I’d bet that nobody expected a random project made to get the hang of a visual library to end up here. I mean, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, but really. Surely no sane person would spend ages rewriting, refactoring, and debugging JavaScript purely for the purpose of posting to a website dedicated to actual accomplishments! Oh ye of little faith! Lonk must his rupees have, and you shall aid him in his quest! Yes, I am using this website as a front for Lonk’s rupee collection racket. And no, there are no problems with this. Go forth!
[Please note that this thing uses keyboard input. Sorry not sorry to mobile users]
With a pure note that echoes across the woods, the King of the Elves calls his people to the forest’s heart for celebration under the year’s first full moon. The land is green and lush with fey magic, and as the moon rises, the festivity gives way to ancient ritual known only to the elders of the elven circles. Gifts of magic flash to the sky as the moon reaches its peak, and the dancing resumes, the night illuminated by flickering flame and the pure light of the moon.
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!
Many wonders reside in the workshop of a master artificer. Clockwork marvels tick gently on crooked shelves and mysterious potions bubble in arcane distilleries. The old master himself whistles merrily at his bench, working away at his latest creation, gears littering his worktable and sparks flying from his ever busy tools.
Deep in the heart of an ancient wood live wondrous things. Spirits roam free, and magical creatures wander the land. Wise old trees stretch to the sky, and fireflies drift through the deep shadows of evening. Faeries flit from tree to tree, and nature’s magic hangs in the very air.
