SMOL (small) Samurai
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About the Project
After seing the SMOL kickstarter for 3d printable samurai and having a hankering for a large samurai army, or two, I thought I'll give it a go! The intent, at the moment, is to build a couple of 15mm armies for use with Warlord's Pike & Shotte rules.
Related Game: Pike & Shotte
Related Genre: Historical
This Project is Active
Airbrush and drybrush
Colour scheme for the castle is sorted. I wanted to keep the colour scheme simple and repeatable so standardised colours were a must. As I add to this I don’t want to be trying to mix matching colours.
The stone walls were basecoated black vallejo mecha primer (74.642) then airbrushed a stonewall grey vallejo game colour (72.049). This was done at about 45 degrees to the surface giving me a zenethal highlight to the stone and leaving the black in the recesses.
Walls are a white vallejo mecha primer (74.640), I may add to this at sometime. For now the white looks good enough.
Wooden buildings have a base of vallejo model colour flat brown (70.984) with a drybrush of vallejo model colour Khaki (72.061).
Roof tiles are a base of sombre grey vallejo game colour (72.048) and dry brushed with the stonewall grey used for the stone.
last of all the dirt floor has a base of the flat brown used for the wood and then a random spray of desert yellow vallejo game colour (72.063).
Next up I have started printing some corner towers
Waiting for the files and working on terrain
So the kickstarter has a less than a day to run. Soon the, hopefully, short wait for the files begins!
In the mean time I have been printing myself a castle as any Dyamo worth his salt would have one.
3D files from 3d Alien Worlds, https://www.3dalienworlds.com/index.php they are scaled for 28mm so with the magic of 3D printing I have reduced the models down to 56% to fit in with 15mm troops.
These are all modular and I found that 3×1.5mm magnets work well and hold this block nice and solid. This is only the gate tower and some walls so far. I’m working my way up to the full castle. It’s probably time to work out a color scheme. As I am only printing this on one machine it’s taking some time, I can’t imagine doing this in 28mm.
Basing experiments
Trying out how I want to do the basing. It's a balance of a massed look, unit footprint and quantity of painting. I have settled on 40x40mm bases with 6 infantry or 3 cavalry per base. The final kickstarter will include plenty of poses to mix up the units and add commanders, etc.
Standard sized units will be made up of 3 bases giving the unit a size of 18 miniatures.Testing, testing!
Handily SMOL have released some files on their kickstarter to test print. The first is a Samurai archer. So let’s see how hard these are going to be to paint on mass and wether I can achieve a good effect without getting carried away!
Basically a black base with a light grey drybrush to pick up the armour detail, face in flesh. Then blue pyjamas and sashimono with a bamboo colour for the Yumi (bow) and sashmono frame. Finally pickked out some details in red and Bob's your Mother's brother
As you can see they are far from good but should be good from afar!
