Cute lil’ Reindeer

Ah, a project I look back on every christmas season, I 3d printed these cute little reindeer and had zero problems making them whatsoever. oh wait no… I decicded to make FIFTY THREE OF THEM. and they killed my first 3d printer via a failed print. I used to work at a daycare and wanted to make these as a gift for the kids. I was an ameteur 3D printer who maybe had like 20 total prints under their belt. “how bad could it be?” I thought “I can just load up the build plate it’ll be like 10 prints”. I’m guessing its because i overfilled the bed among other factors that over 100 of these suckers failed in printing. this project wasted through two 500ml BOTTLES of resin, thats right 1 LITRE of resin. Mostly consisting of falures and supports.

After the nightmare of printing them was over. The nightmare of painting them begun. Nowadays (2025) I struggle to batch paint 10 guardsmen in a weekend but I had 53 reindeer to do and a wopping 2 weeks to do it thanks to my struggle in printing them. and my awful tan army painter paint was not helping. the tan took over four coats to get solid and I ended up inlisting (begging for) the help of my brother to get it done on time. This project is actually why I swear by Citadels Mephiston Red, because my 2 army painter reds and my valejo red at the time wouldnt go on in one coat. To this day its the only Citadel paint I reccomend.

and soon the big day arrived, the kids got their reindeer. most of them were quite indifferent to them. a few liked them very much and for the 4 of them that were interested in my 3d printer the story to go with it was very funny.