Catan Castle Build

First up, I gathered a bunch of reference images and got to work on roughing in a design. I wanted to create something with lots of detail, incorporating medieval/fantasy elements like pointed parapets and a flying bridge, while also feeling like something that was at least grounded in a realistic layout and design for a real castle.

Using Blender for my modelling, I started with the terrain, trying to create organic organic shapes for a pathway, river valley, and surrounding cliffs. Then, adding on chunky basic shapes one at a time, I gradually added detailed buildings to fill out the hexagon.

One thing that can be a real challenge while designing printable miniatures is knowing how much detail you really need. Every printer, including mine, has a certain amount of printable fidelity; if you design features microns wide, they will disappear in the lesser accuracy of the final printed piece.

Yet, it can be hard to keep a sense of scale when you are designing things in a 3D simulated environment; you can zoom in endlessly and, if you’re inspired, you want to add more and more detail the further you go down.

Tangent aside, I really like how the first print came out. There were some details that were too small to appear; however, I was able to simulate a lot of detail with painting techniques, so it’s a wash (wow, what a pun!).

Starting into painting, I laid down some basic dark base colors for the rocky ground, and after that dried, I worked in a stream on top by blending blues and whites in place while wet. Next, I got the green grass, pathway, and red roofs all painted, and did a dark wash to make the nooks and crevices of the cliffside really pop with contrast.

Finally, I did some drybrushing with white and light grey to accentuate the edges of the roofs and the cliffs. Again, I think this step does a lot to bring in contrast and make the whole piece pop.