Well now it has been a while hasn't it.
I find myself waxing nostalgic and I remembered I was once a
blogger among my many other hobbies. Since the middle of October maybe before I’ve
been pretty heavily occupied. It started of course with several commissions
from fairly large miniatures manufacturers. But it quickly escalated as December,
the holidays, and my wedding day arrived.
At this point I haven’t worked on my models in months which
saddens me. I’m also sad that some of
the commission work I’ve done hasn’t actually been released yet. In particular
the defense lines from Chapter House’s kickstarter which were an extensive
product I’m proud of. Still I am not in control
of that stuff so I shouldn’t let it bug me.
I’ve had a lot of requests for different designs, mostly
space marine bits. I’ll fill these in bit by bit as I get the chance. My work schedule has imploded due to layoffs
so my free time is not what it was. But
I still enjoy this part of the hobby. Truthfully I think the 3d modeling and
printing is more fulfilling than playing 40k for me since 6th
edition launched. I’d personally like to go off on a rant about how GW’s hodge
podge releases are killing the game or how their disguising the price hikes as
mini-rereleases sickens me but truthfully my vested interest is pretty much at
an end. I can’t really feel angry at
Games Workshop for their business plan anymore, it’s just, sad.
But all that is unimportant when we are talking about 3d
printing miniatures.
I’d like to firstly say I get way to many “copy this” requests. I think I’ve become a magnet for such
requests because my big starting project was space marine shoulder pads which
are arguably copied designs. (I disagree by definition the addition of any amount
of creativity makes things unique designs and I believe I had done that, but I digress). My point here is I’m going to have to be more
discriminatory on this issue. Companies
like Games Workshop are being more restrictive on such issues but even companies
that make real world products would have recourse for legal action on the issue
if they cared. Mainly I’m inclined to
lean towards simply producing original designs or variants with high degrees of
originality. People are free to request anything they want but I encourage you
to also consider that I’m free to refuse requests as well.
Secondly I get a lot and I mean a lot of requests for
pictures of my products. I’ve been
pretty torn on this issue for a long time.
I have had these requests pretty much from day one on Shapeways. On the one hand I agree it’s a bit miss
leading to put up digital images of a product to be ordered in print. On the other hand I’ve said before I don’t
have a camera that will take good miniatures photos. There is something bigger at work here
though. Put simply I don’t have time or
money enough to order prints of every single product. And many things I wouldn’t order prints of
even if I had all the money in the world.
I don’t want copies of everyone’s custom shoulder pads and I don’t have
the need for 500 swords. Even further beyond that is simply I don’t want to
take a thousand photos. I’m not a
salesman. I make miniatures for the fun
of it. Taking it seriously and treating
it like a business takes that fun away. It was a nice lark to have
Chapterhouse, Blood and Skulls, and others treat me as a professional but this
is a hobby to me. I don’t take pictures
of my 40k armies and stick them online I’m not going to do it with the bits I make
either. Now this does make things a bit
awkward at times, hard to imagine bits and such can be problematic. I’ll be
making adjustments as needed upon request and maybe that’s not good enough for
some but It’s the best I can do. At least until I no longer have a home to take
care of, a wife to love, a job to go to, and at least a dozen other hobbies to indulge
(maybe if I kick one of the hobbies I might take up miniature photography).
On a happier note, I’m officially buying a 3d printer. Specifically a peachy printer. The peachy guys were kind enough to let me
pledge late to their kickstarter so I’ll be getting one in a few months. The peachy printer is a high detail photo-resin
printer that uses laser pointers to solidify resin. It’s oddly sound driven with a water drip
system to control the z axis which are really unique features. The important point is they are affordable. Not affordable like companies often claim
where you have to spend 2 or 3 paychecks to make the down payment but actually affordable,
about twice the cost of a standard printer. It uses Blender for its model
output which saddens me but I can deal with importing models from a good
software package into blender. Its
detail resolution is about .2mm at the moment and they are trying to improve
that. This is roughly analogous to Frosted Ultra Detail but its resin meaning
it has no frosted surface and could theoretically be printed smooth. Once I receive this printer I intend to do
several things. First, dance around
happily. Second, lament for days about
where to set it up, likely getting yelled at by my wife everytime I try to take
over the living room coffee table so I can play with it and watch tv. Third, I want to test print some of my
catalogue of miniatures, specifically some full figures I’m working on, stuff
that really needs tested for sizing before being sent off to Shapeways. Forth,
I hope to test some of my larger designs, Shapeways is prohibitively expensive
to print large things like vehicles so I’d like to try and test some that might
eventually be sent off to a design studio for casting.
Anyway that’s a good update for now.
