I usually don’t post galleries of models that I make for friends/family as “gifts” because I try to keep those things personal, or just between the giver and the recipient. That said, I’m going to make exceptions this year because Resin3DInteractive, a small 3D printing company based here in Atlantic Canada, did a fantastic job with the 3D prints that I commissioned and I want to make sure that they get their due in credit for some brilliant work on my Christmas batch this year. I also want to make sure that I give credit to the designers of the sculpts as well – I went digging on CGTrader to try and make sure I found things I could paint that would be tailored to special people in my life.

Since me and XenonMage at this point have basically watched the whole first 100 episodes of the Saint Seiya anime, and since we’re both in agreement that Camus Did Nothing Wrong ™, it felt incredibly appropriate to gift her this year with a statue of Aquarius Camus, as designed by CGTrader user “damaia”. This sculpt is about 10cm tall with a 50mm base, and I can’t say enough good things about Resin3DInteractive’s work on bringing the STL files to print, and doing cleanup on the model before it reached me. They also included a “backup” copy of the model without the basing if I ended up needing it, without me even asking for one; I really can’t say enough good things about their work.

This model looked a little touch and go at first because I have a long running feud with Balthasar Gold as a base color. It dries too fast, it’s gummy to the touch, and I find that drybrushing over it is enormously frustrating. That said, with this project I discovered the joy of painting using Gehenna Gold. I don’t know why I didn’t start using Gehenna Gold years ago because I find it goes over Balthasar Gold better than any other gold color I’ve used before, and it worked perfectly on this model for bringing out all those little armor details and raised highlights on Camus’ armor.

I’m also very happy with how the basing turned out, especially since it was a “happy accident” – while trying to brush on Ushabti Bone, it turns out I hadn’t cleaned off my drybrush after applying a blue-green color to another model, and as a result the basing started to take on a snowy, dusty (one might almost say a “diamond-o-dust-o”) color. Which, really, is the perfect kind of base for Aquarius Camus. I doubled down on it, and am just thrilled with how the end result turned out, and XenonMage liked this which made it even better. If I had to look back on the things I’ve painted that I’m happiest with, I’d definitely be putting this on the shortlist.