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I'd like to announce our new venture - Great White Miniatures. We're producing 28mm sci-fi figures and vehicles that will be compatible with a number of games.

To start us off we've got our Abrogator Self Propelled Gun conversion kit mastered by Tomcra from here on Dakka:







We'll be following this up with an IFV conversion kit and some Scrap Tech vehicles (a gun carriage and a scrap-coupe), and then hopefully we'll have our first few figures.

You can see some work on these on our blog:

http://greatwhiteminiatures.blogspot.co.uk/

or order from our store

http://www.freewebstore.org/great-white-miniatures/

I could not see myself buying a product like this without finished conversion pictures. Do you have any mounted on an actual vehicle?

The sculptor has some pictures of the master being test fitted to a vehicle on his blog:

http://talasaprime.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/chimera-artillery-conversion-kit.html

One of my customers is documenting his construction of the kit here:

http://animosity40k.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=projectlogs&thread=301&page=1#3539

You should really look into showing it used for conversions somewhere; it looks good on the sculptor's blog, but I shouldn't have to find another website just to figure out what it looks like. Looking at it out of context, I thought it was the front piece for a counts-as Vindicator.

You may also want to look at getting a better logo; that squiggle and Times New Roman isn't terribly inspiring.

We would love to be able to post up completed photos of the kit, but we have been advised not to do so if the photo includes another company's miniatures, which does make this difficult. The sculptor's blog was linked from our blog post here:

http://greatwhiteminiatures.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/abrogrator.html

but this has gone to the second page of articles now.

We would love to have a better logo, but since I was out of work when we started this venture, the choice was spend the money on making a brand or having these made to the highest quality we could afford, the models won out. When we've got a few more models selling well, there will be money for getting the site professionally done I'm sure.


PS it's not Times New

Meh, I dunno. The logo looks functional enough (though I'll admit I'm no typography geek) and with niche companies, it's going to be models selling on their strength as models all the way, I don't think a 'better' logo would have a substantial impact on sales.

Still, you might want to consider offering a few of your kits, shipped free, for some graphic design hobbyist around this forum (or similar parts) to do a better logo if it does seem to annoy folks. At cost that would be a few tenners for you which should be manageable for anyone able to scrounge together the cash to have moulds and some inventory made. Your party, though

I think you should at least explain that the conversion part fits on the back of a GW Chimaera to form a gun house for a large cannon.

Like Brother SRM I thought it was intended for the front of a vehicle to make something similar to a Soviet SU-122.

I was advised to remove almost exactly those words from my original description, seems I can't win!

You're entirely within your rights to state it's a conversion kit for a certain model, certainly within the EU.
However, being within your rights does not guarantee not having them effectively trampled by the C&D brigade of a much, much bigger fish, which is why you probably shouldn't.
...Deplorable as that is.

Did you take fully qualified legal advice?

The recent GW vs Chapter House case shows the limits of GW's ability to prevent people from making and marketing after market parts to fit GW's models.

(IANAL)

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Did you take fully qualified legal advice?

The recent GW vs Chapter House case shows the limits of GW's ability to prevent people from making and marketing after market parts to fit GW's models.

(IANAL)

I was aware of that, but what was mentioned was that a judgement in a US court did not necessarily set a precedent for the UK. I will talk to a solicitor if I have to, but I'd rather spend the money on producing more cool toys if I'm honest.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Did you take fully qualified legal advice?

The recent GW vs Chapter House case shows the limits of GW's ability to prevent people from making and marketing after market parts to fit GW's models.

(IANAL)

IANALQY, but as I said it's quite simple. Small, starting boutique miniatures manufacturers are usually such small fish (remember, paying for logo design was a bit too expensive for this bloke not too long ago..) that even the smallest bit of not-entirely-quite-evidently-provable-to-be-frivolous harassment from GW legal would be too much. Theoretical rights are fine and dandy but sometimes it's better to avoid the headache (at least for a while) at least until you're in a position to shoot back and it would have some benefit to you specifically, rather than just the general benefit of getting GW legal to play fair some time this century. I'd say Lavuran would probably just do best to stick to making minis - >90% of his customers would find these via such forums (and WiP threads etc) anyway regardless what precisely he puts on his website.

What would be a good idea would be to get customers (remember, you have no control over what your customers do ) to put up some pics of the entirely-not-intended use in such threads as this one ASAP, perhaps even by giving out a kit or two to someone you know would do so quickly. That's up to him, though

Thanks Bolognesus that's exactly what I'd rather do. Resources are limited so I've spent the money commission/buying works from good sculptors to help me produce a range quicker than I can do on my own. In addition I've opted for an excellent caster to make sure the models customers get are as good as we can get them. If anyone want's reassurance on that front, Brian from Anarchy Models is doing all the casting.

It seems that one of my early customers did actually post on here that he was starting on the kit over the weekend, but I missed that!

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/552188.page

With the concern you could always show a picture with the other company's parts in distinct but blacked out silhouette.

 aka_mythos wrote:
With the concern you could always show a picture with the other company's parts in distinct but blacked out silhouette.

This is a good way to go.

Here is my effort on the GWM Abrogator:






One of the easiest conversion kits i've had the pleasure of putting together. From opening box to base coat took less than 1 hour.

If you would like to know more, please feel free to ask.
Mat B

Thanks Mat, great job you've done there, hopefully others can see what the kit looks like on a Chimera chassis!

I think I might have found an alternative solution too, we'll be making our own hull to which the Abrogator can be attached, as well as our forthcoming Slaxta IFV. We won't be doing track units as several other companies can supply those. I should be able to have the master completed in the next few days.

 LavuranGuard wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Did you take fully qualified legal advice?

The recent GW vs Chapter House case shows the limits of GW's ability to prevent people from making and marketing after market parts to fit GW's models.

(IANAL)

I was aware of that, but what was mentioned was that a judgement in a US court did not necessarily set a precedent for the UK. I will talk to a solicitor if I have to, but I'd rather spend the money on producing more cool toys if I'm honest.

That's true -- a British court can "take note" of decisions in US courts but that might only be of help once you were in court with GW, which obviously you don't want to do.

Fortunately the excellent solution of people like MattyB publishing build-up pictures will get around the problem.

...wow, that thinglooks even better assembled than I'd thought. Really nice kit! Shame I don't have any use for it

Nice work all round guys.

I've got a few more ideas in the pipeline which I'll be featuring on my blog in due course so stay tuned.

Thanks for dropping by, and thanks for letting me take these to market!

For those that haven't ventured over to the blog, here's Tomcra's second conversion kit that will be out next product.





Fits in the same way as the first kit to make an Infantry Fighting Vehicle, which I've named the Slaxta.

No ETA on when this will be available though as I'm adding some pieces to our third product so that these can be cast together in a batch.

I'll post up some pics of this 3rd project when I've had some time to shoot better photos but it's a scrap-tech artillery carriage.