3rd World Gaming: DIY Miniatures

Miniatures.  Some games don’t need them, but all games seem to do better when you’re not arguing about distance and cover.  That being said, not everyone can afford to find, collect, assemble or paint miniatures anymore.  Especially here in the Philippines, when even getting the collectible pre-painted types will cost you an arm and a leg.  That being said, here are two ways to make quick and easy miniatures for a pittance.

The Paper Tent Miniature:

First of your options is the incredibly easy to make Paper Tent Miniature.  All you need is a good image, some heavy stock paper to print on, and a pair of scissors.  While I’m unfortunately unable to provide images at this time (given my lack of a good camera at the moment), I will however, provide this:

Sample paper miniature (Image by Luis Royo)

As you can see it’s fairly simple, just cut along the solid vertical lines as indicated on the sample, and fold along the dotted lines until you come up with a tent-like paper structure with the character portrait serving as the “front” for facing.  If you’re having difficulty getting the flaps to fold against each other and hold, you can also opt to just glue them to each other or use a paper clip to hold them together and add an extra bit of weight.  The weight might become an issue in an evironment where there’s a strong wind that might blow your miniatures away, so gluing them to spare washers you can get at a hardware store will prevent that.

The Binder Clip Miniature:

This is my personal preference when it comes to really cheap miniatures.  All it takes is a straightforward printing of a character image of a reasonable size on a good heavy stock of paper.  Dimensions of 1.5 inches by 1 inch is usually good enough.  Cut the portrait out and clip the bottom with a small binder clip, making it serve as the base and weight for the miniature.  Finally squeeze off the binder clip’s wires, and set them aside (just in case you need them later on) and there you have it, a Binder Clip Miniature.

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And there you have it, simple, easy and with minimal risk of self injury, you can make your own paper miniatures.  Sure there are other commercially available paper miniatures, but if you’re even slightly handy with an image editing program, making your own isn’t all that difficult.

Resources:

• Paint.Net – Can’t afford Adobe Photoshop?  Neither could I.  But Paint.Net is small, fast and free and can do pretty much everything I need it to do.
• Death Jesters Baldur’s Gate Portraits – The Baldur’s gate modding community is a great place to find portraits for paper miniatures, and Death Jester’s site features art from various classic fantasy artists, and each one is properly credited too!