Always loved the pig faced orcs concept, but getting these in 15mm was always a problem. Now with 3d printing it’s been solved. Here’s a group of 6 including a pig-helmet pig faced orc, a shaman, archer, spearman, swordsman and maceman. If I had to choose the highlight of the group is my freehand job on the shield markings. Love how they turned out.
Scaled 60% for 15mm. Supportless models from Brite Minis. Printed on a Bambu Labs A1 mini with a 0.2mm nozzle. eSun PLA+HS Filament. 0.06mm layer height. High Quality default presets.
One can never have enough orcs. These are a collection of Brite Minis sculpts, printed in FDM, at 60% for 15mm scale. I went with a darker green skin colour for greater variety to my existing orcs.
Orc shaman Big Orc with axeBig Orc with halberdOrc with sword and shieldOrc with axe and shield Orc with sword and board Orc spearmanOrc archerOrc archer
I’ve painted more of the Brite Minis I had printed in 15mm scale. This time various Elves. A couple wood elf archers, a couple high elf warriors and several adventurer type elves (sorcerer, mage, mercenary, bard).
The wood elf scheme was close to my previous wood elves I had painted from Demonworld. Went with light greens, and red accessories.
For the High elves I went with a white and red scheme (wanted pink but guess I missed the mixing of paints in proper ratio, so I just went with it).
For the adventurers I focused on vermillion and turquoise with some variations.
Printing was okay bar the sorcerers staff head which was corrupted during printing so I turned it into a flame.
Continuing with a selection from Brite Minis, here are a few peasants, villagers and townsfolk ready to defend their land.
Scaled 60% for 15mm. Supportless models from Brite Minis. Printed on a Bambu Labs A1 mini with a 0.2mm nozzle. eSun PLA+HS Filament. 0.06mm layer height. High Quality default presets.
Halfling butcherBakerTownsfolk with rolling pin Villager with clubArcher womanPeasant archerPeasant archer Peasant Spearman
I’ve been tampering with print settings a while now, but I don’t want this post to be another 3d printing guide. I’ll just give settings and information and proceed to the miniatures painting stuff. Perhaps I will make a separate 3d printing post later in the future.
I’ve collected several town-guard style sculpts from the Brite Minis catalogue.
Scaled 60% for 15mm. Supportless models. Printed on a Bambu Labs A1 mini with a 0.2mm nozzle. eSun PLA+HS Filament. 0.06mm layer height. High Quality default presets.
For paint scheme I went with a mix of earth tones (browns for leathers, gambesons, wood) and a Green (Permanent Green Light) and Yellow (Azo Yellow Medium) for the uniforms (capes, overcoats, pants, shirts). I free handed a tower in the shield with a Yellow/Green background.
I spent the extra time for details like moustaches, beards and buckles as needed. Overall I really like the end results, and will be proud to field them alongside my Blighthaven Town Guard.
Spearman Guard CaptainTownguardHornblowerDrummerSpearmanMan at armsMan at armsMan at armsMan at armsSpearman
As discussed in my recent Bug Hunting Actual Play report, I’ve spent the recent past few weeks working to expand my “bugs” collection. I worked with the aim to have at least the distinct types covered first before switching to variants (for example insects prioritised over alien xenomorphs as I have not-genestealers already).
I needed a fast way to get these on the table as soon as possible, without compromising quality or variety.
Spent some time looking on available options and the most suitable models to print for each type. Then planned on the print, paint and sealing.
For printing I preferred types of enemies with at least a few variants, fitting on a standard sized base (didn’t want big or long bugs). Support free as always. I printed sets of 16 at a time, and to increase variants I Mirrored half of them in the X axis. The nice thing about “bugs” is that there’s no left or right side, you just want many, and this extra variety gives the mob look that is needed.
For painting, I decided to spray prime, then use a cheap (20 bucks) portable airbrush to lay down zenithal, and a few base colours. I followed them with a wash and drybrush.
I had never used an airbrush before, and it worked better than expected. Laying down the colours was nice, smooth and fast. There was a learning curve about thinning thick body acrylics in the right consistency, cleaning and avoiding clogs, but overall for batch painting that’s a tool I recommend, and will be using it more in the future.
Finally I did a lot of research on making a dip sealant, and combining it with a wash to tie the miniature together. I went down the rabbit hole of using floor polish, and it wasn’t easy to get out. But I succeeded in the end. I found a floor polish (perhaps the last in Greece) which has an acrylic polymer as an ingredient. I used this as my base. Added some PVA glue in order to avoid it running off a lot (for extra viscosity) and brown and black paint (no exact ratio here, just enough to give a nice tint, without covering the mini). I then did a quick dip, and it worked well! Sturdy enough for PLA also (dunno if it’s strong enough for pewter).
The first batch of bugs I painted was Deinonychus from Brite Minis – I only did the round based ones. They’re meant to be razor lizards and whatever else is suitable to be proxies.
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.
Onibaba is discussing. 
Solo, Pen, Paper and Dice 
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