rocjaws-curated-collection - Tumblr blog

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Using the foam cutter, managed to get much smoother shapes- and using dirt from the garden, a much more realistic earth texture. Would highly recommend for all your basing purposes- looking forward to seeing these on the table!

[rocjaws-curated-collection]

Your best bet is to scroll my mini factory or thingiverse and see what's something you want to add to your collection. Miniatures of every kind are available - the paid ones on MMF are generally better fits for a resin printer than filament- but there's so much choice you have to narrow it down. A hero unit or complex monster is my advice there, themed after your personal collection. Dragons are always fun!

Alternatively, you can do terrain pieces- from rough stone blocks or tree trunks that work great as filament, to intricate branching flora or bizarre fungal abominations. Openforge is great if you do DND or other dungeon crawls, ruin bits are good for wargames.

Another option is spell effects or objective markers- print a lightning storm or treasure chest or warp stone growth. Or, you can branch into tools of some kind - print holders or cases or dice towers and the like. Stagetop is really cool as a play surface, but it needs a lot of material and durability so if you don't have filament I'd skip it.

Now that I have my 3d printer working and can semi consistently make it work, I have no idea what to actually use it for. I want to start a cool new painting project but I have no idea what to do. Thoughts, anyone?

[rocjaws-curated-collection]

Did a little more work on the terrain tiles, but they came out a touch janky due to struggles with carving the foam with a bread knife.

Not bad, but a little harsh lines and some odd looking bits where the foam isn't smooth, so I finally decided to cough up the cash for a decent hot wire foam cutter.

With a little luck, I should be able to start creating some more consistent shapes and smoother slopes. I've also been watching videos on other implementations of this, and I'm going to try some new tricks for the dirt on the next one. Wish me luck!

[rocjaws-curated-collection]

Another bit of openforge stuff- Sewer tiles from Masterwork tools. Built these a while back for an urban questline, but it's been a hot sec since my players were fighting slimes in the sewer so I never built out the set anymore. Someday, perhaps.

[rocjaws-curated-collection]

Got that tree from Cast n Play finished. While I've got a pretty good collection of rough tree trunk markers (examples below) at some point I'd like to expand my collection enough to decorate my terrain with full sized vegetation.

[rocjaws-curated-collection]

I liked the openforge system enough that when I decided to make some more natural terrain, I carved up the foam board and attached individual squares to the bases so I could attach them with magnets and rearrange the battlefield to be different each time. After that, just followed a basic guide to grassy mini bases.

While the lines between tiles are quite distinct, I've found I rather like that as it's easy to judge distance without having to mark a grid or pull out a tape measure. Keeping tiles from 2x2 to 4x4 inches makes it easy to tell how many squares across it is without losing room for detail within the lines.

[rocjaws-curated-collection]

One of my first experiments with 3d printed terrain- modular dungeon tiles by Masterwork tools using the open forge system. I've added quite a bit to my collection since then, but those basic walls and dungeon stone floors are solid placeholders for anything artificial or cavernous.

[rocjaws-curated-collection]

Another board game set, from a year or so back- Betrayal at the house on the hill, 3rd Ed. While it's not super overt, I'm rather proud of the OSL I managed on the purple mini; it's one of the better jobs I've done on portraying light I think.

Side note, if you're somehow the kind of person who's ended up with this in their feed and hasn't played Betrayal, I absolutely recommend it. It's a little like a cross between playing a Scooby Doo episode and a goosebumps book, where each time you play it's a different storyline. The new edition cleans up a lot of the friction points and adds some fun new mechanics too!.

[rocjaws-curated-collection]

The wash is probably my favorite part of painting miniatures. The sheer difference in vibrancy and dimension is kind of stunning considering how little effort the wash is- like if you have a large enough can you can just dunk it and shake off the excess, and as soon as it dries? Shadows, depth, detail you didn't even realize the model had just appear out of nowhere.

[rocjaws-curated-collection]

Starting a new piece, 3d printed from the Cast n Play terrain collection.

[rocjaws-curated-collection]

Just finished up painting the miniatures for the Unmatched boardgame. I think they came out well! Great quality minis too- down to the numbers on the watch and icon on Arthur's shirt.

[rocjaws-curated-collection]

To start off the new blog, here's the first miniature I ever painted, and one of my most recent additions!