A Hard Days Knyght 

It’s been a while since my last post, as I’ve been busy (and sidetracked) with some projects. One project has to do with re-shooting photos of the entirety of my collection (over 1k figures), uploading and tagging them properly. This is roughly 1/3 done. It’s a chore, but I really love seeing them in better pictures. Still not perfect, but far better than previously. Although the new photos are less forgiving in some cases. When that’s done I’ll make a separate post about it, but I’m not in any rush, as I kinda paused it, working on my second project, that this post is about.

I’m a huge fan of Moonstone. This was a computer game back in the 90s, released in Amiga and PC – I had finished the PC version. I recently bought it again in GOG and played a bit, and the idea stuck with me that I wanted to print a suitable miniature to represent a knight in a similar style. I tried finding a suitable stl model, but while some came close, they were not close enough. Titancraft and Heroforge also didn’t have the model I wanted. I then tried digital kitbashing using some parts I found in thingiverse, but they were using realistic proportions, and also were missing some important details. Then I tried doing a mutation from some existing models, cutting and glueing parts digitally, but that was an absolute mesh, which I abandoned quickly.

Which leads me to the final choice. I decided to spend the time and learn how to sculpt it myself. This was a process that lasted around 2 weeks of intense, learning blender, watching tutorials, and making several attempts, hacking at the problem from different angles. I tried sculpting using MWsculpts tutorial, but that, while easy at the first steps, requires true skill to get a nice clean result towards the end. I then tried using an animated rig using Charmorph and Rigify to have a base character, but that wouldn’t work either for many reasons, the main problem being proportions being way off from Heroic. In the end I learned that I liked the approach of mesh editing and use of subdivision as my core editing, physics and modifiers for most of the part. I also used some parts as a basis to work upon which really sped up my process. Some sculpting here and there, and a lot, I mean a LOT of different iterations and learning. The body was rigged together via parenting parts.

I also tried to make the knight a boolean union instead of separate parts, but I could go as far as 2 parts (surcoat and rest of knight) joined together before the model became non-manifold in my first version. First print was okay, but I found that I wanted a larger sword, as it felt flimsy when printed, so I revised it with a bigger blade and also increased the size of the helmet a tiny bit. It printed better.
There were some warnings about floating regions, but it wasn’t really a problem when printed without supports on FDM. I didn’t design a separate base, as there are tons of good free bases to use, and I just used one that I liked. Here it is printed in 18mm scale, and painted in Pyrolle Red (as I realized the Primary Magenta that I used as Red until today, is not actually Red).

Also I released the model for free over at Cults. You can grab it here: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/sir-edward

Hope you like it.