Wow a 3D Modelling Competition I might be able to actually enter!!

So on my daily cruise of all things Printables I noticed that Joseph and the team had launched a new flash competition.

Design a Dice Tower

It's a simple task and one well within my design skills, so this weekend I am going to be knee deep in my favourite 3D design app Sketchup.

My Dice Tower History

My clubmates at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club know about my legendary bad luck when it comes to rolling the old plastic polyhedra.  Years ago I decided to take the human influence out of the RNG and buillt my first dice tower:

The Pringles Can Dice Tower - This is simply a discarded Pringles can (preferably with the plastic lid) and a whole bunch of bamboo skewers stuck through it to create a little spiral staircase.

The iPhone Box Dice Tower - One of my earliest makes on this website was for a portable dice tower made from recycled materials.  I can't believe that this was almost 12 years ago.  My how time flies and tools change.

Castle Gray Skull Dice Tower - My current favourite dice tower is Castle Greyskull which I printed on my old Geetech i3 Prusa clone back in 2020.  At the time it was my longest ever print and it barely fit withing the vertical build envelope of that printer.  It has served me well over the years but has strangely never graced the pages of this site as it predated the Jessie's Prints series.

Wish me luck...

Jessie's Prints - Episode 42 - Tiamat the Colossal Chromatic Dragon

This week, I are mostly been printing... A Colossal Chromatic Dragon!!

Tiamat - Printables 41937 

Tiamat was a regular recurring character in the Dungeons and Dragons Cartoon back in the 80s and I have to admit that she never really did it for me.  The rendering of her was always a bit pudgy and more like Pete's Dragon (1977) than a fearsome multi headed monstrosity. 

As can be seen in the image above, she is quite girthy about the shoulders and feet.  Trust me it gets worse the further along her body you go.  Her red head is considerably larger than the other four and it has a peculiar dog-like look to it.  This might be deliberate as some say she is the progenitor of all Kobolds and I do prefer a canine look to my kobolds.

 

Whilst I never noticed this at the time, the 80s was a long time ago and we've learned a few things about sculpting dragons since then.

It's another Multi-part Model 

A model of a dragon of this size and stature can only be executed in a large scale multi part model, 13 parts in total.  The great thing is that the designer Miguel Zavala (aka MZ4250) has supplied multiple variants of the model ensuring that it will fit on most smaller resin printer build plates like my Anycubic Photon Mono 4K.

However, there's only so much a designer can do and I still needed to split both the tail and wings in half and I also hollowed out Tiamat's body so I could save on resin.

All told (including the odd failure and reprint) this model was spread across a total of 7 build plates.  Total printing time over a number of days clocked in at  29 Hours 47minutes... However, it still took less than a whole 1kg bottle of resin, meaning that this print cost less than £15.  The official WotC Aspect of Tiamat miniature is currently going for ten times that price.  If you don't have a 3D Printer a licensed version of this print will set you back about £70.

Hollowing out the Parts.

Some of the parts, like the body, were pretty substantial so I elected to save resin and hollow these out using meshmixer.  I was most concerned about the wings and the necks as these would be the parts with the most angle of dangle and, as I experienced with my Demon Prince B'lakor model, the highest likelihood of not staying where I want them.

Pinning and gluing the meshmixed halves back together was essential.  I managed a much better job of matching the two parts than on the previous wings I tackled.  I sliced the tail at an odd angle a bit wonky but you can only tell if you look real hard. 

Puttying the gaps in the seams was always going to be required and as they say  "Milliput and paint make me the modeller I ain't"  

It's Magnet Time Baby

The necks and wings were all sculpted with generous square keys and sockets but I wanted these to be removable for transportation.  The keys needed to be sanded to ensure a slip fit and then the magnets installed in both socket and key to ensure that they stayed put.  

A fiddly job but well worth it.  In hindsight I should have hollowed the body out less, the shell really needs to be a bit thicker than the depth of each magnet.  I ended up punching through the shell and having a hell of a time supergluing the magnets in.  Lesson learned for next time.

I used 5mm x 1.5mm magnets which,  whilst not immensely powerful, are strong enough to keep things reasonably well attached given the weight of each neck and wing.  Some of the necks were incredibly tricky to magnetize and I had to add a couple of pins as guides.

Painting

I always use a zenithal prime of matt white over a black base.  I opt to go cheap and cheerful with some auto paint I found in Poundland at only £2.50 for a large 400ml can.  They also do matt silver, gold, grey and white and black gloss.  Honestly, I can't see why anyone would use anything more expensive unless they were entering a Golden Demon painting competition.

The zenithal on this model I did with all the necks and wings connected this would produce reasonably realistic shadows where one neck blocks the light from another.  Similarly you want a nice zenithal gradient going down the wing as the model is posed with wings outstretched.

In the cartoon Tiamat's heads were ordered from left to right; White, Green, Red, Blue, Black but in MZ2450s model they are Black, Green, Red, White and then Blue.  Being slavishly canonical has never been my thing, but making sure that I know which head is which is fairly critical when it comes to painting each one.

A Colossal Base

According to the her stat block Tiamat is COLOSSAL which deserves a 120mm round base or even larger.  This is where my FDM printer excels and, when it works, can spit out a base in next to no time.  

 

 

I have a stock of cool bases which I can just scale as necessary and I opted for a cracked lava with vent holes.  The model is so huge that Tiamat can only fit on it in one or two spots with either a front or a back leg in the large lava vent.  I think that this is quite a cool idea as it makes her look even more powerful, having no fear of injury from boiling lava!    Miguel has to be applauded for sculpting the tail sweeping around and pointing forwards like a spear.  This is way better than the comical dinosaur tail of the cartoon Tiamat. 

I opted for a black basalt colour scheme accented with yellow thru orange to red lava effects.  The black areas were given a dry brush with Vallejo dark grey.  The cracks and lava vents were then painstakingly filled (using a needle and syringe) with the UV resin I got from my recent Wish Hobby Haul.  Wow this is amazing stuff.

Colouring A Colossal Chromatic Dragon

I cannot tell a lie this was a monster painting project mostly because she is so intimidating a miniature to paint.  I rattlecan primed and zenithal highlighted her back in mid february and she just sat there glaring at me.

Eventually I summed up the courage to shoot her with a coat of Vallejo Game Air Bloody Red (72.710) across all the exposed skin of the body making sure that I left her belly neck and insides of her thighs unpainted.  I then blended these parts in with a coat of Model Air Light brown (71.027).  Shadows were accentuated with Model Air Mahogany (71.036) and Model Air Black (71.057).  The spine was also painted in mahogany and dry brushed with progressively lighter shades adding a touch of light brown.

Each head was painted in the correct order; Black, Dark Green (72.028) , Red, White and then Blue (71.004).  I suck at painting white so I opted for a Model AIr Pale Blue Grey (71.046) which I think looks kind of cool.

Wash a Disaster!!

Calamity struck when I used a Vallejo Game Wash Umber (73.203) across all the wings and heads and it pooled in all the wrong places and dried a horrible sandy colour.  I was kind of expecting this to operate in the same way as the Army Painter Speed Paints.  My mistake and this was definitely a low point.

 

I soldiered on and tried panel lining the chest armour, but this didn't really give me the effect that I wanted so I tried some sketching with paint.  This is a technique I have seen Sergio Calvo use on many occasions to simulate a rough texture.  I painted each chest and neck armour section with little stripes of the light brown and bingo it was the effect I was after.  

 

I celebrated by painting each of the dragons eyes with a base coat of white and then a dot of Orange Fire (72.008) and a blended circle of Medium Yellow (71.002).  A vertical black pupil was added and then each eye glazed with the UV resin.  Have I told you how much I love this stuff?  

Teeth and horns, toes and claws were all finished in shades from mahogany up to white and the beast was finally done.

 

Big Miniatures can Become Boring

This was a classic example of the epic struggle we all face as painters when the job at hand becomes long drawn out and tedious.  I could have put another 20 to 30 hours into this paint job but I just don't have the patience.  I signed it off and you decide if I should put more effort in...

 

She is a big girl and measures; wingspan 14 inches, height 8.5 inches, length 9 inches.

 

A Patreon Worth Joining

None of this would have been possible without the awesome modelling skills of MZ4250.

Miguel has a free Patreon subscription which I encourage you all to join.  He offers some pretty cool free minis and the sheer volume of his minis is frightening.  His work ethic is fantastic and he has some very cool little minis gems you will find nowhere else.

In fact this is not the first time I have printed an MZ4250 dragon.  I printed a version of the Chardalyn Dragon from the D&D Rime of the Frost Maiden campaign on my FDM printer.  I have also used Miguel's files in the past printing an Ancient Colossal Red Dragon and the famous Statue of Moloch from the cover of the AD&D PHB

Jessie's Prints - Episode 41 - Daemon Damzels: Spider Princess

This week, I are mostly been printing... Big Booby Spider Lady

OK, I lied... I printed this off a few weeks ago for my clubmate Sam and had to wait till he painted it.

Daemon Damzels Spider Princess - Keta Minies via My Mini Factory

This is one of a series of minis that Sam asked me to print for him.  An amazing paint job and an amazing bit of basing makes this really pop as a mini.

and a side view...

I understand that she is some sort of Warhammer Slaaneshi demon but it's a cool mini nonetheless.

More minis to come from Sam in the very near future.

1:30 Scale Nax Fishing Vessel - NTKJ MODEL - Part 3

In Part Two of this mini series we managed to get the boat sanded, filled, painted and wired.  In this episode we finish the model

Fitting the Accessories

Replacing some of the awful laser cut accessories has been a primary goal and now we get to fit those to the deck.  In the photo below you can see the life preservers, anchors and vents which have all been painted and glued to their respective positions around the boat.

Some additional accessories were necessary though:

A deck winch - Cults 3D - This is apparently the upper deck crane winch for a Liberty Ship, but it looked suitably mechanical for my needs.

A light housing - Thing:6007577 - Not perfect but do you know how hard it is to find these sorts of objects from a description

Rigging the Mast

We are almost at the end of the build and this is where the quality of the instructions once again fails to clearly indicate what you are supposed to do.

I need a little bit more instruction given the limited amount of wood we have left.  So I spent an hour or so studying the other Naxos fishing boat model reference photos I had collected and drew myself out a rigging plan.

Given that I had used some of the thin length of dowel for my prop shaft, I did not have enough left to do both the Spar and the crane Jib.  I grabbed a BBQ skewer from the kitchen drawer and used that for the crane Jib.  I chucked both lengths into my drill and game them a sanding, adding a taper to both ends of the mast to ensure that it fitted into the deck hole and also that it came to a rounded point at the top.

With no hardware (I believe is the appropriate term chandlery?) attaching these together was going to reuire some ingenuity.  I grabbed the thin aluminium florist wire I use for pinning my miniatures and bent up a couple of hooks. I then drilled a hole into the mast and one into the end of the Jib supergluing the hooks so that they act as a rudimentary swivel.   

Four more hooks were also made.  Two fit into the gunwhales on either side of the mast and two in the rear corners of the transom.  

I then laminated some plasticard and created a trapezoid shape which would act as a place to anchor the Jib Pulley.

Talking about Pulleys, I could have used 3D Printed parts for these but the kit actually came with some wierd figure of 8 shaped pieces of wood which may have been for the deck winch that I didn't end up using.  These would do nicely as pulleys. 

Some thin "straps" were cut out of the plasticard to add a little believeability to my scratchbuilt fittings and it was time to glue in the mast.  I wish that I had spent a little more time on this as my mast ended up a bit cockeyed and listing to starboard.  I tried to rescue this with the mast rigging on the port side  but it was a little more adrift than the thin cotton thread could muster.  Chalk that up to experience.  

With the mast rigged it was a simple case of adding a length of thread to the end of the jib and looping it through a pulley and down the mast.  This is when I realised I needed to tie it off somewhere and so I drilled a second hole into the mast for a tiedown.  I left the end of the thread long so this can be the end of the rope used to raise and lower the jib.

The final part of the rigging was to add a length of thread between the the two aft hooks and wrapping it around the end of the jib.  All the threads were superglued in place to stop them from ever coming undone.

And with that it's done, or at least as done as it can be for now.  I will probably tidy up the paint and maybe add some more accessories some time in the future.

I was really impressed with what I was able to do given the limited nature of the materials and it was a real challenge of my modelling skills. 

I really enjoyed my nautical adventure and it has spurred me on to try another more historic vessel and another cheap Aliexpress wooden boat kit.

Jessie's Prints - Episode 40 - Kobold Slackers and The Fear Smith

This week, I are mostly been printing... Slackers

I have so many projects on the go at the moment and one big one which I have started painting.  However, when you come across a model that just begs to be printed then you have to push the other projects to the side for a minute.

Kobold Slackers - by MX4250 on Printables 

Being a big Jay and Silent Bob fan I couldn't resist this pair when I saw them pop up on the MZ4650 Patreon blog.

Also pictured is

The Fear Smith - MZ4560 on Printables

This guy just oozes nightmarish horror and would fit well in almost any game. 

1:30 Scale Nax Fishing Vessel - NTKJ MODEL - Part Two

In Part One we got the basic hull together 

Sanding and More Sanding

As I mentioned the hull is made of straight ply planks and there are a lot of gaps and seams which require filling with wood filler.  I bought a tub of 151 wood filler which I thought was going to do the trick and I was dissapointed that it was more like wall filler than anything else.  Still I persevered and ended up slapping on a ton of the stuff.  

In hindsight I would do this totally differently.  The filler oozed between the planks and ended up inside the boat hull trapped between the frames which then dried and fell off.  I have in effect created a boat shaped maraca.  

This necessitated opening up the deck under the wheelhouse in order to release the now rock hard filler.  This might sound like major surgery, but as the deck is so thin it was easily acomplished with a sharp craft knife and a steady hand.  I made sure to keep the offcut as I have plans for that later.

The way to tackle this is to use the old superglue and baking soda trick to fill up the gaps.  This of course only works if you are painting the hull.  If you are going for the natural wood finish then you are going to have to get better at laying the planks. 

Painting

Painting the boat in sections is unavoidable at this stage.  I carefully masked off the deck and gave the now smooth (ish) hull a spray coat of white primer followed by a couple of coats of white gloss.

The airbrush then came in handy for painting the decks with a Vallejo Burnt Umber wash.

The remaining wooden pieces for the wheelhouse, deck covers and the gunwhales were then extracted from their boards and sprayed with the same Vallejo Burnt Umber wash. 

Adding Some Colour

I imagined the boat a sort of tri-tone with a red top stripe white hull and black or red hull bottom.  In the end I just gave it a stripe of red on the sheerstrake plank and continuing around the transom.  Masking this off was a tricky exercise as I only had some really nasty cheap painters masking tape.  I will have to come back and do some tidying up by hand later.

Trial fitting the wheel house accents and deck hatches really makes the boat come alive.

You might beable to see in the photo above that I managed to glaze all the windows with some clear acetate from some recycled packaging.  I glued this in using my now favourite hobby glue UV Resin which I picked up in my Wish Hobby Products 2024 experiment.  This stuff is amazing.

Adding the Lights

Last year I picked up some micro LED lights for another project (which I have yet to start).  These are incredibly tiny and come pre-soldered onto super thin magnet wire.  I quickly soldered a couple of these together with a CR2032 coin cell battery holder and a latching push button and stuffed it into the hole.

I will probably tidy this up with a piece of perfboard at a later date as the circuit is tiddly. I am also undecided if I will add any navigation lights.  For the uninitiated this mean a RED LED for the left (Port) side of the boat and a GREEN LED for the right (Starboard) side.  I have some 3mm LEDs from another side project but these might be too large, we will have to see.  Adding them to the circuit should be no problem and might even add some much needed resistance to bring down the brightness.  

The LEDs were then routed up through the floor of the front wheelhouse and up one corner.  One LED illuminates the interior and is bonded to the roof with the UV Resin and the other goes outside in front of the cabin as an exterior deck light.  I will need to find an appropriately nautical shroud for this exterior light as they are suprisingly bright for their size.

Oh did I forget to mention that I added a salty seadog to steer this fine boat across the treacherous seas? 

He is one of the many 3D Printed accessories I covered in part one of this mini series.  A fine free model although he is now sealed in his cabin for all eternity as I have glued on the roof and floor.  

In the next, and final part of this mini series we will add all the accessories masts and rigging.

Jessie's Prints - Episode 39 - Index Card RPG Card Back Stamps

This week, I are mostly been printing... Stamps!!

ICRPG CARD BACK STAMPS - Thing 6545499

My recent foray into the Index Card RPG system (ICRPG) involved a lot of DIY card making, which I love.

However, during play this presented a problem in that all my card backs where blank and indistinguishable from each other.  What I needed was a simple stamp which I could apply to my card backs.  

I find it useful to categorise my cards into one of 4 types:

• People - NPCs, Villains, Bio-forms
  
• Places - Locations, buildings, Landscapes 
  
• Objects - Things, weapons, loot, traps and trinkets
  
• Monsters - Stuff that wants to kill you
  

This would help me to keep my ICRPG cards organized and reduce seek times to a minimum and thereby make me look like a great DM.

Tinker Cad to the Rescue

My experiments making a plaque for my Cowboy Bebop Swordfish II model taught me that this was going to be easily achieved.  

Step 1 - Make a black and white image in GIMP where black is what you want stamped and white is what you don't want to stamp.  This image is then reversed and saved as a JPG or PNG.

Step 2 - Use convertio.co to convert your JPG or PNG into an SVG which can then be imported into Tinkercad.

Step 3 - Import your SVG into Tinkercad and scale it to fit inside your stamp pad.  Make sure that the stamp is at least 4mm high and that you create a backing plate at least 1mm high to connect all the pieces of your stamp together.  Position the stamp so that it intersects with the backing plate and then group the objects together.  Export this as an STL for your 3D printer.  

Step 4 - Make a wooden backing plate and handle for each of your stamps.  If you get into ICRPG you are going to be making a lot of cards and doing a lot of stamping so this step is essential for long lasting stamps.  I made mine out of some scraps of hardboard I had laying around and I glued some pieces of old broom handle onto the backing plates before supergluing my stamps together.  

You could of course model the whole thing in Tinkercad.

 

Step 5 - Stamp Away!! - I bought some cheap stamp pads from AliExpress less than £1.50 each and they have lots of different colours to choose from so you can have a different colour for each card type.

 

Buy Me a Coffee

I have shared the stamp patterns on Thingiverse, so if you like them, download them and print your own card backs.  Support the channel and please leave a tip in the jar or use the paypal tip link.   

1:30 Scale Nax Fishing Vessel - NTKJ MODEL - Part One

In my recent foray into buying modelling supplies from Wish.com I mentioned that I had ordered a little wooden boat kit but that the order got cancelled.

Needless to say, I found a different seller on AliExpress and snapped it up.

This is a fun little kit and my first foray into making a wooden boat with a planked hull.  I made a balsa wood sailing yacht from old model engineering plans, decades ago with a lot of help from my dad, but I can't remember if we ever finished it.

The NAX Fishing Boat or should I say NAXOS Fishing Boat

The inspiration for this model is clearly that of a mediterranean coastal fishing vessel of which there are many models.  The kit is made by NTKJ Model and sold through various etailers.

This is plenty of inspiration for me to commence making this kit.

Meet the Parts

The kit comes as a set of 6 laser cut wooden sheets, a couple of dowels for the mast and a reel of cotton for the rigging.  A set of pictorial instructions with quite well translated text completes the package which cost the grand sum of £5.94 which in 2024 money is less than a Big Mac meal.  

Steps 1-4 - Making the Deckhouse

Whilst the first 4 parts seem fairly self explanatory and involve removing the deckhouse parts and assembling them, the parts are not numbered.  There is a disparity in the plans, in particular the inner bulkhead seems to have a large notch behind it which intimates a part fits into it but the instructions offer no assistance as to what goes in here.   

The wheelhouse fits to the deck with 6 pegs and matching holes.  Dry fitting the parts to the deck helps keep the wheel house square and stable whilst gluing the instrument panel back wall and the top visor.

I left the roof unglued to enable me to paint the inside and out and to glaze the windows and doors with acetate.  

This model is ripe for replacing some of the clumsier laser cut parts with 3D printed ones.  In particular the boat has some cowl vents which are made of laminated wood but they look awful and it will be so much easier to find some on the web or even scratch build.  The same can be said for the portholes and life preservers.  

• Cowl Vents - Cults 3D - A collection of vents of different shapes and sizes.  The two large vents at the front of the boat are 20mm tall and the one on the rear of the wheelhouse is 10.3mm tall. 
  
  
• Life Preservers - Thingiverse - A good looking life preserver model.  You will need to print six, two at 10.5mm across and four at 12.5mm across.
  
  
• Boat Anchor - Printables - This anchor seems to have the same shape and dimensions as the wooden one.  However, the model is huge and will need to be scaled down to fit.
  
  
• 3 Bladed Screw - Thingiverse - This will need to print this on a resin printer at about XX scale  The original prop is about 11.5mm in diameter.
  

Steps 5-8 - Laying down the keel 

Now the serious work begins.  The frames are all numbered and from 1 to 10 and are slotted into their corresponding slots in the keel.  Be careful when removing theframes from the sheet as the protruding sections are prone to breaking due to the orientation of the wood grain.

The diagonal slot at the stern of the boat I thought might be for the stern tube but there was no mention of it on the plans.  The kit comes with two diameters of dowel.  The thin one should be for the stern tube and it is a good idea to add a 1¼ inch length at this point as the keel is relatively thin and likely to snap as you insert the frame 8.  Ask me how I know...   

You could add the rudder at this point but the stupid thing has one mission in life and that is to snap.  It is much better to leave this until after you have planked the hull and either fit it or replace it with a 3D printed part.

Once all the frames are fitted you can add the deck plate.  Before you do STOP! 

Take the time now to add some cardstock or a thin piece of styrene to the back of the deck plate.  It is incredibly thin and the laser engraved planking makes some of the edge planks prone to detatching.  The slots that the frames fit in are also too thin and not in exactly the right places for the frames to slot into so you are going to have a whale of a time gently coaxing them into place and you will probably snap a few.  Don't panic.  Take some time out to put the stand together and have a cup of tea.  

The next step is the one I've been both dreading and looking forward to in equal measure.

Steps 7-8 Planking the Hull

That kettle you just boiled is going to be handy.  We now need to steam the first couple of planks.  These are the wide ones with the little oval holes on the planking sheets marked IV.  The holes go at the bow (the front) of the boat and you will need to hold the end of the plank in the hot steam to soften it and then gently put a curve into it. 

This is incredibly fiddly so be patient.  With these straight planks being made of plywood they really aren't made to go around these curves.  I glued 8 planks down from the sheerstrake (the wide one) and then the remaining planks up from the bottom.  These all had to be shaped at both ends to fit.

There will be lots of gaps.  When we shape the hull planks by sanding we are going to use some wood filler to fill in the gaps.  Real wooden boats have caulked seams and they are designed to swell when they get wet and thereby get tighter.  The hull is going to be painted so you won't be able to see the seams.

More 3D Printed Accessories

Fisherman with ships Wheel - Thingiverse - I spent a long time trying to find a suitable helmsman for my boat and this one conjurs up the same vibe as the Lovecraftian fishing horror game Dredge. be

To be continued...

Jessie's Prints - Episode 38 - Warduke

This week, I are mostly been printing... Warduke

Back to regular scale printing this week with a character from the early days of D&D and a firm favourite with all the fantasy damsels.

Warduke - Cults 3D

Warduke is an iconic fighter and in this printable version we have him as seen across three stages of his metamorphosis from journeyman fighter to outright blasphemous bad guy.  This totally reminds me of the Ral Partha 3 Level character minis for AD&D from back in the day.  Last time I painted up a set of these it was the Illusionist and I think they came out really cool.

The Origins of Warduke

According to Dux Bellorum the first appearance of Warduke was on the cover of Dragon Magazine #17 (1978) before becoming the main protagonist in the LJN D&D action figure toy line. He is fully fleshed out in the XL-1 Quest for the Heartstone adventure module for Dungeons & Dragons BECMI.

Growing up in the UK in the 80s we never really had the LJN toys and I only occasionally managed to snag a copy of dungeon magazine as "official D&D" source material was fairly thin on the ground.  

We had White Dwarf instead, which back when the hobby was in its infancy and Games Workshop sold other games, they would support those games with scenarios and new monsters.  They did this for all the games they sold including Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia, Car Wars to name just a few.  

They didn't stop this practice until September 1987 (WD Issue 93) when they printed the last AD&D Scenario "Getting Away With Most of It"  by James Wallis.  This issue was the one where they previewed the classic art from the Rogue Trader cover and explained what Warhammer 40K was. 

Painting Warduke

The coolest part of Warduke is of course his metallic blue armour and winged helmet.  This is an undeniable throwback to his 70s disco roots.  Back in the day, anything remotely sci-fi got painted in Humbrol (222) Moonlight Blue metallic paint.  In fact everything in the 70s was a coloured metallic.  The first car I ever owned, a 1975 4-door Mk2 Escort, came in a fantastic shade called Purple Velvet Metallic. 

Recreating that shade was easy with a silver base and a coat of Army Painter's appropriately named Highlord Blue Speed Paint.  His armour is deceptively weird being a mix of chain over bare skin and what look like an animal fur or leather loin cloth.

 

Equally bizarre are his boots, with one boot cuff in silver for some unknown reason and the other all black with two big silver studs.  You cannot deny he has a pretty awesome skull shield which just gets the dry brush treatment along with his trusty and utilitarian sword.  

A golden codpiece / underpants combo in the shape of some monstrous demonic visage and two red gems finish him off. 

Jessie's Prints - Episode 37 - Epic Space Knights or Holocaust Squad Judges?

This week, I are mostly been printing... Teeny Tiny Space Knights!!

After last episode's commissioned print I wondered just how small can my 3D Printer print?  In particular I'm after some power armoured troopers to fill in as Holocaust Squad Judges.

Ball Bearing Galactic Crusaders with Chain Axes - Cults 3D

You have got to laugh at the names of some of these files.  These are epic scaled minis which come in a variety of poses and helpfully in groups of 3 & 5 so printing a whole squad is easy.  straight onto the build plate they are about 10mm so I scaled them up 125% to 15mm but they were still too small for my Judge Dredd miniatures which are about 17mm tall so I upped it to 20mm.

These should work well in my games and I have some cool ideas for some encounters which require this type of armoured set up.  

Painting up a Holocaust Squad

Once I had superglued them to 1p pieces and primed them, I gave my squad a quick once over with Gravelord Grey Speed Paint from army painter.  Jet Packs were trimmed in yellow and I gave each one a different coloured helmet and shoulder pad to aid in discrimination on the field of battle.

Holocaust Judges are rarely seen in Mega City One, their deployment being reserved for those extreme moments when the ultimate sacrifice is required.  Their ranks are typically made up of those Judges close to retirement or have in some way disgraced themselves in the line of duty.  This final act of service is seen as a suitable punishment or alternative to the redemption of The Long Walk into the Cursed Earth. 

Epic Scale Imperial Heavy Tank - Cults 3D

I had a copy of the original Epic Space Marine game Adeptus Titanicus back in the days of Games Workshop Large Boxes.  So I wondered, just for funzies, how well these newfangled 3D prints would stack up against my vintage epic armour.

Pretty good me thinks.

Now I've got to find me a decent Epic sized Mek Quake model for those BIG JOBS! in Mega City One.   

Jessie's Prints - Episode 36 - Itsy Bitsy Drop Pods

This week, I are mostly been printing... Teeny Tiny Drop Pods!!

Isn't it just the way you wait ages for a commissioned print and two come along at once.  This time it's my work chum Gary who needed some drop pods for an upcoming game of Adeptus Epicus or something like that.  You know the one, the latest hotness from Games Workshop.

StarPorts - P.O.D. (Print on Demand) Droplets - Cults 3D

I don't really have much to say about these other than I managed to get 5 Dreadnought sized pods on one build plate and eight of the smaller unit sized pods on a second.  Print time was about an hour and a half each.

The models came well supported but the packaging of the files was a bit weird.  Extracting the zip file dumped 3 folders on my desktop; a Lychee scenes folder, a supported STLs and an Unsupported STLs.  I was not expecting this and so I thought that the zip file hadn't actually unzipped.  Weird.

I always opt for supported files and as I was leaving these on the support rafts for Gary to get the full experience of removing supports 😂 I didn't bother to check if these were hollow or not.  I assumed that they were solid.  To my surprise, and as you can see in the image above, these were actually hollow which explains why they came out of the wash & cure station a little sticky.  They had actually trapped a huge amount of resin in the hollowed out sections as it effectively formed a cup with nowhere for that resin to drain out of because they print upside down.

If I were printing again I would add my own supports and orientate them so that the unused resin can drain away whilst still being attached to the build plate.  A minor gripe I know but sometimes these things matter.

Anyway, as you can see these are considerably smaller than the full size drop pod for WH40K.  Aint they cute 😃

Jessie's Prints - Episode 35 - 3 Goblins in a Trenchcoat

This week, I are mostly been printing... 3 Goblins in a Trenchcoat!!

3 Goblins in a Trenchcoat - MZ2450 Patreon 

Our Friday game at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club has seen us sucked through a portal onto one of the levels of hell called Las Infernalis.  Basically this is Disneyland for Demons and I'm sure is going to full of weird and deadly rides, games and equally weird characters.  

Having recently joined the MZ2450 Patreon, imagine my surprise when I stumbled on a recent post containing an STL for this guy!!

This is exactly the sort of mini that floats my boat and so I quickly printed and painted him and sent a photo off to Alex the DM.  He's a very amenable sort of chap and we share a love of weird cinema.  His reaction was classic and I expect to bump into this trio of ne'rdowells in the very near future.

 

Miguel also does a version with 5 Wyrmlings in a Trenchcoat which is totally not Tiamat!

Three Halflings in a Trencoat (D&D 5e)

A very creative Reddit user put up a statblock for the 3 Halflings in a Trenchcoat for D&D 5e games.  It would be a very challenging encounter and seems rather overpowered to me.  It is written more as monster statblock and perhaps something that occurs as a consequence of donning a cursed magical trenchcoat which must be filled with 3 of something... Mwahahaha  

Origins of the Totem Pole Trenchcoat Trope

This is one of those prints that irrespective of age we all seem to instinctively have a memory of it from our childhood.  According to TV Tropes this is known as the Totem Pole Trenchcoat but there is no reference to a historical origin.  I seem to remember an episode of Wacky Races or The Perils of Penelope Pitstop where the Ant Hill Mob used this technique.  

 

Fun Fact, the names of the members of the Ant Hill Mob are different in each show.  In Wacky Races they are: Clyde, Ring-a-Ding, Mac, Danny, Rug-Rug-Benny, Willy and Kirby.  Their car is number 7 The Bulletproof Bomb.

  

 Whereas in The Perils of Penelope Pitstop they are called, Clyde, Dum-Dum, Softy, Yak-Yak, Snoozy, Zippy and Pockets.  Their car, Chug-a-Boom, is much more of a character in its own right in some episodes of this series,  It gets the classic headlight eyes and is voiced by the late great Mel Blanc  

If you know of any earlier uses of this trope, please feel free to comment in the box below.