Hi Folks!
I’m Paul Dennis Taylor* and I wanted to share a bit of my experiences as a sculptor, 3d printer, and designer with this great community of 3D printing enthusiasts. I’ve been working over the past few months on Dungeon Dweller Classics – a Colossal Miniatures line inspired by the classic Dungeons & Dragons role playing game from my childhood.
I grew up playing the original AD&D circa 1976 and have been a life-long fan of RPG’s and the miniatures they’ve inspired. It’s been a blast putting my interpretation and spin on these classic monsters!
And being a Dungeon Master myself, I know you can never have enough monsters at your disposal for your players to encounter, AmIright?!
For the Lizardfolk, I knew I wanted to have a horde of the the nasty man-flesh eaters. So I wound up sculpting a base mesh in Zbrush, then taking it in to Maya to rig/skin for faster posing. And then I polished up the final sculpt back in Zbrush. This saved me a lot of time in the end because I sculpted 21 Lizardfolk in total.
This is how some of the female Lizardfolk turned out. They were printed and painted by NeroVescaro and used here with permission. What an amazing job! I’m blown away by how much detail NeroVescaro was able to paint in there. I really like the paint scheme with the yellow underbelly going to blue-green on the top of the heads.
So cool, and this is what makes spending all the time sculpting worth while for me as a designer; to see the sculpts printed and painted with this much love. (wipes tear from corner of eye)
NeroVescaro picked up the entire Lizardfolk Swamp Camp Mega Pack which has 16 of the Lizardfolk miniatures plus 5 bonus camping Lizardfolk for a total of 21 unique miniatures. Also included is a camp fire with roasting human flesh on a spit, a weapon rack, crude lean to hut, egg nest, and hollowed out swamp tree stump.
So I can’t wait to see what NeroVescaro does with that!
Here are some samples of sculpts next to actual 3d prints. This Gelatinous Cube is my most popular item on the store. The design challenge for this one was to try and find a way to convey how cool the transparent monster is without printing it in clear resin. So I finally arrived on the solution of hollowing out the center but still keeping the cube feel on the sides.
This is also and example of how I am learning to tweak the designs ever so slightly in order to create some versions of miniatures that print SUPPORT-FREE. We all know how great not having to add supports to models before we print is! Notice the Axe and spear undercuts have been removed in the final print on the right compared to the render of the sculpt on the left.
Here is an example of another SUPPORT-FREE model, the Shambling Plant Mound, another take on a classic monster. The primer paint in the photo on the far right really helps the camera capture more details.
My creative roots are deep in D&D fantasy, but I also plan to branch out and sculpt some Sci-Fi, Modern Day Survival, Post-Apocalyptic, Pulp, and even HP Lovecraft inspired Cthulhu Mythos creatures and investigators soon too! For example, here’s a miniature from an unreleased upcoming Modern Day Survivor line I’m working on for my Patreon launch. He’s a bit of an Easter egg in the Dungeon Dwellers Classics image above. 😉
Here’s another couple sclupts of Modern Day Survivors wip. It’s nice to change it up. Can’t wait to sculpt some Sci-Fi soon too!
But I always gravitate back to Fantasy. Here’s another W.I.P. sculpt from an up coming Epic Hero/Villain and Mount series I’m working on, also for the Patreon launch She’s a high level Druid with an Owlbear Mount. The Owlbear prints SUPPORT-FREE, she does not! Ouch.
I hope this post has been informative and helpful. Please be sure to check out Colossal Miniatures as I am going to launch a Patreon in August here:
https://www.patreon.com/colossalminiatures
P.S. Drop me a PM if you have any questions about sculpting, printing, or all things miniatures. I am also a full-time professor at ArtCenter College of Design Entertainment Track where I teach Animated Short Film, so I love to both learn and teach.
Cheers,
-Paul Dennis Taylor, Colossal Miniatures
*Although I have only recently launched Colossal Miniatures, I have nearly 30 years of professional experience in Hollywood VFX, AAA Games, Commercials, and Ride Film CG production. I worked at Blur Studio for many years where I worked on a TON of game cinematics. I have supervised animation for big movies like Oblivion, Red Tails, Percy Jackson, etc. I have also worked at Blizzard Entertainment in the pre-vis department on the original Overwatch cinematic. My TV work includes Lost in Space Season 2 and most recently I worked with Ridley Scott on Raised by Wolves, a new 10 Episode sci-fi series.