3D Printed Fun

01.17.2014

One of my Christmas presents to myself was a batch of 3D printed models which I could (hopefully) use for gaming. My goal has long been to integrate some type of GI Joe Comic Book/Cartoon inspired element into a game, and someone made a few of the Gi Joe & Cobra vehicles in 28mm scale on Shapeways. Last year Jerry ordered a couple of space ships from Shapeways, mainly to test out the quality ofwhat they are able to print. The ships he ordered had a nice amount of detail for how small they were. Thanks to a Black Friday sale, I finally placed my order for a helicopter, tank, and trio of jeeps.

The jeeps were based on the VAMP jeep. One was a basic jeep, the second had a machine gun to mount, and the third a missile rack. I probably should have just ordered one to see if these vehicles would work for what I wanted to use them, but they were on sale and buying them had been on my mind since I discovered them almost a year ago.

It took almost a month for my order to ship. 3D printing is a slow process, and Jerry pointed out I might have been the first person to ever order these models so there was a good chance some quality assurance checking was going on with a better than average chance included that something wasn't going right. That's fine, I wasn't in a hurry. I told myself this a couple of times each day.

After my order arrived I looked through everything. Helicopter, tank, jeeps. While looking at the jeeps something wasn't right. 1 of the jeeps had a part missing - the back 1/5 was missing. I looked in the back in which it was packed - there wasn't a trunk to glue on. Nothing had broken off. The open back end of the jeep was just... open. Normally I would think something has cleanly sliced the back end off, but in this case it was like the 3D printer had just run out of plastic when it was printing the jeep.

I sent exchanged emails with Gary at Shapeways Customer Service, including the above pictures. I like Gary, he has a good sense of humor and could tell I wasn't an irate customer wanting an immediate solution. Basically they'll look into it and let me know what to do next. That's the answer I was looking for.

I can figure out how to use 4/5 of a jeep. I can work up something to close the big hole in the back - the rear axle is there so I can still make a 4-wheeled vehicle. More fun would to make a wrecked vehicle objective marker out of it. I bet that's what will eventually happen. Now my mind gets to wander around all the different ways to make it less than 4/5 of a vehicle. And on fire.


gaming miniatures

I still want a Helicarrier

01.08.2014

I had an idea for something today that would amuse Jerry since he's been amused the past couple of days, but I've waited to long and have forgotten whatever it was.

Instead, here's a bonus feature about the SHIELD Helicarrier from the Avengers movie.


random

I need to watch more cartoons

01.07.2014

Two things I'm supposed to know about, especially when quizzed by Jerry, are movies and comics. Jer was telling me about watching the Avengers movie with Alice over the weekend and how she enjoyed it, which led to how she watches most of the Marvel cartoons, one of which features teenage versions of Iron Fist and some other guys. While Jerry was trying to describe the other guys, I wasn't real sure who they were. That bothered me, so of course I had to track it down.

The cartoon in question is Ultimate Spider-Man. The character I had never heard of was White Tiger. The character that messed me up because his costume and personality is so different is Power Man, but given that the description I had to go on was "some black guy who's powers are forgettable" I give myself a little leeway.

From the Ultimate Spider-Man wiki, from L. to R.

White Tiger - (real name Ava Ayala) is a S.H.I.E.L.D. trainee and the current successor in her family's legacy to bear the name. Originally a lone hero, she joined S.H.I.E.L.D. in an effort to become a right-hand woman to Nick Fury. With the rest of her group, she embarked on many missions and developed further as a hero. Throughout her time with the rest of the group, she rediscovered her hatred for Kraven the Hunter for the murders of her father and grandfather and overcame her desire to kill him herself with the aid of Spider-Man. She controls herself naturally and helps the others with that too.

Nova - (real name Sam Alexander) is a super-hero with cosmic-energy abilities. Ever since being inducted into the Nova Corps, Sam has developed quite the cocky attitude. He believes himself to be a natural leader, despite not seeing the limitations of his powers and his "fight now, talk later" strategy, which ends up, not being the best choice.

Power Man - (real name Luke Cage) is the muscle and "street-smart" man of a S.H.I.E.L.D.-sanctioned superhero team. He is Iron Fist's best friend. It is revealed that Luke received his powers from a S.H.I.E.L.D. version of the Super Soldier Formula developed by his parents.

Iron Fist - (Daniel "Danny" Rand) is a master of K'un Lun's martial arts. Wealth, awesome kung fu skills, head of a company, Danny has it all. Always calm, always in control, always there to aid and assist. Despite his laid-back personality, Danny takes himself very seriously but always keeps his cool. He loves to meditate and does it whenever possible to practice his Zen.

He provides his S.H.I.E.L.D.-sanctioned team insightful advice and teachings from his past experiences in K'un-Lun. Iron Fist is the glue that holds the team together.


random

Post Op Week 14

01.06.2014

After a couple of weeks of my weight loss slowing down to less than what had become the norm of 4 pounds per week, the past week saw a sudden upswing to nearly 8 pounds loss. I have no idea what I've done differently over the past week that spurred this on, but that's part of the joy of losing weight - sometimes it just happens.

I finally built up the courage to eat a real salad last week. Looking at the paperwork from the doctor's office I was allowed to finally try raw vegetables now, so it was time to revisit my old friend the salad. My salad did not require a building permit like my salads of old. This new salad was fairly dainty, in a bowl that could easily be held in my hand. For the actual salad, I mixed in some good old fashioned Iceberg Lettuce, broccoli, mushrooms, along with a little chicken and (fat free) cheese. I was nervous about how the salad would settle after I ate it, but it actually sat better than most other meals I've had.

Saturday I was out running errands and decided to be adventurous and eat out. Mexican food has been one of my safer foods of late (ironic since I've never really cared for Mexican) so I opted for Moe's as I was on that side of town. For fun, I called Jer and invited him out. He brought a date.

Lunch with Jer and Alice was nice - I think I managed to not provide too bad of an influence.

The hardest parts about eating is to not eat too fast and not eat too much. I ordered a small burrito but told myself I wasn't going to eat all of it. A small burrito from Moe's is still roughly the size of my fist. I ate about half of it.

Half was the right point to stop at.


diet gastric sleeve

What I did over my Christmas Vacation

01.02.2014

Over my work-granted holiday break, I managed to do something I've been preparing and prepping for the past 2 years. I finally made a table top battle field to play Dust, and allegedly other wargames.

My goal was to make something fun to play on that would also be easy to store. With that I knew I would need something modular. My biggest drawback would be my inability to cut a straight line, especially multiple times so things would line up modularly. After lots of investigating and changing my mind, I decided to make 12 inch tiles with the following:

12" Cork Tiles. These are pre-cut and available at both Hobby Lobby and Amazon. The cork would be the top of my board so that I could do something artsy and crafty. In step 1 I would glue the cork tiles to:

12"ish styrofoam. Hobby Lobby has styrofoam sheets that are an inch thick, 12" wide, and 3 feet long. I would cut the styrofoam into 12" squares. The cork would be glued to the top of the stryrofoam which would stiffen the cork and hopefully make everything fit together flatter. This is where my inability to cut straight line would come into play, but lukcily it was offset by the next step:

Spray paint the above green. The green paint on the cork would cover any missed flocking/grass spots later on. The paint would also help to seal some of the styrofoam edges so little beads of styrofoam wouldn't fly everywhere once this stuff started to get used. Styrofoam generally doesn't like spray paint (the paint melts the styrofoam), but spraying from a distance minimizes this. A little melting occurred, but it was actually a goal to try and make the styrofoam base shrink to not expand past the bounds of the cork. It worked most of the time. This was followed by:

Glue shelf liner to the bottom of the styrofoam. This step would hopfully minimize the tiles scooting around the table. Originally I was going to use toothpick in the styrofoam to hold the tiles to each other, but over time that's going to leave little balls of styrofoam all over the place. I have no idea how well the shelf liner will work in action. Now the tiles are ready to get pretty:

Apply flocking/grass. Covering the (painted) cork in a layer of Elmers Glue, I then applied a mix of grass flocking most people use for train layouts and also used on the bases of the minis I've been working on. They make giant paper sheets that I could cut to the right size and would have been more economical, but I wanted a little more variety and something that didn't feel like sandpaper. Plus, on of the reasons I'm using cork is so that I can dig into it down the road if I want to try rivers or blasted craters. I didn't add any other features, like hills, because at this point the tiles are still stackable for storage. My table is 51" square, and using 12" tiles I can get 4 rows of 4 on the table. Storage for those 16 tiles should take 12" x 12" and 16" high (maybe a little more once you factor in the thickness of the cork and shelf liner).

From there I started making customized trees, but I cheated. Instead of making trees from scratch (people do that) I armed myself with Hobby Lobby coupons and got trees marketed for train layouts. The key here was just to make sure the tree would look big enough next to a soldier. I had gotten some sheets of styrene (what I called "plastic" a year ago) to cut into bases. After cutting them, they then got painted green to help cover missed spots when flocking.

My next wave of trying something new was to make plaster (technically Hydrocal) rocks with the rock molds that have been sitting on shelves for years. I could use real rocks, but these were lighter and more artsy! Once the rocks dried I added them to some of the above styrene bases and applied a brown wash (thanks to some YouTube videos) and suddenly I've got dirty looking rocks! Add in some various grasses, a bush here and there, and now there are trees to populate the battlefield.

The next big hurdle is learning how to actually play the game. I've read the rules and watched plenty of videos, but I've yet to actually practice any of it. One of my side projects has been to make an army builder for Dust Warfare. There are army builders out there, but I want one that doesn't just give you an army and how many points it's worth, but also the stats you need during the game. One of the fall-backs of Dust Warfare is that (currently) there's nothing that lists unit stats outside of the rulebook and some fan made cards that are of non-standard proportions.

In hopes of making the game easier to learn, I've mostly got my army builder working. One thing that would help would be if there was a picture of the unit shown next to the stats. The fan-made cards do this, and the original Dust Tactics cards do this, both with stock art of the minis. I'd like to go one step further and have pics of my actual units as it would make keeping up with what's what a whole lot easier. I think. With that in mind, I took glamor shots of the units I've painted so far.

With all of that, I should have everything to play a beginner game as everything from 1 core set of the game is now painted.

With that said, I've already got 3 more squads of Allies primed, 3 squads of Axis primed, and another 29 home-made bases with tress, rocks, or just general obstacles and objectives sitting there for the next round of inspiration.


gaming miniatures hobbies

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