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This all started with SisterBoot sending me a text about a month before my birthday saying she'd found some "3d printer files" she thought I'd like, and asked if we had a 3D printer or not. I told her no but that we were planning on one someday, and I'd even backed a couple of minis/terrain stl Kickstarters for when we did. Fast forward to my birthday and a mysterious large box appearing on our doorstep: Yep, as a combined birthday/Christmas present for both me and MrBoot, she got us an Ender-3. The past week has been a journey in learning all the things I didn't know I didn't know about 3D printing, 3D printers, the Ender-3 specifically, slicing, filament, etc. etc. etc. I've watched a LOT of youtube videos lol. After finally getting it all put together and spending almost an hour fiddling with the bed knobs and a piece of paper, I printed a "bed level" file from a youtube video. To my considerable astonishment, it printed perfectly the first time: Emboldened by my success, I decided to print the included cat file (this was before I knew the difference between gcodes and stl files - that was a later lesson I learned the hard way lol). Again, I was surprised when it printed without issue: Next, I felt it was only proper to print my first Benchy boat to signal my formal introduction to the world of 3D printing. This was when I learned about gcodes and stl files, and what a slicer was. Several more youtube videos later, I tentatively loaded my Benchy onto my microSD card (with all the default settings) and set it printing. This also printed fine, though I did try out the Pause/Resume function (right now I'm nervous leaving it running while asleep, same as I would be leaving the oven running or an iron plugged in) since we were going to bed. This resulted in a thick seam that would almost look intentional if it didn't extend to the cabin portion: "Aha!" I said to myself. "But of course they printed well, all of these are benchmarks or, in the case of the cat, designed to give a good first print. Surely, the first time I print something I've sliced myself I will get a bed full of spaghetti!" Except that didn't happen, and this wall piece from the Modulheim kickstarter printed just fine as well: I'm starting to get nervous that I either somehow accidentally sacrificed to the tech spirits (the capricious and unknowable), or at the very least I'm doing 3D printing "wrong" because based on everything I've read and watched, I shouldn't be having this easy of a time to start with. Heck, I came into this expecting to spend a couple months printing new pieces and endlessly tweaking the parts I already had just to get the thing to function. Tech spirits aside, I'm having ridiculous fun just watching the printer at work; it's the same feeling I get when I pay attention while I'm crocheting. "I am making a thing that did not exist five minutes ago, and once the process is complete, I will now have a thing which wasn't a thing this morning!" So yeah, that's the start of my journey. I'm already starting to eye the more complicated stl files on my computer and learning how to use Ultimaker Cura. I can't wait to print my first mini and learn all about tree supports! Huzzah! --OneBoot 🙂

Another great 3d print I snagged on Etsy. The base was a test. I bought some dollar tree checkers pieces. Glued some rocks and spackle. Bam. I need to put a matte varnish on this guy to take that Gloss off it.

Reducted painting & forumming this week due to fibro but have finished this guy. I have an ambition to paint all the miniatures for Against The Giants - 30 odd years ago we had 3 actual "giant" figures and improvised.... Reaper Bones have been fantastic but A lot of the monsters are giant servants -weaker than the fighters ( hill giant servants fight as ogres), Gary did allow room for the servants to make deals with the party to avoid being killed ( we just killed them - twice...). I couldn't find any Giant Servant figures but then I thought of Heroforge....turns out that XL figures printed double size make very reasonable giants - and they are fun to design. I added the patch and the waistcoat belt ends with Green Stuff This is the first one finished. I made a big cock-up in the design -the cat was meant to be Mrs Norris like - but I managed to have it overlap with a bottle - so one paw is missing and the other goes through the bottle...I thought it could be a ghost, then an alcoholic delusion so a pink cat...a cat that was only part there... Butler is probably the brightest hill giant, being part-cloud giant. On a visit to relatives, he noticed that the cloud giants' servants tended to be in control of cellars, food, etc., and spotted an opportunity. Filching a velvet waistcoat, now extremely worn, and adding pinstripes to his trousers, he effectively placed himself in charge of the steading's supplies, and has built up quite a collection of coins and potions (etc.). Unfortunately, he has also been drinking sneakily from both the alcohol supplies and the potion stocks. Hence now he is followed by an irritating pink and purple cat who most of the time no one else can see...

ReaperCon 2022 vendor named Kawna Miniatures had some great sculpts and I picked this one up to paint as an Xmas gift. She’s based on a Dungeons & Lasers base as I’m a huge fan of that company too.

First Reaper minis I've painted! Pretty proud of how the spider turned out! I tried to get an iridescent look on the crow, but I couldn't quite figure it out 😅 Constructive critiques welcome!

Here is some more February painting - a bones IV crone with her black cat out of the familiar pack. Of course it was after pics that I noticed the bare spot on the base!

AMINI3D Mummy Sorceress, Mummy Jackal, Mummy Panther and Mummy Warrior. Printed on Elegoo Mars in resin. Part of my Shifting Sands Project: WIP: https://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/79372-shifting-sands-glitterwolf-paints-egyptian-undead/page/19/#comments Last pics are in the Temple of Apophis Photoboard I made.

Aftermath is a dungeon crawler board game that is the heir to both Mice and Mystics and Stuffed Fables. The game takes place in a post apocalyptic world where rodents have formed colonies to scrounge resources for survival, cobbling together the things they need. For the set, I went with a lot of textures and a lot of wear and tear. Nothing these mice have is brand new, and I really wanted to express that.

I painted up this Reaper metal mini, Swiftpaw the Catfolk monk (SKU 3923) in July. I really like the catfolk minis that Glenn Harris sculpted for Reaper and this is my second completed catfolk from that series. Nothing fancy, I used the off white triad for his Gi.

Finished her up the other night. She's been on my desk for years, part of a batch of anthropomorphs I started and didn't quite finish. Yes, the colors are that bright. She has a ton of detail in her clothing but the body is kind of bland, so I went with brighter colors for interest.

Sis and I painted two sets of these inbetween other stuff. Hope you like them!

Last one for a bit, have some different stuff to work on for presents for a bit, enjoy!

Howdy, Talk to me pretty... Kev!

Sculptor: Bob Ridolfi I fished this cute girl out of the Box o' Goodwill from the Reaper forums, so it's only right that she make her way back to another forum member as an exchange mini for Secret Sophie 2016. Tricksay wanted to receive "open to anything"; I love when people pick that, because I can just paint whatever I feel like. Thanks to Bonwirn for giving me a bunch of Hirst Arts blocks to make the diorama out of. After I took these pictures I realized: OMG, you can't even see the rear half that I spent so much time on. Despite the chance of ruining the mini, I carefully drilled a magnet hole through the bottom of the base so she can be removed. I threw in a gaming base as well for picture taking purposes, and just in case Tricksay ever wants to use her in a game. I was joking with my friends at paint day that "no, those are her adventuring clothes; convenient necklace, weird skirt-thong and all."

Cheshire Cat. Combined Darksword Miniatures. Birman Cat Bard head DSM8111 by Dave Summers. Huge Fae Cat body DSM7644 by Patrick Keith.

Howdy, Lil' kitty... Kev! P.S. Too tiny!

I have a private commission to sculpt a set of cats. The client (a member of this forum) wants them as a gift for someone. I don't want to go into a lot of details or show reference pictures in the case that that someone happens to see this post, but the client did give me permission to share this here. I'll let the client decide whether or not he/she wants to reveal him/herself. The cats are to be 1 inch tall at the head if they were standing, which puts them roughly in scale for a 50 to 60 mm human. One will be sitting and one loafing. Here are the armatures with basic skulls, eyeballs, and underpinning.

There's a French wargame called "Alkemy" which has a faction of pseudo-Egyptian cat-people called the Khaliman Republic (or République Khalimane in the original). A few years back I snagged a starter set of 5 resin figures I found on clearance because, well, cat people. Currently I am involved in an elaborate and fascinating campaign combining White Wolf's World of Darkness (the one in Vampire the Masquerade second edition and Werewolf the Apocalypse) with its "Exalted" game, second edition (which was originally sold as the prehistory of the World of Darkness, although they backed away from that pretty fast). This character is a PC for that game. The person is a lycanthrope, or rather a feline therianthrope. He has a human form, but I painted up the cat man because it's more fun. This is the first small-scale non-terrain resin I've ever assembled or painted. It was a little fiddly and I was worried about its fragility. There are a few places with what is probably flash that I didn't have the courage to try to slice off. Comments welcome. WIP thread here.

I wanted to share this here for those of you not on the social media outlets. My daughter's latest project was the Crazy Cat Lady that I got her for Christmas. She painted the cats first which just amazed me because some of the detail she put on them was awesome. Once she was done and I could not get her to touch up anything else she wanted to base. I decided she would do it all except the super glue. So away she went with craft glue and basing materials. She has a few more things I got her for Christmas and then birthday is in less than two weeks and I have a couple more minis for then too. Should be a busy year if actually sit down and paint.

I finally finished it!

In keeping with the month that hosts Halloween, I painted up some familiars! Very simply done, starting with grey liner, nightmare black (a little extra purple for the cat) and heraldic red for the eyes (cat and raven) & mouth (bat). Drop of linen white for the cat's eyes, and a drop of dragon gold for her forehead. Still need to clean up the bases a bit. Otherwise done!

Over a total of about 90+ minutes split over two evenings I managed to get some paint on the cat. The bird had brown liner on it so far. I started with brown liner and worked up with stone grey and linen white. Getting the spots to look good was a pain. Onto the bird next! Gonna use the same set of colors I think.

I have a few minis displayed at my local game shop and was contacted a couple weeks ago about doing a custom job for a D&D player's Heroforge mini. This is the first time I've dealt with their Premium plastic, and it is much better than the detail plastic they used before - though there were a lot more little plastic spurs that I didn't entirely erase all trace of. I'm pretty happy with it, and the client is happy, so mission accomplished!

These are a couple of the animal companion sets that I painted for one of my players (minus the spider which I have not finished yet). I didn't want to paint the cat like a plain panther and I decided to use an ocelot as inspiration. My favorite is the little wolverine guy even though the photos make the river rocks look like pastel M&M's lol. My usual background got ruined so I have to make do until I get a new one printed or buy a fancy one. The bear looks better in hand and I used blacks and browns in his fur so he doesn't look so flat as he does in the photos. I am not happy with the fake snow and how it turned out. It looked really good when I put it on but not so good once the glue dried. I guess next time I will try baking soda and see how that works out. These are for gaming though so baking soda wouldn't have been the best choice probably. Anyway, here they are! C&C welcome.

This is Jason Wiebe's sabertooth tiger, Reaper 02480. I painted it up with a lynx's coloration. WIP thread here. As a note, this is another form of the feline therianthrope also depicted here. So this is another PC for that idiosyncratic game of World of Darkness-Exalted I'm involved in. And that skull under the critter is small. (with 59037 Deadlands Noir Femme Fatale by Bob Ridolfi for scale)