Squirrel Squabble is a print and play game on board game geek that I’ve been wanting trying to try out. Unfortunately with any print and play game I have this compelling desire to improve it, either the process of making or the game itself. In this case I limited my meddling to a 3D printed version of the game.
I like doing this sort of design work. It starts with a progression of sketches. It only took a few sketches to find designs I liked, thought I decided that I got the the heads backwards. On the final version one would be soft and round curves, the other would have more pointy aspects in body and tail and hair.
There was a point where I considered redesigning the game with a robot theme, but squirrels are just too cute. Also at once point I considered using existing squirrel models but since I had to go through the trouble of modeling the tiles I figured I might as well go all in. Besides they’ll look good in my portfolio. I might have gone overboard with the bulldog tile. I modeled a whole bulldog, then flattened it, then remeshed it to fix the problems with flattening. It was educational, but a lot of work for a little tile.
Before I had a 3D printer at this point I’d be done. I’d upload to thingiverse and hope that someone took an interest. Now that I know about MakeXYZ I suppose I would be able to find a local printer and try it out. But now that I have a 3D printer I feel I need to have a successful print before I share it with others, which isn’t unreasonable but it means I’m not going to share these files… just yet. Especially when I have to wait for new nozzles before I can do any printing. But I don’t want anyone to tackle printing these files until I’ve had a chance to work out the kinks.
Plus there’s a chance I’m going to model a carrying case for the game in the shape of a giant acorn.
