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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/proxyarmy/proxy-war-custom-3d-printed-miniatures?ref=live

3D print your own fully customized tabletop miniatures, from RPG characters to whole armies of custom units.

Proxy War is bringing tabletop gaming into the 21st century, letting gamers create fully custom models online, and then get them 3D printed in ultra-fine detail. Log onto a database of parts, select chassis, torsos, limbs, weapons, mutations, powers, and technology, and clip them together into a unit that is uniquely yours. You can also partner with our design staff to create a custom unit entirely from scratch. Our service lets you make anything you can imagine—from RPG characters to whole wargame armies.

3D printing is going to revolutionize miniature gaming—and that revolution starts now!

I figured you guys might be interested in this-- I'm certainly tempted

If they had a pledge level to give you access to a 3D model to print yourself / have printed elsewhere, I'd be all over this... but not really interested as-is.

They say their fine detail printing has a resolution of 250 microns- that must be a typo, or is not very good... my Form 1 can print at 50 or 25 micron resolution, depending on the settings.

I wondered how long it would be before drag and drop design systems for 3d printers emerged.

I'm thinking about going in for two of the lone adventurer. I want a giant not-sororitas model and one of my D&D characters I like.

I'm pretty burned out on kickstarters in general. This one raised an eyebrow, but then I saw what they were making and like RiTides, I'm just not impressed. They seem very full of themselves, but their product seems very lacking. Kinda get a "stay away" vibe from it like this is just going to rip people off. They claim that their regular prices are going to be 20%+ the Kickstarter prices, which makes me wonder why would anyone get involved for something like that? There are fantastic minis out there all over the interwebs, but I just don't see this as competition for any of them.

It's a cool idea, and I doubt they are trying to rip people off. But for me their are so many variables that stop me from getting into it. The renders showed so far are very "meh" for me, and I'm also unsure if the final minis will be of the quality I expect from my mini's.

My friend and several of his co-workers looked into something similar a few years ago. 3D Print shop for "custom" miniatures. AKA choose a combination from a set of pre-designed posed and items. Had decided against it after the accountant ran the numbers and didn't see them making back the cost of the machinery fast enough for their liking. Worried technology would leap ahead too fast and cheaper better printers would come up and competing shops would pop up.

These guys look like they got some of the printers used by Shapeways. The color sand print and what appears to be fine detail clear are similar to Shapeways items. Possible they got some used printers Shapeways was cycling out. There are very good printers out there capable of turning out great models, I don't think they got one of them given what they have show. There are some able to get down to 7 microns now. 25 microns if RiTides is correct is pretty choppy.

$350 for a custom designed miniature is on the cheap side. Especially with the fact that the example they gave had 5 iterations on the sketches alone. I could see that going bad. They need to set up a certain number of "redos" or they could get a pledger who will never be satisfied.

I wish them luck. Know I had thought about something like this but realized a lot of other people probably were too. As my friend illustrated I see the next generation of miniature stores being print on demand essentially. Looks like we maybe finally here.

 silent25 wrote:
. I could see that going bad. They need to set up a certain number of "redos" or they could get a pledger who will never be satisfied.

Any smart designer, doing custom design work puts a certain number of revisions clause into their contract. After that, you pay.

These guys should do the same thing, though maybe they thought it would scare people off.

Still, you're 100% correct. They will get a handful of incredibly picky people who want things "just so", and these guys will be bled white because of it.

Yeah, those prices for custom work sound like they're undercharging for their hours- my freelance stuff, with clients asking for changes, would rack up a lot more time, and I don't cover material costs...

Well, they own the IP when it's done... so it doesn't actually sound too cheap.
You get some copies of your model, but they get the rights to it and decompose it back into their parts catalog.

Oh, didn't notice that. Yeah, you're right. Probably around on price, then.

 AT wrote:
Well, they own the IP when it's done... so it doesn't actually sound too cheap.
You get some copies of your model, but they get the rights to it and decompose it back into their parts catalog.

True, but they still risk having their concept artist being tied up by people wanting something that might be special to them, but no one else will want to buy it. You are in essence wasting his productivity time on products that might not sell. They still need to put some restrictions on those designs so they don't see their concept artists wasting too much time on these things.