THE YEAR 2022

The re-design of all miniatures

This year was all about finishing all the new versions of the monsters and champions. That means research, making pre-visualization artboards, discussions with a very artistically educated woman, making 3D designs, printing, testing functionality, finalizing pose, adding details and expression.

To make the final miniatures, this process has to be done 24 times in total. Some of the angels and demons I had already started and just had to adjust the design to work without a base.

For the level 3 monsters, this was very easy to do. That's why, once I had my proof of concept, I created them first, to give myself an early sense of achievement and get into the mood, so to speak, or to acquire new skills.

To put it simply, I only had to cut off the things that connected the miniature to the base, rebalance the miniature and integrate new "legs" into the design so that the miniature stands upright but doesn't need a foreign object (like a base) to stand upright.

Functionality versus aesthetics

In the case of the angels, this could often be achieved with cloths, swords and wings that reach down to the floor. Care had to be taken to ensure that the structures created did not appear "forced" and still remained aesthetic.

This was sometimes a little more difficult with the demons. Sometimes I had to design completely new creatures in order to achieve the feat of removing the base. When working on them, I only paid attention to the aesthetics and not to the amount of work involved.

No more proxies were created this year. Creating a miniature around the described placeholders for human miniatures and temples is so complicated and so exhausting that you only want to build the miniature once and then never touch it again.

Most of the time this worked right away. But not always. With some miniatures, I only found out after the first print that the center of gravity of the body had been measured completely incorrectly and that, for example, the weight of the wings, which often make up a large part of the total weight of these miniatures, was unbalancing the miniature.

It was often enough to shift other limbs by a few millimeters to restore the balance and give the miniature a secure stand.

Structural defects sometimes only became apparent after the first print. Sometimes a model leans on a thin sword that presses into the ground at a right angle. However, as soon as the weight presses on a thin structure at an angle, even fully hardened resin bends quite easily.

In the case of the masked angel with the mechanical wings, for example, I had to reinforce the structure of his lance because it had bent completely after a few weeks.

Wooden prototypes for the game board

For the same reason, I started to have prototypes made for the game board relatively early on. Wood is a strange medium and it works and deforms. Sometimes problems arise at the glued edges or in the surface tension. This only becomes visible months later.

So you have to keep a close eye on what happens to the box and the playing fields over the months and then make changes to the design to avoid these problems.

My friend whose company manufactures the game boards and I have now agreed that in future only the dovetail technique will be used when joining box edges and that the wood of the playing fields must be glued in two different directions to reduce the likelihood of bending.

It would also be possible to use chipboard and veneers that are pressed together and sanded. Even though I am a big fan of solid wood, I am considering this option because it is very difficult to process solid wood in such a way that no deformation occurs.

I have started to make a new design for the board. During the game, souls of people killed in a certain row of the board are often placed in the realms.

Since the realms are elevated, the players need a marker to orient themselves. The previous prototypes did not have these markers. From now on, all new prototypes will have this marker in one way or another.

A new magnetic base system for the human miniatures

It takes a lot of trial and error (and also some math and physics) to find a perfect height for a base on which the people can stand, can be connected by magnets, do not fall down if you connect more than 2 or 3 together and apart from that can also be separated again with relative simplicity.

In the gallery you can see some sketches and some experiments.

The last version of a human miniature consists of two parts. The human and his base. Magnets are inserted into the base and then the model is glued into the base with a pyramid-shaped wedge.

I think the system will ensure that the human miniatures can be assembled very quickly and mistakes can be avoided.

The worst thing that can happen is that magnets are inserted the wrong way round, which means that miniatures and upgrades can no longer be combined during the game.

Therefore, it is of utmost importance to create a system that makes assembling the human miniatures a "foolproof thing". I think I have found this system.

A new printer

The new Phrozen Mega 8K has an immense printing plate. Huge quantities of people and coins can be printed by this machine overnight.

It takes barely 12 hours to print all the human miniatures at a resolution of 0.05mm layer-height. This is a very good resolution and only the Phrozen Shuffle 4K achieves a slightly better resolution of 0.03mm.

However, you can not only save time with the 260 human miniatures that are included in every game, but you can also save time with large models. You can easily print three or four large monster models at once, including the busts and any minions.

I still printed small tests for dice or miniature bases with the small printer, of course.

A new UV oven

When I first started 3D printing, I used a UV lamp and an aluminum tray in which to roast poultry.

At some point, however, this is no longer justifiable if the printed models have to be rotated three or four times in order to cure the last corners of the miniatures.

That's why I've now bought a professional device. 30-40 minutes are enough to cure all the miniatures in it.

You can't fit a full load of the Mega 8K printer in this oven, but almost. That should be enough.

A new attempt for the human miniatures

In what I now realize is a pitiful attempt to design new human miniatures that are easily producible with injection molding, I've created probably the ugliest miniatures since I started this project.

No matter how easy these miniatures are to make later, they would ruin the whole game.

It was important to do this to answer the question "what if" and it was good for me to make these things and deal with the technical limitations! But no... I'm not going to do these things to the players.

You can see the various miniatures in a long strip in the gallery.

But they are too ugly. Away with them. I'll have to rebuild the 6 different Realm Humans, the Neutral Human and the Soul model.

However, I have learned a lot from the past constructions of the human miniatures. I will incorporate this knowledge into the new models.

Conclusion of this year:

I'm glad I didn't let the mass of work put me off. I can say with certainty that I would not have been able to cope with this mass of work if I had not been supported by my love C.

You need someone to support and criticize you, someone to open your eyes again and again. I have become a better and more reflective worker this year and am confident that I will be able to complete the work on the miniatures in the first half of 2023.

At the end of the year, I also had an idea for a new game. I think it's a good idea and I'll pursue it when "The Pit" is finished.