10-20mm Hoplites - more test prints

I'm almost coming to the end of the scale testing stage, having landed on a style that looks good printed at 20mm, 15mm and 10mm.

I can't decide which scale I want to do... so making something that's multi use seems like the best idea.

20mm, perfect for Dragon Rampant perhaps. I have a soft spot for this size and think doing some classic fantasy armies like this will scratch an itch for Warhammer Fantasy Battle style gaming (miniature count wise especially - a block of 20 spearmen is more palatable at this size than at 30mm or whatever the warhammer size is now).

Every single mini there is slightly different... but you'd barely notice. Hopefully its subconscious. 

15mm. This is probably my go to for muti-based style gaming.

10mm, Warmaster. Doing 5 minis on a strip with interlinked/touching between the figures is of course the usual approach for 10mm. That's on the back burner, but printing individually isn't too much of a pain, and it really cuts down on production failures (a single broken spear tip on a strip of 5 ruins the entire print/cast). Straight from the horses mouth I recall hearing this from Rick Priestly... the designer of Warmaster mentioning this... in hindsight regretting they did 5 minis on a strip.)

The above shot shows the style evolution, the mini on the left was the fist with more of a realistic Hoplite. At smaller scales though they are slightly flimsy and lose their visual punch. The final version on the right is slightly more cartoonish than I generally prefer (as a sculptor I like the first one best) but the practicalities of production, painting and using them as gaming pieces trumps the 'artsy' sensibility.

Now that I've locked into the basic infantry I can't start on some more fantastical elements.

Little Hoplites (15-20mm)

This is proving to be quite a chore, digital sculpting is a breeze... but getting the sculpt just right for translating into a physical print is certainly a trick!

Heres' a load of test shots. The three on the green base are the latest versions, although those legs were slightly too thin... so they're being bulked out. 15mm toe to eye, so about 18mm to the top of the head.

I can't decide what scale I want to do this in, 10, 15 and 20mm are all of interest so I need to land on a style that will fit all of them.

(These are basic iphone pics)

First 3D sculpts and prints

 There's definitely a learning curve to this...

It involves sculpting something, printing it, going back to the sculpt and making tweaks, printing it... then going back to make more tweaks before printing again. And so on again...

These are very quick and messy sculpts just for practice. As we all know- it's not as simple as scaling a sculpt up or down, the entire style of the thing needs change - take the spears here as a prime example.

I'm a convert to digital now so 2022 should be extremely productive.

Black Praetorians - WIP sculpts

I sculpted a few of these a couple of years ago now I'm finally getting round to finishing a full squad!

The idea and design for these goes all the way back to 2008! At that time I was just getting into sculpting, and Troll Forged miniatures were casting and selling some of my stuff (I think some of my sculpts are still on sale there to this day).

This will be the second time I've sculpted the mini's! The first lot were more pulp sci-fi. I think they're probably stored away in a box somewhere at Troll Forged, never having made it to production. In fairness they were quite rubbish as sculpts go!

I've even got a full on mythology drafted for them, sci-fi based. This incarnation of the Black Praetorians are however clockpunk styled! So I'll need to edit the text and bring into line with the tech and setting.

In my last post I mentioned I really loved the Victrix ancient plastics. I also like their Napoleonic stuff...so it should be no surprise these are scaled to match that range!

More to follow on these in the near future.

Oh and while were talking Napoleonics, here's a little test I'm doing for some 10mm stuff!

### EDIT - oh shit look I found some really old stuff in my photobucket! Black Praetorians and Redcoats! This takes me back... my "House Crowmantia" stuff with Anvil Industry is also from this mythology. Very gothic horror, originally Sci-Fi, now transplanted to the 19th century!

All that should give you a rough idea of what I want to do with this range! 

Another test mold... 28mm, 15mm & 10mm

Here's a shot of another mold I'm commissioning from another new potential caster!

If they work out I'll be able to use them as masters and dollies for lots of variants and tweaked poses.

There's a few bits and pieces in there, specifically to test the quality of the mold and casts!

A quick run down for anyone interested...

• x5 10mm scale sci-fi troopers
• x4 15mm scale Fantasy Spearmen (different races)
• x4 28mm scale clockpunk rifles (details and clockpunk elements will be added later)
• x1 28mm scale Fallen Dwarf Spearman
• x1 28mm scale Orc Hoplite, with 3 different heads.

This will be shipped off in the next few days, then I'm preparing another lot of minis for another test mold at another caster...

Then once that's done I can get back to finishing lots of sculpts, preparing new ones and looking forward to working with a new (potentially more than one) casting outfit! Cool.

Update dump: 28mm, 10mm, 6mm...

Time for a little blast of what's been sculpting...

… and scratch building.

Well, I nailed down a gun design for the phase 2 Peacekeepers. Proper “blaster”. I can now start posing the rest of the sculpts around this design and aim (no pun intended) to get a mold filled with a good mix of Peacekeepers: leader, heavy, grunt, etc.

I had a terrible flash of inspiration and rattled out a few 10mm scaled miniatures. Very stylised, comic book feel I want to get with them. This may or may not come to fruition, by that I mean having them molded up and making them available to folks. They are about half way done, rifles are simple stand in at the moment (0.5mm plasticard). I've also done a little power lifter suit, minus an operator, and various other bits and bobs. More on all this later, but I really like the thought of robots and mechs dominating a 10mm game.

Here's some more exploration in 6mm, I really can't lock into one scale or style but I suppose I'm still finding my feet and experimenting... I mean, I'm only 30, I can still fantasise about having time to model/paint/game in multiple scales right? Hopefully by 40 I'll have merged it all down into one scale... but which one??

Note the same Desert Insurgent miniatures done a few different ways. The version at the front is actually just under 6mm and the scale and style I'm going to run with. All the others as you can see, are a little taller or wider. For me 6mm is all about massive mechs, tanks and aircraft, with the miniatures being in there to show just how huge everything else is. For that reason I'd like to get the basic human looking just right.

They say 6mm is gods own scale: 1mm represents 1 foot in real life. If that be the case, the first Desert Insurgent is about 5'10.

Some personal conversions in there, basic rogues for Rebellion Protocol, with the guy on the right being my first 28mm scale done in Super Sculpey Firm... well, the legs and torso at least. Still not got the hang of it yet...

Practice/development at muscles here, super shredded or a bit more bulk (Like Rambo1 vs Rambo2 maybe...). That guy on the left will be a fantasy Egyptian... the right is a red skinned desert Orc thing (Khozards, maybe.. enemies of the Fallen Dwarves).

Some more shots and work on Grim Regions, a Napoleonic style clockpunk horror project. Probably shooting to have things ready for October this year.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!