And so, what to make it out of, what to make it out of. We created a proof of concept in dark beeswax from ye olde egg painting kit, and decided from there. Some epoxy putty stuff, that'll work (good ol' JB Weld). Never worked with it before, but there's gotta be a first time. I figured to try making a steel wire inner armature for strength, and kinda fill it with this stuff. And so, we mixed up a clump of it, and WOW, but that is gloopy. Like not liquid JB Weld gloopy, but it's certainly too soft to hold a D4 shape without slumping down. I tried working with that wire frame only for a few moments before abandoning the idea, and... attempt 1 was completely unsuccessful, but I learned something. So this stuff, once you mix it, it's soft, soft, soft, so-whup, warming u-CONCRETE! ABSOLUTE CONCRETE! So very difficult to craft with. But it's what I have, so... let's try again anyway! I'm prepared this time! So, we made a generally oversized D4 with it, waited, waited, warmOK NOW, and I cut the three slits into the peak with a box cutter and peeled them back. And even that only partially worked, two of the jaws kinda broke off and needed to be crazy glued on again until I could reinforce them with epoxying round 3. Also extending them, because with that initial cutting, it squished the top corner down a bit still. Before that though, we cut the base down to standard D4 size, so at least we've got that set, and can gauge the rest to that. And so, we mixed up yet another little disc cut off from the stick, and extended the jaws a lil bit, reinforced those cracks on the inside, and by that point my working clump was turning into a rock already. O-kay, it looks like I might be using this entire epoxy stick on this little d4 yet lol. Oh well, I got it specifically for this, if that's the case, so be it (I would end up having like 1/4 of it left by the end).
After this jaw extension, I carved grooves down the center of each of the insides of the jaws, and crazy glued a thin wire into there for some added strength, mixed up another disc, and covered the wires, as well as touching up the jaw tips and anywhere else, more or less finishing the epoxy stage of the process. I figured to make the teeth and smaller details, this stuff wouldn't work too well, it's not gloopy enough to dab tiny little dots on for the teeth, so I opted to use industrial wood glue mixed with epoxy powder sanded and filed from working with this. At first I started to just dab teeth on, but the thought... wait, let's just run a seam of this glue along the edges of all of the jaws, and carve the teeth into THAT when it's dry! Also, in keeping with toomanymimic's awesome design, I added some texture to the inside middles of each of the jaws, adding THOSE by dabbing bits of glue, and carved the teeth in. I'd debated whether to carve in the numbers too, but figured there was no chance of getting that looking clean, especially across three copies of each number, some on curved surfaces, so those will be painted instead for this. Now, finalizing the teeth and physical shape, we set out to paint. We coated it in primer, which let me identify any spots that needed a touch more sanding, re-primed those spots, and decided... what colour. Toomanymimics did orange, but I couldn't copy that outright, that's just not right. But I mean, that was an epic colour. So whadda we got, whadda we got. Red, too much like blood, green, too monstery, blue, not my style, yel-YELLOW! Ooohhhh, a yellow dice, that's nice, beneign, kind-looking, just a pleasant fella. We'll get a Chessex opaque yellow dice to kinda have in the dice pile that it mimics (I dunno, something something in campaign), though this lil fella will sit in the minis container until such time they're pulled out. Maybe when toomanymimics puts out the 3d print one I'll dare to have that one rolling around in the dice bag, but I do fear the jaws breaking in there, so this one'll sit with the minis. Anyway, nice ol' kind and innocent yellow :D.
Having picked the outside, we were left with... the inside, a daunting task for me. And so I started with a flat coat of red, mixed some white into there to go over the gums, mixed some black into there to go towards the middle, painted the teeth, and gave the inner gullet a nice strong wash to darken it up and gradient it darker towards the bottom. A lot of mucking around, some touching up of the teeth, but I'm really happy with how it came out. It's a very inner mouth fleshy pink going on in there, dark gullet at the bottom, I like it, that came out awesome! I debated whether to put eyes on it somewhere (tmm didn't have any), but... I just couldn't see it working well anywhere.
So, with me being VERY satisfied with the colour, we gave it a coat of varnish to protect this work before I put the numbers on. The numbers came out slightly small perhaps, just a tiny bit, but noticeable if looked at directly beside eachother. However, the numbers came out SO good, that I didn't want to redo them. I mean like... I held the dice beside eachother, and matched the lengths of the straight parts, so it's just like... an uncanny valley type of thing maybe? Works out for it being a mimic in that regard. So we painted liiiiittle tiny eyes inside the 2 and 3 of the Chessex dice (which arrived that day), and I painted slightly larger, angry eyes on the numbers of the mimic. Which I guess makes them both mimics, just one is actively attacking. I suppose my only complaint, other than the uncanny valley thing, is that I couldn't match the yellow perfectly. I tried adjusting it, but it's like I'd need to add like... 1% translucency to get them to match. A dot of white in the yellow pool made it more different, a dot of red, nope, just the straight default yellow was the best that I could do. It's as close as possible, we'll say that now that the illusion of its false appearance is broken, you can tell it's a mimic more, something like that lol. In either case, I'm very happy with how it came out, it's a cute little nibbley friend (we'll call them Nibbles until I introduce them in a campaign, after which it might get adopted and renamed by the party lol), and does 1d4 bite piercing damage. Watch your step.
Finished July 17, 2025
