My newest theme for my 3Dprintable miniatures is Trolls. I’ve been researching a lot of artists and Scandinavian folk and fairy tales for inspiration. I think the biggest influence that I have is the fairy tale artwork of John Bauer.

I see them as big and shaggy, somewhat beastly in form… As I read some of the stories, I thought about our cousins the Neanderthals, and how they were displaced by our ancestors. The trolls seem to have retreated from the noisy humans and younger races in the same way, and I wondered if that might be a possible origin of their stories, (as well as yetis and jotun and even bigfoot!)

I started with a drawing in Procreate, and then a ZSphere armature in ZBrush for the basic form.

After sculpting the basic Troll body, I brought in some other 28mm scale objects as a reference, so that I could be sure my finished miniature would look good on the table after printing.

Using my drawing as a reference, I detailed the fur and the Trolls accessories. The John Bauer troll illustrations were influenced by the dress of the Sami people of Norway. So I decided that I would also draw from that, as well as relics from bronze age Scandinavia, such as the Troll’s sword:

I really liked Bauer’s big noses, so I decided to use that in my interpretation. Another artist that I love, Paul Bonner, also gives his trolls big noses and cites John Bauer as an influence!

This is the finished model, rendered in ZBrush. I exported this as an .STL file for 3Dprinting for my Patreon.

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I was very happy with how these Troll turned out, so I am planning to sculpt a few more trolls for my Patreon. If you like it, and would like to print your own, they are available exclusively at www.patreon.com/Zandoria