Hero Forge Custom Miniature + Painting Miniatures

By Charles Moffat.

So I asked my girlfriend for a Hero Forge Custom Miniature for xmas. It arrived early and I am fortunate to live in a household where we celebrate xmas the whole month, so gift giving can happen any day. Hence why I received my gift on December 3rd - the day it arrived in the mail. It was not a surprise, I did design the miniature after all and ask for it.

Hero Forge makes miniatures using a 3D printer - and can make transparent plastic, strong plastic (which apparently only comes in white), and metal - and you can order the figurines in a variety of sizes, so you are not limited to the normal 1 inch base figurine.

Behold what I saw upon first opening the package.

And wow. That is a lot of packaging for one tiny miniature. (Note, you save on shipping costs if you buy multiple miniatures.)

Even the cat agrees that it is a lot of packaging, as she gleefully bites and plays with the box and bubble wrap. (I am going to be posting a video of her attacking the packaging later today on Victoria has Claws, our cat's youtube channel.)

Below, the front view of the miniature out of the packaging. His name is "Wrathgar", a character I designed circa 2003 and have been using, playing in Dungeons and Dragons, writing about for roughly 12 years now. eg. You can read one of Wrathgar's adventures / origin story in the book "The Adventures of Wrathgar: The Assassin's Trail". The character is Conan-esque, but Wrathgar favours the bow over sword and axe. His choice of clothing is also more unique, as not many people wear antlers on their helmet - which means it was also a challenge to find a company that has an antler helmet on their list of options.

And the back view of Wrathgar.

So I immediately had to begin the painting process. I got my box of paints, my roll of paintbrushes from studying painting for 5 years in university, lots of water to drink, something to watch while I paint, and a clean painting surface, and more water to wash paintbrushes in.

Before painting I washed the miniature in hot water to make sure there wasn't any residue leftover from the painting process. The manufacturer recommends washing the miniature before painting.

Below, the base coat of the miniature. Wrathgar is a very nature-loving character and tends to wear lots of brown, so "burnt umber" made a good base coat.

Additional layers saw me add black shading, titanium white for the antlers, and vandyke brown. For the face I used a mixture of jaune brilliant and naples yellow.

And here I used phthalo green blue shade for his arrow fletching.

The miniature is not done with the painting process. I still want to go back and do the following.

• Fine tune details on his face.
• Add white and blue for his eyes.
• Ivory colouration for the antlers, which should not be completely white.
• More shading around his armour.
• Gold hilt for his dagger.
• And other details I can think of later.

I was very pleased with Hero Forge and what I saw on their website - and yes their prices are pretty expensive, but it was totally worth. I have seen Wrathgar come to life before me in a miniature.

Note - If readers and their friends want to save on costs, I recommend ordering as a group in order to save on shipping costs.

Prior to this I was using a Dark Sun "Half Giant Psychic Warrior" as the miniature for Wrathgar, which was a good representation of Wrathgar's physique, but failed to point out that Wrathgar spends much of his time using his bow. So now I can use the half giant when he is using his sword, and my new miniature when he is using his bow - which is his preferred weapon of choice.

And for those people who are curious, Wrathgar is normally a ranger when I play pen + paper D&D. In DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) however Wrathgar has been both a ranger and a barbarian, operating on the DDO Argonnessen server under the names Wraethgar and Wrathggar,because apparently, somehow, Wrathgar was taken. Go figure.

For more information about my writing or the world of Korovia in which Wrathgar exists, check out either http://www.korovia.com/ or http://fiction.charlesmoffat.com/.

Happy gaming!