Fitz’s Toy Chest #24: Heroes Forged

Welcome back guys.

It’s been awhile since we did one of these, but something came up recently that I just had to share on the site.

Now before I get into it, let me start by saying this is not sponsored by Hero Forge whatsoever. The only reason their name is part of the title is because A) That’s where I got the items I’m going to be talking about this time around, and B) It made for a way shorter title than what this post really is which is my journey into the world of custom 3d printed miniatures and my return to a past passion, miniature painting.

So, now that that is out of the way let’s get into this unconventional installment of the Toy Chest.

As most of you know, Doom and I have been playing through a D&D adventure on the show along with @TheJSarge. This epic 4 hour introductory adventure has somehow managed to last almost the entire run of the Nerd Blitz itself.

Along the way, we commissioned the talented @LookingForEight to draw portraits of our characters, which turned out great and can be seen as the featured image for our 100th episode.

Then one day I had a thought: We should have minis to represent our characters! The likeness didn’t have to be perfect, but I wondered how close I could get. I searched all over the internet and while I did find a few minis that would have worked, none of them seemed good enough.

And that’s when I stumbled across custom 3d printed miniatures. In particular HeroForge.com.

I was pretty skeptical that their online modeling tool would be easy to use or flexible enough to make what I was looking for, but I gave it a shot anyway.

Boy was I wrong.

Not only was the modeling interface pretty easy to use and intuitive, the amount of customization was amazing.

Now, our characters have some pretty outlandish features. I didn’t think there was any way this tool could reproduce them. But it could and did! From the perfect trench coat and hat for Finius to a floppy hat and flying V for Jibbz, I was able to recreate an almost identical 3d version of Tah’s illustration of our party members.

Crazy.

And the craziest thing was that the price to have these printed….wasn’t THAT crazy. Sure it was exponentially more than a single off the rack figure (unless we’re talking Games Workshop in which case…not that different at all) but considering the amount of detail and the ability to create a figure exactly how you want it to look, the price was a steal.

When the figures arrived I was pleasantly surprised at how good they looked. The 3d digital models look amazing online but I still wasn’t convinced of what the physical product would look like until I saw them in person.

The surfaces were pretty smooth for the most part, apparently some 3d printing leaves models with rough print lines all over their surfaces. But for the most part they weren’t too noticeable on these.

At first I thought this would be cool enough, just the plain pre-primed gray figures. But then I got to thinking. I’ve been meaning to get back into the hobby of miniature painting for years. It used to be one of my favorite things to do, but it’s a hobby that requires time and concentration and after the kids were born, well, I had very little time and absolutely no environment conducive to concentration.

But it’s different now that the kids are older, and here I had the perfect excuse to spend time painting painting tiny plastic men. It would be for the show and not for my own benefit.

So I promptly fell down the rabbit hole of painting tutorials to brush up on new techniques and tips. Back when I used to do this, there was no internet or YouTube with videos full of experts to show you how to do it. You took what you could get from White Dwarf magazine or the pages of Games Workshop rulebooks and just tried to copy it the best you could (which never ended up anywhere close to the magazines and box art).

I also did a deep dive on different paint companies and set about replenishing my 15 year old supplies that were half dried up and useless.

Finally the painting started and the first thing I did was royally mess up Finius’ model. I had forgotten that these minis came pre-primed and decided I would use a brush on primer instead of a rattle can spray primer. I’d never used the brush on kind before, when I was finished I realized what a horrible mistake I had made. I had managed to glob up all the delicate details on the model with primer until it looked like a lump of Dragonborn shit.

This was bad. I had just ruined a $30 miniature in less than 5 minutes. I was so disgusted with myself I almost gave up competely.

I went back and forth between giving up and just shelling out another $30 for a new model.

Then I fell down another rabbit hole of YouTube videos. This time the subject being how to strip paint off a model you fucked up.

Back in the day, when most minis were made of metal, it was gross and messy to strip them but it could be done fairly easily using Easy Off oven cleaner. It stunk like shit but it worked great. I stripped many figures like that (especially after I discovered a thing called eBay where you could get old minis for a steal)

But how the heck do you strip minis made of plastic? Easy Off and most solvents that I know of would melt the plastic and you’d have nothing but a gooey mess.

I saw several people say to use everything from special solvents you can only get in the UK to standard ca brake fluid. Supposedly all would work without damaging your mini.

Then I found a thread about using a product I’ve seen a million times at Home Depot. Simple Green. It’s a very mild detergent cleaner that claims to clean just about anything. Well apparently it strips paint safely too.

So I got some. Held my breath and soaked that guy for several days. Each day I’d take him out of the solution and scrub away with an old toothbrush. Sure enough, after several days scrubbing and soaking Finius looked 98% brand new. The gloppy white primer was almost totally gone, leaving just the gray Hero Forge primer behind.

Finally I was ready to start again.

Doom was pretty specific about how he wanted his character to look, and I took it a step further. Obviously his outfit was going to be based on a very particular pro wrestler, but I wanted something that would pop more than just a plain black hat and coat. So I opted for Taker’s old school gear color scheme that was equal parts black and purple.

I started by base coating all of the skin areas. That was the part I was most interested in getting perfect. Since he is a red Dragonborn, I could see very clearly how he should look in my head and was interested to see how close I could get his skin to what I envisioned.

Next, I added the base coat to the chest area. I at first wanted it to look like the under scales of a dragon, but as you’ll see that evolved into more of a leather look. At first I thought that was supposed to be his bare chest but the more I painted the more it looked clearly like armor plates.

Then I base coated all of the black clothing areas. And added the bright purple edge highlights to the coat.

I was originally planning to do the shoulder pads in a metallic color but then I had the idea to make them appear to be painted purple which really helped lighten up the color scheme and made the outfit pop.

At this point I also started adding my attempts at glazing the folds of the coat and faces of the armor pieces to give it a nice gradual highlight. It worked. Kinda.

About this time I started working on Jibbz.

The concept for Jibbz’s look started as a joke between Doom and I when trying to figure out what we thought JSarge’s bard character would look like. The only thing that kept coming to mind was François le Foutre, a.k.a. the gay pirate author I had seen at multiple Wizard World conventions. He is a character to say the least and I swear one of these days I will buy some of his books, they sound ridiculous, in a good way.

In case you don’t know, this is who I’m talking about…

And so, since I based the look of this figure on him, this is the basic color pallette I wanted to use as well.

I started with base coats of purple and pink, and I was focused the most on getting the hat right. I felt like this is the part of the model that would really sell the look so I had to get the color and shading right.

They I added white sleeves and the initial light skin coloring.

And here’s the second place I messed up badly. These paint companies sell washes specifically meant for shading skin areas, and I, foolishly, used one of these pre-made washes rather than making one of my own the right shade.

The results were…..problematic…

Obviously this could not stand and so had to redo all of the skin areas.

I also based the boots and backpack. I decided that since the way the boots were sculpted made it look like the heels were an add on, I figured why not put some bling on this dude and make them gold. Then I added a coordinating gold tip to his sword scabbard

One thing about painting minis is there’s a lot of waiting. Waiting for layers to dry, waiting to buy more paint colors, etc etc. The way to deal with that waiting is obviously to start painting another model until you can get back to your other ones. So right about now I started work on Dilznic.

This one was the hardest to figure out colors for. Finius and Jibbz I was able to picture in my head immediately, either because of how they had been described to me or because I based them on a flamboyant real life person. Dilznic however, I hadn’t given too much thought to.

Originally I had though of doing his robes in a woodland theme of nature colors like greens and browns, since he is a Forest Gnome. But the more I though about it the more boring I thought he would look.

That’s when I came across a picture of some D&D style artwork of a Gnome that was dressed like a traditional garden gnome. Blue coat, red hat, you know the one.

I decided that would be too funny, and so I started base coating Dilznic in different shades of blue. I intentionally used different shades of blue so that different areas of his outfit would stand out and not be just a uniform color.

You can see the panels of the under robes are just a little darker than the tunic, and the outer robes themselves are a super dark blue. I went really dark with those so that I could highlight the ripples in the fabric better.

I also put a coat of dark red on the hat, also so I could build up gradual highlights later.

I started to see this as being a really garish bright outfit, and so I wanted something gaudy for the trim that would stand out.

So initially I chose a bright yellow.

Yellow is a notoriously difficult color to paint. Possibly second only to white. I did well on Jibbz’s white sleeves, so I thought I could paint yellow with no problem.

I was wrong as you will soon find out.

While waiting for the first coat (of many) of that stupid yellow to dry I went back and colored in some more areas on Finius and worked on some initial highlights on the coat and chest plates.

I fought those chest plates the whole way. I don’t have pictures of every stage but the colors on those changed several times as I messed up shading or highlighting them or just plain didn’t like the way they turned out and had to retouch and rework them.

And you can see here I’m starting to color in the details on the shield as well as adding a gleam of light to the ridge down the center.

I also added color to the crossbow on his back and lightened up his feet and tail spikes again after giving the recesses a dark wash.

Returning to Dilznic, I decided his boots and bed roll should match his red hat, so those got the same base coat of dark red. (Pay no attention to paint slopped all over the base, I’ll clean that up later)

You can also see my first attempts at highlighting the folds of his blue robes.

Meanwhile on Jibbz, I was working on highlighting his boots and hat as well as putting additional coats on the  pink under skirt to get it nice and opaque.

And of course here is where the flying V gets its classic black and white base coat as well as a first coat on Jibbz’s beard and eyebrows.

Then I ran into trouble again with the skin on this model. I tried to highlight his face but ended up overdoing it and washing out all the shadows, ending up with the start of a rough chalky mess with no definition at all.

I would need to go back and fix this again but not before I took a break out of frustration.

Maybe the yellow on Dilznjc’s robes would go better.

Nope. Still looked ugly as sin.

But the hat was looking good. I was really pleased with how the highlights on the hat and boots were going.

I got Jibbz’s skin looking a little better, but still not great.

At this point I abandoned Dilznic’s yellow trim and decided to repaint it red. The red had better coverage and also matched the overall color scheme better after all.

The final highlighting on the hat turned out pretty well. I’m kinda proud of that gradient.

Similarly I’m proud of the layering I did on Jibbz’s empty beer bottles.

For Dilznic’s spellbook, I went with a green cover with gold details. This was done as an homage to my green faux leather hard bound copy of The Hobbit.

On Dilznic’s other hand you can see the blue gemstone ring that he uses as a spell casting focus. It looks suspiciously like a ring I’ve seen before, almost like it’s a personal nod to something in real life.

Finally I wrapped it all up by touching up all my paint slop, and painting the stone bases.

Here are the finished models all varnished and ready for the tabletop.

All in all, frustrations aside, I had a great time working on these and trying out new techniques I had never attempted before. Overall I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, but still a bit disappointed with some aspects of my paint job.

I’m definitely glad I did this, and I can’t wait to paint more!

If you’re interested in any of this, here are just a few of the resources I used for this project.

Custom 3D Printed Minis: http://heroforge.com

Hobby Supplies: http://miniaturemarket.com

Painting Tutorials: https://youtu.be/8sYclmqWRMc

https://youtu.be/Mp7X3AA54tQ

https://youtu.be/4ePwy9qED28

And just because I think he’s ballsy and awesome, here’s a link to the book series by François Lefoutre who inspired Jibbz’s look: http://www.seamensexology.com/

Let us know what you think of this post in the comments below or share this post on Twitter with the Hashtag #TNBToyChest.

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