Short answer: at home, up to my eyeballs in work. Fortunately, I have a bit of a reprieve today, since I’m waiting on a tool I need for my next job. So, what have I been doing? Well, in addition to desperately trying to keep up with trimming the vegetation, a task made damn near impossible by the fact that I’m frequently away from home for a month at a time, I’ve had a number of design requests on both Wargaming 3D and Shapeways, most of which are re-scales, so there’s not much to show. Today, however, I finally got around to fulfilling my self-imposed 15mm challenge with another fictional tank: the KT-3 “Kalinka,” a design that I had sketched out a while ago, but didn’t have time to work on. As of this writing, I have just finished recording the eight-part video series (bloody hell, they just keep getting longer!) of me rambling while I make it. I might make more rambly-pambly design videos that are even less professional than my horrible CAD tutorials, depending on how I feel. We’ll see. In the mean time, here’s the armoured cutie:
The basic print arrangement will appear in my Shapeways shop as soon as I make a few necessary modifications to it. If you want to see more pictures, as well as a link to the video series, don’t forget to check my Hive blog. There will be a single post as soon as all the videos are finally up on BitChute, but given the tremendous processing and upload time, none of that will be ready until tomorrow, at the very earliest.
I’ve recently gotten into designing figurines as well, using a website called Hero Forge. I’ve already played around with it a bit on camera, but since my initial experiments, many more items have been added to the site, and I ended up adding a whopping 33 more heroes to my collection (I have a total of 35 as of this post). Admittedly, some are just different versions of the same character, but there is a lot of potential. It is certainly a better way of kicking around ideas for custom wargaming miniatures than anything else I’ve seen. While there are some notable shortcomings, I can’t really complain.
So, where do I go from here? Well, given the job that is currently on hold while I’m waiting for a certain tool, I think I’ve put off reviving my machine shop long enough. Unfortunately, that means further delays on Shapeways requests, since there simply aren’t enough hours in the day for me to work on models, restore my machine tools to working order, and plan meals, especially if I go through the trouble of video documentation. Personally, I don’t see this as a particularly big loss, since Shapeways has messed with both me and my customers via price gouging, so my shop doesn’t appear to be “commercially viable,” to use everyone’s favourite milquetoast corporate buzz-phrase, and before anyone asks, yes, CovID-19 has contributed to this problem.
Now to close on a more positive note: a few months ago, I started re-organising my website to better facilitate miniature models other than historical tanks. I keep adding new categories for both types of miniatures and the worlds they come from. As I overhaul older models for The Nine Empires, I’ll be able to start offering collections that are representative of entire factions, from soldiers and vehicles all the way up to airships and dreadnoughts. None of this is public yet, and until I can find the time to start printing more of these models, there won’t be any photos to share. Luckily, with all the wonderful painting tips available from Tangible Day, I don’t have to be stuck with unpainted, washed-out white models that look like blobs of light instead of the intricate contraptions of my imagination – at least, once I finally find the time to start painting again. I think I’ll start with the Hero Forge miniatures, and work from there.
Kaja's Kreations 