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They look brilliant also a great canvas for your tagging skills.

If you can afford those prices for production I think you are good. I ordered some last year from a guy in South Africa who makes them from hard paper for around $5.50 each and shipping was actually more reasonable than ordering something from the war store. Shipping was fast too, but assembly took a while and yours looks more sturdy and is hollow for gaming purposes so I think you win out there.

They look great Cam

Love the wayland sign on them

They look excellent. Would the plan be to sell them raw or painted?

To truly get a reasonable price you need to anticipate all material costs ie. Casting material, disposable gloves, containers, mixing sticks etc. an estimate of how many parts the mould will produce before needing replacement and then amortise the cost of those materials over that many parts. Then consider how long you spend making moulds, casting, cleaning up and decide on an hourly rate you want to achieve and that will give you your labour costs for a unit. Then decide on the margin you want to achieve.

Sorry you probably know all this already but this sort of thing is what I do for a living so its second nature to me.

Brilliant Cam. I'd agree that I'm not a fan of the two rails on the top as it limits how you place your figures without them toppling off, but the containers look great

Oh, love em - and competitive at that price against mdf. Are they Waynecorp or Wayland Yutani?

I like them Cam. You definitely need to figure out how much they're costing you in materials to build, then work in a bit extra for your time. Once you have that number (which is your absolute minimum)... consider if you can raise the price a bit to make all that effort worth your while.

Or you can just ship me a heap already painted and ready to go.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seriously

Good job on the painted peoples on the previous page and the sculpting of the big rat/ogre/Minotaur/thing.

Nice job on the containers too.
As for pricing, the only thing I can add is look around for what other similarly sized models are sold for.
While you can't compete with large model-making companies for pricing and quality (you are but one man after all), they do serve as a reality check in case you are either over-pricing your work, or under-valuing your effort.

Don't be afraid to start high and come down if there's no biters.

Let me start off by saying that I like the cargo containers. They look good. I also appreciate the technique that went into producing them. The insert to save resin, and especially the rounded end on the plug to make it easier to remove.

 Archer wrote:
They look excellent. Would the plan be to sell them raw or painted?

To truly get a reasonable price you need to anticipate all material costs ie. Casting material, disposable gloves, containers, mixing sticks etc. an estimate of how many parts the mould will produce before needing replacement and then amortise the cost of those materials over that many parts. Then consider how long you spend making moulds, casting, cleaning up and decide on an hourly rate you want to achieve and that will give you your labour costs for a unit. Then decide on the margin you want to achieve.

Sorry you probably know all this already but this sort of thing is what I do for a living so its second nature to me.

Archer is right. It may not even be worth it to make them for other people.

I stopped casting for my friends and gaming group when I added a modest $10 an hour labor to my equation.

If you only have the one mold, you can't produce them in batches, significantly increasing the time you spend producing them.

It simply may not be worth your time to produce them for anyone other than yourself.

LaserCutCard Containers, laser cut from sturdy cardstock, offers 3 for $13.84, 11 container deal for $28.63

Underground Laser offers then in MDF for $10 each

Armorcast Offers them in resin

Iron Heart Artisans offers them in MDF for $10

Warsenal offers them in MDF for $12

Warmill offers them in MDF 2 for 15 pounds

You're looking at a market price of about $10 per container.

I don't know what the curing time is on your resin, but even assuming your using something with a short cure time, say 15 minutes, your total time including prep, mixing, pouring, de-molding, and cleaning is probably somewhere around 30 minutes per model, with a single mold.

If your material costs are above $5 a model, it's not worth it for a product with a $10 retail, and that's only paying yourself $5 for labor.

A $10 retail may not be even realistic. There is a lot of competition, and while your model looks cool, it's still an amateur production.

GW's cargo containers (3 for $50) are more expensive, but feature detailed interiors, much better detail, and additional pieces (guns, crates, and barrels) for roughly $17.
LaserCutCard's containers are $3-$5 each depending on how many you buy and they look really good..

We've not even discussed other expenses like Ebay fees (10%), Paypal fees (10%), or the time and gas you'll spend driving to the post office to ship them, packaging materials, etc...

Good sized, resin material, and just 5pounds? Hmmmmmmm. so much temptation!

So could. I'd potentially be interested if you do decide to sell them. I'll be following this with interest.

EDC

Those shipping crates look amazing, nice work .

Congrats on the competition!
Well deserved against some serious stuff

I'm happy to see what you managed with the Sedition characters - I never got around do do anything with mine. I find them too...blurry, not sharp enough, and compared to a IG trooper or an Eisenkern, they are tiny...
Hard to expain them, no matter how good the fluff

Well, the shipping containers are ACE!
There are some improvements suggested, like the roof for better positioning of models.

Honestly, after I had worked with a Third Party Boardgame manufacturer for a while, I wnat to give you bit of a warning.
Mixing hobby and earning money was a real hobby breaker to me. And once you sell your pieces, people change.
Once they spend money, they simply want perfection. What they have praised while it was for free, is all of a sudden a faulty product as soon as they put money down.
Happened to me often, and honestly I'm the same.
If I pay for a product, I want it to be perfect....no bubbles, no warps, straight and crisp lines etc...

Just a bit taling out of my "treasure trove of my experience"
LOL

Wow, Cam. So much to catch up on for me. Looks like you're getting some good advice on the marketing. Once you start selling, or doing commission painting, etc, you no longer own your own hobby time. That can be very uncomfortable, and a real creativity killer.

Now the rats... best way to deal with a rat problem is with a Jack Russell Terrier or two. ( I have one, but no rat problem. I do have a squirrel problem though. Jack Russell Terriers cannot climb trees. That may be a good thing.) The rat ogre looks promising.

The shipping containers are very good. Nice solution to keeping the plug in place.

The containers came out great. Solid detailing and looks good painted up.

the shipping containers look excellent

however, I disagree about the idea of doing them for sale

It's not that I don't think they're not good enough for it, I do. I simply don't think you'd make a profit =/ which would suck big time. I suspect strongly you'd spend more time/money getting them out there, then you'd get back in return. To add to what adamsouza mentioned, about what's available out there, there's also Reaper's some what similiar Shipping container.

All that being said, if you decide you want to go ahead and do a kickstarter or some such, I'm in ^_^

Thank you all for the most brilliant advise. Originally never started out as a "for sale" project just for myself really. And given all the advise I think I will leave it that way. Certainly there was never going to be a mass marketing, but a few to cover the cost of the next batch of resin would have done me. Also a big thank you to those (looking at you adamsouza in particular, but others too.) who unlike me got their google on and found some that are already on the market, GW's are a big surprise to me, when did that happen.

I will take the advise on the ridges on the top and try altering my mould to do a flat roof.

Having said all that, I will happily do a few off for people for my usual Dakka discount if they really don't mind them being so amateur, not too many mind, basically make good use of the mould kind of thing, so if you fancy one or two PM me.

Now on to other things I think, I have been so busy IRL not even sat down this week, so need the coming weekend to get some ME time in.

Thanks once more, your amazing guys.

So finally painted some rats....

With flash...


Without....


Not going to hard on these, lot of them to paint, so relatively table top will do.

Thanks for stopping by.

GW only released their cargo containers in the last few weeks.

The rats look good. I especially like the banner. Is that freehand ?

Lovely containers.

The rats are coming! Hold steady men! Hide the women an children! Get the fires ready!

The Ratmen are looking good there Cam.

Hey cam!! Those rats look great, the banner especially!! Nice green too, perfectly poisonous! love seeing your progress dude!

Nice work on the Skaven. Very vibrant green.

EDC

The banner makes the unit, excellent job!

Great banner on the rats. They could use some basing tho.

Really liking the work on the skaven.

Taking notes for when I do my Deadzone veer-myn

Thanks all, really appreciate feedback, working on basing at mo.

Not had much time or mojo for me models lately, little work done.

Still PIP on these guys.....


Trying hard on these guys now, sculpts are not brilliant, but no excuses.


Yet another side project...friend who does some Military Modelling put me on to a site called Accurate Armour.

https://accurate-armour.com/

Good stuff, prices are maybe a bit more than most would choose, but the kits are really nice. Can vouch for this as bought this...





Now me being me, I will obviously be using this for a chassis for a IG or Ork Truck, but really like the detail. Chassis was £20 and it was £9 for the set of 5 wheels, I really like the wheels, they look right, skinny enough to be realistic. Any ways, have a look, one thing I did get from them is a couple sable brushes, I think they are well priced. And I will be investing in one of the micro saws. Not sure I am about to buy a fleet of chassis from them, but it gives me ideas.

Anyways, thank you for looking in, hoping to get a day tomorrow sat painting, hopefully see you in the morning.

The chassis looks incredible. Agree completely about the wheels as well. Very interested to see what you come up with for it.

Hmmm, what size are those wheels - diameter + width? (didn't see the measurements on their website...) They could potentially be the answer to my 'dragon truck' problems... Nice detailed chassis as well, can see lot's of potential for that as a base for some scratchbuilds... (any chance of some measurements for the chassis as well?)

The SW guys look like they're coming along great.