Something fishy is going on

Well, it's been a while since my last post. Lockdown has done strange things to timetables and to hobby habits. It's hard to be motivated to work on models when you have no idea when the next game will be (other than this: that it will probably not be soon)...

I really haven't managed much painting recently. I have good intentions and have laid the groundwork, but I'm yet to really apply myself. I do feel a bit guilty about it, but there have been other developments that are quite promising.

My friend bought a resin printer a while ago, but had been unable to find the space to set it up and get it running. He was using the box as a coffee table, with the printer still in it. Eventually the absurdity of this became too much, and we arranged to bring it around here and get it working. Since then, I have printed an entire regiment's worth of some cool Greatsword models, a number of horses to pull wagons, and Trolls. Lots of Trolls.

 12 River Trolls, all assembled and waiting for their glue and putty to dry.

The internet is already packed full of designs being offered by 3D modellers, waiting to be printed. There's free stuff on places like Thingiverse, there's all sorts of interesting Patreons, and there are dedicated webstores. In this case, these rather cute River Trolls have come from Duncan Shadow.

I knew I wanted to print a dozen of them. That is probably more than the designer had intended, given there are only 3 different models available. But there are options. Even for a simple bumpkin like me, the tools are readily on hand to re-size and mirror models. If you want to get fancy you can use a tool like Blender that can be used to cut and change things digitally before printing. That was a bit much for me at present, but I made do with the things I felt I could handle.

 This is the same troll, printed at 2 different sizes and mirrored.

Again we have the same troll, this time with one of them having lost his fish. There were too many fish. I had to take some them away, using the trusted methods of knives and stabbing weapons.

Where I could, I mixed arms. Elsewhere I altered weapons, turned fish heads into rocks, and generally made some rather clumsy use of a bit of very old green stuff that was sitting on the table. It was barely workable. I really need to take better care of stuff. Anyway...

That club on the left was another fish. And the rock in the middle was because I decided the 2 handed overhead club (the one that has been hacked up on the right) was too distinctive.

 I also decided to make use of some of the spare bits I had from the single box of GW River Trolls I assembled many years ago. The scale was about right (although truly, these were printed at 68% of the original 3D model), and I think once they're painted you wouldn't know how badly kitbashed they were. And then these guys kind of serve as my hybrids to help meld these new guys with the GW ones...

Hooray, finally an entire horde of Trolls. Man they really don't want to rank up, even we me trying to glue them to their bases in very strategic ways.

All of these conversions are pretty rough, but I think they'll come up OK, and it's all in the interest of making a ridiculously large mob of the things anyway. Nobody will ever know...

So I have been making progress. Tomorrow I will probably glue sand to bases. Maybe if they're lucky, they will even get undercoated. 

Then I just have to make myself actually paint something again...