Thank you TitanCraft Custom Monsters for providing us with a miniature in order to be able to evaluate it in preview! In case you are interested in buying, we advise you to visit the official website.
Miniatures always lend a special value in game sessions. They are certainly not essential, but being able to see and hold your characters in your hands always evokes beautiful emotions. From here a question arises: why should only the protagonists of the story be represented? Obviously, it is not always possible to find the right miniature for every single antagonist or non-playing character (any more than it is for PCs), but why not extend this privilege to the most important of them?
Hence, my interest in TitanCraft.
Through a successful Kickstarter campaign, these guys have created a website that allows you to design unique monsters, then see them printed and shipped directly to you.
Customization
This is probably the most important aspect of this product. If you decide to invest in a custom miniature for a monster, perhaps for a memorable boss battle, you want to create something really cool and special. And, as I will explain shortly in this preview, TitanCraft allows you to do it very well!
Their editor provides a lot of satisfaction. You can start from a pre-set model and from there you can free your imagination. The basic model is chosen from macro categories that make it easier to achieve what you want to create, such as a dragon, devil, plant, giant, or aberration. From there, you can make all the changes you want. All! Swap limbs, add more, place extra eyes, tails, horns, or whathaveyou, and in the desired pose, with the preferred angle and rotation. The potential is enormous and the only limit is your imagination. The number of parts available is already very respectable and developers continue to add more regularly.
Preview of the Technical Side of TitanCraft
Each model has a very high number of “key” points. Each of them allows the grafting of an element and each element can be translated, enlarged, reduced and rotated in every possible axis. The grafted elements themselves, tails, limbs, etc., also have various points by which they can be manipulated, millimeter by millimeter, to create exactly the pose you want.
One detail I especially appreciated is being able to place features so they overlap one another. I created a skull with tentacles emerging from it; this was possible because the program allowed me to attach the tentacles in places the skull already occupied. It is very useful.
Customizing the TitanCraft miniatures becomes even more flexible this way, as seen in the photos of the tentacled skull I made for this preview. Being able to make the tentacles cross the central body allowed me to give the idea of a sprawling parasite inhabiting a skull, like some sort of macabre snail.
Final Considerations of this TitanCraft Preview
Please note that the site is still under development and guarantees access only to supporters of the Kickstarter campaign. Some customization elements are still lacking, but the solutions will come soon. With the launch of the final version, all the tools will be available to create the right monster for every situation.
Also, I did not cover the materials and the physical production of the TitanCraft miniatures because the example I received, on which this preview article is based, is still only a test. The final tools and materials will be addressed in the future, once the site opens to the general public.