Modelling 15mm Simple Vehicles and Small Terrain

[Golan2072]

What is the best medium to model simple vehicles/robots (a truck or smaller in most cases) and small terrain (such as crates or pillboxes) with? Is Miliput or Brown Stuff appropriate? Would FEMO work well?

And what techniques work best for this?

[YPU]

What scale are we talking about? in the higher scales vehicles tend to be build from plasticard and cannibalized bits.

[Golan2072]

Oh, sorry for not mentioning it before... I use 15mm.

[Wirelizard]

Fimo works nicely for sandbags and such; I did a bunch of piles of sacks for warehouse filler, and one of my projects soon will be to use the last of the Fimo up in sandbags for troops to shelter behind.

Fimo could work for small 15mm pillboxes; I've used it for 6mm trenches in the past.

For crates, use wooden cubes and styrene or wood strip to build them up. Far easier and faster than putty.

[Golan2072]

Thanks for the tip!

[Golan2072]

So, which clay or putty work well for modeling simple 15mm vehicles and/or robots? I'm looking for something that could be sculpted with relatively sharp edges and a mechanical look and feel.

[Connectamabob]

Sculpting crisp mechanical shapes can be fussy work no matter what clay you're using, that's why working with materials like styrene, wood, brass, or cardboard is usually preferable. If you use clay for that, you want something that's rigid and easily carveable when cured. You sculpt it roughly to shape you want, then after it's hardened, you carve, scrape, and sand/file it down to get the flat surfaces and crisp edges you need. This may involve several passes as you will likely have to go back after the initial carving/sanding to spackle in dips kinks, nicks, voids, etc. Don't worry if you have to do that numerous times, as that's pretty standard.

Of the stuff you listed, Milliput would be the best for this. I'd actually recommend Aves or MagicSculpt over Milliput, but you said in your other thread that you already have some Milliput on the way, so use that. You don't want to use Green Stuff or paper-based clays because they don't carve or sand well. Plus they're harder to sculpt into crisp edges to begin with, and the closer you can get while the clay is "wet" the better. Fimo would work okay, but Milliput is probably better (in terms of carving and scraping and such). Brown Stuff would also work well, but it's probably better to save that for figure work and fine details, as it's better for that than milliput, and use the milliput for the bulk shaping.

[widgren]

for sculpting i use supersculpey but for mechanichal minis build them out of plasticard and bits.

[Golan2072]

Thanks for the tips.