One of the suburban basement gang was talking about making a mech miniatures game for our group and this inspired me to make some little fight robots. This would be a similar scale to Battletech, so I laser cut some hexagons to size and gathered my materials.
I knew the legs would be the most annoying thing to have to make from scratch every time, so I planned on making two legs and then molding and casting them. I created the legs using a combination of laser cut acryllic, styrene rods and sheets, acrylic nail beads, and some random Warhammer pauldrons.
Once i was generally happy with the legs, I made a one part cut mold of each. Everything I know I learned about mold making I learned from Robert Tolone on youtube. I even added in some air vents.
I’m not a fan of the resin I used but it’s what I had. Rather than a 50/50 resin to hardener mix, it uses drops of hardener depending on the pour depth. This isnt very helpful for this because I’m not casting a regular shape. The casts came out ok, if not a bit tacky at first.
Once I had some legs cast, I got started on the first robot. Just like the original legs, I used a combination of styrene bits, acrylic nail beads, and other plastic junk. It started looking like a camera because of the gear I used as the cockpit so I leaned into that concept.
I airbrushed the robot a yellow and did various chipping and weathering. I wanted to keep this paint job quick and vibrant. I also added a few small decals from a Sherman thank model kit.
For the second robot, it was a similar process to the first but I added in some MDF scraps and some of my daughter’s acrylic nails I’m constantly finding in the wash. The fake nails gave a nice gently curve to the two spots that I used it.
I airbrushed this one red and followed a similar technique as the previous robot.
