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12 September 2024
3DRPG and Laughing Bear Games have a treat for you today: we’re unveiling the first completed paint job in The Forgotten Rails Hovertrain campaign setting. All aboard!
The lead engine sets the tone for the entire series. Onlookers need to be memorized and amazed by its thunderous force and mysterious technology! Hovertrains are a whole new ballgame and will wholly transform Waterdeep and the rest of the Forgotten Realms. We really had to think the entire paint scheme through and do countless tests.
Now, obviously, we’re not employing the master strokes of Laughing Bear Games for every 3D-printed hovertrain car. However, having Arkansas Adam graciously take the centerpiece of the Fairhaven Line set was huge for us.
As novice painters, we can now do our best to emulate his paint scheme and come away with a satisfying, replayable set of pieces. Painting is always easier when you have something right in front of you to compare against, right?!
Warning: The pictures in this TTRPG article won’t do Laughing Bear Games’ work justice. The engine is so darn good! What struck us the hardest was its simplicity. In our own train car tests, we were “getting cute” and using all these different metallics on all these different model elements, and it was just all so busy! As you will see with Arkansas Adam, simple is 100% better.
Whenever 3DRPG works with a paint pro, we always give them complete carte blanche. The project should be their vision and what speaks to them. If we force a solution, the final piece will never come out as good as it should. Arkansas Adam explained that he wanted to stick with metallics and blacks as that would make the engine more streamlined. Mission accomplished!
The only suggestion we gave LBG was to add a little copper color to the very bottom of the hover engines because we wanted to highlight the futuristic train’s liftoff technology. We love it!
Our trailing hovertrain cars will all be painted in-house here at 3DRPG Studios in sunny Chandler, AZ, and emulating Arkansas Adam’s engine will be challenging (but not in a bad way).
The biggest reason is we won’t be using any fancier pots from Citadel or ArmyPainter because these FDM 3D prints absorb a ton of paint, which would break our fragile hobby budget. Also, we’re novice craftsmen and stay far, far away from complicated paint steps and mixing. We get frustrated, and it spoils the fun.
The good news is we found a fantastic, affordable paint by DecoArt called Black Pearl (which we shared on a previous paint test article). Even better, a wash over the top isn’t even necessary. What did Arkansas Adam teach us, though? We can intermix some softer dry brush blacks and silvers to get close enough to his lead engine!
Even LBG’s interior colors tugged at our hearts. Again, he kept it simple and let his dry brushing and blending do all the talking. There’s no rule that says every single element has to have its own unique color…especially, when you are dealing with a large set of pieces to complete.
A heartfelt thank you to Laughing Bear Games. Their work is tremendously inspirational, and now we’ll take the brush baton and see if we can make them proud! As we paint our trailing cars, we’ll constantly set them alongside this engine to ensure there’s some synergy. What a luxury. We’re so spoiled here.
So what’s next? Welp, once the completed engine arrived in the mail, we secretively did two full car test paints. There were a few highs and many lows from that experience. Still, we learned a lot, and after huddling up as a team, we had some ideas for improvement. We’re a little embarrassed to share our first stab but we’ll be able to laugh at ourselves once we have some colored cars we’re happy with.
Here are some paint steps we’re solid on:
The upper sides of each hovertrain car are still vexing us a bit. We tried some solid colors like dark green and red, which just didn’t wow us. Instead, we’ll use Black Peral as a dry-brushed base and then try some softer light highlighting strokes of Shimmering Silver, Zinc, and straight black over the top. We’re not writing off some colored cars, but we’ll save that style for a little later.
Once again, a huge thanks to Arkansas Adam for his fantastic paint jobs!! We’re really jazzed to share more of his excellent works in future posts. Be sure to visit his Instagram, Facebook, and Etsy (where you can request a custom quote for some paint jobs on your own pile of shame).
Until next time!
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