3D Tabletop Designer Spotlight – dutchmogul

3D Tabletop Designer Spotlight – dutchmogul

This week’s pinshape Designer Spotlight shines on Arian Croft, aka dutchmogul. This 3d tabletop designer is into game design and has created many unique games and miniatures, each of which are part of elaborate and creative fictional worlds he’s developed. Lucky for us, we got a chance to talk to him and want to share his story with you.

 

Your artwork is based on creating tabletop games and unusual creatures. Where did you get your inspiration to create your art pieces?

I have always been into game designs, creative writing, multi-games, board games…3d printing is a means to communicating those ideas among different media platforms.

 

Did you come up with design ideas by yourself?

Yes, they are my own. We have this big science fiction fantasy universe my friends and I have been creating over the last 10 years. We pull from that methodology and expand it to multi-games and board games, you know, and make it live fiction.

Pocket-Tactics Guardians of Ark

 

 

Congrats on your campaign for your Wayfarer project on Kickstarter! Is this tabletop game targeted mainly to adults, to children, or to both?

I think adults.. people who are into tabletop role playing games and are experienced with it. I mean kids can play it too if they can grasp it. It’s not exclusive or anything.

 

Is there a specific tabletop game you would recommend for kids?

I think Words of Wisdom is the most kid-friendly game…its like a mix between Scrabble and Candyland. But a lot of kids who come up to trade shows seem to be interested in Cyvasse,which is the chess game.

 

How many players do your games allow at once?

Well for games like Pocket Tactics, you can play as many as you want. You just need to have a bigger table basically, but the pieces are very small so you can accommodate a lot of different players. We have done games with 8 players at once.

Pocket-Tactics Men of Midgard

 

Wow, that’s a lot! Here’s a good question for you, what creation are you most proud of and why?

I made some children toys for my niece and nephew. Pieces to the ‘Viking Explorer Toy Set’ and I’m most proud of that because kids can actually play with it.

 

How did you get into the realm of 3d printing?

I only worked with miniatures for tabletop games, and that’s what I worked on as a teenager. And I have always wanted to make my own. So when I found out about 3D printing, I went looking around in hopes to find an artist who will be able to make 3D models that I can 3D print.  TinkerCAD was the first design program I played with; I decided to try it out on a whim, and immediately opened possibilities for 3D printing.

 

Have your tabletop games been successful and what types of people download them the most?

We have a huge amount of 3D printing success like Pocket Tactics, downloaded many many thousand of times.. don’t know the exact number on the top of my head… Yeah there are works for people all over the world who have been translating it into different languages.

 

It’s great to see that your designs are free to download. Is there a reason for that?

Yeah, yeah. All the designs I have is for free right now. I kinda look at it as building my portfolio. I have always wanted something to give back to the kind of open source community…I really like that aspect about 3D printing.

Branar Lasher

 

What are you working on next?

Currently working on the codex for Wayfarer. Mostly focusing on Wayfarer. I’m working on characters from that game and scale model of theoretical marg space.

 

Seems like you have awesome projects coming up. Can’t wait to see more of your cool designs and games, Arian! Thanks for the interview!

 

 

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