Din Djarin

[Malebolgia]

And now for something completely different.
My 12 year old son is a huuuuuuge Star Wars fanboy and we're watching everything there is. And of course he -loved- The Mandalorian. Now we also have a 3D printer at home, a Bambu A1 mini. It's an FDM printer, one that turns filament into a print. And I'm getting better and better results with it, so I asked him: "what do you want to print for Star Wars?". At first he wanted a funko doll, but I couldn't find good stls that gave good results. But then I stumbled upon a huge Din Djarin bust by creator Eastman 3D. And he loved it. So time to get printing!

The bust (without plinth) is about 22cm high, so it's huge! Printing it on the best settings gave a print time of four days. No problem, I'll take quality over speed any time. But at 97% of the print run there was a power outage in the neighbourhood! Nooooo! But....when the power was restored, the Bambu simply came up with a pop-up that asked if we would like to continue the print. Yes...a thousand times yes! And it continued and the final print was brilliant.
And although it looks great, there of course are layer lines. These are more than fine on the chest armour or clothes, but for the pauldron and helmet I wanted a super smooth result. I found a neat trick on Youtube to fix this. Basically I first sanded the plastic to smoothen it more. After rinsing and drying the model I took some UV resin, an old brush and then coated a lot of the surfaces with the resin. This gives a great smooth result. After the resin had hardened (and I cleaned it with some isopropyl alcohol), I sanded it a bit more until it looked good enough. Time for painting.

First I wanted to cover the metal parts with chrome paint to give that super shiny and reflective surface. For this I used an airbrush and Alclad's black gloss primer and chrome. The idea is simple, make the surfaces black and super glossy with the primer and then use chrome to to get a mirror effect. It worked...okay? The black primer wasn't shiny enough for my taste, but I couldn't get it shinier. This made the Chrome not as reflective as I would like. I think it's good enough, but it's not that typical chrome look. All in all it's a fickle product and tricky to use. Also because it's solvents based and I really don't want to spray that indoors with the airbrush. It's nasty stuff.

And then it was time for the 'normal paint'. But normal is a bit weird when the model is so huge. You can't paint it the same way as a 28mm model, lighting and colours need to be done differently. I stalled a bit as I needed to mull it over in my brain. But in the end I just grabbed some brushes and started going. After doing the basecoats it became more logical how to do the painting. Using a much bigger brush and applying bigger and more pronounced brush strokes worked much better. I also didn't want the surfaces to be too smooth; they're worn clothes and used armor and it needs a rougher finish to get it right IMO. And it also creates a great contrast with the clean metallics. So I stippled, dabbed and swooshed the brush around in bigger strokes and had a ton of fun. It felt quite liberating and free to paint this way and not trying to get that pupil in on a 28mm model. It's very organic and I just went around the model, doing all kinds of colours and mixing stuff. I did use warmer colours the top half and colder colours in the lower half to get them matching better with the light and angle, but this was quite easy to do on this scale.

And after many hours painting and having a lot of fun, Din Djarin was finished! What a fun project and my son was soooo happy to get this bust. It's now in his room, scoring me a lot of dad points

Now to continue with our 15mm Star Wars project...(which will be posted about here soon)

[Greylegion]

Fantastic.

[Daeothar]

That's awesome! 

A great result, and that with an A1 Mini! Did you manage to print it in one piece? And power outages; how rare those are and then to get one exactly then? Dang Murphy...

[Malebolgia]

Cheers guys! And the model itself is in one piece, so a good solid chunk. The plinth is a separate piece, but also in one piece. So also very easy to print. And yes, the power outage freaked me out, but the magic of the Bambu's software is brilliant.

[Rick]

Absolutely fantastic model - superb painting and finishing, makes it really 'pop', adds depth and a lot of realism. Great stuff.

Don't forget that 'The Book of Boba Fett' is actually season 2.5 of 'The Mandalorian' - there's stuff in those episodes that is referenced in season 3.

And tell your son that only the best and brightest are Star Wars fans! 

[Malebolgia]

Absolutely fantastic model - superb painting and finishing, makes it really 'pop', adds depth and a lot of realism. Great stuff.

Don't forget that 'The Book of Boba Fett' is actually season 2.5 of 'The Mandalorian' - there's stuff in those episodes that is referenced in season 3.

And tell your son that only the best and brightest are Star Wars fans! 

Thanks man!
We watched Boba Fett after Mandalorian and thought it was great. Sure, as an adult I saw enough that could be better, but watching with a kid makes it such an awesome experience. You see the magic of Star Wars in their heads and it helps me enjoy the shows so much more! Cad Bane, rampaging Rancor, shootouts on Tatooine...what's not to like eh?

[beefcake]

Wow, that's awesome. I love the silver armour, that has come out amazingly well.

[HerbertTarkel]

Awesome work on that - the metal is really a stand out.

Book of Boba Fett (starring Mando, with occasional appearances by Boba Fett), will have a second season. Tom Hardy is going to play bounty hunter with rags Dengar! How’s that for a deep cut…

[Rick]

Awesome work on that - the metal is really a stand out.

Book of Boba Fett (starring Mando, with occasional appearances by Boba Fett), will have a second season. Tom Hardy is going to play bounty hunter with rags Dengar! How’s that for a deep cut…

Is that officially official? I keep seeing conflicting information about season 2; it's probably on, then off, then on again with an indication of a cast! But this time next week it might be off again.
Also they've got to get the Mando and Grogu film out of the way before they can start season 2.

[LouieN]

An amazing brush work.