The Tiny Absurdist
Miniatures and Dioramas of the Delightfully Ridiculous
Welcome to a world where things are small, slightly strange, and made with far too much attention to detail.
I’m Cate - a miniature artist creating handcrafted dioramas, custom figures, and tiny versions of real people and things. From surreal scenes to more personal pieces everything here is built by hand, one detail at a time.
Dioramas • Tiny Pets • Hobby Storage
Models
Tiny Animals
Handcrafted miniature portraits inspired by real pets. Discover how favourite photos become tiny keepsakes through digital sculpting, 3D printing and hand painting.
Daisy the AT-AT
A playful Star Wars model that reimagines the iconic Imperial AT-AT as a peaceful grazing animal, complete with cow markings, daisies and a white picket fence.
Beneath the Same Moon
An original Watership Down-inspired tale, written to accompany my miniature sculpture of General Woundwort and the Black Rabbit of Inlé, exploring power, mortality and the natural order.
General Woundwort & The Black Rabbit of Inlé
Hand-painted miniatures inspired by Watership Down, featuring General Woundwort and the Black Rabbit of Inlé. Explore the model and read the companion story, Beneath the Same Moon.
Battle for the Throne: A Shared Human Experience
Created for the Battles Through History show, Battle for the Throne explores one shared human experience that has united every civilisation.
All Rails Lead to Rome
A miniature railway running through the Roman Colosseum? Explore All Rails Lead to Rome, a humorous diorama created for the Make a Scene 2026 competition.
Battles Through History Mascots
From concept artwork to hand-painted 3D miniatures, see how I created the Battles Through History mascot characters for events, exhibitions and social media.
Snow White and the Seven Dropbeards
A fairy tale-inspired exhibition display featuring Snow White, seven Dropbeards and the DropStack paint rack.
Mosquito vs V-1 Flying Bomb
Inspired by the RAF's V-1 interceptions, this humorous diorama imagines the de Havilland Mosquito as an actual mosquito. Built for the de Havilland Aircraft Museum model show.
Voxelgram Level Design
Designing miniature worlds for Voxelgram, an indie 3D logic puzzle game.
Marder Vs Munchers
A post-apocalyptic diorama reimagining a "Marder I" as a scavenged survival vehicle, pushing through a zombie-infested city overrun with rats.
1:35 Scale
2,500 Hours of the Same Four Walls
A 1:24 scale recreation of my home study, built during lockdown as a way of turning a far too familiar space into something worth looking at again.
Wrong Spawn Point
A 1:148 scale castle diorama inspired by the game "Chivalry 2", capturing the moment a few unlucky blue team knights appear in entirely the wrong place.
Glasses On – Glasses Off
A miniature diorama inspired by the movie "They Live", recreating the moment where everything looks normal, until it doesn’t. Designed on a rotating base so the scene shifts between what’s shown and what’s actually there.
Gollum - An Experiment in Figure Painting and Light
A hand-painted resin figure of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, created as my first experiment with figure painting and airbrushing.
The Day the Sky Came In
Safety glass collected after an unscheduled encounter with summer, encased in epoxy resin.
Products
DropStack
See every colour, Use Half the Space
DropStack is a modular vertical paint storage system built for hobby painters who need fast colour access without sacrificing desk space.
Custom Pet Miniatures
Turn your dog or cat into
a tiny keepsake
Using your photographs as reference, I create custom miniature pets inspired by the real thing. Each piece is digitally modelled, printed and hand painted to capture the colours, markings and personality that make your pet unique.