Print & Paint Thrall

Wicked recently released Thrall and Arthas in their April Patreon term, and as soon as I saw the previews I knew Thrall was the one I wanted to tackle first. The sculpt has so much presence — the armour plates, the layered textures, the expression — it just feels like a model that deserves to be printed and painted properly.

Since I wanted to do the piece justice, I decided to step up my resin game. I picked up some Phrozen Aqua Grey 8K, which has a great reputation for sharp detail and low shrinkage. I spent most of Saturday dialing it in using the excellent Cones of Calibration V3 from Tableflip Foundry. After a few iterations, the exposure settings landed right where they needed to be, and the test pieces came out crisp and clean.

With the resin tuned, I moved on to the real project. Thrall’s bust is broken into 15 individual parts, and I’ve already printed the first few sections. The detail Wicked packed into this sculpt really shows — even unpainted, the pieces look fantastic.

I decided to start with the bust rather than jumping straight into the full statue. The full version is absolutely stunning, but the painting workload is intense, and I want to make sure I’ve got the colour choices and techniques locked in before committing to the larger build. The bust feels like the perfect warm‑up: big enough to showcase the detail, but manageable enough to experiment and refine the approach.