Hm, I could try and sculpt new versions of the heads, scaled down, if you like. Most likely I'll be busy with work for some coming weeks, but maybe after that? I'd intended to go for learning Scribus and try some editing work on Word of Hashut then, but perhaps that could wait.
Do you want new, smaller head sculpts? With Fuggit Khan's emissary at my desk it should be much easier to keep the scale in line, especially since I've got some more experience since the headsculpting last spring. Either Bloodbeard may want to try again with new sculpts, or we could try and find some company like MaxMini that would be interested in such sculpts.
Admiral
I'm totally onboard with that.
I actually know some gamers who set up their own (online) gamestore could maybe convince them to sell heads, but that does leave casting as an issue.
@Malorn: I offered it to Doombeard, he no longer has the time.
@Admiral: You should make another set of heads and get a prof company to cast them. It’s a sound investment as the interest for them are huge. I’m going back to work soon and wont have time for casting heads.
@MadHatter: Tin casts are really hard to get right when doing them yourself and the mould needs to be made from another kind of rubber.
I have a suggestion, you can take the original greens, get them 3d scanned, resized and then 3dprinted. Then you have the correct size. Voila.
Thats the easy bit, deciding what to do with this master set is then the thing, do you want to 3d print a big batch or make a fresh mould and resin cast them.
I’d suggest a kickstarter, find a good 3d printing company and go from there. I work in CGI so I understand that whole kinda process and I think its doable in that the technology is much more accessible and cheap nowadays and you can find many places that would offer that service I think. I can do some digging if you’re interested. Would probably be much faster and easier than resculpting them.
I’m not enthusiastic about running a Kickstarter, not least because my calculations could turn out wildly wrong, but I’ll try and look closely into it in the coming days/weeks (whatever the schedule allows). Thanks for bringing up the idea!
They’re not forgotten, but there’s a greater demand for Phrygian soft hat heads, so they’ll have to be finished first. Prior to the news of head gigantism I was aiming at sculpting the Mongol style heads sometime in the coming months, since Bloodbeard was getting the casting process nailed down. If it’s possible to have some company 3D-scan and shrink the soft hat heads, it will save time that can go into sculpting Mongol Hobgobbo heads. I’ve got some plans for them for a long time now.
Thanks for your efforts up to now, Admiral and Bloodbeard. :cheers
Even if in the end it didn’t work out so far.
Personally, I would like to see Mongoblins more than Phrygian Hobgoblins, but I don’t think that Mongol heads are enough to get the style. Again I would say that a full Khan (plus maybe rider) sculpt may be a better solution than putting Fur-capped heads on tunic or loincloth wearing goblins or skaven.
Some (including FW) planned to do Mongoblins, but so far only 3-4 single sculpts by a forum member are offered on Troll Forged.
We’ll see both Mongol and Phrygian Hobgoblins in due time. I’m dead set to succeed with this venture despite amateur setbacks.
Doombeard kindly offered good advice on 3D-scanning and resizing. It would require a Kickstarter to fund, which I’m reluctant to do, to say the least, since that would bind me to actually deliver on the Kickstarter, and more or less on time, too. Also, faulty cost calculations or unexpected turns could end up making it cost more than the crowdfunding covered, if the crowdfunding would even succeed in the first place. Beeing free from Kickstarter responsibilities to backers will be more kind to my schedule. On the other hand, it would be a neat solution…
I’ve been busy as of lately with lots of stuff, but I think I should soon be able to invest sufficient time to dive into the 3D-printing avenue and see if there are companies that could fix the scale issue. If that fails, I’ll simply try and resculpt all the soft hat heads, and then do Mongol ones after that. But I’d have to finish a project for MadHatter before such sculpting could happen.
The firms linked to by Doombeard has been contacted for a 3D-scan, resize and print job on the Hobgoblin heads. My hopes are to get fine detail prints out of such services, with detail quality that will translate well into a metal or resin mould. I’ll keep you updated here, and will try and consult with you closely about the exact wanted measurements of the 12 heads.
Jan Kral over on Custom Made Miniatures have also been contacted, regarding the possibility of making moulds for 3D-shrunk head prints, for the purposes of metal casting (his moulds last a while longer than the average mould, according to Jan).
We’ll see about financial details. A Kickstarter might be necessary, but I hope to carry the whole venture with some of my own savings, and earn them back in the end.
Once again, don’t hold your breath, but do cross your fingers!
@Herby: Hope to have time to learn Scribus in the coming month, or next week already (can’t promise anything, but fingers crossed in any case). I’ve asked on the Scribus forums for the few essentials to master in order to cobble together a magazine of simple but sufficient layout, and have hopes to learn it properly this time around. I’m green and inexperienced when it comes to certain technical learning. Once I know the essentials of the program, it’s just a matter of work to get the issue out. The rough outline and contents of the magazine is planned out already to catch up with all happenings in the world of evil Dwarfs (we’ve got quite some interviews!), and all the very good articles which members like yourself were kind enough to submit.
That is very kind of you both! Even though my financial situation isn’t brilliant for the time being, I still hope it does not have to come down to it. Sure, this is more a community service drive than a real commercial one, but should it fail in the end despite expenses, I wouldn’t want to see anyone else sharing in the losses. Of course, you’ll be kept updated on all details so you’ll have ample info to base any potential funding decisions on.
Jan Kral says the heads should be castable in whitemetal without issues, except for price as usual (he also gave some handy tools, including acquiring a stereomicroscope for tricky details). Let’s await the 3D-scanning firms’ replies, gentlemen!
@torn: I’d prefer to avoid Kickstarters. Crowdfunding makes me responsible to actually deliver a product that works in terms of scale, price etc. I’m already set on succeeding with it, but binding me to responsibility with a project that is more of a volunteer community service goes against every fibre of my cautious nature. Especially since I probably won’t need Hobgoblin heads for my own army for several years to come.
Two of the contacted firms responded quickly, namely Rapido3d and Stephanie Wood Design. Seeing as how the other companies have not replied, it’s time to share the details.
I can scan the objects with perfect detail, the cost would be around £200:00 per single scan or £150:00 for 5 off or £100:00 for 10 off.
No matter what 3d printing technology you use there will always be an amount of finishing required, all 3d printers have build line that are visible to the naked eye under the right lighting, the more expensive the machine they are printed on the more accurate they are and the thinner the build layers usually are in general.
A mild sandblast or wet and dry in most cases is usually enough to clean up a good quality print. Cost to print would be any price from £30:00 to £250:00 depending on which machine a material you choose.
My advice would be to print them on a SLA machine, this prints layers of UV cured resin and the layer lines can be as thin as .025mm, cost for this method would be around £100:00 per single print, £75:00 for 5 off and £50:00 for 10 off.
I have attached a 3d print I did using a layer thickness of .05mm if you zoom in you can see the layer lines and quality of the print.
On a positive note we have a Projet HD3000plus, which has an XHD setting, that allows for a 3Dprint to be made, the good news is that all of the support is melted away, so you are left with very high resolution models. Scanning these models would need a jewellery rotary scanner, that can pick up the fine features, I have a friend at Birmingham university, that has such a scanner. I would be happy to investigate the likely results for you if you want.
I would have thought that the scanning would cost about £50.00 and the 3Dprinting would be about the same, but we would need the Scanned data file to quote accurately, carriage to the Uk is £15.00 , Holland may be about the same, but you will need to give me your address before I quote , I will also check whether you need to pay VAT or not.
So I think, If your budget extends to about £100.00 each, we can help, if you want to send me the first model to my address below, I will see what my friends in the university think, before I invoice you for anything.
Thanks and best regards Brian Withers Stephanie Wood Design Ltd
Stephanie Wood Design
Serviceminded and helpful answers, interesting and much appreciated. The 3D-printing-resizing-scanning costs aren’t as astronomical as they would have been just some years ago, but still well outside my wallet’s comfort zone. The costs are also well beyond the scope for any crowdfunding that is to be headed by me. Simply put, I don’t like handling other people’s money and will always expect unexpected extra costs to crawl up despite meticulous calculations.
The fairest solution is to just wait a while until I’ve cleared a couple of priority projects (like MadHatter’s commission, first in line), and then attempt smaller resculpts of the heads, to be cast by Custom Made Miniatures. It will be cheapest for everyone. It took roughly two weeks of sculpting to make the old heads, with one sculpting session in the morning, one in the evening when the morning sculpt had dried. Even with a busier schedule at the moment, smaller resculpts might end up taking a mere month or so.
However, when quality 3D-scanning-resizing-printing costs have eventually declined enough (as can be expected), it might very well be worth a shot at a 3D-resizing of the old big heads in the future, to see how well they will stand up to resizing and mouldmaking. By then, I hope a new kit of smaller sculpted heads will have been available for several years.
If anyone have any objections or ideas, please tell. :hat off
Interesting. As you say it’s not astronomical but it’s not exactly trivial either.
The thing I worry about would be that it might actually not be trivial to just resize them after scanning anyway. Scales are tricky, as we found, and I know sculptors exaggerate certain features for miniatures heads, hands and weapons I think to make them “look right”. So just resizing might actually not work. Also working of a real sculpt could bring out stuff not quite visible to the eye, giving similar problems that one has with 3D printing anyways, ie the lines thing. So maybe there’s a invisible fingerprint we suddenly get in 3d printing.
3d printing hundreds of heads I don’t think we are quite there yet either.
Obviously getting a real sculpt in a smaller “scale” I’d imagine would yield the better results. But I’m not the one doing it either so…
Considering the price (and the fact that it might not work first time), I think it’s best to make some new heads from the buttom up. And perhaps include your caster from the get go. The old greens had a few problems like the some ears being to far from the head, and the knife between teeth that often miscasted.
