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Project Entry by maledrakh

Wraith Wolves

October 15, 2020

The full moon casts a pale blue light across the rugged white landscape. Tall pine trees cling to the rocky ground, branches stirring, shedding their cold white burden as the wolves breathe past. The pack is on the move, and the land is trembling beneath their step. They move with purpose, something is not as it was before. There! An affront; a boat pulled ashore, a small group of fur-clad prey around a campfire, round shields and axes in sight. From the treeline the windwolves move, silent, swift, cold gusts of dark shadow, spirits of malice descending upon the men with claws of ice and fangs of doom.

The Wraith Wolf Alpha. I made it an extra base rim to go around the original 50mm base. It is now 65mm. It was mainly painted with Citadel Black Templar Contrast and Reaper 09411 Wilderness Green and a slight bit of Vallejo Model Color 70.967 Olive Green. All the Wraith Wolves are printed in clear water-washable resin that turned distinctly yellowy after curing in the UV-chamber. I sprayed them with matte varnish before painting.

These are further early fruits of the Elegoo Mars resin printer. The Wraith Wolves by Asgard Rising. They run a patreon centered around fantasy viking / norse type .stl files for both minis and terrain pieces, and they are simply gorgeous.

This one was painted with Citadel Nighthaunt Gloom and Army Painter Dark Tone quickshade ink. Then drybrushed with light bluegrey for the most part.

These are some of the earliest ones I made supports for and printed without the prints failing in some way or other. I view them as test subjects both for the printing and also the painting.

This one is painted in Citadel Shyish Purple Contrast with Vallejo Nocturna 74.026 Purple Hex and 74.032 Orchid Light for the most part. Shyish purple is really strong and overpowering. It does not behave much like most of the other contrast paints, but more like the nighthaunt gloom technical paint, that also is very strong and overpowering.

If you look closely, there are some bad support marks, divots etc in inopportune places (such as smack in the middle of the face / mouth) which ruined the details there, broken wisp-ends and such all over these. You can also see where the bases have deformed slightly where the supports were. I know I should have sanded these but did not.

I have since refined both the angle of the mini and the placement of supports to avoid the worst of this. I will probably be printing out new ones at some point.

The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing was painted with Citadel Akhelian Green Contrast and some Reaper MSP 09323 Glacial Mist for the spiritwolf and Vallejo Nocturna 74.015 Pale Flesh and Reaper MSP 09272 Graveyard Bone for the sheepskin, with Flames of War Sicily Yellow and Vallejo Model Color 70.976 Buff with Army Painter Strong Tone quickshade ink for the horns, hooves and bone details of the sheepskin.

All the bases were very finely detailed with leaves and such. I painted up some of the larger details like mushrooms and branches, and covered the rest with my usual autumnal flockmix like I do most of my minis these days.
The three little wolves have 60x35mm bases.

Some musings:

There are many things about 3D printing my own minis that make this a paradigm shift in my approach to minis in general. One is that I no longer need to be too intimidated by or apprehensive of ruining a very expensive mini with a bad paint job. I can experiment freely as I can always make another print! Even if I never get around to printing off another of a given mini, it still represents a sort of epiphany or free-your-mind-situation for me. I had a similar epiphany when I first got into the Bones minis. The “cheapness” of them takes away some of the pressure to do my best, and a serviceable result is perfectly acceptable.

For my part, I do all this as a hobby to unwind. I do not feel the need to chase excellence with every mini I paint. But I do like to try new paints and effects to see what happens.

Enter these minis I print myself. So what if I mess up? I can print out another and try again!