Falling Snow Globe

 

My son and I built this musical snow globe for my wife for Christmas and I'm just getting through a backlog of projects and posting it now.

My son composes music and he wrote this piano piece, "Falling Snow" a few years ago.  He converted the score to a music box for this project. Sadly the water proofing did not work, and the first attempt ruined the miniature piano, but the final product looks great without the water.

Here is a video (with audio).

Piano Build

I found the piano and bench on Thingiverse by Winslow, scaled, and printed it.

The piano required some minor patching at this scale, but was otherwise perfect.

I quickly designed the circular hardwood stage in Tinker CAD.  I did not add wood texture, but the 3D FDM printer leaves enough lines, etc to give a realistic look after quickly sanding the top.

Assembled and painted it looks very nice.

And the final images show added snow flocking (because the water sealer did not work and it is no ,

Globe Build

The plug was designed to insert into a Globe from National Artcraft and a basic music module found on Amazon was integrated into the base.

The base was pained balck and the title plaque was designed in TinckerCAD and printed on a 3D printer in white PVA.

3D Printed HeroQuest Board

A few years ago I 3D printed and painted my own HeroQuest board.

original versus 3D print comparison

My print features larger squares ~35mm vertical (versus ~25mm on the original) so the board never gets overly crowded.

Sketch of a How-to

To 3D print an image you basically convert it to a grey-scale image and use the grey value as a depth in your 3D geometry.  That would almost work here, except the board would have deep pits where the shadows are (top right corner of every room) and the darker rooms would be deeper than the brighter colored rooms and we can do better than that. I do not recall the filters, but my notes suggest it was a Gaussian followed by a high contrast filter (as applied in GIMP). This is what the image looked like with the shadows removed.

Height-field image

The image was divided into 36 "tiles" and imported into Blender where I learned how to make a mesh and apply this height field. Those initial 3D shapes were very rough and I applied several iterations of a smoothing filter in Blender to make them look nice and exported STL files (you can get the files here).

Printer Settings

I printed a few samples and settled on a fairly dense 3D print an image. I have one of the early Ender3 printers and these are the settings I used in CURA 3.4. This makes for a long slow print, and used almost two reels of Hatchbox black fillament.

Note that due to a Blender error on my part, the files are 200% of the desired size and I scaled them all to 50% prior to printing.

a segment ready for slicing in CURA

Build

I super glued the tiles to two pieces of 1/4" plywood (divided where the board would normally fold) and embedded magnets in the edges such that it jumps together when remotely close to aligned.

Painting

I painted the whole board with Craftsmart paints and created my own black and black/brown washes to achieve all of the effects you see in the final product. You can always add more wash to darken things, start with bright colors and use the washes to color the recesses.  Then dry brush an ivory or white on top to add the specular highlights on the board. Then do several light iterations of the wash in the top right corners to bring in the shadows. Lastly, protect your hard work with a matte varnish but be very careful not to ruin it here, test in your exact weather conditions on a different piece first!

In progress board

Final Board

HeroQuest: Alternate White Plastic Figures

Mummies, Skeletons, and Zombies

The miniatures in HeroQuest are shipped in groups with different color plastic. I've already completed the red plastic Heros and the grey plastic Chaos boss miniatures. I decided my next milestone in my updated HeroQuest game project would be the white plastic which consists of 4 Skeletons, 2 zombies, and 2 mummies.

Mummies

Mummies

I really like these mummies from Mantic. They have a "Knights of Last Crusade" feel to them and fit excellently with the vibe I'm looking for.

in the tomb

Zombies

Zombie

These Mantic zombies are a very popular choice wherever zombies are desired. I still have many left and will eventually build more and base them on GW style bases to match the other models. Also my painting has improved and it will be nice to see the difference on these.

Skeletons

Skeletons

These Games Workshop Skeleton Warriors represent the peak of multi-part kits from GW and have been my favorite kit for a long time.

Ulfenwatch

Ulfenwatch and Watch Captain Halgrim (center left)

Blasting through these with more speed painting. There are six more of the Ulfenwatch in partial complete status.

Markers and Bats - Cursed City

More speed painting for the Cursed City game. Really happy with the Skeleton and based here.

Objective markers and other game elements 

Bats.  Not so great zoomed in, but fast and respectable tabletop pieces.

 

HeroQuest: Alternate Grey Plastic Figures

Chaos Warriors, Gargoyle, and Chaos Sorcerer

The miniatures in HeroQuest are shipped in groups with different color plastic. The Heroes (already completed) are red plastic. I decided my next milestone in my updated HeroQuest game project would be the grey plastic which consists of 4 Chaos Warriors, the Gargoyle, and the Chaos Sorcerer.

Chaos Sorcerer

Chaos Sorcerer

The HeroQuest Chaos Sorcerer miniature wears a horned helmet and skull mask and with his half naked appearance is often painted to resemble Skeletor from He-Man. The more recent "Chaos Sorcerer Lord" model from Games Workshop (here) appears to have no resemblance. But a head swap with a GW Chaos Warrior (as seen first on Reddit by u/cyber-333 here) looks fantastic and inspired me to pick this project back-up and update/replace every mini. 

Gargoyle

Gargoyle

The classic HeroQuest gargoyle miniature is based on the old Games Workshop Blood Thirster models. This "Guros, Darkspawn Captain" model from Reaper Miniatures shown above is a really great minor demon figure which lands halfway between the classic HQ gargoyle and a modern Blood Thirster. Specifficaly, Guros has the more realistic sculpting style / body proportions of the 2000's era and is not a giant miniature like the last incarnation from GW.

• The model's natural horns and ears shooting out horizontally from the head match the helmet shape on the classic gargoyle (and the classic Blood Thirster).
• The hooves match the GW Blood Thirster models.
• Guros has a whip and an empty hand (which can be modified to match the weapons on the classic HQ model, e.g. whip and sword)

The sword was added by drilling out the hand with a pin-vise and attaching a sword and pommel cut from a GW Chaos Warrior sprue.

Chaos Warriors

These Games Workshop Chaos Warriors just went out of print, but you can probably still find them at your local Game Store. These multi-pose kits are fantastic and after 10+ years I still have bits floating around to kit bash the other models in this post!

Vargskyr

Vargskyr - Cursed City

Vampires in Cursed City occupy a spectrum in thier ability to control the ferral aspects of the curse. A Vargskyr has lost the battle and is entirely a beast.

This paint scheme is a significant departure from the game/box art. But I saw this style used on Redit and loved it.

I used Army Painter Speed Paints to quickly paint this fellow in one coat of 50/50 Highlord Blue / Gravelord Grey.  Then made the eyes appear illuminated with white paint and completed the effect by tinting the white with a thin (watery) yellow.