Back to More Stargrave Miniatures

Sorry that I haven't posted for a while, but between real life and painting up an army for Kings of War, I haven't had that much time for posting recent miniatures. I will be putting up pictures of my Kings of War army soon though.

I had the chance to do a few more Stargrave miniatures. These are all 3D printed from designs by various artists on Patreon.

This is a police droid from the excellent designer Papsikels. I modified it a bit by adding a knife hand to fit Stargrave's idea of a "runner" or "recruit".

The miniature was quite big by default, so I reduced it a bit (a good benefit of 3D printing) to fit my other Cyberpunk/Sci-fi miniatures.

These are Mangalores from the movie Fifth Element, sculpted by another great artist, BigMrTong. They will serve as generic enemy troopers in my games. These were actually painted very quickly with Army Painter Speedpaints, which I'm finding to be quite useful right now.

The original design was actually kind of small, and again I increased their size to fit my other miniatures.

I also painted another miniature from EC3D, again using mostly Army Painter Speedpaints. This is supposed to be an alien arms dealer, but I guess it can be used for all kinds of NPCs.

I'll continue to paint a number of Stargrave miniatures for an upcoming campaign, and will be posting more soon.

More Stargrave Crew Minis

I've painted a few more miniatures for Stargrave, with all of them 3D printed using my FDM printer. After the terrain and creatures from last time, I went back to crew members, and finished up the captain and first mate for my first crew.

This miniature is again from Papsikels' excellent line-up, and it's a much more dynamic version of the "witcher" miniature I had shown here previously. However, my FDM printer simply couldn't do it justice, and pieces were not printed properly. I fixed up the miniature by attaching some Warhammer Fantasy bits, which many reading this will probably recognize. 

This is a nice sized miniature, and represents a pretty imposing tall man. I'll be using him as my captain.

For an FDM printer, this print was very successful and preserved a lot of the detail. This close-up really shows it.

This is also from Papsikels, and is supposed to be a "cyber sorceress". I think she is inspired by another character from the Witcher series. The mechanical bird drone is supposed to be a "cyber crow", but I painted it in a much brighter colour to make it stand out.

There is also a stand-alone version of the bird drone, and I'll be using it as a drone in Stargrave, which looks quite useful according to the rules, with the sorceress as my first mate.

I also painted a few Aliens-style "face-huggers" that I found on Thingiverse. These creatures can represent mind grippers, a type of dangerous random enemy from the Stargrave bestiary.

Since my old resin 3D printer died, and I was never satisfied with my FDM printer's ability to produce miniatures, I ended up buying another resin 3D printer. However, it's kept at someone else's house due to my wife having allergy issues with resin. I'll be showing painted results from that machine here soon too.

Stargrave Bestiary and Terrain

Sorry that I haven't posted in a while, but I 3D printed a lot of stuff recently and couldn't keep up with preparing and painting them.

Most of what I've done is for Stargrave, primarily concentrating on the bestiary for random encounters, and for terrain.

One of the creatures from potential random encounters is the horat, which is described as a wooly rhino type of creature. I printed and painted up one of the creatures from the Ignis Quadrant Kickstarter, which is sort of an alien rhino. I think my varnish treatment worked perfectly in this case, with no visible print lines at all.

This is a fair-sized beasty.

Also from the same source are these factory bots, which will look quite good as repair bots, as described per the Stargrave bestiary.

I also painted some terrain items, which will be useful in certain scenarios, and as general scatter terrain. The ventilation fans are also from the Ignis Quadrant Kickstarter, and are specifically required in one of the Stargrave scenarios. The medium cargo containers are from Novus Landing, the sequel campaign to Ignis Quadrant. I have quite a few more pieces of terrain to go.

For non-3D printed items, I have this Dungeons and Dragons umber hulk. The Stargrave bestiary has a creature called the "porigota", which sounds a lot like an umber hulk (or ambull if in GW-speak). I painted up this one fairly quickly, and it's a decent model with nice detail.

Again, a fairly large creature compared to a human.

I have quite the backlog of printed items to paint through, so there will be a lot more updates soon.

More Painted 3D Printed Miniatures

I've completed a few more 3D printed miniatures. All of these have been shown here before as unpainted prints.

Here are all of them next to my standard cyberpunk size comparison figure, the one with a pistol and orange pants.

This is a figure from Cyber Forge, and it's slimmer than the others, which are from Papsikels. I painted it in an "anime" colour scheme which I though suits the theme. The helmet unfortunately didn't end up with a lot of detail, due to this being an FDM printer. It can be good as a "faceless" bounty hunter though.

The "Detective Wayne" figure from Papsikels comes with a cybernetic arm, which I painted in a metallic colour. Unfortunately, the angle of the head made it really hard to capture the face with a phone camera, but the lit cigarette tip actually shows up pretty well.

This is the "Airhacker Cyberkid" miniature, which I'll be using as a hacker in Stargrave. I think the surfboard-like object on his back is supposed to be an antenna. For this miniature, I used a head from a plastic kit (the old Wargames Factory zombie survivors sprue) to create more variety.

The hacker kid is quite small, as I think he is supposed to be a young teenager.

This is the "Cyberpunk Space Bear" figure from Papsikels. I replaced the original weapon which looked strange with an assault cannon from my Warhammer 40k bits. He can be a rapid fire heavy weapon trooper in Stargrave.

The miniature is pretty big though, compared to a normal human. I don't know how well larger figures will survive in an actual game. We'll see.

I still have a few other miniatures to do, including the captain and first mate, which I'm trying to spend more time on. Then I'll have a complete first crew for Stargrave. I have a few other crews planned, and they will follow once I get the hang of painting these 3D printed minis.

A Few More Painted 3D Prints

To follow up on my previous post, I painted up some more items from my first batch of 3D printed small sci-fi miniatures.

These are the power armour troops from Titan Forge that I showed in a previous post. Because of the bulkiness of the miniatures, they painted up well while still retaining a decent amount of detail. The interesting thing is that the middle miniature with two pistols was primed without my varnish treatment! If you look very closely, it has more print lines visible than the other two, but not by much.

Here is a close-up of the right side of that miniature.

One problem I did have was with supports. Because of the amount of supports, the back of the miniature with two pistols had a "melted" look, as you can see on the left. For the other miniatures, I oriented them enough to minimize supports, and the details look quite a bit sharper, on the right.

Here is a size comparison with my previous cyberpunk character in regular clothes. The power armour is suitably imposing.

I also painted up a couple of spherical sentry drones, which are from the Novus Landing Kickstarter and came as a free addition. They are nice and quick to paint, and Stargrave apparently has rules and scenarios for drones.

Here is a size comparison with all of these side by side.

I still have quite a few more miniatures in the queue, including figures from the Novus Landing system that are designed to be support-free. I'll put them up as soon as I can manage.

Painted 3D Printed Sci-fi Miniatures (Small)

I've finally painted some of my smaller 3D printed miniatures that I had previously shown. They mostly turned out quite well.

The above are all printed on a Creality CR-6SE FDM (i.e. filament) printer, treated with a couple of coats of varnish before priming to reduce the visible print lines. The dog, the cyberpunk character, and the robot are all from the creator "Papsikels" on MyMiniFactory. The Ewok is a free file from Thingiverse.

I really like the cyberpunk character, since he has a lot of detail that showed up very well even on an FDM printer. Here he is compared with a GW Genestealer cultist and a Reaper Bones pulp miniature. This is definitely a tall 32mm scaled figure, although I can scale him down a bit to fit 28mm miniatures.

The back still has decent detail, even with supports making the surface more "melted" than the front.

The Ewok is a free miniature, but is actually very well-designed. However, due to the small size, there are some print lines visible if you look close enough. Good enough for a crew member in Stargrave though.

The battle droid miniature has some very thin parts. Because of that, I had a hard time printing it until I upscaled it by 120%. Now it's a fairly imposing thing. A robotic member for a Stargrave crew?

I have even more miniatures being painted right now. Here is an example of how I prepare and prime them.

I usually give them two coats of varnish, which will cover up most of the print lines. Then I prime them with black gesso, my preferred primer. The gesso dries very tight and smooth, and will reveal any details, including print lines, mercilessly. I've found that horizontal surfaces with the varnish treatment end up very smooth, but vertical surfaces still often have print lines showing. Maybe the varnish flows off too easily when it's not dry? Here you can see the effect, this heavy weapons robot has very smooth horizontal surfaces but some of the vertical surfaces, like the sides of the gun barrels and the legs, still show print lines.

Here it is compared to the cyberpunk character. I don't know if there are rules for larger crew members with heavy weapons in Stargrave?

Inspired by another hobbyist at our gaming group, I also quickly painted up some terminators from the Warlord Games Terminator Genisys game. The game was pretty forgettable, but the injection molded hard plastic miniatures are a joy to paint and are very easy to deal with.

I have quite a few of these. Maybe they can be used in Stargrave as "pirate" troops?

Stay tuned for more 3D printed items.

Getting Deeper into Cyberpunk

Encouraged by my previous successes printing 28mm characters, I've printed even more, mainly aimed at a sci-fi/cyberpunk setting for use in Hardwired or Stargrave (when that comes out).

Back over Christmas break and around New Years, I took advantage of some sales to buy more STL files. There are quite a few talented artists, both on the free Thingiverse, and on the (mostly) paid MyMiniFactory.

A good source of figures is Titan Forge Miniatures, a store on MyMiniFactory. They have a good range of science fiction, fantasy, and post-apocalyptic figures. The above are their Cyber Force Marines unit. These come with separate torsos, legs, etc., that can be combined into different poses. I have a couple with rifles and one with two pistols above, and there are a lot more possibilities. They are a bit bigger than the Papsikels demo mini from before, being all in power armour. Titan Forge figures also come with useful textured 25mm or 32mm round bases, which I'm using above.

The dog with VR goggles and the cyberpunk "witch hunter" (who may look familiar) are from Papsikel's store on MyMiniFactory. The kid with the boomerang on the right is from Titan Forge's post-apocalyptic range. The witch hunter figure didn't come out as clean as I would have liked, so maybe I'll try another one. The dog came out perfectly since it needed very little support. The kid and the dog can make great NPCs or objectives in games. After all, no adventure is complete without a kid and a dog!

The Titan Forge "wild child" figure seems to be based on the feral kid with a boomerang from "The Road Warrior", although the helmet and hair remind me more of Newt from "Aliens". This miniature was so small and thin that I didn't think it would print on an FDM printer, but it turned out to be serviceable, although not perfect.

For "bounty hunter" type figures, the "sheriff" on the left is from Papsikels, and the thin guy with the "commie alien" type helmet on the right is from Titan Forge. The "sheriff" suffered a bad sanding incident on the front, and I may have to do another print.

For more of a horror flavour, I also bought a "stitchwork golem" from the wonderfully named Rocket Pig Games, also on MyMiniFactory. This is printed at around half size to be more of a human-sized figure, but it can be a giant monster too. I like the design, and it reminds me of the "boogie man" from "A Nightmare Before Christmas".

Don't worry, I have actually been painting miniatures too. In fact, I'm waiting for some recently-sanded bases to dry right now, and I should be able to put up some painted 3D printed figures soon.

New Year and Some More 3D Printing

I wish everyone a Happy New Year, and hopefully this will be a better year than the last one.

I've been playing with my 3D printer some more, and despite my point before about avoiding miniatures with my CR-6SE FDM printer, I tried some Cyberpunk characters for my two favourite scales.

This is the same file from Thingiverse here, by a talented artist with the moniker "Papsikels". His miniatures are done in a very fitting style, bulky enough to print with an FDM printer while still retaining excellent amounts of detail and proper human proportions.

I printed this miniature in two scales, 28mm on the left, and 1/72 scale on the right. Once again, they turned out to be much better than I hoped for an FDM printer.

This is the 28mm miniature next to a Games Workshop model on the left and a Reaper Bones model on the right. It's a good fit for 32mm "heroic" miniatures, which I think I'll use for the soon to be released Stargrave game.

This is the 1/72 scale miniature with respectively, Caesar modern French, Elhiem sci-fi Fed trooper, and Caesar modern special forces (with some mods) miniatures. To be honest, I didn't think this one would come out at this scale, but it turned out fine, but with a lot of excess stringing that I'll have to clean off.

These miniatures have encouraged me to experiment even more. Stay tuned!