These last few weeks have been a bit of a struggle. Covid has left me suffering with fatigue, lack of focus, demotivation and shortness of breath. I have been doing small stabs at hobby, but I haven’t had the enthusiasm to really get stuck in with the painting.
I have been making progress with Blender, 3d modelling software. And I am attempting to rig, basically putting a skeleton inside the figure, my model which will make posing a lot easier.
I have been making some tools for my workshop. I always need clamps for glueing and I have been eyeing up some right angle aids on that fabulous far eastern trader. My aim was to avoid plastic and as I had a lot of spare wood scavenged from the Happylab bins I thought I would attempt to make my own.
I am now working on a bigger version of this now.
The weather has been going from snow to sunshine and back again in a day.
I have had some nice walks when the weather has been clement. My mood improves after being out.
I have finished building the modular tiles for my 4 x 4 modular ruined city table. Now to slap some paint on them.
My neighbour, who is a bit of a perfectionist, took ten hours to deconstruct my Ender3 3D printer and rebuild it totally square. The difference is amazing and I will be posting some pictures soon.
There you have it. A brief catch up on what has been happening.
The last couple of weeks have seen me busy. My 3D Printer has decided it wants to start behaving again so for the last week it has been printing pretty constanty. It is slightly stringy but I don’t want to mess with the settings just yet. The strings can be dealt with pretty easily with a scalpel and file. I have managed to print an elemental cavalry unit for one of my Dragon Rampant armies, a skeletal giant for another DR army and on the print bed at the moment is an Ork Gobsmasher, a replica of an old Armourcast model. All of these are freely available from http://www.thigiverse.com. Next up is a replica of another Armourcast model, the Warhound Titan. The originals don’t come up for sale much and when they do they are quite expensive. You can see some images of the Titan here
Tool making was next on the agenda. Number Two Son has been watching “The Mandalorian” and loves the helmet the protaganist wears. He also discovered on Youtube a cosplay video where they described in great detail, with downloadable plans, how they made one out of EVA foam. He would like us (me I expect) to make it. One of the tools they used was a rounded metal former. I had a cut off section of railway track and with a bit of work with an angle-grinder I ended up with this.
I have a rusty H Beam section which will get the same treatment.
A recent discovery (thanks Daughter!) has been the app, “Wish” where you can buy goods directly from the factories in China. I bought a 2m strip of LEDs for €3, that was including postage! I added them to my photo thing.
This is how it was originallyNow with added lights!
This has been expanded with a paper holder on the back and trays underneath if I want to do some more scenic photography. I will be getting some photographs printed up with dramatic skies. The light is a little yellow but I did a manual white balance on my camera and my first test result seems promising.
I am keeping up with my New Year Resolution, so far and also the 2020 painting Challange.
If doing basic carpentry, remember to keep your fingers BEHIND! the chisel.
Then there is my new paintrack. I had been running out of space for my paints and I had promised the Boys that they would have a paint rack in their painting desk. So they get my old one and I get a shiny new one.
Last year I stepped into the exciting world of 3D with an Ender 3 printer. It hasn’t been an easy ride, it is something that needs a big learning curve. It doesn’t quite work straight out of the box, requiring some tinkering. Also having an antiquated computer doesn’t allow for the installation of modern slicing software. The whole process has been a slightly frustrating hit and miss experience.
Here is my printer set up
I seem to collect rule-sets in the vain hope that my Boys might want to play with me or that someone in the area would have an interest in playing. HINT: if anyone in the Salzburg area would like to game, I have a nice gaming area and multiple rule-sets.
One set of rules that caught my eye and seemed to have a following, in the UK at least, was Dragon Rampant by Daniel Mersey. One of the rulebooks published by Osprey publishing. Osprey are producing some interesting and inexpensive rules covering a very broad church of areas. Worth checking out.
This interested me as you could play a game with nice streamlined rules and build an army with relatively few miniatures. I have enough Orcs and Goblins kicking about to make an army with zero expenditure. A friend, David Wood, scored a massive haul of Essex Miniatures Undead and sent me his spares. Some minor expenditure and voila a beautifully sculpted Bob Olley Undead army. A recent Kickstarter provided me with most of a Renaissance army.
If you are not aware of Thingiverse and are into 3D printing I would recommend that you go and visit. It is stuffed to the rafters with Arduino projects, electronics and workshop tutorials and of course 3D printer files.
Browsing through this cornucopia of stuff, this place is brilliant for gaming accessories, I came across some Mud Elementals. They looked so cute I had to print one.
And then another.
And another.
Soon an army emerged.
The Leader I had some issues with layers so I may reprint.Elite FootMagic UserBellicose FootHeavy FootLight Foot
I have another unit of these guys waiting for armsLight ArtilleryRavening Horde
Scaled down foot troops
This year hasn’t been terribly productive for me. May comes along terribly quickly and then for three months I’m tied down with Electric Love which takes all my energies then the end of the year seems to arrive before I know it.
My Mighty Fortress addons have been popular, but not enough to retire on. But apart from that I haven’t made anything of note. This has been partly a lack of confidence/laziness and intimidation from seeing other company’s work. And partly due to depression.
I got myself a new toy.
My set up
It is the Ender 3 from Creality, It seems to be taking the 3D printing world by storm, a combination of price and quality. It is still not good enough for miniatures, for that I’ll need a resin printer, but for scenery and vehicles it’ll do. If you apply the “Three foot rule”. I’ll post results next year. I’ve made some modifications, fan covers, LEDs, stepper motor dampers and bed handle. Next up will be TL Smoothers. I’ve been hitting Thingiverse, there’s a lot of interesting bits there for free. I’ve been printing some APCs for my Not Imperial Guard Army.
I have just been given a Laptop and I am getting to grips with it (PC 😦 ) because I’d like to get back into 3D modelling, something I used to do twenty years ago. I think the future is 3D modelling and digital distribution. For me a combination of laser cut, 3D and vac forming will make some very interesting models.
I don’t have a product of the year this year. I have invested in Kill Team and Blackstone Fortress (gorgeous models) from GeeDub. But painting or playing them hasn’t happened. I do plan to make a Kill Team demo game for Austrian Salute. I have played a couple of games of Tanks with Number One Son and they have been fun. My big time sponge has been a Playstation 4 gifted to me by my Daughter. I have been playing Destiny 2 but have been getting frustrated as there seems to be no story to it and you have to be online to play. The downloads for it are huge and I can’t play them unless I pay. The Nessus world is gorgeous and I’ll be copying the style for my Kill Team Board.
I have been resisting buying figures (ok ignoring Kill Team and Blackstone Fortress) because I am so behind on my painting. The Dragon didn’t get touched and I have Alpine Dwarfs and a Gnome army to finish. I have been sooo tempted by an Athurian army from Footsore miniatures but I don’t have anyone to play against and I’ll never paint it.
Best wishes for the New Year to my regular readers, my lurkers (Hello Ruth!), my randoms (WTF do you have in common with me?), anyone else who stumbled across this and the one follower who I am sure is a dog.
genuine grumpy old tin 