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.

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.

17mm...

One minute I'm trying to paint up some of the great Copplestone 15mm* barbarians, next minute I've started sculpting a load of minis in the same scale!

I'm torn between casting some stuff up like this, could do a skirmish/dungeon crawl set... or could do full blown armies in ranks maybe.

Left to right: Uruk-Hai Spartan, Arabian good guy spearman, Far Eastern legion bad guy, skeleton.

(spot the Fallen Dwarf. His heads loose in case I want to use this as a little dolly"

Few others in progress as well but not photographed.

I'll take a break from sculpting for a few days and have a think about what to do with them...

*actually 17mm.