I did do some more painting of the frame yesterday, but I’ll leave that update for another time when I have more to show.
Today I thought I’d go back to a little project I haven’t really talked about much, my 3d printed Ladytrooper.
I found the file on Thingiverse , a site that has loads of things to print on a 3d printer. Things from door stops and hooks to movie props and busts. If you can imagine it someone has probably designed one.
I’d seen similar things around and thought they look cool, so I had a look around and found a couple of different ones. This one caught my eye. I downloaded it, and set the printer running.
It came in 3 parts, the base which is designed like a Tie fighter wing. The legs and the upper part. Each took several hours to print and a few more to do some sanding to remove some of the “print lines” that are part of the way the printer works.
After glueing her together I gave her a coat of automotive filler primer. A thicker than usual primer coat that also fills the lines in some more. It does this at the expense of filling in some detail though, so I couldn’t use much. A couple of rounds sanding and priming again got me to a level I was happy with. Well, if I kept going it would lose all the detail….
I decided to go with a traditional stormtrooper armour look, black under white. This did pose a bit of a problem as I had to paint the black first and then the white. So if I messed up and got black where the white needed to be it would be harder to cover it up. So I went carefully. And only stuffed it up a few times. 🙂
The end result is something I’m quite happy with. As a learning experience it was great. Printing your own figures and busts is a cheap way of getting stuff to paint and you can remodel them if you know what you’re doing! The only real expense in 3d printing (after the machine itself) is time. I’m not happy leaving the printer running while I’m not around so it does limit me to prints that can be done in several hours, but there are still more to choose from than I have time to print!
I’ll leave you with the finished product, there is a video about the “build”, but it is a patreon exclusive. You can help support my Modelmaking by becoming a patron here.
