Creative Questions: Episode 3

Episode Transcript

Desiree: Welcome to Creative Questions. The podcast where we attempt to review various creative projects we ourselves are part of and, or other people’s unique creations and attempt to celebrate the creative inspiration and all of this. I am. Desiree Silver, your host and owner of New Nerd Novelties and #own your weird lifestyle brand.

Liam: And I’m your co-host Liam Hewlett back at it again, this time we’re going to be talking about some of our past projects.

Desiree: And thanks for joining me today, Liam. How you doing today?

I’m getting by one step at a time, but, uh, I’m looking forward to talking about what I’ve been up to this last week. Cause I actually got quite a bit done and a hobby wise. That’s not always the case. Lot of times I stick myself into a, some sort of video game which I’ve been doing, but also I’ve been accomplishing things.

Desiree: I find when I don’t feel. Well, sometimes I do a lot or nothing at all. So I’ve been doing some stuff this week too, but you can start. What have you been doing this week?

Liam: All right. Well last week as I discussed, I was, um, I had my D and D session coming up for this last Sunday. And so there were a few things I needed to accomplish or wanted to accomplish for that session.  All of which I did get done. So I needed to paint a miniature, just one and I’m pretty happy with how that turned out.

But I also had a system set up that I had designed to kind of quantify for the players, how they could affect a region in a meaningful way. And it turned itself basically into a board game, self stylized board game that I made.  So we met up on Sunday and the majority of our session, we run sessions for like six to eight hours depending was  spent dealing with that. Mini-game basically that added constructed for that session. And it turned out to be really well. The guy’s got a lot of like, deep thinking and hard choices about how they could save people from potential starvation and bandits and beasts as well as fighting off, and flushing out encampments and dangerous beasts.

So I was really happy with how that turned out after just some minor development and,  playtesting to make this one-off mini game for um, to spice up a D and D session.  And yeah, I painted up that Yeti, which I’ve got some pictures to share. I think he turned out really well.

Desiree: Looks good from the picture. I see, I see something about chariots too looks like.

Liam: Yeah. That’s gonna be my past project that we’ll be coming up to talking about.

Desiree: Ah ok. So what I did this week, I didn’t feel like writing anything for the internet, uh Teela and  I’ve been discussing about the 300 words thing. We’ve we think we’ve found an easier way to not have to write 300 words about each individual thing. More of like, this is my collection of bags, per se. Write a thing about why you did the collection of bags.

And what’s interesting about the collection then, write you know, this is who I am, and then this is the specifics of the bag. That’s a lot less, it’s like a hundred each instead of 300. And then we’re just going to do a couple of different versions of that. But I didn’t feel like rewriting everything I’ve done again for the third time.

So this week I’m just working on, I worked on some bags and I went back to my vinyl because I love the vinyl. I’ve been doing a bunch of, of fabric bags. They’re called dumplings. Cause they kind of look like a dumpling or a taco. And I have pictures there that Liam will share for us on the podcast. And I made a vinyl one from this vinyl, from a lady in Victoria who made it herself and, um, designed the fabric and it says, fuck you, you fucking fuck.

And a friend of mine’s a long haul COVID suffer, unfortunately. And, I decided to make her a bag with that. Fuck you, you fucking fuck and added COVID on there for her and sent it to her for free. So on one side it says, fuck you fucking fuck with some safety pins in lime green and the other.

Side’s got another fabric that this lovely lady from Victoria, Brittalicious Designs designed and it’s got eyeballs and donuts and cupcakes. And I sent that to her and she actually got it within the day. So that was pretty cool. She really appreciates it and shared it on Facebook. And since I don’t usually do just one item when I’m making something, if I at all possible, I make two at once, because all the time, if I make one, someone wants to buy it from me and then I don’t have a second one.

And I usually do it like, cause I’m giving one away. So I made a bag with what I like to call the naughty Greeks fabric. And that’s got a bunch of like artistic renderings of centaurs and humans and other interpersonal relationships that Greeks like to do all over the front and back of this

Liam: It’s a bunch of statuesque Greeks fucking

Desiree: Yeah.

Yeah. Each other centaurs, you know, setyrs, the usual

Liam: Centaurs are our people too.

Desiree: Girls boys, whatever. So that’s my naughty Greek bag. I managed to post that on Tik TOK, Facebook and Instagram, without anybody noticing there was penis and nipples on it. So I haven’t been reported yet. That makes me happy. And then I made a, I was deciding that the coffin bags that I make, I make like tote bags.

I’ve seen people in the group that shares the pattern that they’ve been making pillows out of them. So I decided to take one of those and actually put a strip of a gusset around it so that it’s shaped and has some 3d and stuffed it with pillow stuffing. So I’ve got myself like a little undead pillow as well

Liam: So you, uh, got yourself some therapy sewing in.

Desiree: Yeah. That’s I was like, I haven’t sewn in two weeks. So this is what I’m doing. I didn’t have to seam rip, which is take it apart too much. So I was there for happy. Never a good day. When you see me with a seam ripper

Liam: Yeah, but besides the the miniatures and the game designing that I had been doing, I also just today spent last like three to four hours taking pictures of, uh, one of my past projects that we’re going to be talking about today. But I do think I would actually probably prefer to talk about the one that you’ve brought for us today because mine, I could probably talk about for like two to three hours.

So I’ll have to be able to, uh, reign myself in when it gets to my turn.

Stripy Undercorset

Desiree: Okay, well, I’ll start with one of mine and then maybe you can go halfway and then go. Okay. Cause I got what I was bringing because today we’re talking about different projects we’ve done in the past and completed, which honestly, you know, for me completed means I haven’t got too many. So I’ve always loved and enjoyed corsets.

It’s one of the main reasons I went Gothic, quote, unquote, as a young age, I spent 300 to almost $400. Getting a custom made custom fitted corset for myself from a lovely lady downtown, uh, who makes courses for living and the proper corsets, it’s always have metal boning, spring, spiral steel, and a lot of them.

And then they have grommets and all these different hardware, which makes it really difficult for you to do at home. My goal has always been able to make my own corsets. And so what I was doing is last year’s mums, Halloween party, her theme was pirates and I’m like, oh, that’s good pirates, easy. I’ve got stuff for pirates.

I’ve been working on altering clothes a long time:

Liam. It’s not a difficult costume. I think I, I think I assembled my costume from, uh, stuff. I had lying around my room.

Desiree: Yeah. So I’m like, okay, then I can take my time and try and make a corset because I don’t have one I’ve gained weight since then since buying my first original corset. Pardon me. And

Liam: When was that? Cause that was a long time ago.

Desiree: I was 19,

Liam: I remember that first corset.

Desiree: I was 19, and I still have it, and it’s still just as good as it was before, which is surprising because vinyl does wear out and wear down.

Um, and it will eventually, but it was such a thick version and it was done so well. I could probably resell it now, but I’m not that size. So I can’t wear it myself anymore. And while I was in my heyday of wearing these custom made very well done corsets I was able to cinch as in bringing in my waist in these corsets by 6 to 8 inches, which is huge.

That’s called tight lacing. Hardcore. I would not do that now with my Crohn’s disease. They do not like the idea of being that squished. I, and I don’t blame them because, uh, I’m surprised I was able to do it for so long. So I’m like, well, I have to re evaluate how I would wear or make a corset because I can’t, I, can’t not that hard anymore.

I can’t cinch that hard and most corsets are made in kind of a, an hourglass shape. Cause that’s what you want. Right? You want the tiny little waist and the hips and then the chest. So with I bought a pattern, which is actually one of Yaya Hans, I’ve got the picture there of the pattern, uh, Yaya actually a very competent and well-known cosplay artist and she partnered with McCall’s.

So I bought her undercorset, pattern and decided to use some Ikea fabric. Believe it or not that I bought in black and white Stripe to make a pirate kind of undercorset it now undercorsets,are a little different than over corsets. They only go underneath your chest to your hip bone in the front and back, and they can go up higher in the back, but they don’t go over your chest because you need to breathe.

I’ve only ever worn under corsets. I don’t like the idea of squishing the top of my chest, as well as the bottom of my chest. It’s easier to breathe that way. Cause you can breathe up on top on your diaphragm. So I decided to make this and I’m like, I know I don’t have boning. I don’t really want to use boning because then I won’t have a good time breathing.

And my, my intestines will get very angry and he did give, so this is canvas fabric. I bought. From Ikea. And then I used canvas lining as well as interfacing, which stiffens up your fabric. And then a whole, like I made the whole corset set without boning. So it doesn’t really look quite as good as a real corset.

It, because it’ll fold in the middle where your hip is, cause that’s where the, the boning would keep the shape. So I wear a belt in the middle, usually. Um, I’m more of a tube shape than a hourglass shape, but I was quite happy with it. It made me feel like my husband could buy me a grommet setter because having to set all those grommets by hand when you have to usually use a hammer and smash them together and not so much fun. So they actually got the machine that’ll punch holes and I’ll punch the, the metal grommets, which are the circles that you see to lace it together.

Liam: Right. I’m sure you’ve used that quite a bit since then.

Desiree: Yes. Especially in bag making like wallets

Liam: I was going to say bags and wallets, right.

Desiree: I kinda cheated with the stripy one, cause I didn’t have one.

I put a, a binding that already had a canvas. Uh it’s like, uh,

Liam: I think I can see what you’re talking about. Looking at like the lacing picture.

Desiree: I put it on top of mine. So I have like two layers of grommets and it was an existing webbing that had grommets in it that you could buy. So I did it that way. So it was kind of like double enforced so they can grommets can fall out if you don’t put them into something that doesn’t bend, because if it bends, the grommet will pop out.

So that’s another reason why you need the, the metal corset pieces. The actual metal boning is it keeps it stiff. So that was like my first version of. Uh, an under corset, for myself, that was mostly comfortable. The good thing about corsets is it doesn’t just make your shape look good. They were used in the old days to hold up your skirts because skirts and dresses were really heavy.

So

Liam: They had multiple different layers as well.

Desiree: Inside of the petticoats and you’re under whatever things. So, I was gonna use it to hold up my skirt. Unfortunately, it didn’t do that too good. So next time I wear that. I’m definitely wearing suspenders on my skirt. That’s another trick. If anybody’s ever going to wear a really heavy skirt wear suspenders, make it.

Liam: Something that you would learn. Cause that’s one of the things I wanted to ask about these past projects is what do you think you’ve learned from it now that it’s done? Like looking back on it, like, what do you think you would have done differently? And what do you think that regardless of whether or not you would’ve done it differently, what do you think you’ve learned from that?

Desiree: Well that you can definitely like doing your corsets, not easy on something like a mannequin, you know, like the, the dressmakers form that you would use because everybody’s shaped different. And I don’t have one my size. So taking it off and on, on myself to try and measure, it was really difficult, but at the same time, better than doing it wrong, if you know what I mean is the patience.

You got to have a lot of patience and keep changing it over and over. They keep telling me in pattern, making that you have to make a muslin, which is supposed to be like your version one that you

Liam:Right. Like your  zero, basically the one that’s not going to ever turn into a completed project. It’s just there so that you’re not using like all of your expensive material, figuring out how to do the

Desiree: Unfortunately with muslins, I’ve never found a muslin that was exactly the same consistency and type of fabric that I was going to use for the fancy fabric. So it’s a little bit hard. You can’t have your muslin made out of something completely different that what you’re going to use for your good stuff, because then it reacts different.

So I use this as a muslin and therefore it’s just as good as a muslin, not really as a finished product, in my opinion. So I still kind of want to put bones in it. And, um, what what’s called like a, a corset lacing on the inside. It, it binds it between the different pieces of boning so that it keeps it shape.

Cause it doesn’t right now, but it’s still like a comfortable corset that to wear it is still cool. I would definitely use it for Halloween it’s still a really cool like item that other people are like, oh, that’s so cool. But they would probably be like, yeah, but you know, it doesn’t make you look thin as for sure. I still like it.

Liam: But then again, it. is a comfortable corset.

Desiree: Exactly.

Liam: Which is already rare enough as it is

Desiree: For sure. So that’s like that first 1.0. Version of an under corset that I made. So I’ve got another version I can talk about later, but for sure, I’d like to hear about your beastwoman army.

Beastwoman Army Part 1

Liam: Right. And that’s what I was taking pictures of for the last several hours.  Which is, it’s a nice thing to do, honestly.  It’s not like I really enjoy taking the pictures in and of themselves, but I’ve had this, beast. women army. I have the plaque from when I won a tournament with them.

It was from 2015 and I completed the army earlier in that year because I made it for, I believe some sometime early in the year I was worked, definitely working on it in like January, February, and then I probably the next month after that, that’s when I went to a  tournament with it for that year.

So it’s been. Like six years and I’ve never taken the time to actually get decent pictures of them.  Mostly cause like I either didn’t have the camera or the lights or the reason or desire to do so. So it’s,  nice to finally have some decent pictures of my beastwoman army even if they don’t they’re not as photogenic as any of my later projects.

It’s been a long time since I’ve also laid out an entire army on the table. There’s a lot of fucking miniatures in this army, just, yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking.

Desiree: Well, you were thinking that you wanted an all woman army

Liam: Yeah. Well, I do know what originally started the project. So like You were saying, you, you started your project because you wanted to make something for mom’s Halloween party, but also because you liked your corsets that’s, but you know, they wouldn’t fit your needs. Now for me, the, the start of this beastwoman army was a tale in and of itself.

I was at a tournament with a different army.  One of my first two armies, I think I was playing in Victoria at a tournament. And it started off with a conversation between a few people that were there playing. And one of the guys had brought an all female chaos warrior army.

And for those that don’t know, chaos warriors are like the heavily armored, like bulky worshipers of evil and Warhammer fantasy. So it was an easy conversion job for him. He basically, all he had to do was remove their helmets and replace them with female heads because they’re all fully armored and the majority of chaos warriors don’t even take off their helmets.

So I thought that was cool, but also I thought it was kind of a bit of a cop out, um, because they were still very distinctly male bodies with female tiny female heads that didn’t look appropriate like at all.  But also because he was a, it was not a slenesist.  Again, for those that are unfamiliar with Warhammer fantasy, there are four gods like evil gods of chaos that like chaos warriors might worship and of the four there’s Korn, who’s all about blood and the skulls and war.

Um, the Z choose all about change trickery and, you know, deceit Nurgle, who’s all about rot and decay and Slenesh. Who’s all about pain and pleasure. Um, Slenesh was universally panned just for being bad. It wasn’t played in tournament because it wasn’t a, any good compared to any of the other gods.

Really. They all had something going for them besides the Nash. And so, uh, people generally didn’t play the  armies.  But Slanesh was the only demon prince that was also like a princess. Like they were never distinct about what gender Slenesh was. And it was the only miniature line that had some female miniatures for games, workshop.

They had demonesses and that was very much their thing. They would lure people in with like basically like succubi. And then once you got close, they’d tear you to shreds or torture you.  But the guy wasn’t running his choas warriors as slenesh his female choas warriors, as slenesh, he was running them as what was Mehta at the time, which was as Korn.

And so I was like, I felt like I could do a better job than that. But that wasn’t the end of the conversation. Cause we were talking about like his army and other stuff, but we were the real reason why I made this army is because it was from, um, the concept of what’s the most expensive, possible army that you could make. And that’s, that’s not a joke.

Desiree: You picked it because it was the most expensive.

Liam: It was literally, well, I like things that I know nobody else is ever going to have. Right. I like to have my army stand out as being completely unique on the table. So that does lead me sometimes to play stuff. That’s just not very good because I play things that people don’t bring.

Right. And a lot of times there’s a reason why they don’t bring them cause they’re garbage. The like major three factors of why I made a beastwoman army was that nobody played beastmen at all.  You couldn’t hide a beastman, because a beastmen in Warhammer fantasy, they’re basically naked goatmen. So you couldn’t hide the fact that a goat, a naked goat woman was a woman behind a bunch of armor and nobody played Slenesh so I made a Slenesh beastwoman army. Um, but Yeah, it was definitely. Obscenely expensive. I could have made four or five Warhammer armies of this exact same size for this, for the amount that I paid for this army, because there were very few female miniatures in the games workshop line, especially at the time.

They’ve gotten a few more since then, but it’s still quite restricted.  And at the time there was very little in the way of D and D or Pathfinder minitures as well. Like almost nothing back when I was collecting these,  models for this army, I started in like 2013 and it took me about a two years before I had actually like gotten enough female miniatures of different size and scales to start making some stuff. And so I’m like, I knew I was going to be making this project a long time ahead of time. And it just took that long. Some miniatures I would order from overseas. I’d forget I’d paid for them already. And they’d arrive like a year later when I’d already finished the army.  And so I would just throw them in a box and file them away for later. But even the most simple of miniatures in this army is a combination of at least three different kits from games, workshop. Some of them being the most expensive kits they, had in their line at the time because of the, female miniatures that they, did have, the major ones were demonettes, which I mentioned before and witch elves, which were basically twice the cost of every other male minaiture in the line, for whatever reason, the reason being that they’re women,

Desiree: Yeah, they they, they have naked boobs, therefore cost.

Liam: That was demonettes, the witch elves were, just like scantily clad, but they were still like, they were hot elf women.

Therefore they cost twice everything else. And that’s not a small amount, like a of them at the time cost 80 Canadian dollars. I bought more than 10.  I bought more than 10 packs easily more than 10 because this army as you might be able to see if you look up the pictures I’ve linked in, I’ve got several very large infantry units originally.

I was going to make this army chariots, and that was going to cut down on the cost a little bit, because even though the chariots that I made were at least combinations of three other kits, They were a combination of a tomb king chariot, a along with bores from an ORC bore bar unit with the bottom half of a beastmen  to get the hooves along with the top half of a witch elf, and then the horns from beastmen.

So that was four kits to make a single chariot, but at least the tomb king chariots came with like pat and packages of three and stuff like, but I played a little bit of playtesting with that list and I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t like having an army that was all full of chariots because the reason I like, why are fantasy battles and always have, I like a bunch of miniatures on the table.

I like to have those big ranked infantry units. And so I started just committing to it and it? took me a long time. It took me more than a full month just to assemble this army. Even when I had finally gotten all the miniatures together, just literally gluing and green stuffing, like using modeling and sculpting putty to make this stuff put together, I didn’t put paint to a miniature for over a month and That was working on it straight every single day.

Desiree: Was that just the sculpting to put them all together? Like.

Liam: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, the way like mixing multiple kits together in the hobbyist called kit bashing. So it’s when you take two kits to make a single miniature, right. And that’s the majority of what this army is, is multiple different kits that I just  bashed together. to get the desired result of what I wanted.

The rule that I had for all these miniatures big are small. As I wanted them all to be distinctly female. I wanted them to have to also be distinctly goat. Like I wanted them to have goat legs or Like have some sort of hooves, right. I wanted them to be distinctly beast and,  they had to have horns, right?

So they all have horns. They all have hooves and all of them are very distinctly female. And that took a lot of work.

Desiree: No kidding. When people, people say I have patience, to do chain mail or something?

Liam: Yeah. I mean, it was a lot of fun, like besides being absurdly expensive, which it absolutely was, a lot of these miniatures that I did when I get, when I did receive them, there was no telling of what the scale was for me. So, I’m going into it, I knew I wanted some big ladies, some medium sized ladies and a bunch of really small ladies.

Right. So I didn’t know when I ordered something when they’re there, whether it was going to come and it was going to be a big lady, a medium lady or a small lady. Sometimes you could guess from the price, but not always. And sometimes they be way, way bigger than you expected. And that’s, if you look at the picture, uh, nowadays games workshop makes miniatures that are this large, but back when I was fielding them in 2015, they were the largest thing on the tournament.

And they definitely stood out. Right. They were, they were eye catching centerpieces.  Yeah, they just barely were like what I would consider acceptable for the size of that. Um, like, uh, of the scale that we were playing at, but I, at least I knew I had like a range, right. So if I ordered something and it was too small to be a Minotaur, even though I thought it would look like a good Minotaur, then it, you know, maybe became a character or, you know, joined the infantry.

Uh, if it was too large, then I could convert it into something else.

Desiree: Yeah,

Liam: and with the,

Desiree: The giant ladies are considered Giants.

Liam: Yeah, there were a few things that I could use them as one of the reasons why, if you look at the two giant ladies, they all have four arms, is that I’m in the beastmen army. There are three large creatures, well four, but one of them is not humanoid, but there’s three large humanoid creatures that you could potentially field on the battlefield.

One of them is called a Gorgon. Another is a Sygor and then the third would be a giant giants, could be filtered in multiple different armies. So I could feel these guys as chaos giants, and that wouldn’t be any, nobody would have an issue with that, but Gorgons and Sygors were different in that they had an extra set of arms and the Gorgon had his arms were bladed and he was like a, like a wind Miller of death. Whereas the Sygor had a singular eye, but it threw rocks from like the backfield. It had those multiple arms. Yeah. Throw rocks. So that was another thing for the big ladies. They all have extra pairs of arms because I wanted to be able to use them as whatever I wanted to use them as. And yeah, I actually think the, the big ladies turned out quite well. They don’t hold up as well as some of the other minatures that I’m still proud of to this day. Like there was a few miniatures in this line that I am quite proud of. I think the big ladies, you know, if I had another crack at it today, I could definitely do a much better job with my conversion and painting skills nowadays. But especially for the time they’re quite serviceable. They fit with the army quite well.

Desiree: I like the theme that you pick, you pick the most disgusting pink and purple that you could find. I remember for Christmas, I was finding you pinks and purples in modeling paints. As many as I possibly could find you wanted pink and purple dice for this specific army

Liam: Yes, they had their own. I had my own dice set for each army and these guys were my pink and purple dice.

Desiree: So people definitely can’t say that you’re, you’re not shy in the fact that, you know, I, I make what I want!

Liam: They were also, uh, they have nipples, right? There’s actually quite a bit, cause there’s quite a bit of nipples in this army, which was like, some of these are games, workshop miniatures. The harpies, which do have nipples were like the only games workshop miniatures, like there, again, some of the very few female games, workshop managers and they have nipples.

So it’s not like they couldn’t say that it was out of context because one of the things that was a concern for me, which wasn’t really a concern for most tournament organizers, they would not care, but it mattered to me is there was a rule called what you see is what you get. And so if you were going to be going to competitive tournaments, it was important that people could understand what you were fielding on the table.

Right? Most, pretty much every tournament wouldn’t care. As long as you’re not putting a potato down on the field and saying it’s a steam tank, right? Like so long as you put effort into the miniature and it looked good as long as you told your opponent and they understood what it was like, what it was supposed to be, they would almost always be fine.

But I took to heart that I am want there to be any issue. I wanted people to see at a glance and look and know what it was despite the fact that it was a completely converted army. I wanted them to understand when a chariot is a chariot, a minataur, you know, that sort of thing. So I put quite a deal, a great deal of effort.

That was probably unnecessary and like making sure the Gorgons had their additional arms, making sure all of the minitaurs were like armed appropriately. The chariots had two riders along with there, you know, two boars pulling them. The the beast e gore unit is different from the gore unit because the gore unit, they they each have one weapon in each hand.

Whereas the beast e gore units, they all have great axes. Right. That was important to me that you can look at it and kind of interpret what it was supposed to be without having to do a double-take.

Desiree: Yeah. Most people wouldn’t care about those small details, but I know you’re all about the small details. Did you even write their stats on stuff too? I thought you had little cards with your stats as well.

Liam: That was for a different army.

Desiree: Uh okay. But that is something you commonly do.

Liam: That was for it. Yeah. That was her. That was for our future army.  But for these guys, I just want, like, I would go into a tournament now. I’d make sure that like before the battle started, I would point to my, um, I would point out to my opponent exactly what everything was representing to make sure there was No misunderstandings, right?

Just, yeah, no.

surprises. Everything was as it was. and  to play the less tough play the list competitively. I did have to adjust quite a bit.  I, as I said, I won once I did win a single tournament with it and it wasn’t running a whole bunch of infantry that just wasn’t. Uh, Warhammer eighth edition was done.

Um, so I had the ladies around one as a Sygor and another, just as a potential miniature for my wizard to transform into, with a spell. It never actually like saw the battlefield after a while, but it was still there to look pretty. But though when I did, win it was because of the Minotaurs, I never, I always run the big Minotaurs bus, as it was called that you see here, I have nine of them which was basically putting all of your eggs in one basket and hoping for the best and the one tournament I won, it turned out for the best, but all of those minitures individually could stand out as D and D characters.

I’ve got a picture there on the link dump of them all separated. And there are a lot of them are mutated and have additional limbs and stuff like that added to them because they’ve been gifted gifts by the chaos gods. But,  that, that minataur bus just chewed through multiple opponents. I was always much a gamer first.

Right. I like to play in the hobby was a secondary part of it, but this army was definitely a hobby first for me. They were fun to play in some ways, but it was more fun to see people’s reactions to setting up across the table from this army.

Desiree: And you won for you, won for overall or for the painting? I forget

Liam: I won over all actually for this one. Uh, yeah, I, I won my painting was just so, so it definitely wasn’t the best painted there. Uh, not even close, but it was good enough to get me full marks and painting. And I did really well for the battles. So that’s what got me over all that.  My one overall win that I’ve gotten out of the tournament.

Desiree: I think we need,

Liam: One of two.

Desiree: I think we might need to see like your official favorite painted item. At some point. It wouldn’t be something from this army I’m guessing.

Liam: No, but I really, know exactly what it is. It’s in my display case, this army is I had to pull them out of my display case. That’s one of the things about the that’s great about this podcast is it got me to dust my display case and this army, I,had to pull out my air compressor to dust off this army because even in the display case, man, that was layered on there.

Desiree: Everything in my house, it’s like dust. I had a spider industriously in the kitchen trying to lay webs on my dishes to the other day. I’m like, seriously, they don’t sit here that long

Liam: Yeah,

Desiree: Jesus’ way to make me feel like a, a real witch anyway.  So I do want to talk about my other version.  Is that okay right now?

Movie Reverse Corset

So, so once I did that one corset that I went Hmm. Uh, I could either go all the way with this one corset pattern, which still needs to be addressed it a bit more and actually add boning.. Which I have a link for an American place that does sell boning that I can buy in the, in the roll. Unfortunately, Canada, the only stuff you can find is plastic.

Plastic isn’t really useful, particularly unless you’re a stick bug and have absolutely no shape because plastic just cracks and or keeps the shape of whatever it was already in. So I decided, well, maybe I’ll make a belt kind of like a corset belt, then it won’t cover the entire belly. It’s more of like a middle waist cincher.

And if I use my vinyl, it gives that extra like layer of thickness and support.  So I bought a whole bunch of custom fabric and vinyl and one of which I immediately saw it and I knew it had to be a belt. And it was this old school movie monster poster. So it has the mummy, it has a bunch of Vincent Price movies.

It has the Frankenstein bride of Frankenstein and stuff like that, or

Liam: The Invisible Man.

Desiree: The Invisible man and stuff like that. Yeah. So I took that fabric and went, okay, well this one vinyl is actually pretty thin. It’s almost the equivalent of canvas, which is what I use for the other one. And you can, you can line vinyl with something calledDecovil, which is basically the same as vinyl, or you could use, you know, double up the vinyl.

So I’m like, well, if I’m going to double up the vinyl, I’m going to double it up two different images. So what I decided to do was a skull print pattern on one side, and then this movie monster fabric on the other side, and I made a complete pattern for this belt from scratch.

Liam: So does that mean it’s reversible?

Desiree: It is. So what you do is

Liam: So you got Two for one.

Desiree: Two for one, you take it off and you turn it inside out and put it back on. I didn’t put a zipper on it, the best kind of belts or corsets have zipper because then you can take them on and off easily or this one, because I wanted it to not be one way, because if you do the zipper, it’ll be on the inside. If you turn it inside out, I decided to just do it lace up in the front and then I put elastic in the back instead of lacing so that it does stretch with me.

Cause I do expand, my belly can expand itself up to six inches in a day. If it feels like it, I could expand with me while I’m wearing it. And then I could just let out the, the lacing and the front as needed. So I made a complete pattern by myself, off the cuff, from the experience I had with that undercorset already I’m like, I just kinda want it to look like this.

And then.

Liam: So that’s already one of the, um, one of the things that you’ve gotten from that first project is it led to the.

Desiree: Yeah, for sure. And it’s just an evolution of the idea that I want to wear something alternative and gothy, but all the waist cinchers or belts that have come into contact with, unfortunately in the Gothic alternative communities made for stinkbugs. So I’m literally double the size. So no matter what I’m going to have to make my own pattern or expand on whatever it is myself, because it’s just nothing, nothing anywhere near my size.

So I, I find I’ll just do it myself because that’s me and decided to make a muslin out of like the canvas fabric, which did, and didn’t work, adjusted it three or four times made it in the vinyl adjusted it three or four times. As I was going, unfortunately withvinyl though, like I said before, if you sew it, that’s it, you can’t really take it apart.

So it’s still

Liam: But you, you did make a preliminary one of this one then like you, you made your type one.

Desiree: I did, but I only made half, which is dumb. I really should not skip the muslin part because I only made half. It actually came out too big originally. So it was almost completely closing. And you want it to have a little bit of space open in the front as thats the decorative part of it. So I actually had to cut some off to make it smaller, which is not usually my problem.

Usually I make things too big, too, too small, because I assume I’m smaller than I am. I made it too big. So I had to cut off back a chunk off the back. So the front and the back aren’t reversible, I was going to make it the front and back, or also the same. But no, they’re actually slightly different. So for next time I might evolve it.

Cause I really wanted like the front and the back to be almost exactly the same shape as well. So be fully reversible period. Well, no matter what I do. So elastic in the back, I wanted like a four-inch elastic. So you have this, this gaping wound up being just like an inch. So yeah, it’s still pretty cool though.

I think that the, even just the concept of I

Liam: especially if you’ve made the pattern yourself.

Desiree: And I took four inch elastic in the back and I used strips of it and the, I had never seen anybody attempt to do that before. And this time I did use, I bought some plastic boning and I put it in, uh, into the corset itself. And then because it’s vinyl and the edges of vinyl don’t fray, I was like, okay, well I could just leave the vinyl edges as they are and use this stuff.

I call, um, edge paint, which you use with. And you like paint the edges. So it doesn’t look stupid. It looks more finished, but I’m like, I really don’t want to do this on like a 50 inch corset. That’s a long space to be doing this on. I did piping. Now. Piping is complicated for some people. You see it sometimes on a upholstery, because I did, like I said before, I did the upholstery with Nicky before.

And so basically you take like a really thick, um, cotton kind of piping. So it’s like, it looks like yarn, but it’s about an inch or half an inch wide, and then you stick it in vinyl and then you sew down the side and it makes us really cool tube. And that’s what I used actually on the edge of the entire corset at all the way around, which also made it harder to adjust because then I had to make it smaller.

Liam: Have to cut it. Yeah.

Desiree: So I had to cut it and make it smaller. But I did. I did. And I’m damn well proud of myself for that. I just sent you pictures of me wearing it. Cause for some reason I didn’t get you those, but I got the different pictures. The skull side and then the movie monster side, and then me wearing it both ways.

And there actually is plastic boning in there. So it keeps it’s shaped pretty well. And I think it feels really comfortable, but I’m used to wearing vinyl and it can go on any kind of like plain dress because I made myself like a red dress and this is the corset that I wanted to wear on top of it. And it just, it brings everything up.

I think up a notch.

Liam: Yeah, it’s more like a female cumberbun then wouldn’t it

Desiree: Yeah. Like a female cumberbun, or a really fancy belt. And I’ve got a whole bunch of ideas. I started sketching it that time. I’m like, oh, well, I’m learning how to do reverse applique and applique, which are like taking different shapes like you would in papercraft and layering on top of each other to make a shape for my belts.

So I can make like, oh, I can make one that looks like a giant eyeball, or I can make one that looks. Frankenstein or, you know, so I still have, um, a book of about 12 plus ideas that I still want to do for more of these. This was just my original

Liam: What would you say that  would be the, one of the major lessons that you’ve learned from this project?

Desiree: Um, for sure to do muslins better again. But I yeah, I also learned that you know, working with the, the plastic boning isn’t too bad and that I probably could graduate to the metal boning without any hiccups, which I was pretty surprised to figure out I’ve been scared of that.

Like one of those things where you’re worried to do it because you know, of course it’s a complicated, but if you’ve already done all the steps to get up to there really how much further.

Liam: That’s a lot of that. Like I, and I’ve definitely found that in my hobby as well. Is that like a little steps lead you in, like it’s like they get progressively more and more and more until eventually you get to a point where you’re doing stuff that you could never, ever really comprehend.  Like when I first started kit bashing was understandable to me.

Right. Where I was like, all right, I’ve got a guy with a sword and I’ve got a sprue that has a whole bunch of different arms. So rather than having the guy, I’ll just remove the sword and, you know, give him a gun or whatever it may be. And that goes from like, all right, well, this guy has got some weird legs.

What if I put armor on his legs? And then all of a sudden you’re getting to the point where you’re adding,  sculptors putty to make goat legs for no reason.

Desiree: Just cause you can.

Beastwoman Continued

Liam: Yeah. Cause, cause I want, well, there was a reason I wanted to, I wanted it to be that way. Uh, yeah. Th there’s a lot of things that I’ve learned from my project and beastwoman project was, um, like it was two months of concentrated effort. I basically did nothing, but like listen or watch.  But mostly just listened to things as I hobbies straight for two months to get this army made for a tournament that upcoming month. And I got done in time.  I could’ve started work on it a lot earlier, but as the procrastinator that I am, it was very much like, all right.

If I don’t start now, it won’t finish. So now I go

Desiree: I think you were still glueing them together when you went, because you stopped by my house, but that’s because in transit, I think some of the parts.

Liam: Oh yeah. uh, anytime you’re playing, no matter how properly packaged your miniature armies might be, and mine were never were. Um, but no matter how properly packaged they are, you always bring glue with you. Cause they’re going to fall apart. That specific army that wasn’t didn’t happen while I was staying at your place.

Cause the, the first tournament I brought, these two was a tournament in Victoria and the first tournament I brought them. First day of the first game, like I got to the hall early and I was going through the door. I had my box with my miniatures in my hands. It was a big box and these are heavy miniatures a lot of them, especially the big ladies are like fully ceramic or metal.

And so they’re heavy, you know, box. I reach out with one hand to open the door and the fucking box spills all over the cement. I spent the first hour of the first game, just gluing my army back together while I was playing the game. yup.

Desiree: Excuse me, my beast ladies had a bad fight and I’m still putting it back together from the last time.

Liam: Yeah.

Literally I, I had the movement trays, so at least I knew where the units are and stuff like that, but I was like 20 or 30 minutes into the first match. I was still gluing stuff back together. My oponent felt bad for me, for sure. But This is my fault. I could have packaged them a lot better than I did.

I never really put much effort or time or money into packaging. All of these absurdly expensive armies that I was running around with. I just show up with like a $10 plastic tote filled with these things.  But yeah, that, that I paid for at that time.

For sure that one was, I was amazed, the ladies didn’t shatter their ceramic and they would have basically never come back together again if it had happened.

But it was only a bunch of little parts that I got lucky with.

Desiree: Did we learn anything?

Liam: Nope. I never did always forward. Never learning, especially when it comes to transporting expensive miniatures. I never learned that lesson ever. 

Desiree: I don’t go anywhere that way. They don’t break.

Liam: Yeah, that’s solution right. I’ve got them in the display case so long as they don’t fall over in there and they’re good to go. I did learn quite a few things from this piece where an area besides the fact that I really should take better care of my miniatures when transporting them. And there are a few things that, like I said, I was quite proud of that I think this army has some of my best examples of, um, freehand, which is something that I’ve talked about, I think last week, that like painting stuff on things, right.

Getting images that aren’t just like a paint by numbers, like making the miniature have the color.  This army, I think has some of my best examples of that for the banners. There are a bunch of standards which are, you know, just flags that the army carries around with them to denote like the units or the army itself.

They all have. There’s individual miniatures in that army that have a standard, that’ll be the units like rallying point or whatever. It might be. The standards that I have in this army have almost every single one of them has something that I’ve painted freehand on there.  And the theme that I went for was roses. So skulls and roses specifically, most of the banners that do have free hand on them have some sort of skull or a Wolf, and then, roses as a motif behind them. And a lot of that was done by looking at images online or Googling like skulls and roses online and just trying to copy it as best as I could onto a miniature, but I think it turned out quite well.

Desiree: I’m looking at them right now. I think so. Probably better than I can.

Liam: Yeah. I was fairly happy with how that turned out, especially for how limited my free hand experience was, even at that point.  And I haven’t really had a need to do much more freehand just because I haven’t like made armies that have standards anymore.  So there’s a lot less in the way of a need for free hand.

But I do think I have some good examples of that in this army.  One of the other things is the conversion that I did specifically for the chariots. I’m quite happy with how the chariots came together because I had the concept of them in my mind, beast men chariots, not the beast woman, but like a regular beast man chariot is basically a plank of wood with two like square wheels attached to an ornery pig. And I never liked the look of that miniature. And so. I can do better than this.

I can make like sleek beast, woman chariots. And I felt like I really did.  It took like pieces from four separate boxes. And that’s one of the images that I’ve put in the link dump is I,  actually had some of those chariots un finished because I had originally planned for there to be an army of 13 chariots.

And I  that when I didn’t have fun playing with it, but I still had a few of them un assembled cause I painted them and then put them together. And so I had the pieces that I could actually take pictures of today. And so you can look at what the pieces of the chariot looked like separately before I put them all together of like there’s two riders, the, the chariot itself and like the boars I attached to it.

Um, I w I was quite happy with how they turned out.

Desiree: Yeah, I’m looking more like a Roman chariot obviously than just a piece of wood

Liam: Yeah. Or like a Egyptian like it Lewis something like looks sleek, especially by like Warhammer chariot standards. So at least like it had a more of that Slenesh feminine touch to it and it a makes, it makes it very unique. Nobody has a beast men, chariot, that looks, even anywhere close to looking like that. Um, because, it’s absurdly expensive and unreasonable for you to do so.

Why would you ever do that?

Desiree: Because because you’re, you.

Liam: Yeah, because I wanted to, you know, but, uh,

Desiree: Just like me, like I do eventually want to do a real quote unquote corset. It just like the one I got when I was 19, but how much is that going to cost me by the time I get that right.

Liam: Right.

Desiree: In materials and practice and versions. And it’s definitely not cheaper. That’s for sure, but I just want to do it. So I will.

Liam: Well, and that was the thing. Like I wanted my army to be unique and it was unique in that nobody would ever pay the amount of money that were required to make it. And nobody even thought about doing it. And it was a feat to actually get it done in general. So it was, it was nice to have a completely unique army, not just like even if somebody showed up with beast men, not a single one of them would have anything even come close to looking like my army, let alone for my composition.

Cause they’d probably be running an actual competitive list and I’d be running trash that I liked.

Desiree: I bet you anything. It would be pretty funny to see your girls go against a male version of the beastmen too.

Liam: Oh yeah.

Desiree: Would just look great. Compositional wise.

Liam: There was a, there was at least one other beast men player in a tournament that I was in, but we never got matched up against each other, which is a shame.

Desiree: Yeah. Cause that would have been make good pictures, even if you got trounced, but at least you look good doing it.

Liam: Which probably would have happened because he was a very good player, but yeah, you never know. Dice can go any other way. Anyway, uh, especially in Warhammer, the, before I leave off on this project though, the one thing I did want to point out was the. The, the large ladies,  one of them I’m more proud of than the other.

Uh, cause one of them was basically just, largely she has a, she doesn’t have a very dynamic pose. She’s just sort of standing there. It was a large like statuesque,  style miniature that I had and it was just like, it was available in the right scale. So that one, I’m not like. I’m fond of, it’s just, it was functional for what it was, but the other one, the one that’s holding up a Dragon’s head and has a giant fuck off axe and two like claw arms. I was really proud of how that one turned out, even if I could’ve definitely done the legs better nowadays.  And I certainly would have given her a better paint job nowadays, but like, even then I really liked her axe and her pose and the head dress, because originally this miniature was not fantasy.

She was 100% science-fiction she had like a cybernetic arm as well as she was standing on the decapitated corpse of a Terminator and like holding up its severed head.  And I was like that miniature is bad-ass. It’s absolutely. I love that pose. I’m going to use. But I have to change so much about it so that I can fit it into a fantasy setting.

So I literally covered her entire cybernetic arm with, like plates and armor and shields and stuff from other miniatures that I had to make it like an armored like scaly arm. I covered like all of the scifi stuff for her cyber axe with like bits and bobs and made it look like as makeshift as possible for a beastial army.

I added the, uh, the two extra limbs with like facade blades and like one hand that looks like it’s supposed to be her normal hand. Like the, Yeah, the, that miniature turned out so well, I’m really happy with that. And I can’t believe she hasn’t dropped that dragon that severd dragon head she has in her hands.

Desiree: Yeah, it looks heavy. Is the dragon head metal too?

Liam: No that dragon heads plastic. Thank God. Otherwise it wouldn’t be up there. Metal stuff does not like staying around.

Desiree: I liked the look on the other one too. They’re both pretty damn cool. Like of all things. I liked these giant ones, for sure. I like the face thing you put on the one with the dragon. That’s

Liam: Yeah, well that, that head dress. That’s all stuff I added. She didn’t have horns. She absolutely did not have horns. So I added the horns. I added the head dress. Like I added the stuff in the hair. I added the extra arms and like all this stuff on that additional arm. Yeah. If I could have just done those legs a little bit better, she would have held up a bit more,

Desiree: Yeah, they do seem kind of thin, but they still look good.

Liam: They turned out pretty well. I’m happy with them. I think eventually the D and D guys, like most of the stuff I have in my collection, I will, at one point in time, most likely the guys will run into, if they ever run into this thing, they’re going to have a hard fight on their hands. It’s not going to be for a long time.

Cause I, I respect the hell out of this miniature. So if they’re going to fight this thing, especially considering the scale, like this thing is easily 10 times the size of their D and D characters. Like this is going to be hell on earth for them to fight.

Desiree: Like this, these stats on this one, you’re not anywhere near yet.

Liam: Yeah. I’ve got a picture of it by a black dragon And it’s like, I had to angle it down so I could get the dragon in the shot.

Desiree: And they’re already, they’re already getting their ass kicked for the black dragon.

Liam: Yeah, well, they, they killed it. I mean, the, the, they have thought a black dragon before a young black dragon, not a real black dragon. I was just like a baby. They thought a baby black dragon. And they made it run away. They didn’t actually kill it. If they fought in an adult, they’d have a hard time at the point that they’re at.

Yeah,

Desiree: Yeah. So Dragon’s first that giant, giant gollum.

Liam: Yeah. Dragons first and then giant that eats dragons. Yeah.

Desiree: Got to do baby steps, kind of like us, you know, you did the assembling and the mixing of the different people to make this army next, you know, you’re leveling up your painting game.

So

Liam: They’re like level six or something like that. They got a ways to go before they get anywhere near this lady.

Desiree: Yeah, and I’m on  like a level six of corsetting. So we’ll see.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: So should we just, I wrap this up pretty quick. I’m going to say that Liam’s already put some of the. We talked about here on his blog.

Liam: Yes, if you want to go for the link dump for the previous podcast as well, I’m going to be starting to put them on my website, which is soloquest.ca the link at the top, there will be creative questions.  So the link dump for this podcast will be available there.  Desiree is also going to put in the description of the YouTube video, so you can see all the pictures of the projects that we’ve been talking about.

And if we have like links to other things, like I can provide links of all of the kits that I use to bash these damn things together. I was thinking about doing that, whether I’d, yeah, whether I do or not, probably not, because there’s just so many different kits that I have, like lying in a bucket, uh, that made these each individual unit it’s a bit much.

Desiree: Maybe just a couple that are easy to get to anyway links. Yeah. But still it’s pretty cool. And for sure, I have my link to my Facebook, you know, @newnerdnovelties as well as my Instagram. Same at @newnerdnovelties.  New Nerd Novelties so, both of them are @newnerdnovelties, say that three times fast and I’m for sure.

I’ve got progress pictures of a bunch of stuff, as well as I didn’t point out, I just got a giant box from Brittalicious Designs, which is the lady that I used the vinyl to make that bag, the fuckity fuck bag. I just got a delivery of heat changing vinyl. So when you touched it, it changes colors.

I got a couple different colors and a bunch of really fancy rainbow Gator and glow in the dark and stuff. So I’m going to be posting pictures of those new vinyls as well. So you can give me some ideas as to what should I make out of these, cause I got a lot and I just want to say thanks for listening everybody.

And for sure, we’ll put this up on YouTube as soon as possible.

Liam: Yeah, I have alive like to ask, what do you have coming up for projects while you think you’re going to be doing for this next week?

Desiree: Well, I just talked to Teela and she said that she might help me make my blog too, so we can both have blog posts up. Cause we’ve got lots of things that we referenced today. So I think it would only be fair. I feel inspired to, to write a little blog post about my corsets. So for sure, I’m going to try and do that tomorrow and then this week’s considered hell week, so I’m not quite sure how much I’m going to get done, but this vinyl is really tempting.

So I’ll probably wind up making something.

Liam: Right. Yeah. I don’t have D and D for another two weeks and that’s generally my motivation to get things painted. So there probably won’t be too much of that, but maybe I might take some more pictures of some stuff. I’m definitely going to get the like, cause I’ve got way more beast woman of my pictures then I’ve put in the link dump.

So I’ll probably make a guy, a gallery of the beast woman of my pictures that I have put together.  So there’s going to be at least that. And then I have some miniatures that I do need to work on for the a D and D eventually in two weeks. That’s probably what I’m going to be working on. Uh, yeah.

Desiree: Cool. Do we have an idea at all? What we want to talk about next week or will we just pull it as a surprise?

Liam: Well, we can talk about that. I don’t have anything. Well, I’ve got a few ideas, but we’ll see what we want to nail down.  Regardless, it’ll be something

Desiree: I want to say it’s a surprise then, because that sounds so much cooler than we don’t know what we’re doing.

Liam: An idea of what I have an idea of what we’re doing. It’s just a, which of the ideas we want.

Desiree: Yeah, we got plenty of ideas. We’ll just figure out which one we pick. So I just want to say thanks everyone for listening.  This is Desiree Silver and we are the brother, sister pair bringing you Creative Questions. Have yourself a great day!

Liam: I’ll see you later.