In which I paint a 3D-Printed Nightcrawler

Happy Friday, bibliophiles!

This is definitely a different post from what I usually do, but I had a lot of fun with this little project, and I thought I’d share it over here. 🙂

Some of my relatives came over to visit recently, and they gave me this amazing 3D-printed model of Nightcrawler from X-Men! (Thank you so much! And here’s the original model, if you want to check it out) So as a short project, I decided to paint him. This was my first time painting any kind of 3D-printed model, so this was a lot of fun!

Here he is before I started painting him.

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First, I had to spray him down with some primer so that the paint would look a little better on him. It took a few coats because I missed some spots (read: a lot of spots), so it took about three or four spray-downs to get him mostly covered.

These were a few of the acrylic paints that I used for him, and here he is next to the general set up. (Big thank you to my mom for letting me borrow her paints hehe)

This is the general costume color scheme that I tried to go for. I didn’t need a whole lot of colors for it – red, black, and white for the costume, yellow for the X badge and his eyes, and blue for his skin. I found this great iridescent blue for his skin – it was definitely a little finicky on the first coat, but once I got a few coats on, it looked really cool!

Day 1 of painting! I got all of the colors on except for the black on that day, and I listened to a whole bunch of Car Seat Headrest the whole time.

Day 2! I got all of the colors laid down, and I added more coats to the colors I had already added. It still looked a little messy, but it was on its way! (And it’s a bit hard to tell, but the gloves and boots are painted too – they were just iridescent white.)

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And here’s the final product! The last day of painting was just cleaning everything up (and painting the X on the badge). I was super happy with how it turned out – the paint on his skin and the black part of his costume looks so nice and shiny! He now sits on my bookshelf…right above my Nightcrawler funko pop. (Comfort characters, anyone?)

So there you have it! For my first time painting a 3D-printed model, I’m pretty proud of myself.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this little painting post! Have a wonderful rest of your day, take care of yourselves, and remember: mutant and proud!