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17 September 2024
There’s a buzz in the air here at 3DRPG Studios as we unveil our first completed hovertrain car behind our mighty Forgotten Rails engine. We took numerous stabs at matching Laughing Bear Games pro paintwork and think we’re finally in our happy place! Let’s take a look!
Having Arkansas Adam’s pro-paint job physically in front of us has been incredibly beneficial. We just kept tinkering and comparing until we got where we needed to be.
We’re using novice acrylic paints by DecoArt because the hovertrain cars absorb a lot of paint, so we need a decent yet economical option to stay in our craft budget lane. After countless paint steps, we think we’re finally in a good place to apply this sample car to the rest of our 3D-printed hovertrain cars.
First, let’s check our hovertrain master hovertrain car list and see what’s printed and what’s still in the Prusa printing pipeline. Aether Studios value-packed Patreon keeps cranking out new train pieces so while we’re certainly not done, we believe we have enough pieces for our starting gameboard.
We’re pleased with our progress overall! There should be enough 3D-printed pieces to batch paint and support a variety of home-brewed DnD one-shots. Note: not every completed car is in the image above.
A few miscellaneous notes. While the cars are FDM prints, the train doors were easier on our resin printer. The Orc Engine has been the most challenging piece as the car’s front portion has inadvertently failed on us several times. Aether Studios has been working with us on test prints, and we’re hopeful for a clean print next week (which you can watch on our Twitch channel). The final caboose car is going through a file tweak as the railings were initially a bit thin for our liking, so we asked the gang if they could foolproof that car more.
Creating these files isn’t easy, folks. It’s a process. We have mad respect for Aether Studios and their openness toward adjusting the files here and there to ensure the FDM printing goes as smoothly as possible.
We’ve also done several roof tests, but they don’t always sit flush, so there’s still some understanding and testing behind the scenes for this element. This quirkiness could be the result of our assembly/clamping process. We might skip the rooves entirely and use black cloth as the initial game table fog of war. Rooves will be added eventually, though.
We started with this more straightforward flatbed car because we needed something a little less intimidating to match the Laughing Bear Games pro paint engine job initially. While not perfect, as novice painters here in sunny Chandler, AZ, we’re over the moon with the results!
As our earlier paint tests revealed, the DecoArt Black Pearl is an excellent industrial-looking primary color. We dry-brushed it as the base layer. Then, we used a series of intermittent black and silver dry brushes on top of it (and some spotted black wash) to get as close as we could to the mighty engine. Our wood color also turned out well, as it looks rugged and worn (woo hoo)!
Next, we will try this same grimy color scheme on a larger, completed secondary car and see how that looks. We want to eventually try some other colors on the passenger cars, but as you can see above, early tests didn’t generate a “heck-yes” response, so more experimentation is needed.
Now, this particular patterned test piece doesn’t have a wash on it, so that could make it tolerable, but this varied green pattern (and a different dark red version) turned out to be disappointing. Color patterns also add immense time to the painting portion. We just want to focus on a few basic color applications so we can get our hovertrain into our game faster.
Enough of that pity talk! Let’s focus on the joyous painting progress. We love these flatbed cars because we can put all sorts of wild stuff on ’em! Unexpected cargo like a large dead whale (from EC3D Designs) creates a wonderment buzz! Where the heck did that thing come from? Where are they taking that carcass and why? The subplots are endless.
We have several empty hovertrain cars so that we can create any scene on the fly by dropping in 3D-printed scatter terrain. Of course, the preprinted scenes like the golem car or bath car are fantastic, but it’s nice to have the scene flexibility as a DM.
As always, we’ll release our final paint scheme as a step-by-step guide so you can replicate and get your hovertrain roaring through your realm ASAP. Please be sure to share your paint ideas and crafter thoughts on the Aether Studios Discord, our Facebook page, or on Instagram!
Still, what a relief, guys! Picking the right paint brands, color combinations, and brush strokes gets paralyzing at times. We pushed through it, though! Now that we have our coloring confidence back, we’ll apply this grungy look to a full-sized passenger car as a next step to ensure everything is still vibing.
Until next time!
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