While I clean up and upload more painting pics, I figured I'd post something exciting I did just this last weekend.
I'm a graphic designer by trade, so I have experience working with vector files. Lucky me, vector files are used for laser-cutting! I got a chance this weekend to play with a cutter, and I must say, with a few odd incidents, it was an amazing fun time!
All pics are from my cellphone, so no promises as to the quality, but that, my dear friends, is my first ever laser cut project! Sure it doesn't look like much there, but that's because you're not seeing it...
...after having been removed from the bed! What you're looking at there is a paint rack perfectly suited to Vallejo paint bottles, (or similarly sized ones), measuring 22cm by 20cm, with room enough for 48 paint bottles! (Assuming you don't just shove a bunch in the negative space underneath.)
Once I got it home, I assembled it, glue-less thanks to careful sizing (and I darn near risked needing to file some of the gaps larger) and arranged the paint bottles in a hopefully-logical way (it seemed so at the time for me!)
Of course, one does not merely play around on a laser cutter with just one thing, so I decided to do up a few other files for cutting various samples on:
This is an experiment with different types of plastic: A blast template, flamer template, and two types of "camo markers" for Infinity or other sci-fi games. I very much like the frosted green. It's translucent enough to show through to models underneath somewhat, but also holds the look and feels snazzy. The dark plastic is technically translucent, but came off so dark I don't think I'll want to use it again for these sorts of templates. It'd make a neat variant to the all-clear paint rack though: an opaque and shiny black one!
Back at the apartment, here's what all the various things we printed look like. Large and small spray templates, blast templates, camo markers, and along the back, the real test I wanted to pull together; Clear bases! We have, from left to right, 55mm, 50mm, 40mm, 30mm, 25mm, FoW Artillery, FoW Infantry, FoW Command, and a 1" square with rounded edges meant for me to base Dropzone Commander walkers on so I can go a bit more varied with leg positions without fear of them becoming unstable.
What makes the bases we made unique, and what we're refining now, is they all have little indicators at both sides of them. So many games now differentiate front arc from back arc, and there can be disagreement over lines being applied cleanly, properly, etc. These bases come with the marks already burned into them...
...meaning it's just a matter of aligning the model to face the right way in gluing! We're still dialing in the amount of power to use when etching them, and the size needed, which on these ones isn't quite yet immediately distinctive enough from casual glance. We're eventually hoping to make enough we can start selling them too!
I must say I couldn't be happier. Watching the printer cut is mesmerizing, and it's made me excited to make up a bunch more templates and get cutting again!
