Christmas Pokemon!

Laeta Saturnalia!  As the holidays are approaching, I have bestowed upon myself the pretty stupid task of making all of my Christmas gifts this year.  Naturally, I put everything off as long as possible and now have about two weeks to finish and then hand out all my gifts.  I'm a genius, I know.  Note-- this post will be published well after the date it was started, as I don't have all the Pokemon done as of the time of its writing and want to have a group picture at the end.

To keep things relatively simple, adult relatives are getting a bottle of the mead I started back in August and friends are getting Pokemon!  I might decide to blog about the mead later, if anyone's curious, but this post is about them Pokeymans.  I'll do a quick run-down of how I'm making them and then a list of lessons I learned along the way, i.e. things I screwed up in the process.  Enjoy!

Prepping the Models

The only way it's even remotely possible for me to crank out 10 Pokemon figurines in 14 days is by borrowing the models off this cool website that pulled in-game models from Pokemon X/Y.  Normally the thought of ripping models out of a game would make the game developer inside me cringe, but modeling them by hand wouldn't have really eased my conscious-- either way, I'm dealing in unlicensed reproduction territory.  But anyway, the models from that site come with textures and rigs, so I've already saved about a billion hours of work by using them.

Although the rig is there, the models don't seem to be properly weight-painted when I load them into Maya, so I had to repaint them myself.  It's been an eternity since I last weight-painted anything at all, so there are still some weird bits of deformation going on.

Lol, no idea what I'm doing

Once weighted and posed, I scaled the models down to a size that could fit in my printer comfortably.  The first few print attempts were pretty bad-- I've never printed something this organic before and haven't really gotten my printer calibrated for it.  Since I'm in a hurry, I decided it'll be best to just print the Pokemon in pieces as needed and reassemble them by hand.  Not super graceful, but that's a problem for 2016.

Poke-pieces!

Post-Processing

After they come off the printer, the Pokemon figurines have been meeting one of my closest friends-- super glue!  All those little pieces need to be attached, meaning I'll probably be losing parts of my fingertips in the process.  Hopefully I'll remember to preserve enough of my right index to successfully use the weirdly high number of fingerprint scanners in my life.

Next up is sanding.  Lots of little jagged edges on these guys, as you can see from the pictures.  Some of it is support material that didn't pop off properly, but some of it is just from the models themselves not being optimized for printing at this size.  I'm using a 120 grit for the really rough bits and finishing it off with a 220 grit.  This should leave enough texture for the primer to hold onto.  It's not necessary to wet-sand, but I prefer it to getting all that plastic dust everywhere.  I swear I've found it in my eyes before-- probably not healthy.  Any holes and gaps in the print that I find get a dab of Bondo and another quick sanding with a 400 grit, then they're ready for a layer of XTC-3D.

After they're nice and smooth and have been given a good coating of primer, it's time for the arduous task of painting these tiny little bastards.  I've never really had a steady hand-- hence my love of Control-Z and all media digital-- so this is probably the hardest part for me.  Luckily I have a bunch of tiny paint brushes, masking tape, and cheap acrylic paints on hand.  That's all you really need, right?

My messy workspace after a night of painting

Once the paint dries, I hit them with a light coating of a spray matte sealant, as the paint I use is kinda shiny and also cheap enough to stay very slightly tacky.  This stuff reeks, so it's best to use it outside.  After a few hours of drying, they're done!

Finished set for far-away friends (not pictured-- another Charizard and a Feraligatr)

Finished set for work friends

Conclusion and Lessons Learned

Well, this has been fun!  Tiring and kinda stressful, but look at the cute little Pokemon!  They look derpy as fuck, I know.  Naturally, I've made a few notes and observations along the way, which I'll outline below for your amusement.

• Don't get carried away with your raft settings if you're having issues with it detaching from your print.  It's entirely possible to have them so firmly attached that you can't actually detach them again, which kinda defeats the purpose in its own way.
• If using someone else's models feels a little cheaty to you, try putting them in your own poses.  It's a nice little way to add your own flair to the print.
• Don't be afraid to chop your models into pieces when you need to.  I'll admit that it's much more satisfying to pull a complete figurine off your print bed, but assembling pieces is worlds better than throwing out a dozen failed prints because you just can't get your printer to cooperate anymore.
• The most obvious, I'm sure-- don't wait until the last minute to make presents for your friends, especially if you know well ahead of time that you're gonna want to make everyone something!  You'd think by now I'd have figured this out for my personal projects, but it seems you'd be wrong.
• Don't use cheap paints.  My paints vary greatly in quality just from tube to tube, and it's super obnoxious to need 3+ coats of the reds and oranges when blue goes on silky smooth with no problem.  When I can justify blowing more money, I might get myself an airbrush and some nice paints.
• Painting on eyes is not trivial, if you couldn't tell by how I went for the lazy method and just went with Ditto-styled black dots.  I will be trying actual paint markers in the future.  Or stickers.  Stickers seem even better!

Fallout Pip-Boy: Lessons Learned

Hi again!  As the title suggests, I've put together a custom Pip-Boy.  This was a gift for a special someone who was unable to get a pre-order for Fallout 4 before they stopped offering the edition that came with a wearable Pip-Boy.  Luckily for me, someone else had the same idea, so I'll be using this guy's models instead of trying to design the entire thing by myself.  It sure was nice of him to make this available for dorks like me to use-- I hope to do the same when I finally design something other people will want to print!

Considering the number of parts that come in this kit, as well as the fact that many needed to be cut into pieces to fit my printer, this was a very long project that consumed much time and filament.  I'm pretty sure this took me a good nine months of off-and-on work!  Instead of trying to do a chronological set of posts about it, I opted to be lazy and just use this one post as a general "what I've learned" style of summary that I updated over time.

Quick notes: I 3D printed the parts with PLA and a Printrbot Play printer.  A combination of XTC-3D and sand paper were used to smooth the prints.  The paper decals were printed from my normal paper printer, glued to a piece of cardboard for extra strength, and then wrapped in a cut of plastic baggie to give a shiny "behind plastic" kinda look.  Much of this was assembled using screws and toothpicks.  The black cable was salvaged from an old headset that no longer worked.  The "blank screen" and screen surround are the cheap craft foam you can pick up for like a dollar at a hobby store.  Bondo was my filler of choice, and I used Krylon spray products for the paint and sealant.  I did not include any LEDs this time around, but the guide mentioned at the top does show you how to set them up if you're so inclined.

For the complete Imgur album of the completed Pip-Boy, please look here!

Samsung Galaxy S5 not included

Things I've learned from trying to make a Pip-Boy:

• ModPodge sucks.  There, I said it.  I know all the other arts and crafts blogs have at least one entire post ranting about how awesome they think ModPodge is, but I've yet to have a good experience from using it.  As a sealant?  It never fully dried and left my figurine sticky.  As a glue?  It's pretty much the same junk we give kids, except I don't have to go to the hobby store for regular paste.  As a filler for 3D prints when you're attaching two pieces and have gaps?  Holy hell, no.  It doesn't exactly "harden" as much as dry into a rubbery substance.  I thought I could live with that at first... but then I tried to sand it, genius that I am.  It simply turned to gum that clogged up my sandpaper.  Never again.
• XTC-3D will pool if you apply too much and don't wipe it up.  Sure, trimming an edge with your Dremel isn't too bad, but the part where you get covered in a fine dust that the packaging marked as "do not inhale" is a bit of a pain.  And if it happens to pool on the model itself, you'll lose any surface detail that's under it.
• On a related note, XTC-3D dries clear when there are no bubbles.  This means a spot can look terrible but still be silky smooth.
• Spray paint and primer can be finicky, especially when you're in a hot, dry environment like I am.  Both too much and not enough humidity are things that can affect your results.
• Generic super glue seems to have a minimum surface area requirement.  If you don't meet this requirement, the two pieces won't stick together and the glue will take its sweet time to cure.  This will not keep it from instantly fusing with your finger, however.
• If your prints are warped or crooked, they'll result in a disfigured final piece.  Go figure.
• Painter's tape is the least elegant solution to filling large holes caused by said warped prints, and will not be covered completely with primer and paint alone.  Works well enough for parts you won't see, though.
• Dropping PLA prints can break them, especially if they're heavy but still manage to land on the most delicate part.
• Screws do indeed obey the same laws as every other physical object, in that they cannot exist in the same space that other matter currently exists in.  In other words, if you try to force a screw into a solid print that doesn't have room for a screw, you're likely to pop a couple layers of the print apart to make room.  Next time I'll use my drill to clear out a proper pilot hole.
• The level of craftsmanship a person puts into a prop does not necessarily correlate to how much effort they'll put into the tutorial explaining what they did.  The "tutorial" provided by the guy who made these models is pretty lack-luster, especially when it comes to assembling the crazy number of pieces that go into this build.  I was able to figure it out, but it certainly wasn't easy.
• If you're in the US, your local Ace Hardware is probably the best place to find screws and nuts.  For that alone I've started patronizing them more frequently as a thank-you for being so helpful!
• When cutting pieces to better fit your printer, straight down the middle isn't always the best idea, especially when the center has nooks and crannies you'll have trouble sanding later.

This thing took an eternity, but I'm so glad to have it done!  Hopefully my next project will be a little less complicated... until then, happy crafting!