Red Copper Camels Part 2

The main body of Red Copper camels are these chaps - 3 to a base, hard-charging Arab camelry

As you  will see I was even bold enough to try and do some chequered headdresses - although they are not actually "checks", they are just a cross pattern that looks checked at tabletop distances. 

As before, the main clothing of the riders is layered duns and creams - Burnt Turf/Barren Dune, Paratrooper Tan/Common Khaki, Urban Buff/Pale Sand, Ivory/White and my trusty Holy White Speedpaint topped off with standard white. 

These guys are also glued together into lumps of 3 on each base for extra resilience and integrity, to stop them breaking off at the ankles. It's more visible from the back here, but still hard to spot unless yo uknow you are looking for it 

With no obvious Commander in the range I opted for the "He's the one with the blue flowers on his base" approach if one is needed. 

The spears are very, very brittle, but fortunatelymost are cast (designed? printed?) very close to the bodies of the riders so its only the sticky-upppy bits that tend to break off (if you so much as look at them in the wrong way) 

I have an inkling that my almost-unavoidable desire to use blue as the dominant "non tan" colour comes from the cover of the 1970's edition of Frank Herbert's Dune.

Because of the complexity of the figures, and my ill-informed decision to adopt a multi-later layering paint style on these models they took absolutely ages to finish, and seemed to be a long way from being done for 99% of that time - but in the end, now the epic painting quest is behind me, I'm actually very pleased with the end result. 

Red Copper Camels

 In my occasional dabbling with 3D printed figures, I've had something of a mixed bag results-wise so far. 

There have been the "upscaled too far - but still cute" Etruscans, the "fairly fugly" medieval Knights and the "great but too brittle" Numidians.

Next up on this route march to the future are some Red Copper Arab camels - replacing some very old, and very grim Lancashire Games Mahdist camelry that I've had far, far too long. 

These Red Copper figures are really exceptional designs, with a huge amount of detail - the sheer amount of which only really becomes fully apparent when you start to try and paint them and begin to find extra straps, layers, details and bolt-on weaponry that you'd not really spotted in the unpainted prints. 

That did mean that my decision to go for a "layering" approach with the paint for the riders (with the camels themselves being done with GW Contrasts) ended up being rather more of a labour of love than I intended - some of these camels have at least 24 different paints applied to them ! 

Anyways, first up are some Light Camels and Generals, 2 to a base:

I've gone for a fairly muted palette on the robes of the riders, with whites and duns but then adding a splash of colour with the banners, sashes and headgear - and of course the rugs on which the riders all sit. 

If you look closely here you will see that every base has the pair of camels connected at some point - or not to put too fine a point on it I made sure to glue their buts together.

This was to make them more resilient, as the camels do have long, spindly legs and the risk of them snapping off seemed that it would be significant - gluing each pair of models together creates one "thing" with 8 legs not 4, in a fairly wide and stable stance that won't bend (and snap) when you pick it up carelessly and squeeze the two individual camels together in the process. 

There's about half a dozen poses in the set - no obvious "Commanders" as such, but more than enough to generate variety. 

All of the bases are MDF and magnabase with an added layer of steel base sandwiched between the two - this gives them a bit of extra heft which isn't just me being old school, it makes them easier to pick up   as they are that little bit heavier, and actually weigh about as much as you expect.

I'll drop some more photos of the main bunch of camels in a few days. 

More 3D printed Numidians

 I've finally finished off the 3D printed, 3D Breed-designed Numidians I started back in April, and what a jolly nice - but jolly brittle - bunch of fellows they are too.

I've based some up as "Cavalry" at 3 figures to a base, and some as "Light Horse" at 2 to a base 

They are great looking figures, but OMG these particular prints are really brittle.

So far I think I've completely broken 7 of the horses off their bases (ie legs snapped, superglue comes out..) simply in the process of painting and photographing them, and I've lost count of the number of spears that have pinged off, usually into god knows where.

The saving grace is that they do glue back together again very easily, but with this second batch I've deliberately attempted to position all of the figures such that they can be superglued to an adjacent model at some point, in the hope that it makes them a bit more robust.

Part of the problem is no doubt that they are so light, which means it's super easy to knock them off the table, or see them slide off a tray when you are carrying them around. 

I've also used far less magnabase on each base compared to metal figures, as otherwise I feared that I'd break them almost every time I tried to lift them out of the tin.

I suspect there are better, more flexible and robust resins out there that would make these a bit more survivable - and in future this will get even better as materials technology improves as well.  

I also saw that the eBay seller I picked these up from no longer has any items listed for sale, after what looks like a lot of negative feedback for late deliveries in recent months too. 

My guess is that suspect he's found the whole "setting up a 3D printing business" a little harder than expected, and has thrown in the towel - somthing I can imagine will happen with a number of other sellers on eBay and Etsy going forward.  Perhaps this brittle resin lead to a higher volume of returns than expected, and that also contributed to him stopping too - who knows? 

But, despite the missing javelin-ends, and bits nipped out of some of the horses legs, all in all they are still nicer looking figures than any metal 15mm Numidan range I've yet found. 

Whether I am confident enough in them to pack them up and take them to a competition though is something that needs much more careful thought! 

 

3D Printed Numidians

 Another week, another dabble with 3D printed models.

This time it is some 15mm Numidian cavalry from the 3D Breed March to Hell range, which I picked up as I have never really been happy with the mix of Essex, Baueda and Old Glory Numidians that I already own. 

So, having flogged off some of the metals as part of an eBay sale I then spent some of my ill-gotten eBay gains to pick up some of these prints mostly to see what this now well-established and well-known design shop (is that the right wording?) could offer. 

And here are the results:

I did this as a set of 4 to see how they worked initially.

Horses are mostly done in GW Contrasts - Aggaros Dunes, Gore-Grunta Fur, Templar Black and then the grey is Warlords Speeedpaint Holy White.

The rope "bridle" is also a Speedpaint, hardened leather - all done with white base coat.  

The horses are lovely sculpts - the riders come as separate pieces and I was immediately fearful of the spears as they are thin and rather brittle, to the point I was a little nervous about snipping off some of the "flash" even with a sprue cutter. 

 

These chaps have rather luxurious hair - David Ginola must have had Numidan ancestors somewhere down the line! 

They are a well animated bunch and take paint nicely too... however ... 

... whilst taking them outside for some spray matt varnish I dropped them onto a wooden floor from I guess just over 3 feet up... and this was the sad outcome:

 Yes, every single one broke off its base at the ankles, with a couple also suffering further damage to the horses legs - some very tiny bits of which I knew immediately that I would never find. 

One of the riders also lost the upper part of a set of javelins which he was holding in his shield hand too - but that I did spot and managed to reattach.

To be fair they all went together again with some superglue pretty easily, but that does no doubt mean they could also break again pretty easily too. I've therefore put only minimal magnabase on the bottoms of these units, as they don't need to be desparately gripping the bottom of the tin to stay in place as the figures are so lightweight anyway. 

Once I start doing the full set of 24 my plan is to try and base them up such that the horses and riders can be glued together at some hard-to-see point, giving the entire base a bit of extra stability and structural integrity in the process.

So, in summary, these are very nice figures, and a real upgrade on my rather old metals - but the combination of "materials" and "design" for these 3D prints still perhaps isn't quite there as yet to make them robust enough for butterfingered wargamers like me!

Ten Kingdoms 3D printed Sung Chinese

 In my ongoing dabbling with 3D printed figures the latest test batch is a sample set of cavalry and a few infantry from Ten Kingdoms, as produced under license in the UK by eBay seller Micks Bits.

These chaps are - as printed - slightly large for 15mm, but Mick seems to have found a very good quality resin, robust but with just enough flex not to be as snap-liable as some of the earlier 3D prints I've tested the waters (or resins..) with in the past. 

They are really, really crisp figures, seemingly with more detail emerging the more time you spend trying to paint them properly (!) - another sign that 3D printing even for small scale miniatures continues to come on in leaps and bounds. 

The cavalry even come with pre-printed 3D shields (only one design I think) which you can ink wash and add a bit of paint to and come up with a classic Chinese dragon-face thingy fairly easily.

There is a hard-to-pin-down difference between these CAD-designed sculpts and "normal" sculptor-carved figures, which is perhaps best articulated as these being somehow "cleaner" - but this range at least seems to have managed to get in quite a bit of the artistic elements of "character", with even facial expressions being visibly different on the individual figures. 

Here are the archer and crossbowman stood next to some Lurkio metal castings I bought and painted up at the same time. 

At tabletop distances they are not noticably different in height, but the 3D prints are more well-fed and the difference in amount and sharpness of detail is very noticable. 

I'm working through a fairly major pile of "undercoat these figures outside before the weather turns" at the moment, so quite when I will get around to turning this sample-sized initial purchase into a full army is anyone's guess, but the more time I spend looking at these guys the more convinced I am that I will end up with a Song / Ming / Khitan army using Ten Kingdoms sculpts (designs?) at some point in the near future,. 

 

It's a Camel!

Here's a 28mm baggage camel that I've had kicking around in the "to be painted" pile for a while now. 

I believe it comes from Disain Studios, and I may have picked it up at the PAW show last year - but I can't seem to find this design on their website so perhaps it's a show-only thing? 

I also had a spare Gripping Beast Arab swordsman lying around who didn't fit on any of the bases I did of Arabs a few years ago, so he has now become a baggage guard. 

He has a rather large and fragile sword, so I positioned him so it is touching the camel. A bit of  superglue later to glue the sword blade to the side of the camel and it's now a lot more robust than it was ! 

The camel had no base, just feet, so I had to drill a pin into one of the feet to give it stability on the base. Printed resin is easy to drill, which is handy in  this case. 

The camel itself is done in Aggaros Dunes GWContrast paint on a black base with heavy white drybrush highlights - or "slap chop" if you are down with the kids apparently!

3D printed Knights

 My adventures in 3D printing continue to slowly gather pace, although not by any stretch of the imagination at a pace which will see me take up 3D printing as a hobby anytime soon!

No, instead of that I've just gone onto eBay and bought some 3D printed "15mm" Knights designed by Eskice Miniatures and sold on eBay UK by Hoplite Miniatures. 

I did sort of want some of these Knights (full armour, no horse barding) but the purchase was as much to see what 3D printing could deliver today, a year after buying some very definately "scaled up 10mm" dollies for an Etruscan army. And, also, these were very cheap indeed at just £12+ P&P  for 24 cavalry figures.  

These are the figures that arrived in the post shortly afterwards - the pictures are taken on a half-inch grid (that's not because I'm an old Imperial-measurementalist, its just that the metric side of this double-sides cutting board is by now totally f---ed).  

They are big chunky models, and are (as scaled by Hoplite Miniatures) pretty big for "15mm", being a chunky 18mm if you are generous, or a fat 19mm if you are not so inclined. 

There were 7 different knights in a few different poses, and as you can see they are pretty clean with only a few little nubs of support still left on that I was easily able to snip off with sprue cutters. 

The horses though were very well-fed wolf-ish, and at this stage I was a little concerned that they might not really cut it, both in terms of style and scale against other 15mm metal and plastic figures I already have. 

But, painted up I think they have come out surprisingly well given that rather lumpy looking start.

 

With paint, shading and washes the horses have largely (but not entirely..) lost that "giant racing lemming" look, with the detail really picking up the Army Painter wash (and in some cases GW Contrast Paint main colour) quite well.  

I deliberately did the shields in simple geometric designs to keep them in the style of the Corvus Belli 100YW knights I painted earlier this year,  ducking the opportunity to add papper printed designs to them. Some of the shields (the round ones) wouldn't take a sticker anyway, but I do wonder if more detailed shields wouldlift these guys even more? 

The lances are surprisingly flexible, with quite a lot of "give" in them, making these much more robust  for such narrow bits of printing than some of the other printed resins I've seen, so from that I suspect materials technology is moving on apace in the 3D printing world.

Having said all that, I did manage to snap two of the lances off when I was taking these photos having done no damage to any of them at all in the preceeding painting and basing stages - they did however glue back on pretty easily with superglue, as the breaks were very clean. 

I only did barber pole stripes on a few of them, not wanting the units to look like a fairground ride with too many striped poles. 

The running horses are actually too long (when printed at this scale) to fit on a 30mm deep base, but I did manage to find some 35mm deep bases I had lying around and they managed to fit pretty well on those. 

So, all in all these are very nice, while also not really being all that close to the standards of good 15mm metal-cast figures from established sculptors. they are however leaps and bounds better than the "Playmobil" figures I bought last year, and are more than perfectly servicable for one-table usage.

The oversized impression from the raw prints seemed to be greatly mitigated by a count of paint and standardized basing - and I imagine that it would in any case be perfectly possible to print them slightly smaller just by changing some settings on the machine anyway.

So, the 3D future is almost here - not quite, but certainly getting closer every day. It will just take a few more folks to pick up their mouse (?) and noodle away at designing figure ranges, presumably just like whoever is designing stuff under the Eskice brand banner and suddenly there will be enough interest and enough competition for design to reach that next level - and if (OK, "when") that is matched with advances in materials tech too it'll not be too long until the choice between printed and cast ranges is a very difficult one to call indeed. 

I plan to take some size comparison photos and post them up in the next few days as well.

(Here's an affiliate link to Hoplite MIniatures eBay store: https://ebay.us/NbWnTW)

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