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Turdle Adventurers Dragonlock Miniatures

I do not know what it is about turtle miniatures but I absolutely love them. These are some of my absolute favorite from the Fat Dragon Game collection and I love the feel of them. I’ve previously printed the Fat Dragon Game Turdle Fighter collection and love them. I can’t wait paint these guys and find an excuse to have them on my tabletop to play.

Turdle Miniature Print Data

Layer Height: 0.08
Plate Adhesion: Majority of time used 6mm brim with no supports
Orientation: Vertical with base flat on bed
Filament: Hatchbox Silver
Printed On Prusa i3 MK3s
Print Profile: Very Modified Version of Cura 4.6 “Offical_FDG_Cura_ender3_and5miniatures_4mm” from The FatDragonGames website

File NamePrint TimeEstimated Material UsedMisc Notes
Turdle_04 (Bow)1 hr 53 min5gGreat looking Mini! Very proud of it
Turdle_05 (Staff)1 hr 51 min5gAlso a great looking mini, oops staff broke. (Repairs quickly). Could potentially work on bridging of under shell and very slight retraction from staff to body
Turdle_06 A (Axe)
Turdle_6 B (Sheild)		1 hr 42 min5gI think i’m going to paint the mini before I attach the shield. I absolutely love the bedroll on top of this mini

Where to Find STLs

Dragonlock Miniature store via DrivethroughRPG. Vendor images are from Fat Dragon Game Website.

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Oxidation Beast Dragonlock Miniatures

Special Note: The Oxidation Beast also known as a Rust Monster in Dungeons and Dragons is considered a medium sized monstrosity. If you wish to keep the miniature in a 1″ scale for tabletop gameplay you will have to resize the creature. This model originally has a size of 26.9566 mm x 35.1585 mm x 16.3927 mm. Since the X-axis and Y-axis is greater than 25.4 mm scaling the monster down is more accurate. Reducing to a 71.11% size of its original provides dimensions of 19.1679 mm x 25 mm x 11.6563 mm.

This is on the agenda to do but currently the print data below is for a full sized Oxidation Beast as I forgot to scale it down…. twice.

Oxidation Beast Miniature Print Data


Layer Height: 0.08
Filament: Hatchbox Silver
Orientation: Flat with base on bed
Printed On Prusa i3 MK3s
Print Profile: Cura 4.6 “Offical_FDG_Cura_ender3_and5miniatures_4mm” from The FatDragonGames website

File NamePrint TimeEstimated Material UsedMisc Notes
Oxidation_Beast1 hr 23 min3gPrinted twice, accidently forgot to scale down for accurate sizing regarding Dungeons and Dragons stat blocks. I do like the model not having a gab at the base for easier painting.

Where to Find STLs

Dragonlock Miniature store via DrivethroughRPG. Vendor images are from Fat Dragon Game Website.

Market Images from FatDragonGames Website

crazmadsci Battle Maps

Are you Ready to Battle! The silly tale of needing a DnD group.

You know that we really need a Dungeons and Dragons group running when out of the blue my husband (bolded) goes…

“Lets D&D Battle!”

“Whats a D&D Battle?”

“We pick a team of monsters and fight off to the death”

Ok, ok. That really isn’t how it happened nor do I remember exactly how the event started but yet it did. My husband and I drafted each a team of monsters, built a battle map, and fought 3 times.

I got to pull out the dungeon tiles I worked on! Mental note was that I realized that I really need more dungeon floors printed, ahh another project put on the list. My collection of dungeon tiles are predominately city scapes (tavern and sewer) because last campaign I was building for the published Wizards of the Coast campaign “Waterdeep Dragonheist.” Alias I digress…

The rules were simple:


1. Our team of monsters had to have a combined Challenge Rating (CR) of equal to 5 or smaller.

2. We could at a maximum have 6 monsters on our team.

3. Stat blocks used have to be from published 5e Wizards of the Coast Materials.

We picked our teams…

For my team (left image): I picked a Bronze Dragon, Thug, Kenku, Gazer, Orc, and Apprentice Wizard

For husband’s team (right image): He picked 2 short sword Skeletons (using spears on minis), Two Skeleton Archers, a Priest, and a Gargoyle

I even worked on some Stat block cut outs to make it easier to play with so many monsters simultaneously. There goes another project. The papers worked great but i’m going to add them to notecards to be more durable and sortable in the future.

Here are some pictures of the event!

Overall we had a lot of fun. I got my butt kicked with only 1 win out of 3. Moral of the story my group really needed to stick together as they work more cohesively as a group. My husband is even more motivated to cheer me on to make more dungeon tiles so we can have more exciting battles in the future. Putting the tiles away has been a pain in the butt, but im working on a better organizational system! I also feel the need to learn Frostgrave or something to scratch the itch more for a dungeon group since it looks like i’m not going to have one anytime soon. At least it is more time to craft!


Things i’ve learned:

  • Gargoyles have a lot of health
  • I hate spiritual weapon
  • Gazers although cool don’t do a lot of damage
  • I really like thugs as enemies, especially with allies

Let me know what you guys think. I am happy to label or shout of the sources of any of the tiles or monsters. Have any ideas on things we can play as two people? Help me grow my game knowledge.

crazmadsci Uncategorized

How to Transfer Your Paint. Dropper Bottles All the Way!

Picture of the Finished Project

I finally did it! I finally transferred all my P3 and Citadel paint to dropper bottles! I’m beyond pumped. In case you do not know, miniature paint brands such as P3 and citadel put paint in containers which are not easy to retrieve paint from to put on my wet palette. For a long time I always though citadel paint bottles you were supposed to directly paint from due to their design with lid collected paint for easy retrieval, but discovered the magic of thinning your paint a bit over a year ago.

The brands of paint I transferred


If you have not done so I highly recommend doing it. I have had a terrible time with Citadel paints drying out and never lasting due to the difficulty of closing the lid completely. P3 paints have always been so hard for me to use out of the bottle. I ended up using a lot of toothpicks to transfer paint to my wet pallet and always wasted so much in the process. Overtime I naturally gravitated to the paints that were already in bottles like Vallejo Model Color and Army Painter. So I finally pulled the trigger to investigate a better solution.

I spent a good deal of time watching YouTube videos on how to transfer and why. Here is a list of a few that I found useful and why.

Spikey Bits Youtube channel: I loved this video due to giving ideas on assembly line transferring.

Epic Duck Studios: Gave me the confidence to pour directly from paint bottle to dropper bottle

RobPaintsModels: He uses a funnel into the dropper bottle if you are not confident.

Material List

Stainless Steel Nail Polish Mixing Agitator Balls

Liquitex Professional Flow Aid

15 ml Empty Plastic Eye Liquid dropper Bottles

3mL Disposable Plastic Eye Droppers

toothpicks

Optional: Stainless Steel mini funnels

Method

  1. Take the paint bottle you want to transfer and sit next to a dropper bottle without a lid. Shake paint up well or use a toothpick and stir if it is too separated.
  2. Detach the lid of the paint bottle from the container. Although not required and I personally rarely did so, this helps spilling as the lid could drip while you are pouring.
  3. Check to see how viscous the paint is. If paint is stiff and not much flow go to step 4. If you feel like you can already pour it into the bottle go ahead and do so.
  4. Using the Flow Aid use the plastic eye dropper to transfer approximately 1 mL of material to the paint. If you feel like your hand is too shaky you can pour into the stainless steel funnel listed above. I did not do this and surprisingly found it easy to not spill.
    • Special Note: I found that my citadel paints were significantly dried out and required approximately 2 mL of flow aid. P3 paint was significantly easier and did not need as much
    • Special Note Part 2: Sometimes if your paint bottle already has paint coming off the side the paint would flow down the bottle instead of into the dropper bottle. Simply rotate the paint container so the paint will not flow down that path to elevate the issue.
    • You can absolutely add more flow aid slowly depending on your personal preference of thickness in your paint.
  5. Using the toothpick I would direct paint into the dropper bottle and help scoop out more (think like a spatula but for paint). You can also continue to slowly add more flow aid to your paint. However be careful to not water your paints down too much.
  6. Continue doing so until dropper bottle is full or you are happy with the amount of paint removed from the bottle.
  7. Add a stainless steel ball to the bottle. This is useful to shake up the paint in the future.
  8. Add the dropper and lid to the dropper bottle to close it up.
  9. You can slowly remove the label from the original paint container to the dropper bottle. This was incredibly easy for citadel paints and P3 paints took more patience. This is of course a nice final touch and great for documentation sake in the future.
  10. You are done. Keep repeating the steps and you are good to go!

Overall the process was not difficult but took some time to do. It took me approximately 3 to 4 hours to over 20 bottles but my household was full of distractions. Also I only needed 1 3ml eye dropper but bought a package previously as I use them for creating my own washes.

Now that all my paint is of a uniform size I can work on making a nice paint holder for it too! Next up, organizing my paint.

I hope you found this helpful. If you have anything to add, don’t hesitate to say something in the comments.

crazmadsci Uncategorized

Week in Review: July 10, 2020

This was the week of “Lets do all the projects.” Planning a ton of different things with way too many half written posts than I want to admit. I have been learning and growing seeing how much the 3d community has changed in the year I took off or so. I have been doing a deep dive into 3d printer calibration and fine tuning. In many ways it has made me feel like “how the hell have I been printing for all these years?” Overall it has been super interesting to read all the different perspectives on how to print, how to calibration, what order you should calibrate etc etc etc.

Moral of the Story. Much like and hobby, there are many ways to accomplish your goals.

I event printed for awhile in a 0.15 mm nozzle. I worked on calibration for that for a bit but decided that I wanted to finish my dragonlock project at a 0.4mm nozzle and the castle before I deep dive. Giving myself plenty of projects to paint while the printer is slow going and I can truly focus on mastery for the Perfect Mini.

Projects in Action

3d printed:

  • Benchy with a 0.15mm nozzle
  • Calibration cubes different nozzle diameters
  • My first extruder multiplier cube. note vase printing mode is super cool and I should investigate further.

Painted

I’ve been watching a ton of videos on wood painting effects and am attempting to try a few. So far I’m not a big fan, or I really need to work on my technique. Hoping to do a few more and then posting about it.
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I’ve also been attempting to hunt down some more variety in my paint for more layering. Some of the things i want to paint i’ll have to do hundreds of times which is why i’m not mixing paints.

Miscellaneous

Oh my husband wanted to have a Battle of the Monsters and we went 1 on 1 with hand drafted monsters for an epic battle with some of my dungeon tiles spontaneously this week. It might be a trend.

Lots and Lots of organization. I’ve been attempting to create specific pages to sort some of my posts long term for easy to navigate information.

I’ve been trying to keep a database of all my paints so I can post the colors more easily on painting posts with a better visual of their tone and also so I have a directory of what I know I have for when I got to the store. I am also compiling a directory of all the paint charts of the various brands so if i’m hunting for a particular tone I can try to know what i’m looking for before I buy it.

I even braved Covid to go to Lowes! In an attempt to help reduce vibration on my prints I went to get a paving stone. TLDR: It didn’t help much.

Due to Calibration and tweaking. I have not worked on the Dragonlock Miniature project.

Well this week is a Wrap. I feel of moderate success but it is exciting to have my husband enjoying the things i’ve made and making it incredibly encouraging to keep working.

crazmadsci Uncategorized

So Much to Do So Little Time

Time for some self-reflection.

Starting this blog and project of documentation I have become so excited and passionate to start SO many projects. It is honestly super thrilling to have so many ideas bouncing around my head. Even the little bit i’ve shared of this blog has seen so much more support than I ever imagined. I hope this to one day be a place which will spring board creativity, research and knowledge to all the incredible resources that are out there for tabletop gaming.


However, This week alone I feel like a person at Thanksgiving Dinner seeing all the food, filling my plate and once I sit down go… “OH SHIT, I can’t eat it all”. Trying to pause and think, “What should I accomplish and really tackle first?”

I have ideas of becoming more than just a blog where posts get lost as more and more gets written. I strategize of standard pages such as “Terrain, Miniatures, Calibration, Troublshooting etc” which will be a go to location for each thing linking to blog posts which go deeper into the topic. I hope to eventually have a page for individual monster types with a Lore spotlight, printing and painting history of every different version of that monster I have ever done. For example there are so many creators and incredible sculptors who have done different variations of the Goblin. Wouldn’t be be great to see what is out there, what is free, where to get it?

I want to start dialogues about the rising tensions of FDM vs SLA for miniature figures. The frustrations of an analytical mind and the rising “Scale creep” of miniatures for easier printing.

I want to build and flesh out battlemaps of published campaigns for DMs to have an exact print list of what is required making it easy for planning and assembly. I want to have conversations about “Should you build a whole battle map?” “When is it important?” “Whole walls vs Half Walls?” etc etc etc.


My mind is racing with the possibilities.

I hope that people will critique me as I try to improve my painting techniques and be a testament to the journey of improvement.

I need to be patient, keep plugging along and flesh this out. I hope to help others grow too. More importantly I hope to make friends.

For the community that is out there. Do not hesitate to make a request or comment!

Angry Ball of Eyes
crazmadsci Uncategorized

Angry Ball of Eyes Dragonlock Miniatures

This miniature was super easy to print and comes in several pieces for easy assembly. My favorite aspects are the paint stand which will be incredibly useful when painting and how the base will be easy to reach to paint. The mouth is open in the back of the front piece to more easily paint the inside of the gaping mouth and tongue (WIN!). I only used the Large Peg in this STL folder as it fit perfect in the model. There is also a small peg file which i did not use. I can’t wait to paint this guy!

Angry Ball of Eyes Miniature Print Data


Layer Height: 0.08
Printed On Prusa i3 MK3s
Filament: Hatchbox PLA Silver
Print Profile: Cura 4.6 “Offical_FDG_Cura_ender3_and5miniatures_4mm” from The FatDragonGames website

Abbreviations: Angry Ball of Eyes (ABE)

File NamePrint TimeEstimated Material UsedMisc Notes
ABE_Base3hr 3 min10gPrint was very nice. Some small nit picky 1st layers issues on bottom but unnoticeable
ABE_PaintStand2 hr 2 min5gDid not need to print at a fine layer height but I wasn’t paying attention
ABE_LargePeg13 min1gFit model perfectly. Did without a brim for a nice fit
ABE_Front and Back5 hr 36 min22gAlso printed without a brim since there was enough surface area on the model for a great adhesion and would keep the model cleaner. Teeth on front game out great.

Where to Find STLs

Dragonlock Miniature store via DrivethroughRPG. Vendor images are frome Fat Dragon Game Website.

  • Angry Ball of Eyes $2.99
crazmadsci Uncategorized

Kenku Miniature Painting

The miniature I painted last week was a Heroforge miniature of a Kenku. Previously i needed Kenku bandits for a D&D campaign but miniatures of the more rare races are harder to find. So therefore I designed this miniatures from Heroforge which is a great place to go to mess with a custom model to export an STL or order a printed miniature if you wish.

This miniature was printed on a FormLab2 SLA printer from my previous job. The mini was printed face down which really messed up the front of the miniature making it hard to clean up and paint.

The focus of this paint job was to attempt to have more layers on my mini, In particular the cape which is one of the only sections of the mini i’m really proud of.

For this paint job the mini was can spray primed Gray (visible color on the base)

I realized I own only 3 real variants of blue paint and decided to predominately work with Game Color’s Stormy Blue. Mixing with various rations Black & White paint to create more layers. Overall I attempted to have 5 layers. I believe I could have used more contract overall “Lighter Light and Darker Dark” on the cape itself.

I also realized i’m not as much of a fan of the Bloodstone P3 paint as it really stood out on the bow itself and bracers. I should layered it more or mixed it to make a more subtle color difference.

Overall Colors I can remember are:
Stormy Blue (Game Color)
Black (Game Color)
Hammerfell Khaki (P3)
Iron Gray Hull (P3)
Battlefield Brown (P3)
BloodStone (p3)
Dead White (Game Color)
Hexed Lichen (Game Color)
Heavy Violet (Game Color)
Trollblood Base (P3)
Sepia (Game Color) Ink

In the future I should work on more variation. Better layering and without a doubt better journaling of what I did. Trying to keep in the lines more also for the front of the body.

Inspiration for the paint job was after the artistic drawing of SilasEgress found on Deviant art of “Rattle” the Kenku shown below along with my attempted layers for the cap.

crazmadsci Uncategorized

Week in Review: July 5, 2020

The last week was not nearly as productive as I wished it was. Life definitely took over and the weather was not favorable for priming. 5 out of 7 days it rained preventing priming my terrain.

My weekly goals include.

  1. 3d Print at least 1 thing
  2. paint at least 1 miniature
  3. paint at least 1 piece of terrain

All of the above will get a blog post highlighting each goal. <- I did not accomplish this goal.

Projects in Action

3d printed:

  • Continued Fat Dragon Game Miniatures from the “Dragonlock” 3d Printed Miniatures (see below for scratched off sections of the project)
  • Calibration cube

Painted

I really dropped the ball on this category this week. Need to get better

Miscellaneous

  • In depth calibration of 3d printer.
  1. Cold Pull of filament to clean it out
  2. Deep clean of PEI coated Prusa Print Sheet (which was terrifying because nothing stuck to it for a few days)
  3. Lubricated rods on printer
  4. Flashed Firmware update of Prsua printer
  5. Checked Belt Tension
  6. Calibration Cube

Dragonlock miniature project:

  • Goblins 1
  • Goblins 2
  • Turdle Adventurers
  • Oxidation Beast
  • Angry Ball of Eyes
  • Skeletons 2
  • Skeletons 3
  • Orc Warriors set 1
  • tentacles
  • Trash Beast
  • Lizardfolk Warriors Set 1
  • Lizardfolk Warriors Set 2
  • Dragon
  • Dead orc
  • Cube O Snot
  • Goblinoid Warriors
  • Orc Set 2
  • Snake Warriors Set 1
  • Giant Spider Rearing & Swarm
  • Minotaur Warrior 1
  • Owlbears
  • Skeletons set 4
  • Goblins set 3
  • Roper
  • Giant Rats and Rat Swarm
  • Giant Worm
  • Giant Slug
  • Octopus Warrior
  • Dragon Eggs
  • Minotaur Warriors
  • Hill Giant
  • Ogre Warband
  • Mushroomfolk
  • Kobold Warriors
crazmadsci Uncategorized

Dragonlock Miniature Print Project: Part 1

I don’t know about those of you with 3d printers but we all have not only miniature piles of shame but also digital files of shame. You can see I have over 150GB of files and most have not been printed!

I’ve decided to go through my digital files, organized them and attempt to print as much of it as I can. I’ve decided to first go through the kickstarters I backed and decided to start with the DRAGONLOCK™ 3D Printable Miniatures kickstarter from Summer 2019.

What is special about the Dragonlock miniatures is that all of the miniatures do not require supports at all and if they do the miniatures are “pre-supported” meaning that having to fine tune supports is not required. Tom Tullis the head of Fat Dragon Games also works hard to supply an easy to use miniatures printing profile for FDM printers and releases it freely to the public. This printing profile is always my default starting printing profile and adapt and grow from there.

I’ve decided to start with the Dragonlock miniatures because they are my go to, fine tuning miniatures to spot issues with my prints. Since i’ve taken a heavy break from the hobby what better than to knock this project out.

The miniatures. From my notes i’ve counted roughly 94 miniatures in this kickstarter ranging from medium sized creatures to giant dragons.

The collection

  • Goblins 1
  • Goblins 2
  • Turdle Adventurers
  • Oxidation Beast
  • Angry Ball of Eyes
  • Skeletons 2
  • Skeletons 3
  • Orc Warriors set 1
  • tentacles
  • Trash Beast
  • Lizardfolk Warriors Set 1
  • Lizardfolk Warriors Set 2
  • Dragon
  • Dead orc
  • Cube O Snot
  • Goblinoid Warriors
  • Orc Set 2
  • Snake Warriors Set 1
  • Giant Spider Rearing & Swarm
  • Minotaur Warrior 1
  • Owlbears
  • Skeletons set 4
  • Goblins set 3
  • Roper
  • Giant Rats and Rat Swarm
  • Giant Worm
  • Giant Slug
  • Octopus Warrior
  • Dragon Eggs
  • Minotaur Warriors
  • Hill Giant
  • Ogre Warband
  • Mushroomfolk
  • Kobold Warriors

Extras: Miniature Paint holders & Bases