Transcript
I went on Etsy and found this cool thing. It was so cool I was excited and inspired and then went on Etsy and found more cool things. And now I’m sad.
Intro
Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes we discuss how the collector module in our hobbyist brain is often working against us despite how it may seem. And we tip our hats to our patrons for their constant and uplifting support!
Ah, the collector module, that little engine of dopamine-powered consumerism tucked away in our little brains that feeds this hobby – actually, it feeds a lotta hobbies – and fills us with transcendent and often-fleeting joy.
As you know, I paint some miniatures from time to time and from time to time we play games with those miniatures. But we also know that gaming miniatures are just one particular facet of the whole miniature hobby gestalt, right? There are all kinds of facets in this hobby, disciplines and factions and genres. We have gunpla, which I’d like to try out sometime. We have display painting, and busts, and larger miniatures like 75mm and 1/6 scale and there’s dioramas and inside all of those facets are more facets, more niches, there’s just a plethora of stuff to dive into.
So, with a combination of seeing other YouTubers and instagram artists posting some very cool display models online and my own possibly growing frustration with my own physical shortcomings in painting 30mm scale gaming figures, I was cruising Etsy one day just looking at the piles and piles of really cool 3d printed miniatures and I came across this figure, this elven … I don’t know if she’s a druid or what, but it’s a very cool sculpture.
And I noticed in the drop-downs to place an order for this 3d print that there was a scale option. This is nothing new by any means, but I really just had never considered anything larger than “gaming scale” in these last few years since I’ve gotten back into the hobby.
However, decades ago, back in the 90s, I had been a fan of and collected what were back then called “garage kits”. These were Japanese resin kits of like anime characters and manga characters and there was a whole hobby subculture of these things – but we’re skirting that rabbit hole for today. I’m gonna go more in depth on that in a future video.
Suffice it to say that I’m not necessarily a stranger to larger scale models, just that in my current hobbying, I haven’t gone in that direction. Until I saw this scale option for this elven druid. Which was sculpted by Great Grimoire, link below of course, I couldn’t find any information on individual sculptor names, so Great Grimoire it is. Anyway, I saw that I could get this figure at 75mm scale, which is more than twice the typical gaming miniature scale.
And I was like, yeah, I wanna paint a 75mm display figure! That would be awesome! And this one is just too cool, I really like it. So I ordered it and waited to see what the quality of the print would be like.
And here it is, it’s pretty great. It’s a little bit of a bummer that it’s not in more pieces because some of the areas are gonna be difficult to paint without being in subassemblies – which, yes, I understand the irony of that statement coming from someone who admittedly dislikes subassemblies – but anyway, I think it’s a super cool miniature, an excellent sculpt that has a lot energy and movement to it, in my opinion, and when I got it I was like, super excited. This is gonna be a great project!
And here’s where the excitement tripped that collector module into overdrive and I was immediately hit with this idea that, well, I wonder what other awesome large-scale 3d prints are out there. And just as weird coincidence, at the same time as this was happening, I had either seen some Brom art or something made me look up Brom art. I’ve always like Brom’s stuff and I was thinking that I could use a couple of his pieces as color reference for painting up a miniature. Not this elven druid necessarily but because I was kinda looking at these things simultaneously, Brom art and larger scale miniatures, when I saw this one on Etsy, I was like, BAM, that’s a Brom piece waiting to happen!
This model is from MythReal Games, which again doesn’t seem to list individual sculptor names anywhere but they have a patreon which I linked below. I typically like more realistic armor on my female miniatures but hey once in a while I guess some cheesecake is all right, as long as it’s Brom-flavored. I’ve been collecting some reference images from his artwork that I find inspiring and that I really want to try out when painting this model.
Which is cool, but of course when I was on that Etsy store page, I didn’t just see THIS model, I saw more cool stuff, which is, of course, how the slippery slope works right? And this model’s cloak just sorta stunned me and I was just like, well, jeez, it’s only like $20 bucks for one of these at 75mm scale, I mean back when I collecting those garage kits I mentioned, those were hundreds of dollars. 3d printing technology, man, who knew! So I ordered both of these kits.
I call ‘em kits but they’re really just single piece miniatures, right? But here they are and they are very very nice prints. So I’m looking at all three of these and suddenly I’m realizing that that first model I had picked out and so excited by, the elven druid, it’s lost some of it’s luster. That’s not quite right, it hasn’t lost any of its individual luster, it’s just that looking at it now, while I’m still very excited to paint it up, my excitement is a little bit tempered by the fact that I know I have two additional 75mm display figures to paint up.
For the very short week when I just had this one on the shelf, there was a more concentrated feeling of excitement. Cause now having three on the shelf – which in fact qualifies as a whole new Pile of Opportunity growing right before my eyes – the Pile of Opportunity 75mm edition – because I have more than the first one, these collector module acquisitions have diluted the excitement somewhat. Cause now I gotta be excited about three models instead of just one.
And I am, but I noticed this dilution and put a kibosh on my Etsy surfing right away. Cause I could have just kept finding more and more cool 3d printed miniatures to buy. But I really wanted to stay excited about the ones I’ve got.
So yeah, I literally had to stop myself from continuing to shop.
Cause I don’t wanna dilute the coolness I feel about these models now. And if they become just three cool models out of forty-five cool models in a gigantic Pile of Opportunity, well, that’s just sorta taking a big spike of coolness and flattening it out into a tepid pool of coolness. Which is all still cool but you know … how many times can I use “coolness” in another sentence?
I think this phenomenon here I’m experiencing isn’t necessarily the same as when you buy a bunch of miniatures to build up say a warband or an army, but it might be similar to when you’ve collected multiple war bands or multiple armies. Which of course most of us have done.
So, I’m definitely looking forward to painting up these 75mm scale models as display pieces. I mean, I don’t know if the final paint jobs are gonna be worthy of display, but I’m looking forward to trying anyway. Each one’s gonna need a base of some kind, I’ve got a few ideas, and I think I’m gonna try to practice some airbrushing on these models as well, this scale of model is great opportunity for that I think. And even though the elven druid was my first purchase in this scale, I think I’m gonna work on the Brom-inspired gladiator woman first because I have a – almost guaranteed to be erroneous – feeling that that model will be an easier, quicker project to finish.
We’ll see. One cool thing about this whole 3d printing arena is how affordable these models are. I mean, if I completely trash the whole model somehow, I could easily get a second one and try again. But you know, it’s paint, and typically you can just paint over mistakes as many times as you need to.
All right, well, check out some larger miniatures. See what you think. I wonder if any of you out there have considered or worked on larger-than-gaming sized miniatures.
See ya!