The weirdest question ever: Cicada wings

[Evil Eye]

A while back I posted about sourcing suitable insect wings for larger Tyranids; at the time I got lucky and found a discounted damaged (but quite nicely detailed) garden ornament I could use the wings from, and have since discovered Fujimi's amazing range of plastic insects, which provide very good wings and other useful parts for Tyranid conversions. However, whilst these are perfect for larger organisms where you only need one set of wings, for smaller critters (particularly the rumoured-to-return Shrikes and also Gargoyles) these are too big and not cost effective.

 

For gargoyles I have managed to devise a method of chopping up the stock wings into suitably insectile wings, and Shrikes work very well with plague drone wings (though they tend to go for a lot on bitz sites). However, I may have found a better solution for both species...may have.

 

I was looking on Etsy for 3D printed wings, and found nothing. However, I DID find a seller who provides real, ethically sourced cicada wings! These are aimed at jewelry makers but are affordable (a bulk pack of 50 costs £40, which is less than a pound a wing) and certainly look the part. However, I do have concerns about using them.

I know some incredibly skilled people have used real insect wings on display miniatures (our very own Kierdale told me about a diorama he saw using them, and on an incredibly old blog I remember someone used the wings of a dead dragonfly on a 3E Tyrant) however for gaming I'm worried they'd possibly be fragile. Now to be fair cicadas are quite big things and they have to withstand the force of flapping at very high speeds in order to keep the critters aloft, so they can't be too delicate. My other slight concern is whether paint would damage them, or indeed if it would simply turn the finely-veined wings into featureless pieces of chitin, as I don't know how pronounced the veins on cicada wings are.

 

I'm not concerned from an ethical standpoint (cicadas die at the end of summer, to the point Japan for instance can be found littered with the bodies of the poor blighters, so it's not like there's some weird cicada poaching/factory farming thing going on- plus Etsy has quite stringent guidelines about such things IIRC), I'm just genuinely wondering if this is a great or terrible idea!

[Bung]

I would give it a try.

Can you get a smaller pack for some experiments?

Maybe give the wings a think coat of UV hardening resin with some iridiscent myca flakes and you wont need to paint them.

[tinpact]

...That is a weird question. Not having tried it myself, I would say they're probably too fragile for regular handling, especially after being dead for long enough. Even the thinnest plastic parts are probably ~0.5mm thick, and even pliable they still snap off if they snag on something. That said, I tend to be paranoid with model stability, and you could probably do it, but you still wouldn't want to touch them directly. I read about a way to coat the wings to make them durable somehow, but I couldn't actually find the method - my guess would be some kind of varnish/resin?

 

I also wouldn't paint the wings with anything heavier than a light coat of ink so you don't lose the natural look. As an alternative, clear plastic sheets and greenstuff could probably do the job just as well.

 

[Arkhanist]

A while back I posted about sourcing suitable insect wings for larger Tyranids; at the time I got lucky and found a discounted damaged (but quite nicely detailed) garden ornament I could use the wings from, and have since discovered Fujimi's amazing range of plastic insects, which provide very good wings and other useful parts for Tyranid conversions. However, whilst these are perfect for larger organisms where you only need one set of wings, for smaller critters (particularly the rumoured-to-return Shrikes and also Gargoyles) these are too big and not cost effective.

 

For gargoyles I have managed to devise a method of chopping up the stock wings into suitably insectile wings, and Shrikes work very well with plague drone wings (though they tend to go for a lot on bitz sites). However, I may have found a better solution for both species...may have.

 

I was looking on Etsy for 3D printed wings, and found nothing.

I did find these 3" long printed wings on etsy, that someone found a good substitute for plague drone wings. At £9 a set though it's probably too much, and I suspect shipping may be an issue.

 

 

He also does 3/4" nurgling sized wings, which are seriously cute!

 

 

The cicada wings idea sounds pretty cool - I'm also not sure if they'd survive being used for a gaming, rather than display, piece, but I guess the only way is to try it.

 

I did find this article on electroforming cicada wings, which involves painting them with modpodge (to protect), then conductive paint, then putting them in a copper forming bath to electrocoat them in a thin coat of copper to make a pendant. There's still plenty of vein detail visible, so it should be nicely visible after just painting, and be able to handle that stage at least.

 

[Xenith]

While the might survive the gaming table, I think they'd snap as soon as they went in any kind of case, unless you store your models vertically on a magged tray or something. 

[Evil Eye]

Thanks for the replies everyone!
 

As it turns out, I posted the question elsewhere and got a reply from an etymologist, whose response basically boiled down to "they're unlikely to survive being attached to the model, let alone use as wargaming miniatures". So I might not go with that idea...

[Xenith]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

 

As it turns out, I posted the question elsewhere and got a reply from an etymologist, whose response basically boiled down to "they're unlikely to survive being attached to the model, let alone use as wargaming miniatures". So I might not go with that idea...

 

I wouldn't trust an etymologist on this matter - they barely understand the words they're speaking! Consult your local insect researcher instead! 

[Arkhanist]

Another thought would be to coat them in UV resin. Protect them initially with PVA or a spray varnish first, and paint as desired (carefully). Once done, dip or paint on UV resin and cure to get a hard object that you then attach to the model. It will take superglue with a sufficiently solid join, and you can always use greenstuff etc to build the joint. It can also be varnished as normal to get the final finish you're after.

 

Craft UV resin is used for quite a lot of jewellery this way, to embed and coat objects - it's dirt cheap. 3d resin printing uses a similar method, though is made up of very thin slices of resin that cures together, and somewhat more expensive resin given the fine detail it needs to do.

 

To cure the resin, a UV light such as a strong UV torch, or uv nail lamp is easiest, though you can also cure in sunlight (too long can lead to yellowing of the resin though).

 

I think you'd need to paint first as a coat of UV resin usually self-levels and goes quite flat, so you'd lose the physically raised texture. I use it for water effects, and it's pretty awesome.

 

 

Random example of using it to turn butterfly wings into earrings, though you may want to go less thick, and you can do 2 or 3 thin layers to control it better (so you don't have to cut the excess off with scissors!)

 

Edited January 26, 2022 by Arkhanist

[AlexAbroad]

Have you considered sycamore seeds? They have pretty veiny ‘wings,’ are probably more robust than cicada, and (depending on where you live) you can pickup a lifetime’s supply just off the ground.

[Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch]

Sycamore seeds are very fragile. As in, 'touch them and they crumble' kind of fragile. They don't break if you pick them up by the actual seed but brushing against the wing of a dried seed is an excellent way to break it. 

[AlexAbroad]

Really? I didn’t know that. To be fair my only interaction with them is picking them off the ground and chucking them back in the air for whirligigs

[Arkhanist]

Returning to the 3d printed option, it was bugging me about the etsy wings - I was sure I'd seen them before. I did find them eventually, but here's a few other designs I came across along the way. You'd need a friend with  3d printer, or get done at a local 3d printing service. 3d resin printers have got so much cheaper, and I bought one specifically so I could make this sort of thing for my own conversions without paying silly money for bits sellers or custom shapeways stuff while keeping high quality. And you can rescale them to whatever size you need.

 

Anyway, a few alternative files you could get printed cheaply (there are plenty more, if you search for nurgle, insect, fairy or fly wings)

 

fairy wings $3 (I like the dragonfly ones and beetle ones):

 

 

'sick flies' (the wings are separate parts, so printable alone), $10:

 

 

'Pestilance' - separate printable wings again, $6:

 

 

and lastly, dragon fly wings, free set:

 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Arkhanist

[Evil Eye]

 

Thanks for the replies everyone!

 

As it turns out, I posted the question elsewhere and got a reply from an etymologist, whose response basically boiled down to "they're unlikely to survive being attached to the model, let alone use as wargaming miniatures". So I might not go with that idea...

 

I wouldn't trust an etymologist on this matter - they barely understand the words they're speaking! Consult your local insect researcher instead! 

 

...I cannot believe I managed to mix up etymologist and entomologist...I meant the latter and feel very stupid now...

[Venerable Jazzman]

 

...I cannot believe I managed to mix up etymologist and entomologist...I meant the latter and feel very stupid now...

 

People who can't distinguish between etymology and entomology bug me in ways I cannot put into words ;)

[Evil Eye]

 

 

...I cannot believe I managed to mix up etymologist and entomologist...I meant the latter and feel very stupid now...

 

People who can't distinguish between etymology and entomology bug me in ways I cannot put into words

 

I'm never gonna live this one down am I...