I’m a huge fan of the Alien movies. I recall going on the theatre alone on a Saturday morning to watch the then released Alien 4 (Resurrection).
As I’ve been taking a closer look at my Bug Hunt minis, I realised I wanted something more dynamic, fiercer and bigger than my OOP QRF models. Instead of rolling the dice with the pewter vendor scales, I decided to give it a shot with 3d printing.
I did find some free models that look quite good, but I was scared of scaling them down, and eventually settled on the Wakes Emporium Xeno Warriors X02.
These are meant for 6mm scale, so I scaled them up. Since they’re larger than what I envisioned, I scaled them up by 180%, to get a final result to my liking.
These came presupported for resin but since they’re scaled *up* the supports worked great for FDM too. I also gave them a +0.2mm X-Y compensation to make them even sturdier, and they printed fine. 0.2mm nozzle on a BBL@A1Mini with ELEGOO PLA PRO filament. 0.06mm layer height.
It’s 8 variants which I mirrored in the X axis for 16 variants total.
For painting the first 8, I had prepared with airbrush, but I was bored to take it out again for the next 8, so I used a drybrush. I’m wondering if you can see the difference. The drybrushed ones are darker and the layer lines are more visible.
Awesome movie. I read recently that they shot the first scene with the soldiers last when making the movie, so that the actors would have the necessary chemistry.
One of my favourite digital sculpts from Ill Gotten Games, the Robovermin. 5 variants. The particular Ill Gotten Games support free files, (as well as the Hungry Dead from the previous post) are part of their $1 Patreon tier for Multiverse Mondays (and access to the entire MM catalogue).
They’re in 5 variants if I remember correctly, which I doubled by mirroring along the X axis.
I love the concept and execution. I’ll proxy them as Berserk Robots in Bug Hunt.
There’s only one variant of a Grick from Brite Minis, but it’s quite vague, so by mirroring at X axis, the two variants are enough to create this mob feeling.
Scaled down 60% to have 15mm scale, they printed okay. I had a few failures at some of the prints at one tentacle, but I decided to keep them and not reprint, as it feels perfectly fine for them to be missing a limb. Perhaps during a challenge, a fight or mating or whatever these worm like things do.
I’ll use them mainly as Slithering Horrors for Five Parsecs from Home Bug Hunt.
For painting I did the following scheme:
Airbrush low/inside a purplish pale mix of turquoise, zinc white, YMC 321, yellow ochre, titanium white
Support-free miniatures are a great way to print on FDM printers without having to deal with supports.
What are supports? Imagine that a 3d printer “builds” stuff in the Z axis. An FDM printer goes from the ground up, while a resin printer from the roof down (prints are upside down). In both cases the culprit is gravity. Because it all happens in Z slices. Each Z slice needs to be able to attach to the previous one, otherwise it will drop in the void. Resin printers are less problematic with supports, and also removal is easier especially since it can be done while the resin is still uncured. With FDM printers that’s another story. Gravity will ruin the print either with overhangs (imagine balconies), bridges (speaks for itself), or islands (z slices with parts that don’t connect anywhere).
To make it more clear, an overhang that would need supports would be a sword arm horizontal to the ground, a bridge would be a rider pose, and an island would be a knife arm with the blade dangling pointing downwards.
Therefore these would need supports. Supports are 3d constructs in the slicer which are printed and connect the parts to the bed plate or the model, that would otherwise be unprintable. These come with a caveat though. Filament is meant to stick together, so supports usually end up sticking too well on the model, and removing FDM supports can lead to scarring or parts breaking. There are some solutions which have their own problems, such as angling the miniature backwards, which essentially hides scarring, or using support or support interface of different filament (PETG or PVA), but this would increase print times, filament waste and requires a multi filament setup, that usually isn’t worth it.
So what support free miniatures sculptors do, is design and pose the miniatures in ways that there are no overhangs, bridges or islands. Sword arms are almost vertical to the ground, spear heads touch the ground, knives are held close to the body and touch it, etc etc. It’s an extra skill on top of miniature design. However even with this skill there are limitations, and you won’t be able to get into more dynamic poses easily.
A solution to this are modular miniatures. Cut the miniature in several parts that are support free on their own, and glue them together. Even this has its own limitations as the limbs for example cannot have angles that would cause overhangs, and you end up with open arms poses that could easily dance Zorba if placed all together. Good designers though, find the sweet spots of posing that resolves this. Another problem is the process of gluing.
Especially for scaled down to 15mm, gluing PLA can be a problem. Superglue (cyanoacrylate glue) doesn’t set fast enough, with PLA, as its catalyst is moisture, and you’re more likely to glue your fingers instead. To work around this you can use some baking soda (another catalyst) but then it sets up too fast and you may end up with baking soda particles glued to the mini if you’re not too careful.
I find that the best glue for PLA is UHU, especially the Allplast/Hardplast (depending on where you live). It contains ethyl acetate, which dissolves a small layer of PLA, and can bond it together. It’s also quite viscous so you only need to hold the pieces together for a short while. My main issue is that the nozzle is too big and I can’t put the tiny amount I need for 15mm with the control I want, but it doesn’t set too fast so I can clean up any mess.
To minimise this, I usually do some digital kitbashing beforehand, either in the slicer or in blender. I found that blender is excellent for this, as you can snap objects to faces, and they are placed where they should be as you grab them to place. So I usually place torsos to legs, and sometimes heads too, and print upper limbs separately.
I even went ahead and combined physical kitbashing with the modulars, by using one of GZG pewter heads with a torso. I had done a slot in the slicer for the head pin to drop right in. I miscalculated and had to use the drill in the end, but it was a lot easier with the slot in place.
I did several different modulars, and even combined some parts from other sets together, that’s the cool thing about Brite Minis modulars, they’re (mostly) meant to be used together however you like. Gave them some Unity color schemes, as there are meant to be aliens in the Unity army as well as humans (a couple of ferals and a gray alien). Love the humanoid heads that give this old school science fiction tv look.
The modular torsos all look a bit downwards, and the photos are angled higher up, so the faces aren’t always visible in the photos below. I’ll take this under consideration for future photos.
Unity agent with parts from Space Modulars and Space Modular RidersUnity Alien Grunt with parts from Space ModularsUnity Feral Grunt with parts from Space ModularsUnity Feral Grunt with parts from Space ModularsUnity Lieutenant with parts from Space ModularsUnity Sergeant with parts from Space Modulars, Vampire sabre, and GZG pewter headUnity pilot with parts from Space ModularsUnity Officer with parts from Space ModularsSpace Bandit with parts from Space Modulars, Space Modular Riders and Friday 13th headSpace Bandit with parts from Space Modulars and Space Modular Riders
I have so many different sci fi troops collected, but I haven’t painted any of them in the Unified Army scheme – red armor, gray uniform, brown, green or black webbing.
Looking at the Space Guards from Brite minis, I decided they’d be a great canvas to paint on.
Used primary magenta ink for armor and neutral gray for uniforms.
By the way, two of the minis are printed with the Pro PLA/0.06mm versus four printed with basic PLA/0.03mm can you guess which?
Also a Lord in the bottom with electro lance and a few Space Guards Heavy and Heavier
Space guards – Unity GruntsSpace GuardSpace GuardSpace Lord with ElectrolanceHeaviesSpace Guard HeavySpace Guard HeavierSpace Guard Heavier with minigun
Mini from Arbiter miniatures, scaled down to 15mm. ELEGOO PLA Pro Purple. Bambu Labs A1 mini with 0.2mm nozzle. 0.06mm layer height.
So back to basics I got a new ELEGOO PLA Pro to test versus my ELEGOO PLA basic. After doing all relevant calibrations I tried using it with the highly fine tuned settings I had for basic (0.03mm layer height, low speeds, etc).
The results I got were disheartening at least. I got really fine stringing like hair which would cause minor imperfections. I tried adjusting temperatures, retractions, z-hop, drying the filament. Nothing worked 100%.
Then I remembered a lesson I had learned when starting 3d printing: back to basics. Whenever something doesn’t work, reset to default settings.
I switched to the Bambu default presets for 0.06mm layer height High Quality. The results were amazing. Rigid printing minimal layers, no imperfections.
My theory is that the different properties of Pro are more rigid, so it doesn’t allow the squishing of my other settings I was using for basic. However it works really well with default settings perhaps it fixes itself better together with no curling, stringing or gaps.
Reptilians, aliens, slugs. It wouldn’t be space opera without some (more) xenos. These sculpts from Brite Minis will make great additions to my existing collection.
I painted the reptilians green with vermillion colour armor. The slug and the alien, in simple colours. Gave the slug a yellow bottom part and satin varnish for this moist effect.
On another note, I tried to improve my miniatures photography. Used Adobe Lightroom and my white photo box and I think I’ve gotten some better results than before.
Space ReptilliansReptilian with minigunReptilian with pistolReptilian with rifleSpace alienSpace slug
Lou, and 
Solo, Pen, Paper and Dice 
sopantooth 7:10 pm on August 1, 2025 Permalink |
How could they cut the power, man? They’re animals!
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giorgis 8:12 pm on August 1, 2025 Permalink |
Awesome movie. I read recently that they shot the first scene with the soldiers last when making the movie, so that the actors would have the necessary chemistry.
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Lou 8:27 pm on August 16, 2025 Permalink |
Hi! Great work, they are awesome, can you share a link to the models? I am unable to find them…
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giorgis 8:30 pm on August 16, 2025 Permalink |
Thank you! Of course!
The particular ones are: https://wakesemporium.gumroad.com/l/udopa
There’s two more in the range which I haven’t tried:
https://wakesemporium.gumroad.com/l/JABNO
https://wakesemporium.gumroad.com/l/xbktn
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Lou 2:14 pm on August 17, 2025 Permalink |
Thank you for the quick reply! Your blog motivated me to tune my FDM printer for miniatures 🙂
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giorgis 2:22 pm on August 17, 2025 Permalink |
Glad to help! Happy printing! 🙂
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