Since finishing my Wolf School Swords, I’ve wanted to create more replicas from the world of the Witcher. The Wolf Medallion is an iconic part of Geralt’s gear, and a great choice for a quick project to test and improve some skills and processes. In the years that this project has been on my backlog, I had planned on using my standard fabrication process of MDF, styrene and Apoxie Sculpt, or sculpting it in modelling clay, but once I began working on it, it made sense to get it 3D printed. I started, as I often do, in Blender, challenging myself to create as high quality a digital replica of the Wolf medallion as possible, using in-game screenshots, renders from the various advertisements and high-definition movie clips, as well as photos of various pieces of merchandise as reference.

Once I was happy with the overall look of the 3D model, I printed a series of blueprints to figure out the scale, sizing off in-game reference and comparing to the hilts and pommels of my Wolf School swords. Normally, I would start fabrication at this point, but going the 3D printing route, I still had digital work to do in Blender. I took some time to figure out how I would mold and cast the piece at this stage. Realizing that the teeth could bind the cast into the mold, and that their delicate nature might lead to issues in molding and casting, I split them from the main medallion, so I could work on them separately once printed. I also made the medallion hollow, with a separate back cover, as I wanted to add some electronics. I modelled circular indents into the medallion and back cover for magnets to hold the two pieces together. With the 3D models split out, and cleaned up to avoid any issues, I had the medallion 3D printed.

The print came out pretty nicely form the Ultimaker 3, though the teeth were so small they lost most of their shape and detail. The most time-consuming part of the project was the process of priming, sanding and filling necessary to remove all the print lines and imperfections. Between the print quality and clean-up process, some of the finer detail was partially lost and had to be re-added with files and a sharp scalpel, such as the nostrils, lines along the snout and the forehead detail. The teeth were fairly rough off the print bed, and took plenty of filing and sanding to achieve their sharp, pointed look.

With everything given a final undercoat, I moved on to molding, making a 2-part block mold for each part, using Smooth-On’s Mold Max 40 as usual. I paid special attention to the vents when making the molds, placing them carefully at every point, particularly for the teeth, which were so small that the resin would not flow down into them without the assistance of venting. The finished molds were dusted with aluminium powder and cold cast using Smooth-Cast 300. The tongue presented an issue, since it trapped air bubbles, and it was in a place where I couldn’t cut a vent. After a few tests, I solved this by pouring some resin into the tongue with the mold open, then quickly sealing it and pouring the rest of the resin.

After casting enough parts for 2 medallions, with some spares, I cleaned up the mold lines and buffed the surfaces with fine steel wool before polishing them with Autosol Metal Polish. I decided to take a slightly different approach to weathering for each of the two medallions. For the first, I mixed black ochre powder with water and painted it into the recesses before wiping most of it off with a cloth. This did a good job of simulating real grime and dirt, and gave a more subtle finish than the second technique, though is less robust – handling the piece can rub off some of the finish. On the second medallion, I used watered-down black acrylic paint, again brushing it into the recesses and wiping it off. The paint leaves a more opaque finish than the gradual fade of the ochre, and the end result looks slightly more tarnished and aged.

In the high definition renders of the medallion, the eyes are red, faceted gemstones, glowing with magical light. Ever the perfectionist, I spent a lot of time searching online before finally sourcing 8x5mm pear-shaped garnets from a jewellers’ supplier. When designing the 3D model, I had left some wiggle room to fit the gems, so when finishing the 3D print for molding, I refined the eye socket shape to fit the garnets.

My original plan was to use the LEDs from flickering LED tea lights to give the piece a magical aura, but the yellow washed out the colour of the garnets, so I switched to standard red LEDs. I had to get a bit creative when fitting the electronics, as there was so little internal space to the piece. I got the smallest toggle switches I could find, and used a coin cell battery to power the single red LED in each medallion. The battery is held in place with neodymium magnets, two of which are used to complete the circuit. The rear cover is attached with two further magnets, and has a small slot cut into the top of it to make it easier to remove. Since I could find no reference for the back surface of the medallion, I took the liberty of modelling a raised “Quen” protection rune from the game.

As with the gems, the chain took some time to source, since most jewellery chain is too fine to match the in-game piece. I eventually found a jewellers site that did heavy, 4mm x 6mm cable chain which was almost a perfect match for my reference. Unsure if the colour was correct, I ordered both silver plated and gunmetal chain, hoping I could figure out some colour-matching techniques. In the end this proved to be a non-issue: buffing and polishing the silver chain using the same method as the medallion darkened it enough to match the cold cast resin; however once the medallion had been weathered, the gunmetal chain was a perfect colour match. All I had to do was size it and attach the clasp.

Thanks for reading,

Terry