Making Christmas

As is the rules: finished result first.

For secret santa, I decided to give away a complete set of custom D&D minis I've collected over time. Every single one of these was designed on Hero Forge for for a particular character. Since my giftee mentioned they were into D&D, but just starting out, I figured I couldn't go wrong with some unique minis they wouldn't find anywhere else.

That's all I'll say about the gift and giftee, since I'd like them to not know this is for them until they open the box in person.

This post is about how how I print minis.

Everything starts with the models. I use Hero Forge for all my custom minis, because their parts selection and interface is absolutely incredible. Especially with their new custom posing features, I'm rarely disappointed when I start trying to design a new character.

If you like their stuff and don't have a printer at home, you can order prints directly from them. (Or course, you can only get one. The advantage of print-at-home is that you can make as many as you want!)

After they've been designed and purhcased, I bring the STLs into my slicer of choice to get them ready for printing. This involves orienting them properly and setting up the supports.

Resin printing has some unique constraints and challenged that makes it quite different from FDM printing. But it's absolutely worth it to get this level of detail.

As you can see, I can usually fit 4-5 minis on a single print run. The print time is only affected by the number of layers, not the number of parts, so it's more efficient if you can get as many as possible on there.

The supports are more of an art than a science. If there's interest, I can do another post going over supports and slicing in more detail.

Once I've set up the print jobs, it's time to bring them over to the printers. In this case, I use two: and older first-generation Anycubic Photon, and a brand-new Photon S.

I'm still fine tuning the settings on the new one and tossed a couple print runs that I wasn't super happy with. But overall, I like it a lot -- it's faster, quieter, and cures the resin more rigidly.

I often prep print jobs in the evening and let them run overnight. This was the first run and was sitting, waiting for me in the morning.

Once I get them all off the printer, it's time to clean them up and start post processing. This is what they look like fresh off the build plate. They're still covered in resin and dangerous to touch without gloves. They need to be washed, removed from the supports, and put in a UV lightbox to finish curing fully.

(Again, if there's interest, I can go into post-processing steps in more detail. It's mostly pretty boring, though.)

All cleaned up and ready to go. At this point, they're perfectly safe to handle. In fact, the minis often end up on the table just like this. I love the look of the blue resin, and I'm often too lazy to paint.

Even a little bit of priming makes a difference though. Makes all the small details "pop".

For these ones (and almost every mini I paint), I use a pre-shading technique. I start by airbrushing the whole mini with a black primer and letting it dry. Then I go over it again with a white primer, but only spray downwards at an approximately 45-degree angle. This simulates sunlight and leaves shaded areas darker. Not only do they look better this way, but you can also often get away with only minimal paints to bring them up to "good enough at table-distance" levels of quality. I've got some translucent shades that work nicely for that.

For this batch, I sprayed the white quite a bit heavier than I usually do, just to make them a little more uniform and more like the kind of texture you'd get from store-bought pre-primed minis from Reaper or Wizards. The shadows are still there, but more muted. That way, they're more of a blank-slate in case my giftee decides to paint them.

---

Feel free to leave any questions or feedback in the comments. I love talking about these hobbies.