I transformed a Yu-Gi-Oh toy into an iron golem

The mini on the left is from Zombicide Green Horde, and I was painting it at the same time, but the star of this post is the big hulking figure on the right.

I found it in a garage sale, and had no idea what it was, but I thought it could be good practice for testing out my new metallic paints.

Turns out to be a character from Yu-Gi-Oh, named Exodia. I have

no idea what their backstory is, though.

I painstakingly painted it all around with the metallic paints, trying to use various metals for various parts, but it turned out to be pretty boring looking in the end.

So I decided to apply a fair dose of Nihilak Oxyde on it to make it look like it was very old. The result is mildly convincing.

On one hand, it does give it a special look, like it was sitting at the bottom of the sea for a long time and finally got out. On the other hand it does look like paint and not real oxydation. I still haven't mastered how to use this special paint.

But the main lesson I learned here is that I don't need to apply metallic paint everywhere. I drybrush is more effective and much faster.

I made an Iron Golem out of Ronan the Accuser

I used this mini as a practice for testing the Nihilak Oxyde. I simply painted it silver, applied Nuln Oil and then tried to apply Nihilak Oxyde to its head.

I'm not so happy with the result, the oxydation does not make sense (why would it be only on the head) and the miniature overall lacks any distinctive feature.

In retrospect, I should have used this mini as practice for other techniques, like layering or highlighting (stuff I still don't know how to do) because it has a lot of large and easily accessible surfaces.

I made a couple of Iron Golems (or whatever other metallic construct) from a cheap Heroclix miniature:

I had just bought a bunch of metallic paints and I wanted to try them out, so I painted them with various shades of silver and bronze.

I then applied Nuln Oil on it, which is the secret weapon to have metal look good. I also tried some Nihilakh Oxide on it, but it was my first try using it and I'm not sure it worked really well.

What I learned is:

• For metals, you don't need to apply the paint everywhere like you would do with another color. A rough drybrush works as well and might look ever better
• The Nuln Oil will tone down the colors, so the various shades of silver won't be that different. I would rather keep only one shade in my future minis, but use a light or dark one depending if I want the mini to look dark or not.

Overall, I'm satisfied with the result; I think they look great, they were cheap to do, and I learned about my paints.

I crafted a bunch of tokens for my players abilities. It's poker chips with round stickers on both sides.

I created round token images in Google Image with artwork found only (mostly icons from video games) and printed them on sticker paper, then cut into a round shape using one of those tools:

We use them for spell slots. Whenever a PC casts a spell, they give me the token and I hand them back on a rest. Same goes for class abilities. I also use some generic ones (the green on the right) myself to keep track of my bad guys spell slots and toss them on the table when I use them. It also gives the player an idea of how low I am on spell slots.

I found the following toy in a garage sale. It's a Happy Meal toy (from MacDonalds), where you have to grab a plastic key from two plastic handles.

I didn't really care about the toy, but the two snakes inside grabbed my attention.

I had a very hard time opening the toy as it was screwed very tightly and the screws where in placed I couldn't get to. So I had to bend and twist the plastic until I could rip it appart.

Finally, I managed to extract the two snakes, and they where sitting on perfect round bases, I didn't even needed to base them.

I made some sewer tiles from a set of square coasters.

The coasters had a cork underground, so I traced a squared pattern on it and dig some recesses along the lines with a utility knife.

I then pulled the cork out where I wanted the dirty water to go, applied a fair dose of texture paste, and brushed them to make it look like water.

I painted the tiles black, and applied a light dry brush (in retrospect, I can see that they lack texture, but it was good enough). For the water, I applied green paint and a green wash

I'm happy with the overall result, it looks like dirty water. I just wished I had more coasters to make more tiles, this set is pretty limited in terms of gameplay.

We ended up not even using it in our game, and using the game mat as it allowed for versatility.