Taking up 3D modeling.exe

So, along with the Poop Snake Dragon, who has been officially renamed “Curio”, I wanted him to have mice companions, like little librarians, like the foxes from the great library in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
And, Bae’s Dad, who works in the fine jewelry industry and uses computer modeling and 3D printing professionally, recently linked me to a free version of ZbrushCore, called ZBrushCore Mini.
It’s a very basic software that has most of what you need for modeling and sculpting digitally.

So I made a mouse model, pictured below, and because I couldn’t bring myself to have Bae’s padre smuggle 6 little white mice out of work in his pockets, I found a 3D print service fellow on Etsy and ordered my mice.

For my first time trying 3D sculpting, I made a mostly solid design, but a flaw emerged when considering how thin the ears of the mouse would be when they were sized down to 4 inches long from nose to tail. When the print supports were taken off the ears came with them, but I’m kind of excited to have earless mice, so I told my seller to just send them earless when he asked me about the problem.

I’m still waiting for my prints to ship, but parts of the back and forth between my Etsy connection and I for these mice were kind of cool moments.
Like for one of the mice he said he needed to re-print it because his two year old was playing with it and broke the foot, and I read that and immediately thought how cool that was, that a kid was playing with my mice. That’s a high marks, test passed kind of feeling.
This 2 year old child saw my mouse and wanted to play with it cause they liked it.
It’s just very cool to me and makes me feel appreciated.

So the mice are in production and eventually transit, and when they arrive I’ll need to sand them down smooth and paint them different colors and make little accessories like fezzes and maybe glasses and scarves etc.
They’re my little Tarboosh Mice.

My problem now is the degree of self control I have when it comes to sculpting something in 3D and knowing I can get it affordably printed and sent to me through the mail, cause dammit, it’s cool.

The Tarboosh Mice, getting set up to print

Photo my seller sent me of my physical mouse

In other news, “Curio” is coming along. I finally stole all of Bae’s paper and printer ink so I could make the dragon’s book page skin, so stay tuned for that.

And a new raptor friend has joined the chat, named Gallus Spur. More on him in the next instalment.

One other thing, though this is almost completely unrelated to everything I just talked about, Sam Spud.
Remember that name.
Spud, Sam Spud, Par-Boiled Potato Detective.
Here’s a playlist with (as far as I know) all of his segments:
Sam Spud, Par-Boiled Potato Detective

- - Syd