Here's my second rundown of interesting stuff I found over the last few weeks! Let's start with a few completely unrelated YouTube videos!
Shave your prints with a card scraper; Looks like a great alternative for sanding! If you have ever sanded a 3D print, you probably know what a pain in the ass it can be. Apparently, a card scraper is an excellent alternative!
Robert's Fogger; If you're into Halloween, there's a good chance you own a fog machine. For creating low hanging fog, the most common technique is chilling it with ice, but this guy takes a different approach, and it seems to work really well!
Next up, there's a series on Adam Savage's website Tested.com, featuring Harrison Krix from Volpin Props. In the series, he builds a replica of the Needler gun from Halo. It's a very in-depth series, and nothing is 3D printed!
Hey everyone, so here's my first overview of interesting stuff I found! I hope to post an overview like this every two weeks or so. Let's get started! For this post, it's all YouTube channels or playlists.
Blender tutorials
Like I said in my previous post, I finally want to learn Blender properly this year. Version 3.0 has just been released, but luckily, there are already a few excellent up-to-date beginner tutorial series up on YouTube. It's important to use recent tutorials, because over the last few releases, the UI and certain menu items have been changed, so if you use older tutorials, it might get confusing and frustrating!
The first one is a 24-video series by CG Cookie. It covers the basics, starting with installation and navigation, all the way up to sculpting and animation.
The second one is a bit shorter, and only covers basic modeling, materials and lighting, but you make a complete scene during this tutorial. It's an updated version of an older tutorial series, and it really does a good job explaining all the basics.
The creator of this series, Grant Abbitt, has lots and lots of other tutorials on his channel, mainly aimed at game development and game assets.
These tutorials are only the tip of the iceberg, and I got lots and lots more in my "Watch later" list.
Woodworking
I've been dabbling in woodworking for quite a while, although I don't have much finished projects to show off yet. My goal is to build a complete gaming/dining table one day. I'm working on a coffee table as a practice project, but it's been sitting in my workshop half-finished (actually way less than half) for months now.
Of course, basic woodworking skills always come in handy for prop building. For example, I recently built a full size replica of the Giant Key from the Locke & Key comics, and it's mostly made from wood. It required some accurate cutting, glueing up panels, and the most difficult of all, cutting out a large circle.
So, here are a few good woodworking channels to check out:
And to finish my first list of interesting things, here are a few makers that I follow!
To start, there's Nerdforge. A couple from Norway, they make all sorts of usually fantasy-themed projects. Diorama's, costumes, paintings, ... Especially their most recent projects are quite spectacular!
Next up, Hacksmith Industries. They build real-life versions of fictional items from movies, tv and video games. Their builds are quite spectacular. To name one, they have built an actual, working power loader from "Aliens"! Not entirely the same as in the movie, it runs on tracks instead of walking, but besides that, it's an actual, working power loader! Needless to say, these are not hobby level prop builders, these guys are pros with every tool imaginable at their disposal and the skills to use them.
And to finish, there's Colin Furze. If I was a kid today, this would be the person I wanted to be when grown up. His projects are far from boring! To name a few: a screw tank, a Star Wars AT-AT playhouse, a turbojet powered scooter, and his most recent project, a secret tunnel to connect his underground bunker to his house.
To anyone who is still following this blog, happy new year! I know, I'm not really that active here anymore. I'm more active on my Facebook and Instagram pages, so to follow in detail what I'm up to and what I'm working on, head over there! The reason I'm not writing that much tutorials and build logs anymore is simply because I barely have time anymore, but I hope to be a bit more active this year (and yes, I know I say that every year).
Now, I highly doubt that I'll be able to do a tutorial every week, or even every month. I have a three year old daughter, and more than enough stuff to do in and around the house, so I need to manage my time carefully. So, here's something I would like to try out starting this year. I run into all sorts of cool YouTube videos, blog posts, or other social media content related to prop building and 3D printing, and I'd like to try writing an overview of interesting stuff I found every two weeks or so.
Another thing I'd like to do this year is learning Blender 3D. I have started following basic tutorials dozens of times, only to ignore it again later, so I basically have to start from scratch every time. This year, I want to follow through and actually learn it in depth!
And then there's my store, wich is overdue for a major update! I have tons of cool ideas for new stuff to make, and I hope to find the time to actually build these things. More ideas for sketchbooks, but mostly Dungeons & Dragons stuff and game room decorations! So keep an eye on this blog and my social media channels!
Hey everyone! Yes, this blog is still alive and kicking! I must admit, it's been quite a while, I'm more active on Instagram and Facebook these days (it's so much easier and quicker than writing complete blog posts), but I finally decided to write a complete post once more.
For I think two years now I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons with some friends. Unfortunately, it's been more than a year since we've seen each other in real life, with Covid-19 and all, and we've been playing online ever since. I have some experience with D&D because of the Baldur's Gate videogames, and when I was in college I also played Cyberpunk 2020 with friends, but this is my first experience with actual real life Dungeons & Dragons.
If you follow me on Instagram (wich you really should!) you probably noticed I made a few homebrew spells recently. That's the beauty of role playing games, they perfect for creating your own content. So, let's take a look at how I make these spells!
Step by step
I've got plenty of ideas; at the moment I have only two completed spells, but I've got ideas for plenty more. The only limit here is your imagination! I try to add a little bit of humor to my creations, and some pop culture references. For example, the reference on my "Rogue Anvil" spell is pretty clear (and if you don't get it, shame on you!).
For spells that deal damage, a good approach in my opinion is to make it a low level spell, and make it scale at higher levels. Many D&D spells do this, it's a good way of creating spells that always remain useful. A good example is the Magic Missile spell. You can start using it straight away at level one, and at higher levels, it fires more missiles, dealing more damage. The next spell, "Poquito Cabeza", doesn't deal any damage, it's more of a utility spell, so it doesn't scale at higher levels.
Many spells also require some sort of material component. If you're not familiar with D&D, spell components are often summarized as "VSM", meaning "verbal, somatic, material". "Verbal" means a spoken component, "somatic" means gestures and "material" is pretty self explanatory. Why are these things important? A spell with a verbal component (pretty much all spells) can't be used when you are silenced, for example! Materials aren't that important, because most spellcasters use some sort of arcane focus wich replaces the material component most of the time.
Drawing
When I've decided the effects and description of the spell, I first start on the artwork. I don't want my spells to be just a sheet of text, I want a nice drawing to go with it. I must admit, I'm not that good at drawing, but I'm working on it. I try to draw at least a few times every week, even if it's just some random doodles, and I'm progressing slowly but steadily. The anvil for my "Rogue Anvil" spell was quite easy, the head for "Poquito Cabeza" was a bit more challenging, but I'm quite satisfied with the result.
I use 200 gram/sqm mixed media paper and 3H and HB pencils for sketching, and then I ink everything with burnt umber acrylic ink. I prefer this color over black because of the resemblance to walnut ink. I use two different pen nibs, one for the thick outlines, and a thinner one for small details.
When the ink has properly dried, I erase all my pencil lines and use the same ink for filling and shading. The acrylic ink I use is insanely intense, and can be thinned a lot and still produce vibrant colors! Although it works well, I might try watercolor paint in the future, because there's one huge disadvantage to this acrylic ink: it dries almost instantly! Even when the paper is still wet, the ink has already dried and is impossible to blend or feather with a wet brush. It works if I wet the paper a bit first, and keep a separate wet brush on hand, but once the ink has set, it has set!
One more thing I should add is this. I always scan every step of the drawing process. The pencil drawing, ink drawing (several times) and sometimes even different stages of the shading step. If I mess up, at least I still have my scans!
Writing
Next comes the most important part: writing! I've been dabbling in calligraphy for quite a long time, and now it finally comes in handy. For the spell text itself, I use the Carolingian alphabet, and for the title the Rotunda Gothic alphabet. Even though I like the look of Gothic-style alphabets, they are hard to read in large blocks of text.
I use a 3mm wide nib for the main text, and a 4mm wide one for the title, and the same ink I use for drawing. With the 3mm nib, my line height is 27mm! Of course, this is waaay to big to fit all of my text on a single sheet of paper. For my "Rogue Anvil" spell, I used about four sheets of paper (front and back!) to write all of my text. I scan my text and scale everything down quite a lot (about 12% of the original size).
What I found takes the most time is not the writing. It's drawing all the lines! For each line of text, I have to draw three lines, for the correct height of the letters and all ascenders and descenders. In addition, I also draw some line to keep my letters at a consistent angle. Really, once you've gotten the hang of a certain alphabet and can write it at a reasonable speed, drawing all the lines takes more time than the actual writing!
For future projects, I'm going to try different other fonts as well. For example, the Uncial and Half-Uncial scripts are very beautiful, and still very readable. For the title, I'm gonna try different types of Gothic fonts. A really nice one is Batarde, but it's a difficult one, because it requires you to rotate the nib as you write, so I'll need to practice that one quite a bit!
Scanning and arranging
With everything written and drawn, I scan everything, scale it down and arrange it to fit an A4-sized sheet of paper. I scan it at 600 dpi and save all my original scans as-is, without any editing. Any editing is done on copies.
For the main text, I scale everything to about 12 percent of the original size. It's a comfortable size to read, and it still looks like hand-written text. The header text of the spell is a bit bigger, just like the title. For the header and the title, I add some shadow. I use Gimp for all my image editing, and the trick to make the white background of the scans disappear is setting the layer mode to "Darken only". I copy my original text, offset it a bit, and then blur it and adjust the transparency.
Arranging the text takes quite a bit of time. Lots and lots of cutting and pasting! Besides the drawing I made a decorative page border (took me a long time to get it right!) and some horizontal borders. When everything was finished, I printed it on thick parchment paper, and I really like the way it turned out!
I also added a wax seal in the bottom right corner; this gives it a nice touch of authenticity, and of course my personal logo! I had a stamp custom engraved, and it turned out quite nice. I used a bar of sealing wax with a wick, like a candle, that I had lying around, but I found it messy to use. It takes long to melt, and you have to be careful you don't set the paper on fire! Perhaps I should get some of those sealing wax sticks you can use with a hot glue gun.
If you're interested in my spells, you can find them in my Etsy Shop, along with all my other stuff!
Hey everyone! Yes, this blog is still alive! I've been neglecting it lately, but here's another build log! So, what did I make? I made a sketchbook based on the comic series "Locke and Key"!
This project is a custom comission. The client had a key from the comics, and asked me if I could make a book with some sort of holder for the key. He sent me a sketch of the design he had in mind, so I got to work.
The book is a combination of the kraft paper leather technique I use for most of my books and 3D printing. For this book, I also used wood.
The printed ornaments
This book has quite a bit of 3D printed ornaments. There are the corners, wich have the initials of the author and artists on them, and then there's the key holder. I modeled all of these in Fusion 360 and printed them in ABS-X on my Prusa I3.
For the key holder, I did some tests first. The idea was to make the key 'snap' into the holder, snugly enough to hold it in place, but still easy enough to take it out again. I made a few test pieces of the holder and, after I found the right measurements, I started printing. I used ABS-X for the ornaments because it's very easy to sand, and it warps less than regular ABS.
After all the ornaments were printed, I first repaired small defects with spot putty and then started sanding. Lots and lots of sanding! I started with 120 grit, to get rid of all the layer lines, and then worked my way up to 600.
On the corner ornaments, there is supposed to be a texture in the recessed parts near the corners. Rather than modeling it (my 3D modeling skills aren't exactly impressive), I filled them with sand and then added a few drops of watered down wood glue. Much easier than modeling the texture!
Next up, I sprayed everything with a filler primer. This gets rid of the last bits of layer lines and gives everything a nice smooth surface for painting.
The wooden frame
The wooden frame is made from 4mm thick, 30mm wide strips, with rounded corners. The corner ornaments are modeled so these strips fit into them. I didn't want the wood to look all new and fresh from the hardware store, of course. Here's a trick I used before to age wood. First, I dissolved a steel wool sponge in white vinegar. This takes a few days until it's completely dissolved. This mixture is then brushed onto the wood.
The wood will start turning darker brown immediately. I let it soak for a few minutes, and then rinsed the excess away. The reaction darkens the wood grain. After it had dried, I applied a pale oak varnish.
The fake leather
For the rest of the cover, I used my fake leather technique. Cardboard shapes were glued on the cover, for creating the embossing, and next wrinkled kraft paper was glued over it. Then, a black basecoat, dark brown applied with a sponge, a very thin coat of yellow ochre and finally a bronze drybrushing. To finish, a matte clearcoat.
After all the paint had dried, I lined the insides of the covers with felt. To protect the pages from the moisture while the glue dried, I put sheets of waxed paper between the cover and the pages. I put the book between clamps, and let it dry for a few days.
This is quite a crucial step, and one that shouldn't be rushed. With all the glue and paint on the covers, they will always warp a bit. The felt lining is the last thing that's glued on, so the book should be pressed as flat as possible while it dries. I always take my time for this, about five days. Even though the glue has dried after one day, there's still moisture in the covers, so if you remove the clamps too soon, it will warp again.
Final assembly
The only thing still left was putting everything together. For the wood, I used a general purpose hobby glue, and for the printed parts, I used super glue. Again, lots and lots of clamping while the glue dries. Even for super glue, I have found out the hard way it doesn't always cure as fast as you think. The only time it cures almost instantly is when you glue your fingers together!
It has been quite a while since my last post. Again! At the moment, I'm busy as hell. I recently made Eyeballs Studio an official business and became a dad! Having a tiny human around is quite time and energy consuming (not that I'm complaining, I love our little cupcake more than anything else). I'm still working on new and cool stuff, but here's a project (actually, one of two projects) that's been sitting on my computer for quite a while now, begging to be completed. It's a costume prop I completed last year, all I had to do was edit the photos and write a blog post. So here we go!
That's me, at Elf Fantasy Fair Arcen last year. And this post will be about the helmet I'm wearing! My first helmet was inspired by Gimli's helmet from Lord Of The Rings, but it was very uncomfortable to wear. I had used a steel salad bowl as a base (no, I'm not kidding), and wearing it for a full day gave me a very bad headache.
The new helmet is based on a pattern by Evil Ted Smith, and it's entirely made from EVA foam. If you're looking for excellent patterns for all sorts of foam armor parts, check out his store, it's definitely worth the money!
Materials
Thick paper for the patterns
EVA foam (10, 5 and 2 mm)
Contact cement
Super glue
Hot glue
Acrylic caulk
Flexi Paint
Acrylic paints
Satin acrylic clearcoat
Oil paints (water mixable)
Upholstery foam
Hobby knife
Dremel rotary tool and sanding bits
Heat gun
Building the helmet
I printed the pattern on thick drawing paper, taped the different parts together and cut out the pattern pieces. For the bulk of the helmet, I used 10mm EVA foam floor mats. The texture will be on the inside, so it's not necessary to sand it away.
The helmet itself consists of only four pieces of foam. I used a heat gun to shape the foam, and glued everything together with contact cement. The rings on the sides are for mounting the horns. Those were quite a bit more difficult than the helmet!
The horns are made from 5mm foam, and require a steady hand and quite a bit of patience to put together. Perhaps the most important thing with these patterns are the alignment markings. Especially with complex shapes, like these horns, proper alignment is essential! It took me a while to put them together, but in the end, I had two impressive horns!
At first, I wanted to mount the horns just like that. My wife suggested I cut some grooves into them, to make them look more organic, like real animal horns. I hesitated at first, and thought I could achieve the right look by just painting, but in the end I followed her advice, and I'm glad I did.
I mounted the horns, and added the rest of the details. Some were on the pattern, others were improvised as I went along. For example, the three spikes on top of the helmet, and the plate that looks like it's riveted in place. I fixed the seams that needed fixing with acrylic caulk, and made some dents and scratches with my rotary tool.
Painting
The next step: painting! A while ago, I bought some Flexi Paint, a paint made especially for EVA foam props. As the name implies, it's very flexible, and adheres perfectly to foam. I have used it on a few props, but I must say, I'm not a huge fan of it. It paints well, and can be sprayed with an airbrush when properly diluted, but what I don't like is this: the color changes drastically when it dries! Now, most paints, especially acrylics, do this, but in this case, the difference is huge. I mixed some gray (there's only a limited number of colors available, so you'll have to mix your own a lot), but it dried to an almost black finish.
If you're ok with this behavior and you're good at mixing and matching colors, this is a very good paint. I, however, am not that good at it. But no worries, the paint is also an excellent foam primer, so I gave my helmet a base coat with it, and then painted over it with regular acrylics.
I used my Badger single action airbrush for most of the base coat. As I'm writing this, I'm without airbrush, though. I still have the airbrush, but no compressor. At the time, I borrowed some airbrush equipment from my brother. He had a compressor and double action airbrush and wasn't using it, so I could borrow it. I had bought the single action airbrush for painting larger areas quickly. A single action, external mix airbrush can handle thicker paints, so you don't need expensive, airbrush-ready paints. In the meantime, he needed his airbrush equipment back, so number one on my shopping list is an airbrush compressor.
After the basecoat, I applied a black wash, white drybrushing and finally a metallic drybrushing with either silver and pewter, for the steel parts, or bronze and brass, for the bronze parts. I'm glad I cut the grooves into the horns, because a simple brown wash was all that was needed to make them look more organic.
When all the paint had dried, I gave the entire helmet a clearcoat, and finally, I weathered it some more with water mixable oil paint. This is the first time I used oil paint, and I like it a lot! The advantage of oil paint over acrylic for weathering is the long drying time of oil paint. Weathering required very thin coats of paint, and acrylics would dry in less than a minute. Oil paints dry much slower (I'm talking days), so you have plenty of time to get the effect you want. On the following picture, the right side of the helmet has been weathered, the left side hasn't.
And finally, after everything has dried, there's only one more thing to do: fitting! I used 5 cm thick strips of upholstery foam for that, and glued them to the inside of the helmet with hot glue. This is a trial and error process, but luckily, it's easy to rip it back out if you make a mistake. After a few attempts, the helmet fit snugly.
I wore the helmet for a full day at Elf Fantasy Fair, without any headaches. Unfortunately, the weather gods weren't exactly on our side that day. Somewhere in the afternoon it started raining, and we headed back to the hotel early because we were soaked. The next day, we didn't even put on our costumes because it just kept on raining, and just went to the festival in our regular clothes. Ah, well, better luck next time!
This was by far my most ambitious project so far! A while ago, my wife asked me if I could make a replica of the spellbook from the movie "Hocus Pocus". If you haven't seen this movie, I definitely recommend it. Even though it's a family-friendly Halloween movie, it's not childish.
Anyway, I knew this would be a bit more challenging than the books I made so far (especially the ornaments), but nothing that couldn't be done. So let's get started!
I also documented the entire build process on video. Many hours of footage, many hours of editing, and I managed to process it into a 20-minute video! In case you're wondering, I recorded it using a Canon Legria HFR506 camcorder, edited the video in Lightworks and recorded the voice-over with a USB microphone and Audacity.
Materials
Sewn kraft paper sketchbook
3 mm thick MDF
Cardboard
Air drying clay
Apoxie sculpt
25 mm glass dome
Kraft paper
Unbleached hemp string
PVC foam plate
Super glue
Book binding glue
Epoxie glue
Hot glue gun
Thick needle
Molding silicone
Polyurethane resin
Foamcore board (for the mold)
Spray primer
Acrylic paints
Acrylic varnish
8 mm neodymium magnets
Red felt
Gauze
The ornaments
Like I said, the ornaments would be quite a challenge. There are the four coiled-up snakes at the corners, the two snakes near the spine, the clasp on the front and a hand on the back. The hand isn't shown in detail anywhere in the movie, so I would have to improvise a bit.
I decided to make one of each ornament, and then mold them in silicone so I could cast multiple copies of them. I used a combination of PVC foam sheet and Apoxie clay, and took my time until I was satisfied with the sculpts.
Then, disaster almost struck. I made a silicone mold, and expected the silicone to be cured the next day. However, when I checked, the silicone was still a semi-liquid, sticky mess! I waited a few more days, but it simply didn't cure any further. What had happened? I suspect the catalyst for the silicone had expired. When I checked the bottle, I noticed some crystals on the bottom. I decided to wait a bit longer, but to no result.
So I ordered some new silicone and catalyst and started over. I removed the semi-cured silicone, and to get rid of any remaining liquid stuff, I brushed some catalyst over it and let it cure, so I could remove it easily. I made a new mold, and this time it worked fine. The next day, the silicone had cured as expected and I could start casting.
I used polyurethane resin for the ornaments. Four coiled-up snakes for the corners, two snakes for the spine, one clasp and one hand. When the resin had cured, I first cleaned the casts thoroughly and then sprayed them with a primer, followed by a dark gray acrylic basecoat. After the basecoat had dried, I applied a black wash, silver drybrushing and finally a satin clearcoat.
One ornament that required a special treatment was the clasp. To make it lock, I installed some neodymium magnets in it. Before painting, I carefully drilled some holes in the back, and glued the magnets in place with super glue. Magnets will be embedded in the book cover as well.
The book
My wife wanted a book with brown pages. This wasn't easy to find! There's plenty of sketchbooks made from brown kraft paper, but they are always either spiral bound or very thin. It took me some searching, but finally I found one on Ebay!
When the book arrived, I noticed the spine wasn't glued. The pages were stitched together, but no glue. To make sure the book would be strong enough, I applied a coat of book binding glue to the spine, followed by a strip of gauze, followed by another coat of glue.
One last thing needed to be done, and that was some sort of headband. I have tried making them myself in the past, but it didn't look too good. A great alternative was a strip of red felt, glued to the spine.
I didn't take any pictures of this, but it is shown in the Youtube video.
The cover
The book cover is made from 3mm thick MDF, and cardboard for the spine. The spine needed to be rounded a bit. I did this by glueing a few layers of thin cardboard together on a piece of PVC pipe, and letting it dry for a few days.
Another prominent feature of the book are the stitches, and the eye. The eye is a stock photo of an eye, printed on photo paper, and glued to a glass dome. The eyelids and stitches were sculpted directly on the cover.
I sculpted the stitches out of air drying clay. For the eyelids, I used Apoxie sculpt. After the clay had dried, I carefully drilled out the holes in the stitches with a 2 mm drill bit, and cleaned them up from the back of the cover.
I didn't take pictures of it (again), but there are six small magnets around the eye. I drilled 8 mm holes in the cover, and put the magnets in them, sandwiched between two sheet of paper on the front and back. These line up with the magnets I put in the clasp, so they keep it in place.
After glueing both cover boards and spine together, I used my wrinkled kraft paper technique for creating a faux leather effect. Usually, I try to use one single sheet of paper for the entire cover, but in this case it was easier to cut it into several pieces. The reason I try to use a single sheet is so you don't see the seams between the sheets. If this case, however, I could hide the seams in the stitches so they wouldn't be visible anyway.
And then it was time for the paint job! As usual, I started with a black basecoat, followed by a layer of brown. I used a mixture of burnt umber with a bit of pyrrole red to get a chocolate-like brown. After it had dried, I rubbed a very thin coat of yellow ochre over it, followed by a bronze drybrushing.
The final metallic drybrushing makes a huge difference! I have tried several colors (copper, bronze, gold, silver, ...) but bronze and copper look the best. I have also experimented with different color combinations the last few months, but that's something for a future post.
Before the final clearcoat, I sewed the stitches. First, I opened up all the holes with a thick needle, and then I sewed them using unbleached hemp string. It wasn't easy, sewing relatively thick, rough thread through small holes, but the result looks pretty nice. I glued the stitches in place from the back with a hot glue gun, and then trimmed everything with a sharp knife.
Next, I sprayed the cover with matte acrylic varnish. In the past, I have used satin varnish, but I think matte looks a lot better.
Putting it all together
And now it's time for the final assembly! I first glued the cover to the book. I needed to take special care to make sure everything was lined up properly, because otherwise the book wouldn't open afterwards. I glued on one side at a time, and pressed everything in place firmly, making sure there weren't any air bubbles. I put the book between clamps to keep everything together as the glue dried.
Next, I put the ornaments in place with epoxy glue, one side at a time and waiting until the glue was fully cured before switching to the other side (about 1 hour).
And then finally, the clasp! I glued a strip of leather between the clasp and hand, glued some felt to the inside of the strap and the clasp (not the hand), and finally glued the hand to the back cover.
And here's the final result! It took me a lot of work, but I think it turned out very nice. My wife is very happy with the result.
