Tech, Computers, Dungeons, and Drawings!
In the lands of Wundleich, the adventurers Kadmos and Yum pursue fantastical tales of treasure and mystery, slowly unearthing ancient secrets and forgotten lore that could see their world remade…
These characters are played by close friends, who asked that I draw them as part of their ongoing Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
Over the course of the summer of 2019, I was lucky enough to be able to teach at the Stem Kids NYC Summer camp. For four weeks between January and August, I taught programming to kids ages 6-13. During lunch breaks, I started a game of Dungeons and Dragons for a group of the kids. The kids decided to name their group “Python” (spelled using the Greek letter) in reference to the programming language I used in my lessons. As both a teacher and tabletop gaming enthusiast, it was amazing for me to see how much fun they all had during the games.
Once upon a time, Aaaron Amnotxy was the promising heir to the noble House Antaniel, they of the Silver Word. Such a bright child, the scribes would say, such promise as with the pen or bow. The sages of the Trials, for all his promise, found him wanting. For the dishonor, the stain of failure upon the name of the House, his father the Lord Antaniel says he is to leave. What realm is there beyond the wood for an elf without a name?
I have played the character of Aaaron in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign for the past year – this is a pencil and paper sketch of a scene from his backstory – of the moment he left the elven woods, and left the signet ring of his house behind.
As a huge fan of Dungeons and Dragons, I love to have miniature figures for my character. I also love playing tinker and inventor characters, and so when I saw the latest version of the artificer class on Unearthed Arcana (the pdf is on Unearthed Arcana, linked here) I was… excited.
Now, for some context, I’m part of a massive high-school spanning Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) game with my friends, and my character has bounced around a little bit in terms of his class. I was looking for a fun and interesting set of game mechanics, and boy does the artificer have those in spades. So, I took the artificer, choosing the artillerist subclass as the logical choice for someone just coming off of a gunslinger. The big selling point of the artillerist was the ability to build specialized turrets, which participate in combat (These mechanics have been changed in the official release).
A while ago, I bought a miniature figure of my character from the site HeroForge, which I use to mark the location of my character on the battlefield whenever our party engages in combat. Amidst the general excitement about the awesomeness of the new class and the anticipation of our first session in more than a month, an idea came to me – use Tinkercad to make custom miniatures of the turrets I would be placing which I could use alongside my character’s miniature in combat. And so the adventure began.
The first step was to design the miniatures in Tinkercad. To this end, I enlisted the aid of my friend Jawon Lee to come up with interesting concepts for a few of the turrets. The artificer artillerist subclass specifies three types of turrets: Flamethrowers, Force Ballistas, and Defense Turrets. We set to work on concepts, and eventually finished the models you see here. (You can see and download them here)(Jawon completely modeled the turrets on the left and right of the back row, the rest were mine; the little scopes visible on most of the turrets were his idea as well). After a few days of work, we were ready to print.
Now, you may have noticed that the model pictured above has an awful lot of overhangs and hollow areas, normally anathema to most consumer 3d Printers. Fortunately, my school recently acquired a new model of printer which can print both solid, normal plastic and special dissoluble plastic that it uses for supports. Simply placing the model in water (as pictured above) dissolves away the supports, leaving just the original model. Since the materials don’t mix or bond during printing, the resulting edges and overhangs are perfectly smooth. Fun fact – the supports absorb water as they dissolve, so they hang out as a sort of goop for a while before completely washing away; if you’ve ever handled a hagfish, imagine that stuff sorta clinging to the model. Its super cool (and no, I’m not a weirdo, goop is fun and all of you who think this sounds gross need to go and find a hagfish).
After about twelve hours of soaking, the minis came out just about perfectly! because of the small scale, the fine details like the sloped top of the ballista and the tip of the flamethrower barrel came out a bit rough, but in all other ways it was about as cool as can be imagined!
Cheers, and may the dice roll ever in your favor.