Raupenschlepper Ost 1942 - test print

 

Quite some time ago, I designed this model in Blender. It's a simplified version of the Raupenschlepper Ost, with the cab made from plywood instead of stamped from steel, and with a canvas roof. They went into production in 1942, with the aim of making production faster and cheaper.

But I never did actually get around to printing it. Mainly because its hollow cab would have made printing quite difficult.

Today I filled in the cab and cargo bed with a solid block, but in the cab I kept half of each of two crewmen visible, so that they could be painted in a kind of bas-relief style. It seems to have worked reasonably well, and the model printed on my Ender 3 without any issues at all (except that I initially assembled the running gear the wrong way round, and had to tear it off and re-glue it). 

It means, of course, that there's no interior detail visible, but for a gaming model that doesn't disturb me too much. 

Old Character Minis

 

I took some photos of some of my old character minis with my iPhone, just to see how they'd turn out. Meh. The lighting is pretty crap, but then it was all pretty ad-hoc.

From left to right: Fnord, Smirnoff, and Aedan Comarren. 

 Here's another attempt. Also pretty meh. Somehow I kept activating the iPhone's focus lock, which was annoying, and the tonal range is quite compressed. It's certainly a convenient camera to use, but I think a proper SLR is going to be more useful for this sort of thing.

And here we go with a photo taken with my Nikon D3500 on my lighting stage. The tonal range is wider, though the details are not as sharp — I can set the camera to do some pre-sharpening, but I prefer to do that sort of thing in a proper photo editing app. I don't have a macro lens for this camera, so I have to stand off a metre or so. One day, when I win Lotto, I'll get a macro lens, but until that happy day it's not a high fiscal priority.

Paper Garden Shed

 

I don't remember where I got this from, but I vaguely recall that it was part of a set of download-and-print paper buildings for Warhammer.

I printed it years ago, and found it when I was organising (hah!) my workroom, so I put it together and gave it a base. It looks like I might have intended it for 15mm gaming, not 28mm — Sergeant Measuresby  would really have to bend down to squeeze in through that door.

Three-dimensional models are all very well, but it cannot be denied that these fold-up 2d models are a lot quicker and easier to get on to the tabletop, and I think they can look pretty good too. 

Mörk Borg

 

I was given a copy of Mörk Borg for xmas by Carl.

It's graphically very interesting, though it doesn't make it immediately clear exactly what it is (it's a RPG) nor how it's played (still don't know).

I'm hoping that close examination of its grunge-magazine aesthetic will reveal its inner nature.

I do really like its presentation, even though I have no idea what's going on.