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 Pacific wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

 jah-joshua wrote:
unfortunately, as long as Finecast sells there is no reason for GW to change...

There is actually. Finecast has always been a stop gap to a full plastic range. That's why we're now seeing things like generic characters as single pose plastics. Granted, Fantasy is getting the lions share of these, but they're making their way to 40k every release.

The downside to this of course is that plastic, for all of its improvement over the years, is still not able to reach the heights of detail presented by resin or metal. I know you collect Infinity Loki and so know about the level of detail on those miniatures, I would say probably at least 50% (possibly bits on every model) wouldn't be possible in plastic. A lot of GW's character models are the same.

Different games, different products.

Infinity is small scale where every model is basically a character peice. It works for them having every model be multipart metal (which is a fething nightmare to work with - I do it for Infinity because Infinity). Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 are mass battle games.

For GW games, I'll gladly take a lower detailed plastic over a higher detailed multipart metal or resin simply due to ease of construction. I'd gladly take a less detailed box of three Zoanthropes over even my Finecast Zoanthropes, because working with resin is only slightly less annoying than working with metal, and when I've got so many models on the table, I don't see the need to such levels of detail on models people aren't going to really scrutinize.

Conversely, I wouldn't want to see Corvus Belli go plastic with infinity. Each model is spectacular, which works for Infinity because it's a game where you'll have, at most, 20 models on the table. You have far less models, thus the time to spend on each one preparing the model, pinning (if you pin them), and spending time painting the much higher level of detail.

Games Workshop games benefit from plastic due to the nature of their games (mass battle, lots of models), and Corvus Belli benefits from metal due to the nature of Infinity (skirmish, not many models).

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
They dont just charge for an extra hour of labor because it isnt that simple...

One model they might end up having only flashing to clean up, another might need a face resculpted. They may need to spend an hour or three driving to the local game store to swap out figures and try to find one that isnt damaged. They might end up sitting on hold with GW for an hour while arranging a replacement figure.

If they are even reasonably busy, you have several months worth of projects in backlog, and waiting a week or two for a new figure to arrive and hoping it is useable (and if not...another week or two). If you have given timelines to customers...that is a good way to blow your entire work schedule.

Nothing in there says PR stunt. Just because they use the same photo, only indicates they used the same photo. It would be like not believing that my dog goes poo in the yard. We all know dogs go poo, I no longer require photographic evidence to support the claim. Quite often Finecast are poo...evidence only being needed if it is an amazingly large pile of poo.

That... was a big dog....



The Auld Grump

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
They dont just charge for an extra hour of labor because it isnt that simple...

One model they might end up having only flashing to clean up, another might need a face resculpted. They may need to spend an hour or three driving to the local game store to swap out figures and try to find one that isnt damaged. They might end up sitting on hold with GW for an hour while arranging a replacement figure.

If they are even reasonably busy, you have several months worth of projects in backlog, and waiting a week or two for a new figure to arrive and hoping it is useable (and if not...another week or two). If you have given timelines to customers...that is a good way to blow your entire work schedule.

Nothing in there says PR stunt. Just because they use the same photo, only indicates they used the same photo. It would be like not believing that my dog goes poo in the yard. We all know dogs go poo, I no longer require photographic evidence to support the claim. Quite often Finecast are poo...evidence only being needed if it is an amazingly large pile of poo.

Yes, and that is part of the upfront charge for each model. You update customers that there are delays and are waiting for new figs. All part of time management. Then while you wait, you work on other projects. It is a little thing called multitasking. I'm pretty sure you have heard of it.

Companies in demand can charge the price they want. You want me to do a finecast model? That will be an extra $100-500 for potential hassle.

That they can't demand the extra hassle cost means they don't have enough demand and are trying to drum up business. Everyone has a price, people didn't want to meet theirs. For supposedly having to do deal with multiple bad models, there is a total lack of evidence. There are plenty of WIP shots by these artists and I'm pretty certain they have sent complaint pictures to customers showing potential delays due to defects. As they have clearly complained about the impact on schedule, there should be pictures to back it. All three sculptors doing the same thing around the same time smacks of coordination. It's nothing more that several actors suddenly saying they are skipping an award show. If Tom Cruise isn't going, then I better not go either or I will look bad. It has generated page hits and potentially drummed up business. Mission Accomplished.

It's really not that simple. It isn't just bubbles and the like, which have to be smoothed beyond the comprehension of 98% of the hobby populace in order to accomodate the blending and brushwork of the masters... it sounds nit-picky and 'come on!' but whether you believe it or not, it is true, it's that nit-picky a thing.

That can be dealt with, but as has been said may cost 8-10 hours of additional time to fix in some cases.

But there are irrecoverable finecast issues too, missing detail potentially one of them, but the big one is misaligned molds... I have had this on several models, including 3 necrons and the 25th anniversary marine. It is irrecoverable. You can't file of GS your way out of that, it is as fundamental a flaw as you can get.

If a commission painter receives a POS like this, they will need to return and wait for a replacement, which takes quite a bit of time, and is just another gamble when you get down to it, and you may have to repeat the entire process several times.

This is unnaceptable guys. When you run a business, you live and die by your ability to keep a schedule, maintain productivity and keep your costs predictable. It's not optional, it's not a joke, it's not an oh whatever, it's business. Finecast is russian roulette to those items, and there is no way to pretend even a 20% possibility of failiure is ok. Would you gamble 20% of your income on something completely unpredictable and out of your control? Didn't think so. In fact, enough FC problems could start giving a commission artist a bad rep through no fault of their own, it's a stretch, but it could potentially damage their careers in the field.

No, definitely not worth it if you have a shred of business acumen, it's just arithmetic, really that simple.

silent25 wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
They dont just charge for an extra hour of labor because it isnt that simple...

One model they might end up having only flashing to clean up, another might need a face resculpted. They may need to spend an hour or three driving to the local game store to swap out figures and try to find one that isnt damaged. They might end up sitting on hold with GW for an hour while arranging a replacement figure.

If they are even reasonably busy, you have several months worth of projects in backlog, and waiting a week or two for a new figure to arrive and hoping it is useable (and if not...another week or two). If you have given timelines to customers...that is a good way to blow your entire work schedule.

Nothing in there says PR stunt. Just because they use the same photo, only indicates they used the same photo. It would be like not believing that my dog goes poo in the yard. We all know dogs go poo, I no longer require photographic evidence to support the claim. Quite often Finecast are poo...evidence only being needed if it is an amazingly large pile of poo.

Yes, and that is part of the upfront charge for each model. You update customers that there are delays and are waiting for new figs. All part of time management. Then while you wait, you work on other projects. It is a little thing called multitasking. I'm pretty sure you have heard of it.

Companies in demand can charge the price they want. You want me to do a finecast model? That will be an extra $100-500 for potential hassle.

That they can't demand the extra hassle cost means they don't have enough demand and are trying to drum up business. Everyone has a price, people didn't want to meet theirs. For supposedly having to do deal with multiple bad models, there is a total lack of evidence. There are plenty of WIP shots by these artists and I'm pretty certain they have sent complaint pictures to customers showing potential delays due to defects. As they have clearly complained about the impact on schedule, there should be pictures to back it. All three sculptors doing the same thing around the same time smacks of coordination. It's nothing more that several actors suddenly saying they are skipping an award show. If Tom Cruise isn't going, then I better not go either or I will look bad. It has generated page hits and potentially drummed up business. Mission Accomplished.

You can't blame a professional painters or studios for not wanting to deal with it. Just because they can whack on an extra $100 to account for up to 5 hours wasted doesn't mean they want to do that. They may want to maintain a certain quality of product for a certain price so don't want to be charging more than that, they may not want to risk finecast because even the best painters work for a very low hourly rate and can't can't afford lost hours, they may not want to interrupt their workflow dealing with it, they may rather spend those hours actually painting another model instead of dealing with flaws, they may be trying to maintain a certain public image of a company that sells X quality work for Y price.

Just because someone COULD work something in to their business doesn't mean they SHOULD or even want to do it. I took my car to a mechanic that I trust for a service and inspection a couple of weeks ago, a wheel well panel is cracked and they told me they don't do that sort of work and I'd have to take it elsewhere. They COULD do the work, it's not that they don't lack the expertise (I know more than one of the mechanics do bodywork on classic cars in their spare time, so it's not out of their depth), if they don't have the parts they COULD order them and charge me extra for them and hell I would have been happy if they did to save me the hassle. But they DIDN'T because that's not what they do. Most car repair places that specialise in one thing or another are fully capable of doing more and often the workers do actually do more in their spare time, that doesn't mean they want to get in to the business of it.

Based off from past experience it isn't even as simple as whacking on an extra $100 to account for it.

When you do something like that, you then have to deal with fielding all the questions from people who will offer to do the clean up for you, to find perfect finecast models and ship them to you, to somehow bargain away that extra PITA fee you are applying. If you don't - then they get off into their various corners of the internet and they complain that you are unreasonable in your rates and that you refuse to work with a customer who was more then willing to help.

The better business decision is quite often to just say no. What little extra work you might get is much better made up with actually having more time to work on more customers projects and not having to deal with the issues related to Fine Cast or customers complaining about how you choose to deal with Fine Cast.

for me, it isn't about the clean-up, and resculpting, as it is about the softness and memory of the material...
i simply do not want a client to be stuck with a mini that sags, especially when they are paying hundreds of dollars for my work...
at least i know that if i have to heat and bend a Forgeworld mini it will not just go back to the original state...
i have seen this with a lot of people's Finecast, which means i can't trust that i'll be able to deliver a perfect mini...

to be fair, i have had bad experiences with every company and material at one time or another...
buy enough minis, and you will see every possible hiccup at some point...
some are fixable, some are frustrating, and some end up at the bottom of a drawer...

oh, and MajorTom11, i think you mean Bohun, not bogun...
he is definitely one of my favorite painters in the world...
i didn't know he was banning Finecast, too, as the OP just mentioned Atacam and Arsies, unless he's painting for FantasyGames and i just missed that...
those guys are great, but Bohun is in his own world the last couple years...
his NMM and battle damage are insanely good...

cheers
jah

 MajorTom11 wrote:


BTW, if you think a hive tyrant was tough, you should try this bugger sometime... what an absolute nightmare, and I was way too young to understand pinning or have the right tools, I can't tell you how many times that ankle broke, the wings fell off or the thing tipped over by itself...

Omg! I've actually got one of those in my to-do pile of classic warhammer stuff. Missing one of the feet though.

 spaceelf wrote:
I have never had a problem with finecast. I also have not bought any because of the problems that I have seen. Just recently someone I know purchased a finecast hydra that was horribly miscast.

This being said, I do not quite understand why professional painters would turn down finecast. If someone paid me for something I would do it. Maybe they are not charging by the hour, or charging for prep. That, or the painters do not like to fix models. I think that it would be the customers prerogative to supply the painter with a model that they are satisfied with.

Another issue is with delivery; finecast is very fragile and even if you get a good cast, the risk of it being damaged by the time it arrives is pretty high (as some parts of the sculpts are impossibly delicate). So it may also be that the painters return-rate is too high for it to be worthwhile. Then there's the issue of sagging; if it's sagged then the buyer won't be happy either.

So it could be that some painters just feel bad about charging customers enough money to make finecast worthwhile, or charging customers lots of money for a figure that's so badly cast and likely to collapse on them.

silent25 wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
They dont just charge for an extra hour of labor because it isnt that simple...

One model they might end up having only flashing to clean up, another might need a face resculpted. They may need to spend an hour or three driving to the local game store to swap out figures and try to find one that isnt damaged. They might end up sitting on hold with GW for an hour while arranging a replacement figure.

If they are even reasonably busy, you have several months worth of projects in backlog, and waiting a week or two for a new figure to arrive and hoping it is useable (and if not...another week or two). If you have given timelines to customers...that is a good way to blow your entire work schedule.

Nothing in there says PR stunt. Just because they use the same photo, only indicates they used the same photo. It would be like not believing that my dog goes poo in the yard. We all know dogs go poo, I no longer require photographic evidence to support the claim. Quite often Finecast are poo...evidence only being needed if it is an amazingly large pile of poo.

Yes, and that is part of the upfront charge for each model. You update customers that there are delays and are waiting for new figs. All part of time management. Then while you wait, you work on other projects. It is a little thing called multitasking. I'm pretty sure you have heard of it.

Companies in demand can charge the price they want. You want me to do a finecast model? That will be an extra $100-500 for potential hassle.

That they can't demand the extra hassle cost means they don't have enough demand and are trying to drum up business. Everyone has a price, people didn't want to meet theirs. For supposedly having to do deal with multiple bad models, there is a total lack of evidence. There are plenty of WIP shots by these artists and I'm pretty certain they have sent complaint pictures to customers showing potential delays due to defects. As they have clearly complained about the impact on schedule, there should be pictures to back it. All three sculptors doing the same thing around the same time smacks of coordination. It's nothing more that several actors suddenly saying they are skipping an award show. If Tom Cruise isn't going, then I better not go either or I will look bad. It has generated page hits and potentially drummed up business. Mission Accomplished.

They cant demand the extra hassle cost because 90% of people buying painted minis are cheap. they rarely if ever would want to offer up more money, they only want to offer up less.

Even the rich people still like hunting for deals and haggling when it comes to minis.

This is probably because commission painters have a nasty habit of selling themselves short.

Don't know about the rest of you but I've never had to replace a metal figure eight times because of miscast issues.

I've had metal models be miscast to the point of beyond salvageable but I've gotten a replacement that was fine. I've had roughly ten finecast kits (couple space marine, couple IG, a Necron or two) and while the sculpts that aren't miscast are fantastic, the ones that suffer from issues are horrendous.

I can understand that someone who makes their living based around painting and modeling not wanting to deal with the russian-roulette that is finecast. Honestly, people who don't do it for a living really don't have any basis for a counter-argument. "LOL, these guys must suck as hobbyists because they can't take ten minutes to fix a figure.", if they have to make half an army out of finecast models, that ten minutes turns into hours or days of repairs.

I don't envy guys who do this for a living, it's got to be infuriating.

There are really some things people are not putting on the table here regarding finecast shortcomings...

- A painter is not a sculptor, both charge differently because sculpting takes a different approach and timings etc in comparison to painting.

- Unreliable random models... How can you make a quote if you have no clue how things will get you your hands? It can be some bubbles filling or sculpting full faces... quite different.

- After all clean and painted there is another problem, model can snap with the smallest pressure, bend on shipping and even melt... these things are fragile so client in the end would ask for refund or redo all over again... Guess who is losing money here?

Winterdyne was a bit to explicit on the point but I believe he just wanted to separate common painters from top professional ones... there are just different levels of attention to detail here and that makes a difference.

Better put than I did. Again, I apologise to anyone who feels insulted by it. I have a tendency for bluntness.

 NAVARRO wrote:
There are really some things people are not putting on the table here regarding finecast shortcomings...

- A painter is not a sculptor, both charge differently because sculpting takes a different approach and timings etc in comparison to painting.

- Unreliable random models... How can you make a quote if you have no clue how things will get you your hands? It can be some bubbles filling or sculpting full faces... quite different.

- After all clean and painted there is another problem, model can snap with the smallest pressure, bend on shipping and even melt... these things are fragile so client in the end would ask for refund or redo all over again... Guess who is losing money here?

Winterdyne was a bit to explicit on the point but I believe he just wanted to separate common painters from top professional ones... there are just different levels of attention to detail here and that makes a difference.

I totally agree with all of this. Being fine for my own use doesn't mean that it is good for commissions. Some crazy models which are hard to assemble and ship are also not great for commissions. Painters should use their discretion and not taking on 'finecast' is a reasonable line IMHO.

Resin>Metal>Plastic>Sculpting>Carving>Making it with poop>Finecast

 tundrafrog1124 wrote:
Resin>Metal>Plastic>Sculpting>Carving>Making it with poop>Finecast

I think that you may have swapped the last two....

But could be wrong....

Carving miniatures out of soap needs to be there too - I actually did that once....

The Auld Grump

Finecast is one of the reasons I started pulling away from Games Workshop; not only the lack of quality, but the price increase hit at the exact same time. And then, after all of that, they came out with products to sell you to fix the miniatures that you just opened. They replaced a miniature that I could've bought cheaper and without flaws in metal with an inferior product and asked me to pay more for it. After that, my wallet started closing up. It was all metal from eBay or nothing at all. I would proxy Finecast miniatures if I had to, or scratch-build them. Irrelevant now as they've completely turned me off as a customer.

 puma713 wrote:
And then, after all of that, they came out with products to sell you to fix the miniatures that you just opened.

That's been one of the biggest changes to my view on GW; when I took back a miscast the guys first solution was to try and sell me LGS to fix it, rather than to offer a replacement. I've never before encountered any other company who wants to charge to fix a defective product like that.

I was standing outside GW with Atacam The day finecast was released. After trying and failing to find a model without significant flaws he showed me a Mcvey resin peice to show what could be acheived with resin and why he was so disappointed with GWs efforts.

Needless to say the McVey peice was 1000x better than any thing from workshop, no flaws at all. Now obviously this is a showpeice model not a mass production gaming peice but even so.

I've not really spoken to Atacam recently about Finecast but i am well aware of his opinions of it. Now i havent looked through this thread all the way but one reason for the ban may be standards. These are all professional painters and you will want your work to look as good as possible. Finecast will definitely prohibit this. You can only polish a turd so much.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
It's really not that simple. It isn't just bubbles and the like, which have to be smoothed beyond the comprehension of 98% of the hobby populace in order to accomodate the blending and brushwork of the masters... it sounds nit-picky and 'come on!' but whether you believe it or not, it is true, it's that nit-picky a thing.

That can be dealt with, but as has been said may cost 8-10 hours of additional time to fix in some cases.

But there are irrecoverable finecast issues too, missing detail potentially one of them, but the big one is misaligned molds... I have had this on several models, including 3 necrons and the 25th anniversary marine. It is irrecoverable. You can't file of GS your way out of that, it is as fundamental a flaw as you can get.

This.

I've made one finecast purchase- a rock lobba. The mold was severely misaligned. I could have spent hours making it look how it did on the box, and based on how much it cost I should have returned it, but fortunately the lobba is supposed to look like crap, so I figured it wouldn't be too noticeable. If this was a commission piece it would have had to have been returned.

I want to like finecast, but my first purchase put me off. I've been buying used metal models on ebay rather than buying new finecast ones. I'm sure not every model has these issues, but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth.

More than a year after the Necron release, I bought a Finecast Anrakyr the Traveler... it looked like someone took a lighter to the accessory sprue. Called up GW and they sent out another... which looked just as bad. Besides, the warscythes on the sprue weren't sharp. I mean... they looked like the NERF version of the warscythe. Horrible.. I'm in the process of converting up the special characters I want. I won't buy another finecast model.

I have to agree, the painter is not a sculptor and doesn't have the time or inclination to deal with this....

I have a couple of problems with finecast.

1. I can accept that there are some limitations to resin however when I compare FW resin to Finecast resin, there is no comparison. Finecast is light crappy stuff that melts, bends, warps. The only problem I have had with FW resin is snapping of long slender pieces.

2. The bad bad salesmanship of GW. As I recall, they said this change had to happen because of the high cost of metal. OK fine but then this was accompanied by a 50% price hike. Add to that the initial quality problems and it was an auto fail.
I think they would have gotten better PR if they had left the choice to the buyer. 25$ for a metal version or 12:50 $ for a finecast version. Then people would have had nothing to blame but themselves... Instead GW decided to make the change, up the cost of 12$ models to 18$ and then perform little or no quality control.