3D printed, hand-painted miniatures

These 3D printed, hand-painted white nylon miniatures are rather special:

Take a look atTurtleWorks shop on Shapeways that does not contain any turtles, but does contain many more 3D printed miniatures that you can order in the material of your choice then customize by hand painting for yourself. We also have an entire gallery of3D printed miniatures on Shapeways, if any of your models are suitable to be included in this category, be surte to assign them in your product page.

Amazing Hand Painted, 3D Printed Miniatures

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: 3d printing • Games • gift guide • makers • rpgs

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Conan Librarian

So he fell from heaven do to his heavy armor? Finally, it all makes sense!
- Tynam
  
  For a good enough set of armour I’ll fall pretty much anywhere.
Marc Forrester

Welp, here we go. Should be interesting to see what kind of RIAA style meltdown Games Workshop et al descend into.
- Conan Librarian
  
  But they did, didn’t they? They took down those warhammer or whatever ones from thingiverse right? Universal did as well for that movie prop too on the same site. So the lesson here is, when they start requesting for more laws and protection, remind them they have laws and protection already.
unclegabby

Neat stuff but your links are broken, I think.
http://twitter.com/RagingRoosevelt Theodore S Lindsey

TurtleWorks shop link is
http://www.shapeways.com/shops/turtleworks?sort=newest

Miniatures gallery link is
http://www.shapeways.com/gallery/miniatures
ifriit

Hm, they’re close, but not quite to modern cast model quality standards. They’re better than GW plastics from the mid-90s, though,
- Ryan_T_H
  
  Yeah, Reaper miniatures doesn’t have much to worry about here. First, the scale and detail are not great. It looks to be about twice the scale of standard gaming miniatures, with less detail than is expected from a nice quality 25mm mini.
  
  Also, the cost. This is $60. A higher quality metal version would be half that. An equivalent 25mm scale mini would be a fifth.
  
  This is neat, but I suspect miniatures will be one market that resists the advances of printers, at least at character scales, for quite some time.
  - Tynam
    
    In some ways, yes. In others… at the UK Games Expo last year I saw an awesome table full of printed starship miniatures. The prices were competitive, the quality was adequate-though-not-stunning, and the designs used the printing to do some great gantries and connectors what would be hard to impossible with conventional moulds.
    
    3D print doesn’t beat conventional moulding yet… but you don’t have to sell 1000 of a 3d printed mini to break even. I expect to see it being used heavily for ‘weirder’ designs that are hard to find normally.
  - A J
    
    I think they have everything to worry about, considering the massive improvements in quality and price that have been achieved in the 3d printing world over the last 5 years.
    
    Were these things being tracked on a graph, I’m confident that the lead that the more traditional miniature companies currently enjoys could be eroded in a few short years.
    - Daniel Platt
      
      It’s the efficiency in time and how fast 3D printed goods can be distributed that makes the difference. Even if they don’t look as good, they can still be popped out of a machine anywhere, on demand, with little labor required (painting?). The same goes for anything else 3D printed. The better the technology gets, the more competitive it will be. This article explains it well: http://empiricalmag.blogspot.com/2012/12/december-excerpt-creative-disruption-by.html.
Andrew Singleton

Hmm. I could have Goliath and the associated horrors from the Lightning and Iron setting printed out. Nifty.
M S Stanley

Kindar, the bringer of justice…
…and small chocolate eggs containing a small, disappointing toy
eadipus

The best use of 3D printing that I’ve seen for miniatures is having it printed with the intention of recasting it in resin multiple times. A friend has just bought some Battlefleet Gothic scale ships that he’s very pleased with that were produced this way and I’ve seen some excellent barricades/emplacements printed then cast in plaster.