How-To: Shrinky Dinks Gaming Minis

Craft & Design Fun & Games
How-To: Shrinky Dinks Gaming Minis
OGRE_spread.jpg

Even as we approach the cultural apocalypse of ubiquitous, fully immersive, photo-real multiplayer video game environments, there are still those of us who like to play board or tabletop games. The communal wargaming experience, for instance, is very different from playing a networked MMORPG or turn-based strategy game. Whereas WarCraft or Xbox Live is kind of like hanging out with your buds watching TV, actually getting together and playing a board game is more like a real party. There’s usually music and snacks and beverages and lots of gregarious BS-ing of a type that just isn’t as practical over a network line. Manipulating the physical game pieces is also satisfying in a way that virtual objects have yet to achieve, and probably won’t for some time to come.

A lot of folks who are into tabletop gaming eventually end up making their own pieces, for one reason or another. They may be making a custom army to compete in a wargame with established rules, or they may be making up their own game for which no commercial pieces are available. For these folks there’s an array of techniques available. The simplest, as in wargaming days of yore, is to use illustrated paper or cardboard “chits” that lay flat on the gaming surface. A step up from that involves buying or making bases so your cardboard heroes can stand upright, which not only makes them look better but makes them much easier to manipulate. If the cardboard approach is too wimpy for you, you can always purchase commercial 3D miniature figures and paint and/or customize them to suit your taste.

Polyolefin shrink film presents an intermediate approach to original miniature design, midway between cheap paper or cardboard cutouts and fully dimensional figurines. Shrinky Dinks are much more durable than card stock, and unlike store-bought figurines, they are completely customizable. Best of all, you can make all your artistic mistakes at the software level, where they’re easy to fix.

Materials:

  • Inkjet ink
  • Inkjet friendly shrink film
  • Small binder clips, one for each mini you intend to make

Tools:

  • Computer with color inkjet printer and appropriate software (if you’re designing your own art)
  • Oven
  • Cookie sheet with cardboard insert to fit
  • Paint pen
  • Scissors/pen knife/paper cutter to cut out dinks

Step 1: Design your dinks

printed_dinks.jpg

The best way to determine the expected shrinkage of your film is by experiment. Print a square of known dimension, cut it out, shrink it, and measure the new size. The ratio of the “after” dimensions to the “before” dimensions gives the expected shrink percentage. Every film I’ve ever seen also includes an approximate shrink ratio in the directions, and if you’re not an accuracy freak it’s probably safe to assume it’s correct. The clear film I used shrinks by about 50%, meaning that the designs as printed need to be about twice as big, in each dimension, as the desired miniature size. Note that if you intend to use bases you need to be sure to leave an empty “tab” at the bottom of each image so the base can be attached without obscuring the art. If you’re using binder-clip bases (see below), I recommend the small (3/4″) size. These have a real “footprint” of 3/4″ x 1/2″, so scaling up for 50% shrink film gives a 1.5″ x 1″ pre-shrink area to allow for during the design of each piece.

If you don’t want to design your own minis, or you just want to experiment with the technique, I’ve put together a set of markers for the deluxe edition of Steve Jackson’s famously awesome future wargame, OGRE. You can download a .PDF of my OGRE marker designs here, ready to print onto five 8.5″ x 11″ sheets of 50% shrink film.


Step 2: Print onto shrink film

shrinky_dink_minis_printer_settings_screenshot.png

Shrinking causes the color saturation of your images to increase, so they will need to be lightened before printing to keep them from ending up too dark. I use my HP printer settings dialog to do this. Your equipment may vary, but most printer drivers include a color management panel that will at least let you tweak “brightness,” which is enough. Again, the best way to be sure is to run an experiment. Using the feature set of my HP C4180, I turn the brightness of my image all the way up to “brightest”, the saturation all the way down to “least saturated,” and the color tone all the way up to “warmest.” These settings give good results for my printer, with these images. I recommend loading only one sheet of film into the printer at a time to avoid feeding problems that may be caused by friction between sheets in a stack.


Step 3: Cut out the dinks

cutting_out_dinks.jpg

You can make the profiles of your minis as complex or simple as you like. Keep in mind you’re probably going to have to cut out a lot of them, and carefully cutting complex profiles means a lot of time and fine work with scissors or a pen knife. My OGRE minis are mostly rectangular, and I was able to cut them out very quickly using a swing-arm paper cutter. I made exceptions for the OGREs themselves, giving them semicircular profiles that I cut with scissors, so that they would stand out on the board.


Step 4: Shrink the dinks

pre-shrink_dinks.jpg
post-shrink_dinks.jpg

Refer to the directions on your shrink film for appropriate heating temperatures. Mine were shrunk in an oven preheated to 300 degrees, and it took approximately ten minutes per batch. Observe the pieces as they shrink (that’s half the fun of it, anyway). They will curl up and then reflatten. Sometimes they will not flatten completely, in which case you can compress them with the back of a spatula while they’re still hot without damaging the image or the surface of the film. Let them cool completely to room temperature before attempting to handle them.


Step 5: Finish edges (optional)

applying_black_edge.jpg

I find that a black edge on the dinks looks better than a bare one. A paint pen is the best tool for applying said edge. Sharpie works, too, but it requires a couple of coats to get the same coverage.


Step 6: Add bases (optional)

binder_clip_base_01.jpg
binder_clip_base_02.jpg
binder_clip_base_03.jpg

Bases for shrinky-dink minis (or any flat game mini) can be improvised readily from small binder clips. The photo sequence illustrates the process. First, clamp the clip to the base of the dink as shown, then remove the wire handles from both sides of the clip by compressing them. The black spring remains in place on the mini, forming a functional, discrete, good-looking base.


Notes and ideas

ranks.jpg

I chose clear print-on film in the hopes that it would be sufficiently transparent to provide easy viewing of the game board surface in the background of the design. Turns out whatever coating they apply to make the plastic take inkjet ink tends to opaque the film, and after it’s shrunk the effect is even stronger. Basically the “clear” film produces a dink with a translucent white background. Next time I will use regular opaque white film and include backgrounds in my designs.

If your printer is capable of sufficiently accurate registration, it should be possible to print mirror images on either side of the film such that the resulting markers are double-sided. I don’t know how well the ink on the reverse side will stand up to being face-down when shrinking, but my instinct is it shouldn’t matter too much. You could put the same design on each side for aesthetics and/or convenience, or you could put a different design on the reverse, perhaps an “injured” or “battle-damaged” version of the obverse unit.

15 thoughts on “How-To: Shrinky Dinks Gaming Minis

  1. Anonymous says:

    Excel has a hexagon template on the Microsoft website

  2. Gareth Branwyn says:

    Ogre? I freakin’ love that game! Your post inspires me to want to play it again. Thanks, Sean!

  3. StefanJ says:

    Great idea!

    I’ll post a link to this on the SJ Games forum.

    1. Sean Michael Ragan says:

      Thanks, Stefan. Appreciate that!

  4. Fred says:

    Well, now you have to find something cool to do with all the lever parts from the binder clips!

  5. Sean Michael Ragan says:

    Good point! I’ve been staring at the pile of them leftover for a day now, thinking about what I might do with them. I have a couple ideas that at least bear experimentation.

    However, even if I don’t reuse them they are steel and can be recycled by any scrap metal buyer. I sort my waste metals by type; I keep a big plastic bin for iron/steel waste that gets trucked to the scrap buyer once a month or so. If I can’t come up with a clever project for the levers, that’ll be their fate.

    BTW be sure to save at least one pair of levers in case you have to remove or replace one of the attached bases.

    Also, I’m open to suggestions about what they might be used for!

  6. Sean Michael Ragan says:

    A thoughtful soul tweeted us that shrinky-dink waste can be recycled with #2 plastics. Dunno how authoritative that is, but it’s good info to pass on.

    1. Soni says:

      Actually, I think it’s #6 plastic that will shrink. Not saying #2 won’t, but my searches all turned up advocating #6.

  7. Jeffrey Boser says:

    Anybody know if these inkjet sheets can be printed on by a laser printer?

  8. Sean Michael Ragan says:

    It’s just recently come to my attention that there is a smaller standard size of binder clip than the “small” (3/4″) clips that I originally used in this project. The smallest size is, in fact, called “mini” and is just 9/16″ wide and about 5/16″ tall. Useful info in case the “small” clips are still too bulky for your taste. They’re available at Office Depot.

  9. Anonymous says:

    Great stuff, esp using the document holders for stands. Might have to upgrade my old edition.

  10. Anonymous says:

    Sean, did you DIY that Ogre board too? If so, any tips, pointers, or instructions?

    1. Sean Michael Ragan says:

      No, the board is the normal “deluxe edition” board, from a set purchased somewhere in Texas during the mid-to-late ’80s.

  11. MikeG says:

    For those interested … Steve Jackson Games is issuing a Designer’s Edition of Ogre.

    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847271320/ogre-designers-edition/comments?page=1

  12. Elizabethmsmith says:

    =========== That’s the makzine i started working from home, doing various simple joobs which only required desktop or laptop computer and Net access and I couldn’t be happier…It’s been six months since i started this and i made so far total of 39,000 dollars. And the best part about this job is that you can decide when to work yourself and for how long .and you get a paycheck weekly…. http://—–click for info

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I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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