Interview with Chris Hunt of Dragon Workshop

Today I’m interviewing Chris Hunt, the founder and designer, of Shipworks, a 3D printable ship system. You can pick it up now on BackerKit. Chris was gracious enough to sit down for an interview with me.

You’ve got quite a big Kickstarter here. How long have you been 3D modeling and printing?

I’ve been 3D modeling for almost 20 years, and in the last two years I’ve started to take it more seriously. I’ve been 3D printing for about 15 years; I started when the hobby was still fairly new. At the time I had disposable income to burn on it. I started selling when some friends really liked some of my designs and encouraged me to open an Etsy. The Etsy was making OK sales and then I parted ways with my prior company, and some friends saw the ships that I was working on. The ship system at the time was a lot more crude than it is now. They were like, “Hey man, I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there that would love that,” so we launched a Kickstarter, and I realized they were right.

There’s a huge variety of 3D printed systems for locking your models together. What’s the connection type for your ships?

They’re currently OpenLock, but I do plan on converting them at the end to DragonLock. I know there’s a lot of people who just don’t like the OpenLock connector. People that purchase before the fulfillment, have the added bonus of getting both systems. Honestly, there won’t be much of a change though. Realistically, it’s going to be swapping out ports.

I wanted something that I could customize, and I wanted something that was playable. I wanted the stairways to work, the rigging to work, and the ladders to work. I understand why some people shy away from that. It did take some trial and error to figure out ways to make it work, but I think it was worth it.

I like that your ships don’t seem chunky like some other modular 3D ships I’ve seen out there.

A lot of it is playing with perspective. some pieces are thicker than people realize. I play with some perspective the way I do the walls, while still keeping it playable thoughout the ship. Someone was surprised at how thick the side walls are. It’s that way for a reason. It looks pretty on the tabletop, which is what matters. One of my earliest tests was at a game shop letting the owner’s 6-year-old put it together and tear it apart. He was like, “Daddy, it’s ship Legos”, which is what I was going for. It does convey really well on the table a sizeable ship.

I’ve got a small print bed for my printer, though I’m looking at getting an Ender, which has a smaller bed. Your prints allow for small and large printers?

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to make sure that anyone could print it. There are a couple of pieces annotated that are for larger printers. There’s always an alternate piece for the larger pieces. A couple of them do toe the line though.

I’m guessing you didn’t have that many stretch goals from the beginning, that you didn’t think it would be as successful as it was, since your later stretch goals are mostly concept art. 

Yeah, the success kind of took off. There were a lot of requests for additional ships. I did some initial playing around for about 4-5 hours, and realized, yeah, I could make different profiled ships using the same principles as the core, so I put them on as stretch goals. I initially thought ten to fifteen thousand dollars, and it more than doubled that. I don’t think anyone’s been upset with me so far because there’s been a few delays. I’ve had nothing but support from my backers. It think it’s because I’ve taken requests seriously and supported them. If you ask for something that makes  sense, I’m usually going to say, “yeah, let me say if we can fit that in. And if I can’t fit that in, I can at least say, “maybe we can look at that once the project is done.

 

It looks like you can pull the ships apart and rearrange them in different ways, but it’s also just as viable to put the ships together and glue each deck to make a permanent ship. And in the end it doesn’t even look like it’s modular.

 

No, it doesn’t. I’ll take pride in that. I worked really hard on hiding the seamliness. I incorporated traditional ship design, like the ribbing going along the side. It really goes a long way to hiding the modularity of the system.

Almost everything is out now, except a couple of figureheads that have just proven a little more difficult to make support free, which seems to really matter to people. If they wanted them tomorrow, I could say fine, you can print, but you’ll need to use some supports. But that doesn’t seen like that’s something anyone wants. The little bit of supports that are in the system are integrated into the designs. The hardest part with supports that are built in are the Kestrel’s nose, which is one of the airships. It is a little bit of a bear. There’s no other way I could have done it. It actually cleans really nicely, because I tried to drop supports in places that aren’t super obvious.

Do you have any plans for the next kickstarter, or are you just trying to get things out the door?

There are plans for the next Kickstarter, once all of these are fulfilled. We are going to do a couple of fantasy ships, we’ll do a submersible because that’s been a big request, and it’ll definitely have steampunk-y vibe. We’re going to do something our style that ties into the name of the company. That’s intentionally not vague, but I also don’t want to reveal too much before I can show it off.

What are some of the most impressive builds you’ve seen?

We’ve had a couple of backers who have built tall ships. A lot of those people have painted them, with fairly robust interiors. The beauty of Shipworks is that you can build the ship your party wants. They are big projects to get into. A reel or a reel and a half per ship easily, a lot of individual parts. There’s not a ton of cleanup, which is nice. If you print in brown, a little staining goes a long way. I personally use PLA+. All the enhanced PLAs seem to work great. I like that they have a little bit of extra flow that standard PLA doesn’t.

 

If somebody came and wanted to print this all up, and didn’t have a printer, what would you recommend they go with? An Ender, something more expensive?

 

My personal recommendation would be to go with an Ender. An Ender 3 or Ender 5 are both great machines. They’re both a big bang for your buck and the community support is pretty awesome. I’ve had a few people ask if I’m getting paid by Creality, and no, I just really like their products. I don’t recommend Anet products. They seem in the last year to have caught fire in a few places. Any printer has a risk factor at the end of the day. These are machines being built overseas with questionable at times business practices. Some of the parts on occasion are found to be fakes. Anet did do a pretty big thing on trying to replace units that had imitation power supplies, but in the end of the day they’re not going to catch everything. Nobody’s perfect. I have a 3000 dollar printer that hasn’t printed reliably since I bought it.

One thing I tell friends who are looking at getting into 3D printing is, “you’re going to buy this printer, and spend about two to three weeks trying to get your settings dialed in. Just at the point you’re ready to give up and decide to have your friends just print stuff for you, that’s when everything will click together and you’ll start getting it to work. 

Everyone hits that point. Even people who are experienced with 3D printers will get that from time to time. I run my printer pretty hard. Just because I’m always trying out new pieces. If you look through the history, I’ve modified masts about a dozen times since I released them. I’ll do a modification and then upload. I don’t see that changing as time goes on with the system. I want all of this to grow. The big thing with the website, is when it relaunches, there will be a portal for people to submit 3D models where people can buy them. I want the system to grow more than I can do on my own. I know there’s a lot of stuff that I have planned in the future, or things that just won’t fit into this round of things. I want people to have a place to share and get full recognition.

Thank you very much to Chris for his time. You can check out and back the ships at Backerkit, or join the Facebook group here for more information and pictures.