I have opened up ALL of the Tiers for 3Dprintable STL files on my Patreon. If you aren’t in a Tier or have been wanting to upgrade from the Fan Tier and start 3Dprinting, now is your opportunity.
I had previously unpublished these Tiers, because someone had dumped my work on to a pirate site… I might have handled it better, rather than withdrawing and sulking. I was pretty devastated by it, because I had already had to deal with counterfeit products from China using my photos to sell knockoffs of my work on Facebook, Amazon, and Walmart… Having my files stolen was very depressing.
I have only one goal–to keep making art. I am not going to let others determine how I feel and react, or prevent me from sharing my art. There has been a lot of erosion of artist’s rights this year. AI art generators have been unleashed, trained on the work of living artists, by nihilistic wannabes…
We are heading into a new year, and I choose to face it with optimism and hope. I appreciate all of you who have supported me on this journey, and I welcome those who want to come along for the ride!
I made these Christmas gnomes last year. This is an example 3Dprinted by Mad Max Miniatures,and Painted by Vincent T. (@scales20.100 on Instagram). I have these Figurines and Ornaments now available on my Etsy shop! You don’t have to learn about 3Dprinting or have access to one, because I take care of that for you!
If you do have a 3Dprinter, you can get the STL files on Cults3D and make gifts for all your friends and family.
These gnomes are available as 4″ figurines or 3″ ornaments. They are solid resin and unpainted. You can paint them with inexpensive acrylic craft paints. This might be a fun holiday project or activity for the family!
If you have been wishing you could use one of my Gnome miniatures for your next character or campaign, but do not have a 3Dprinter, now you can buy physical miniatures directly from me! I have added a Miniature section to my Etsy shop. These miniatures are printed by me in a durable ABS like resin. They are 28mm scale (1:56) for tabletop games like D&D or Pathfinder.
These are just the first available– I will be adding more as I have a chance to print and paint. Make your next character a Gnome!
It is New Years Day, which a lot of people use to come up with resolutions…Instead of that, I thought that I would post some work from the past year and talk about what I’m working on now, and what will be coming up on my Patreon and Cults3D in 2022.
Gnomepoleonic Wars!
I’ve got the first set of gnomes for Gnomepoleonic Wars finished. I will be adding additional sets with different headgear (Bicorn and Shako hats). These minis are going to be great for tabletop wargames, and that has me thinking about publishing a Gnome Wars rule book, using my own wargame system!
guardin’gnome
It will not be limited to just Napoleanic battles, but works for skirmish games, scifi wargames, fantasy and historic. And it will be able to be used with any miniatures, whether traditional or 3dprinted–not just mine–Though I will use my own miniatures and illustrations for the book ( I better model some Space Gnomes…)
PuzzleLock Dungeon II
I also plan to release PuzzleLock Dungeon II this Spring. This is an improvement over my earlier PuzzleLock Dungeon, because I have focused on fully printed rooms and corridors (which make better use of the printbed), and have offset walls to maximize the playable space of the grid.
test prints for PuzzleLock Dungeon II
I also want to put up some more figurines on my Etsy shop! I have shown off a few on Facebook and Instagram, and based on the response I think there might be a desire for them amongst fans who don’t have access to their own 3Dprinter…
That’s the update for now. I hope that you have a Happy New Year!
Some scam companies have been offering my Guardin’Gnomes for sale on Facebook….. they are not legitimate, and if you bought anything, you got ripped off…. there are now more than 24 different scam e-commerce sites—all running the same fake Ads!!
While they are using MY photographs, they are actually sending people a cheap knockoff:
I filed a DMCA takedown request through Facebook and got their ad removed for copyright violations (using my photographs). But they launch new pages faster than I can keep up. They are even trying to sell them on Amazon and Walmart!
If you would like to see more of my work and help support me as an artist, I have a Patreon page, where you can do so. Patreon is a way for fans to join together to help support the artists they love:www.Patreon.com/Zandoria
For anyone who really wanted a Guardin’ Gnome, and disappointed to see that it was some scam company stealing my photos, I’ve created an Etsy Shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Zandoria I will be 3D printing them in resin and hand-painting.
I finally sat down and painted a group of my Gnome miniatures. One of the things that I was pleasantly surprised about, was how well the micro details showed up even at 28mm scale. I put in a level of detail that enables you to print my designs at different scales and have them still look good, whether as a tabletop miniature or as a figurine.
the chainmail details hold up at different scales
I am not a professional miniature painter, but I was very happy with how they turned out. I used craft acrylics and a wash to bring out the details (as described in a previous post about painting Guardin’ Gnomes). The wash brought out details that I couldn’t even see when holding the miniatures! Similar sized miniatures that are injection molded cannot hold the same level of detail… These are printed on a SparkmakerFHD which is pretty low resolution compared to newer printers, so I can’t wait to see what they will look like on a 4K printer!
If you would like to print your own, they are available individually on Cults3D or you can get access to ALL of my models when you join my Patreon!
The “G” is silent….like the gninja! These are the Gninja of the Black Cap Clan–a deadly trio of gnome ninjas.
This was just a fun little gnome sculpting project. with an Asian theme. The models are printed on a SparkmakerFHD. I was happy to see that all of the tiny details printed well!
I had a few comments about my paint job on these gnomes, so I thought I would post some step by step pictures of the process, in case that would be helpful to you as you paint your own…
fix any printing errors with green stuff!
If you have any printing errors, the first thing you will do is fix them if you can. Sometimes you might have partial print failure (if a support gets knocked over) and it could leave you with a missing portion of your model. If you have something like a layer shift while printing, you can separate with the putty knife and glue it back together. I have even used a wood-burning tool to weld PLA pieces together or smooth out a rough print!
This missing portion of the shield looks like splintered wood!
Sometimes rather than fix it, it might work even with the print failure–This Gnome had a support fail, which left a portion of the shield missing. Rather than try to fix it, I thought that it looked like it could be battle damage, and decided to just go with it!
primer
The first step that I did with these gnomes was to apply a surface primer. I don’t know if it is really necessary, but since my silver metals will be drybrushed over it, I decided to use a black primer.
The chainmail texture printed very cleanly! All It needs is a little metalic paint drybrushed across the links. The goal here is to not have much paint on your brush so that it will only hit the raised areas, and leave the black showing in the crevices. This paint is Folk Art metallics–the other colors that I will use are Apple Barrel and Deco Art–It is about 50 cents for a 2 oz bottle at Walmart.
first pass with colors
I will go section by section and paint a solid color for each item. Often I will go over an area with two coats to try and get an even coverage.
a dark wash of brown and black
After the base colors are dry, I mix up a wash of black and brown thinned with Acrylic thinner. I think that using acrylic thinner gives a better result than just thinning with water. After the wash was dry, I painted the dark parts of the eyes with a tiny brush.
The next coat of paint is done with the same colors as the first coat. You can also add a couple of drops of glaze medium into your color to thin it, if you want to build up the color. In this step, I want to bring the color and saturation of the original color out, while leaving the recesses dark. Don’t paint over all of the wash that you’ve done, but let your bright color blend into it. You can use wet blending to soften the transition into your recesses. Even the armor and other metallic areas will get a second drybrush coat.
The second coat of color pops out from the darker wash
When I’ve finished the second pass of colors, I will go into the details like the eyes, and add the iris color and specular highlights.
details added to the eyes
The last step is to add a gloss varnish to the eyes and lips. And maybe a satin varnish to other shiny areas.
After Painting, your Gnomes are ready for the Garden!
If you would like to 3dprint and paint your own set, you can get the STL files at Cults3D
I had this idea that I thought would look pretty cool: Gnomes for D&D, bust sculpted in the style of Garden Gnomes! Where they typically have a pointed cap, I would keep that shape, but make it a pointed helmet. This was a series of sketches that I made the next morning when I woke up with the idea…
Gnome with “meat tenderizer” mace!28mm scale miniGarden-sized!
After I sculpted a few, I decided to make a “Garden-Sized” version for the yard! The mini is printed on my SparkmakerFHD and the big version on my Ender3.
more gnomes and test prints
I am sculpting some more for my Patreon for next month, but if you would like to get these you can buy on Cults3D:
Zandoria Studios 