The internet never fails to amaze me and after 15 or so years of writing this blog and essentially shouting into the void...
the void shouted back.
Facebook 15mm Dredd Wargaming Community
As I was doom scrolling through facebook I chanced upon a picture posted by the very talented sculptor Nikki Chatwin of Sprue Goblin Games. Nikki had posted some pics of his latest project 15mm Fatties and authentic looking fatties are one of those minis that I struggle to find.
Nikki is also behind the Megacity 15 Facebook group dedicated to 15mm Judge Dredd wargaming. After reaching out it seems that Nikki had seen some of my posts and played a small part in his obsession with 15mm scale Judge Dredd wargaming, So at least one person reads this blog.
I honestly can't wait for Nikki to finish those fatty sculpts but in the meantime some of her work is available for sale via Ramshackle Games. I love her sulpts so picked myself up some Chaos Judicars and Sector NG15 Civilians.
With my new Judge Dredd campaign slated for October I really need to get a wiggle on writing it and building some interesting terrain pieces for the players to interact with. The objective is to create some lightweight flat packable buildings which can be easily transported to my regular Friday game group at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club.
I was inspired by these nifty Parametric foamcore connectors which I found on Thingiverse, but I wanted something that would work with my material of choice, 2mm ABS board, be very low profile and have a dark gothic style. So I designed these 90 degree, T junction and X Junction connectors.
These are quite small prints so I recommend printing them out on a resin 3D printer, However, being so small you can absolutely fill a build plate and you are pretty much done. I've made a separate file of larger 5mm Foam Core Connectors if you want to make buildings in a larger scale
15mm Flatpack Building Facades - SVG File
I also designed a few building facades as vector files which can be sent to my laser cutter for etching. If you don't have a laser cutter these can be easily knocked up by hand with a sharp knife and a steel ruler. Once I have perfected them I will offer them as a download here.
PROG UPDATE
As with everything I do on this blog it is a work in progress. I spent a morning finishing up the first of the building SVG files (hopefully more to come) and you can download the file for free below:
As I aluded to in my last episode, I bought a joblot of secondhand N Gauge buildings from eBay for the bargain price of £19.
I decided to buy kits because whilst I would love to scratchbuild every model on my layout, to be honest, I do not have the patience or the skills. The aim of the game here is to get something on the layout to fill in the gaping void in the middle and to add some lighting.
Each building will have its own blog where I will document the customisation process in more detail and explain all the trials and tribulations involved when working with 40 year old plastic kits.
These kits are namely:
KleiWe - 203 Stadthaus (Townhouse)
I
didn't realise that these kits are so vintage having been produced
between 1967 and 1971 before being bought by the Arnold brand. In
unbuilt boxed condition these are quite the collectors item so I feel a tiny bit sad that I am going to hack them up. I found a
little bit of information regarding this short lived range on The Birth of N Scale blog.
This is a very European looking structure, but I quite like it. The fancy stepped gable detail is very reminiscent of Dutch "trapgevels" architecture. This is clearly a more upmarket or municipal building.
On the layout it currently sits directly opposite the Heljan Meat Packing Plant I built last
episode and it would seem fitting if this were the offices of the local
district council. Perhaps the fortunes of both entities are somewhat
intertwined.
Heljan 672 - Furniture Factory
I appear to be missing some of the parts to this model namely the base which includes a sort of loading dock. No matter, as this is going to be my "Tex Mex" restaurant in the style of Chiquitos or Nandos.
KleiWe - 202 Mietshaus (Tenement House)
Another
KleiWe kit, but this one is a lot less European in it's roof detail an
looks much more utilitarian. I'm thinking that this would be a perfect
fit as a police station. It sits on a dead end which will provide ample parking for the MFP liveried Falcon XBs that I intend to police Upper Carrom.
Kick her in the guts Barry!!
Auhagen 14475 Factory Building
This kit is still in production and readily available. Sadly I only have the rectangular administrative building part, but it will serve admirably as the Carrom College Halls of Residence.
Bizarrely this building had an entire set of windows with white frames instead of black. This will not do and so I have already ripped them out and will replace with carefully laser etched replacements.
Unknown Modern Warehouse x2
Despite some hours spent searching I could not identify the manufacturer or model of this kit. However, given that the rest of these models appear to be of german origin I expect this to be a long discontinued Faller or Pola kit. Please feel free to comment below if you know the origins.
For my layout it absolutely screams budget German supermarket so I am going to make it an Aldi. I have a second kit so if I get bored then I can always swap it out for a Lidl.
Bonus cardboard model - Builder Plus BPN9 Signalbox
I was surprised to find that hidden inside one of the buildings was this very dilapidated cardboard signal box. This will be perfect sitting on top of the tunnel mouth overseeing the small shunting area and the station platforms.
I understand that no railway architect in their right mind would ever dream of building a signal box on top of a tunnel and there is nowhere for the leverframes to go and all that real world stuff. But this is my layout and I want it to be visually interesting rather than an exercise in prototypical modelling.
This thing is too cute for school, especially as it has an interior. I feel it is only right and proper to do a full restoration and update it with some 3D printed replacement parts and lights.
I had never heard of the Builder Plus range but it was apparently part of PECO and after a bit of googling I discovered that some of the range is preserved in the Robert Freidus Paper Model Collection
Ressurection and Plug & Play
It is my intention to make all of these buildings as plug and play as possible and as I mentioned before my layout sits on top of a carrom table so there can be no dangling wires underneath the baseboard (as is tradition). This means I have to carve out channels in the MDF baseboard to snake the wires from my 5V USB powered chinesium distribution box through to each foundation and then terminate in a 2-pin female JST socket. Each building will then plug in with the matching male connecter and feed power to a hidden distribution circuitboard to which all the lights will be wired with the appropriate resistors.
I am taking this bold step because it will take me some time to ressurect each building one at a time and that is a much easier task if it is done at the workbench rather than huddled over the layout.
To make this a robust solution, I designed a JST baseboard adapter which can be glued onto the MDF and provide a sturdy location to seat each female socket.
I printed a bunch of these in resin fished the wires through the hole and glued them to the baseboard.
I bend over the pins of the JST socket before soldering on the wires. I have adopted consistent polarity for connecting the pins making it a trivial task to wire up the male JST plugs safe in the knowledge that they will always be the right way round.
What I love about the ubiquitous and cheap as chips JST connectors is that if you get this wrong you can quickly depin the plugs and swap around the wires.
Anyway here's a shot of one of my buildings with the JST socket baseboard adapter installed.
This is a free download from all the usual places including Thingiverse, Cults 3D, Printables. If you like it and find it useful please drop a comment and give it a like wherever you downloaded it from.
IMHO a 3D Printer is essential for most model hobbyists, they have never been more affordale and easier to use, as long as you have awell ventilated place to put it like a workshop or man cave then you should get one.
The cost savings of print your own models compared to commercially produced injection moulded kits or ready to run models just makes it a no brainer.
I found this selection of N gauge Rolling Stock models inspired by the PECO wagon on thingiverse and thought I would have a go at building my own rolling stock.
The kit of parts is great and offers a basic short 4 wheek wagon chassis comparable to the ones I already have in my collection which came with the starter set. On top of this can be fitted a choice of:
Box Van
Brake Van
Cattle Van
5 Plank Wagon
Tank Wagon
The kit also comes with two roofs for the brake van, and the cattle / box van and rapido style couplers.
Printing Advice
Supporting the model well is crucial. I chose to print my chassis flat side to the build plate, but I still added plenty of supports arount the edges, buffers and inside the coupler box to ensure a good print.
The wagon bodies have a short pair of keys which lock into 2 matching slots in the chassis so their is no flat surface and a similar support exercise is required. The roof is easier to support as noone will see the insides. The trickiest part to print were the bars on the cattle van, which are really too thin at this scale. When I reprint my cattle trucks I will likely recreate these slats in thin card.
Assembling a 3D Printed N Gauge Wagon Kit
Assembling the kit is a simple case of adding the couplers to the chassis and sealing the two halves together with your choice of body style.
Ready to Run models typically have sprung couplers but I had no tiny springs on hand, so created a simple spring from the thin transparent packaging that the wheels came in.
Cut to size and bent in the middle this provides enough "spring" to keep the couplers level.
The brake van has a specific roof with a stove vent whereas the cattle van and box van have a ventless roof.
What about wheels?
The kit does not come with wheels and whilst I have found some models to print I thought it best to buy these on one of my many aliexpress trips.
I found a seller offering 48 plastic wheel sets by Evemodel, that's enough for 24 wagons, for the princely sum of £5.49 + shipping. If you want metal wheel sets they are readily available but obviously more expensive.
The wheels fit neatly into the holes in the axle boxes of the chassis, although I did have to open up the rectangular pockets that the wheel flanges sit in to enable free running and end float. This was a trivial task with a small needle file, although care must be taken when fitting the wheels to avoid breaking the brake assembly detail.
Once assembled they look pretty convincing.
How do they run?
Pretty well as you can see in the video below. The couplers hang down a little, but with the addition of the little makeshift springs I think these will work very well on my layout.
It's high time that this layout got a name and it seems appropriate to call it Upper Carrom as it is quite literally above the Carrom Table.
Of course it wouldn't be a real railway station if it didn't have a railway station sign. There are plenty of places you can download but I wanted to model one myself and the technique I used to make my badges and the famous Okey Dokey sign is a great fit for what is a very simple design.
Use The GIMP
I have been a GIMP user for many years ever since Photoshop 5 and it is an awesome free alternative. Yes it has it's quirks but once you get used to them it's pretty much plain sailing and has everything I need in a bitmap image manipulator / Photo editor.
On a transparent layer floating above the white background layer, I added the station name using the text tool making sure that this was 100% black.
The basic name plaque lozenge shape is easy to create using the circle and rectangular select tools to create shapes on seperate layers filled with 100% opacity black. These were then merged together to create a single "half" which could be duplicated and flipped and then merged to create the whole lozenge.
The middle lozenge was just a repeat of the steps above. Do not merge the full width lozenges together at this stage. You shouls have 4 layers (from top down) Text, text lozenge, middle lozenge and finally the white background. Hide the text layer temporarily.
For each of the lozenges, select the black area and use the select > shrink command to reduce the selection to an appropriate size then fill this with white. Merge Down the sign lozenge onto the middle lozenge to create a single lozenge layer
Unhide the text layer. You should now have a black and white railway sign. Export this for Tinkercad as a png no larger than 1000px wide.
Finally select in the lozenge layer select everything outside the lozenge using the fuzzy select tool, invert the selection and create a new layer above the white background fill this with black. Turn off the layers above and export to png.
In Convertio
Convertio.co is a fantastic free web based converter tool. Just upload the two png files and convert these to SVG.
In Tinkercad
Import each of SVG files you have just created as "Art". Modify the height of the text layer so that the text and the border of the sign protrude protrudes out of the background.
Export your model as an STL for 3D Printing. Import this into your slicer (it will be big) and scale to your needs.
Obligatory Running Video
The first running of the newest addition to the ready-to-run rolling stock collection, a cheap aliexpress Canadian Government grain wagon... it's on loan okay.
This week, I are mostly been printing... Looot Boxes!!
I am lucky to have a bevvy of machines to do my bidding and enable me to print in both style, Fused Desposition Modelling (FDM) and Stereolithography (SLA). FDM is the perfect choice for projects like these boardgame organiser boxes.
This was a commissioned print for my colleague Stephen who is a mad keen boardgamer. I used some Geetech Silk filament one of the cheapest I could get from Ali Express and I was blown away by the smooth texture.
Definitely something I will look out for in the future.
One of the joys of being a boardgame collector is finding one of those long out of print games that only about 20 people admit to owning on BGG.
Waage Mut - Schmidt Spiele (1982)
I picked this up on one of my regular thrift shop trips for the princely sum of £2. Clearly this was some sort of manual dexterity / balancing game which is usually enough to make me run for the hills, "I'm looking at you Bausack!!"
However, the cover photo featuring a five armed plastic balancing spider intrigued me so it came home.
Google lens translates the box cover as - "LIBRA COURAGE - Anyone who doesn't weigh things up and bets wrong. blurs the victory".
An Incomplete Game
The risk of buying any game in a charity shop is that it comes with missing pieces. For a common game such as cluedo or monopoly this presents no problem as the pieces are readily available. However, the older and rarer a game gets the more difficult it becomes to acquire replacement parts.
This is where the 3D printer shines and so I quickly knocked up a replacement blue pawn in Sketchup
If you are missing a pawn you can download a free STL file from:
Of course having the abilitle to churn out replacement pieces means it is a trivial exercise to print out a whole 5th player set of pawns.
The Rules (English Translation)
Sadly the game does not come with rules in English and so Google Lens came to the rescue. I will be giving this to me my German friend Jonas who can do a proper translation.
LIBRA COURAGE
For 2 to 4 players ages 4 and up, fun for the whole family.
The
weights must be cleverly distributed in order to achieve as many points
as possible without the star. to cause it to tip over. Who doesn't
weigh up and. If you put it wrong, you lose your victory.
Preparation:
The
arms are attached to the center piece and the resulting star is
inserted into the stand. Each arm has 6 holes marked 1 (center of star)
to 6 (outermost edge).
Gameplay:
Each player receives 6 weights of one color (if there are only 2 players, each player receives 12 weights).
A
weight is alternately inserted into each hole. If the weight causes the
star to tip over, it is removed from the game and may no longer be
used.
Weights can also be "caught" by
placing your own on them. This is an advantage, especially with weights
with high points (in holes 5 or 6).
The
game round ends when all players have set their weights. Each game
consists of as many rounds as there are players, so that everyone has
the advantage of placing the last weight.
Evaluation:
Each
weight is evaluated based on the score of the respective hole. If
several weights are stuck in a hole (they have been “caught”), all
points are added together and they are credited to the player with the
highest weight.
Whoever was able to collect the most points won.
More Photos
A Potential Roleplaying Puzzle?
Imagine a scenario where each player enters a large chamber at a different arm of the balancing beam. Looking down they see only darkness. Their goal is on the center pedestal, they must combine their movement to ensure that the beam stays balanced and they can get to the center.
When they fall do they fall to their deaths or just disappear into the darkness?
To add some peril have some wandering creatures like spiders move onto each of the arms.
At my regular friday club Dragons Keep UK we are 10 weeks into a year long Call of Cthulu and I have only just gotten round to printing and painting my character mini...
Bunty Rothschild - Heiress and Supernatural Investigator
Bunty's Story
Her early life in the Hamptons was idylic, being the daughter of the extended Rothschild family the world was her oyster as long as that meant marrying into one of the other rich families that Daddy knew.
Whe she was 16 she was packed off to Paris to study at the famous Sorbonne finishing schools. However, far from the withering gaze of her father she developed a rebellious streak that even the legendary Madame Guillaume couldn't tame out of her.
With the outbreak of war she and her American classmates were shipped back to the USA like refugees. Her father being far too busy with the business of supporting the war effort left her to live in the family's 5th Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park.
Of course Bunty was soon getting up to mischief and found herself fronting various high society illicit parties on behalf of the Italian Gandolfini Syndicate. Her taste for risk and danger often saw her accompanying the boys on a rum run and her skills with the Chicago Typewriter made her invaluable to Don Luigi.
Unfortunately, her success came to an abrupt end when the syndicate fell under the beady eyes of Izzy and Moe, who operated the New York office of the famous untouchables. She was lifted by the cops in a sting operation and only managed to avoid incarceration due the sworn testimony of her Uncle and New York State Supreme Court Judge.
Tired of his wayward daughter's antics, her father gabe her an ultimatum. Either she married into one of the respectable wealthy society families or she got herself a job.
Whilst Bunty ruminated on the two equally unnatractive options facing her, fate had other plans. A chance reading of the New York Tribune classifieds saw her embark on a steamship to Lima, Peru.
He asked me if I could make some badges for the event. I thought that this would be a great way to learn how to use my new Laser Cutter Engraver.
Stephen created a design in two parts, an etch file with his meeple logo and a cut file with a series of 30mm circles which would be the badge. Registration marks in two opposite corners made sure that Illustrator would not trim the images to just the internal drawing.
LaserGRBL
I am currently using LaserGRBL which has support for SVG from inkscape but this is an experimental feature so the files were exported as PNG.
The Cut File
The cut file was uploaded into LaserGRBL and I used the centreline option to vectorize a cut path. This was slightly problematic in that the on the very top and bottom row of circles the line hit the edge of the page and vectorizing broke the cut path.
Pardon the pun, but there is definitely a learning curve when creating files for the laser cutter. The next attempt will have some whitespace between the design and the registration marks.
I imported this at 120mm/min and a laser power of 95%
The Etch file
Importing the etch file I opted to go for the Line to Line Tracing option at a speed of 500mm/min and a laser power of 95%
The Material
I had some scrap MDF sheet left over from some DIY project. This measured 2.8mm thick and I mounted it on my workspace with Duck Double Sided Tape (Boy this stuff is sticky)
Laser Engraving
I was reasonably pleased with the engraving which took just over 20 minutes with one pass. I initially tried 1000mm/min but the laser threw an error about two thirds of the way through and it would not recommence. I think that it must have run into a buffer problem or the speed was too high. I have not done any testing on speeds as yet so this may be part of my learning curve.
The only downside with the Line to Line Trace option is that it prints like a conventional printer and you get jaggy curves (there's no anti-aliasing as far as I can tell)
Laser Cutting
This is where I fall down, hard. With any new technology or tool you just have to learn what works and what doesn't. I have no idea if I am using the software correctly, if my laser is focused correctly, how many passes I should be making, should I be using Air Assist, if my material is at fault or even if I am expecting too much. There are so many variables.
After 4 passes and 160 minutes of cutting I gave up in frustration.
Resin 3D Printer to the Rescue
This job still needed to be completed as delivery is scheduled for the following day. 45 minutes later these bad boys came off the Photon Mono 4K.
Designed for use with my Compact Travel Dice Tower you can make this magnetically attach to the tower so you are never seperated from the ultimate inspiration coin.
This week, I are mostly been printing... A Giant Keeper of Secrets!!
Well this is another commissioned print by me and an amazing paintjob from Sam, my fellow founder at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club. I'll let the pictures do the talking but suffice to say that a few short years ago all of this was impossible...
Daemon Damzels Queen Lillith the Keeper of Secrets - Keta Minies
This week, I are mostly been printing... A Compact Travel Dice Tower!!
When I found out last week that a new modelling competion had launched on Printables, I had to have a go and enter my first 3D modelling competition. I don't expect to win or even get any award at all. I am just entering for the experience and the badge.
When you're gaming on the go you don't want to be lugging around a hefty chunk of plastic or having some huge lump taking up valuable space in your games bag. The travel dice tower is just the thing.
I designed this for D&D or other RPGs which use the standard 20mm (d20) sized polyhedral dice. The dice tower is big enough to safely store a set of 7 dice.
The "Slide" comes in two varieties solid or grill or can be replaced by a 2mm thick sheet of perspex or acrylic if you truly want that high visibility look. This is a work in progress so expect more designs to come in the future.
The backside of the insert includes a 50mm indent to magnetically attach an Inspiration or Hero Coin for your chosen RPG. Check out my other models for inspiration coins:
I have also produced a few 50mm "Inspiration" counters for some of the more popular roleplaying games and these can be fixed to your dice tower magnetically. Coins are actually the simplest dice of all so you get a bonuus d2 if you download the matching coin for your favourite RPG.
If you are a boardgamer then you will appreciate a solid 1st player token.
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.
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
