd just loose the clip and lay them flat.

I like the idea of using this to make customized markers for my Flames of War and Ambush Alley Games like the GF9 ones that are available. I may experiment with this.

Ed G.

A friend of mine has been doing this for years with RPG games. You can actually buy bases for the shrinky plastic to use with the finished flats. They are great for taking to conventions and other events, because they are light and pack easily into a small box. Not sure I'd want an army of them, but for RPG they are great.

"I don't think you need to stack in OGRE, do you?"

Need is rare, but happens. The game is too brutal to clustered units to want to do so often. Its why bridges are so important.

using 20% percent shrinkage paper shrinks the project down by 50% ?…..

I used Shrinky Dinks to make markers for Ambush Alley and Force on Force. Worked pretty well for me. Need to make more actually. By the way, the 40% off coupon for Hobby Lobby is a great way to pick up a package of the printer friendly version of Shrinky Dinks to play around with.

Jeff

EM4 sell plastic bases for paper in reasonable quantities link

This could be very cool to do with Kwanchai's re-skin for Ogre (posted at boardgamegeek.com):

link

Fun article, but I'd call them game tokens.

Using the pure OGRE rules, without anything from GEV, stacking is prohibited. Infantry can combine into a single larger unit, though.

I'm surprised this wasn't an Andrew Walters project. This is right up his alley…

Has anyone ever tried this with buildings, such as WorldWorks Games products? Of course you would need to scale them up, but this would create buildings made of much more durable plastic. Also, it would only work for flat devices, unless you could figure out how to shrink the plastic into the curved shapes needed.

I agree with Jana: for RPG's, this would be awesome! Spend a bit of time coloring your needed monster images, print, shrink, and mount. I prefer miniatures, but for the budget-limited, this option would be outstanding. Never thought of it before.

For miniatures games involving exotic monsters, which may be one-off's, or those which no one makes a 3-D figure for, this would be a fantastic solution. One can always sculpt the odd critter, but not everyone has the talent, time, or interest to do so. This is a fantastic option. Thanks for sharing. Cheers!

I agree with John Treadaway, as usual … I think a miniature is a "full blown" 3D plastic, metal or resin model …