Fallout Mentats (plus commercial!)

[mikelbrierly]

I made a case of Mentats a while back for a friend of mine's birthday, and I thought I'd share it here!

The very first thing I started looking at was scale. I initially assumed that "Mentats" were basically like "Altoids", and therefore a similar size.

But oh boy does this raider corpse say otherwise...

That sucker is huge.

Like 8.5" x 4.5" huge. So I decided I'd come back later to make an uber accurate Mentats replica. But for now the Altoids one will have to suffice as a gift for my friend.

I started out by pulling up the texture file from Fallout 4 in Photoshop. From there I adjusted the size and proportions to match a mentats tin.

Here is the texture file and the Altoids sized transfer in case you want to use them yourself -

So the reason those are backwards is because they're going to be image transfers. I recently learned about this technique and I am stoked on it. Here's how it works:

1. Take a sheet of 8.5 x 11 waxy paper (label sheets are great for this) and brush or roll on a full layer of white glue. create a whole coating on the surface of the waxy paper that is white glue. If you need to do 2 coats to really cover it you can.
2. After that dries, put the sheet in your printer (laser or inkjet) and print out what you want to transfer onto the glue side. (in our case the Mentats seen above ^)
3. Cut out the image you want to transfer.
4. Now brush a coat of ModgePodge onto the surface you want the transfer to adhere to.
5. Wait a little bit until the ModgePodge is just getting the tiniest bit tacky. Then press your transfer onto the modge podge and press really hard.
6. Let it dry completely. (overnight is a safe bet)
7. now remove the wax paper backing from your transfer, being careful not to peel up your design at all.

That will leave you with a pretty rad looking image transfer! I tried this a few different times with different elements, and getting it to work with an inkjet printer was tough. If you have a laser printer, you can just print straight onto the wax paper and rock and roll. But if you're stuck with an inkjet like me, you'll need the white glue so that the ink has something to absorb into. Then basically the entire image lives on a super thin sheet of glue, so you just stick it on whatever you want with modgepodge! (This technique was inspired buy my all-time favorite maker-youtuber, The Crafsman.)

*** I apologize I didn't document that process with pictures but here's the final product - ***

I also couldn't help but add some Fallout accoutrements to my friends package. So I added my own little in-universe Vault-Tec lining, some caps, and a note:

https://imgur.com/G8CZfqw

And finally a long lost Med-Tek MENTATS commercial from before the war!!!

https://imgur.com/3PMQyi6

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

Looks good! BTW, the yardstick in the game isn't accurate. I forget who, but someone also thought of using it to measure in game items and when they scaled them to that measurement, it wasn't the same size. Bethesda could have saved everyone a lot of time if they just made it measure correctly!

 

[HMR]

Thats a great birthdaygift. Cool transfer technique by the way.

 

[mikelbrierly]

Sluis Van Shipyards Interesting! I'll have to look for that thread. I thought that might be the case, especially with that suspiciously tiny skull... haha

A while back I laid out a bunch of FO items to compare against the sizes, and also measured with the in-game measuring stick. A few of them are way off, but it seemed like the bottles and cigarette packs are well-scaled, so I would use them as a basis for scale when building FO props. I think it's hard to get it perfect for video game assets since they can vary so much.

(I read that the weapons are actually scaled up when you are wearing power armor vs normal)

 

[zapwizard]

Ya, nothing in Fallout is to real-world scale. They are setup to be easily visible in-game instead. Your best off just scaling it to fit the nearest real world equivalent object. Having dug through many antique stores, Altoids tins are very much the same size as old pill tins.

I had seen that technique by the Crafsman, but never thought to try it on metal. I supposed all that mod podge helps it look more like old paint.
Great build!