Gimpdiggity
Master Member
Hello everyone!!
I found a nice model of Baby Groot from GotG V2 on Thingiverse and figured I'd give it a shot on my printer. I printed it up in black PLA and was happy with the result. Of course after showing a couple of coworkers they wanted their own, so I printed a couple more to give to them as I don't really have anything else to print right now, and I've got some plastic that's been in there for a while and I was planning on swapping it soon just to be on the safe side so I figured what the heck and made them for them for free. Bums. :lol
Here's three of them:
As you can see, he's just in a sitting position with a worried type of look on his face.
When I shared this picture on Facebook, a friend of mine said "Why is Groot black? He's supposed to be brown."
I can't really argue with that...so I decided to give it a go and see how I could get it to look with painting it.
Please Note:
I'm TERRIBLE at painting things.
So I started out with just a basic brown paint that I happened to have on hand. I got the eyes painted on with just black and was slightly pleased with the look.
I posted this picture on Facebook, and the same friend said "Well, I guess he's kind of DARK brown now." She then posted a picture of Groot that looked sad and said "You've made Groot sad."
Okay, she said it...but I also kind of felt that he was too dark. Back to the drawing board.
So I printed another head, and kept that first one around to just keep trying things on. This second head I painted a lighter color of brown...almost a khaki. This print, however, didn't come out very well. My slicer updated and for some reason was giving me weird artifacts on the models. I ended up rolling the software back and was able to print several more head with no issues. Weird. Anyway, here he is with the lighter brown...and you can see that the print isn't nearly as clean.
Well, that's TOO light. Dang it!!! I don't have any middle colors...there were no other browns at the craft store that were in between these two, so I decided I'd try to get a different color brown by mixing what I had. I ended up with what I felt was a fairly passable color.
In the meantime, I was trying to get the idea I wanted for the details down with the original head, the one that was too dark brown. I tried using some black on the "lower" areas of his skin, and did some really rough green to simulate the moss that grows on the top of his head.
I then painted the body with the mixed brown that I had come up with, and tried my hand at using a wash. This was the first time I've ever used a wash, and I think the results turned out pretty okay. I actually was hoping for the wash to stain the entire body just a very slightly darker brown, and it worked out perfectly.
Now that I was confident with using the wash, and I had tried practicing dry brushing a bit more, I felt like I was ready to go ahead and give the head another shot. I have never really done much in the way of dry brushing, particularly with a completely different color to work out the look I was going for here. However, when it was all said and done I was pretty happy with how it looked!!!
I then put a satin coat on all of it to seal the paint. After that I put gloss black on the eyes so that they'd appear to shine pretty well, and then assembled the head and the body.
Overall I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I really struggled with whether I wanted him to be completely matte, or whether I wanted to go satin. Ultimately when I was looking at it with just the matte paint, I thought it looked pretty "unfinished," if that makes any sense...so the satin gives him a BIT of shine but not a total gloss coat.
Now I've got to work on some kind of way to display him. I've got an idea in mind, I just need to make it to the craft store again on Saturday.
What do you guys think? Go easy...I've never used wash before, had VERY limited dry brushing skills, and really have no idea what I'm doing in general!!! :lol
***EDIT***
After looking at it some more, I've decided to put a matte coat on it. I think it's a bit too shiny. We'll see how this goes. Pictures tomorrow night, probably.
***EDIT 2***
After using the Dullcote, and then painting the eyes with the gloss again, this is what he looks like now. I'm really happy with this!!!
I found a nice model of Baby Groot from GotG V2 on Thingiverse and figured I'd give it a shot on my printer. I printed it up in black PLA and was happy with the result. Of course after showing a couple of coworkers they wanted their own, so I printed a couple more to give to them as I don't really have anything else to print right now, and I've got some plastic that's been in there for a while and I was planning on swapping it soon just to be on the safe side so I figured what the heck and made them for them for free. Bums. :lol
Here's three of them:
As you can see, he's just in a sitting position with a worried type of look on his face.
When I shared this picture on Facebook, a friend of mine said "Why is Groot black? He's supposed to be brown."
I can't really argue with that...so I decided to give it a go and see how I could get it to look with painting it.
Please Note:
I'm TERRIBLE at painting things.
So I started out with just a basic brown paint that I happened to have on hand. I got the eyes painted on with just black and was slightly pleased with the look.
I posted this picture on Facebook, and the same friend said "Well, I guess he's kind of DARK brown now." She then posted a picture of Groot that looked sad and said "You've made Groot sad."
Okay, she said it...but I also kind of felt that he was too dark. Back to the drawing board.
So I printed another head, and kept that first one around to just keep trying things on. This second head I painted a lighter color of brown...almost a khaki. This print, however, didn't come out very well. My slicer updated and for some reason was giving me weird artifacts on the models. I ended up rolling the software back and was able to print several more head with no issues. Weird. Anyway, here he is with the lighter brown...and you can see that the print isn't nearly as clean.
Well, that's TOO light. Dang it!!! I don't have any middle colors...there were no other browns at the craft store that were in between these two, so I decided I'd try to get a different color brown by mixing what I had. I ended up with what I felt was a fairly passable color.
In the meantime, I was trying to get the idea I wanted for the details down with the original head, the one that was too dark brown. I tried using some black on the "lower" areas of his skin, and did some really rough green to simulate the moss that grows on the top of his head.
I then painted the body with the mixed brown that I had come up with, and tried my hand at using a wash. This was the first time I've ever used a wash, and I think the results turned out pretty okay. I actually was hoping for the wash to stain the entire body just a very slightly darker brown, and it worked out perfectly.
Now that I was confident with using the wash, and I had tried practicing dry brushing a bit more, I felt like I was ready to go ahead and give the head another shot. I have never really done much in the way of dry brushing, particularly with a completely different color to work out the look I was going for here. However, when it was all said and done I was pretty happy with how it looked!!!
I then put a satin coat on all of it to seal the paint. After that I put gloss black on the eyes so that they'd appear to shine pretty well, and then assembled the head and the body.
Overall I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I really struggled with whether I wanted him to be completely matte, or whether I wanted to go satin. Ultimately when I was looking at it with just the matte paint, I thought it looked pretty "unfinished," if that makes any sense...so the satin gives him a BIT of shine but not a total gloss coat.
Now I've got to work on some kind of way to display him. I've got an idea in mind, I just need to make it to the craft store again on Saturday.
What do you guys think? Go easy...I've never used wash before, had VERY limited dry brushing skills, and really have no idea what I'm doing in general!!! :lol
***EDIT***
After looking at it some more, I've decided to put a matte coat on it. I think it's a bit too shiny. We'll see how this goes. Pictures tomorrow night, probably.
***EDIT 2***
After using the Dullcote, and then painting the eyes with the gloss again, this is what he looks like now. I'm really happy with this!!!
Last edited:
