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Apologies if this is the wrong forum but I can't think where else to put it - I need some help.

I made some 25mm scaled miniatures a year or two back and used them to make some Heresy era troops (Calth defence force and some invading Imperial Army aligned with the Word Bearers). I also did several different head types - they were essentially dollies and conversion fodder for me.

I need help understanding if there's a market for these type of miniatures... can anyone help? I'm really keen to make some for retail (no IP infringement, they will be original designs) but have no idea where to pitch the project to prospective interest. I'm sculpting full time now so have the facilities to to easily do this, but I'm not sure if it's a good time spend... would anyone buy them?

The whole idea is to do single part metal miniatures and quickly make up some massed infantry squads. Design wise they were to make the Astartes look like they were 7/8' tall. I'd like to do characters and limited heavy weapon teams too.

Thoughts, suggestion or anything that might help would be much appreciated.

Really nice models.

Nice enough looking in general. A bit bland detail wise though.

Depending upon the price someone will buy them.

But that someone isn't me.
Why? Because I want all of my IG in the same scale. As you downsized them to make SM look bigger when sitting next to them, I could not use these to augment any of my existing IG forces.

Perhaps you could make 3d files for them in both scales?

Wouldn't 20mm put a human closer to a true scale with marines? I understand that 25mm is easier. Both in modeling and scenery, but if the purpose is a proper sense of scale wouldn't 20mm be better?

20mm is exceptionally tiny. Keep in mind that general height in mm is exponential in some ways. 20mm is equivalent (more or less) to 1/72 scale figures.

25mm is kind of the old "proper" scale, with a variety of differences in how companies view 25mm (is it measured to the eye, the top of the head, or the top of the hat), etc. Think GW's LOTR range or Red Box Games minis, or many of the Perry plastic boxes. They're more "true" 25mm than other ranges which colloquially became 28mm (the basic standard for GW figures for a long time). Now GW is definitely in the 32mm zone for a lot of figures.

Regarding the OP; the figures are definitely kind of bland. With everything in GW getting bigger, I can't say there'd much of a market for these. IG are also one of the more popular armies and thus are likely to get a line refresh in the next 2-3 years. Is there enough skirmish/role-playing stuff that people would want more accurately scaled old guardsmen? I dunno. If you've got little overhead, give it a shot. Arbitrarily scaling down something will only have maybe 10% the market of scaling the line appropriately with normal GW figures. The mass market of gamers vs. skirmish gamers/role-players is easily 10:1.

I personally think you'd get a lot more interest if you became another alternate guardsmen supplier, but using their current scale. You can clearly sculpt and people who currently buy alternates such as Victoria minis would have another choice.

 Red Marine wrote:
Wouldn't 20mm put a human closer to a true scale with marines? I understand that 25mm is easier. Both in modeling and scenery, but if the purpose is a proper sense of scale wouldn't 20mm be better?

Uuuh that would make marines 50% or so bigger than human? So 9 feet...Marine is about 1/6 bigger than human(7 feet vs 6) and primaris 33% bigger than human(8 feet vs 6)

I already use these miniature of the north guys from the last pic as Cultists. I've put them on 1mm Bases to make them even smaller. Chaos might be the way to go? Cultists aren't as fixed as IG Regiments.

Thanks for all the input this was food for thought.

As suspected 25mm minis is extremely niche and hard to pitch.

If I were to be more to the point, and perhaps shameless - I should really say 25mm heresy era humans (imperial army and traitors). My personal view is that 40k is all about the bigger Primaris and existing GW ranges. 30k uses the smaller Astartes miniatures and always will, so there's already a disparity in size (fluff aside). If I'm collecting or playing 30k then smaller humans beside Astartes makes sense to me.

The minis shown here were just some tests, I'd definitely do more detail on retail versions.

I've already got my 30mm stuff in progress, so this 25mm idea is it's own little contained thing:

tneva82 wrote:

 Red Marine wrote:
Wouldn't 20mm put a human closer to a true scale with marines? I understand that 25mm is easier. Both in modeling and scenery, but if the purpose is a proper sense of scale wouldn't 20mm be better?

Uuuh that would make marines 50% or so bigger than human? So 9 feet...Marine is about 1/6 bigger than human(7 feet vs 6) and primaris 33% bigger than human(8 feet vs 6)

Marines are seven feet tall.

 MOTN wrote:
Design wise they were to make the Astartes look like they were 7/8' tall.

There's only so much you're going to be able to do about that when those marines have the proportions of deformed children. Those sculpts are from GW's "six heads high" phase. Current sculpts are 7 heads, full-size adult humans are 8 heads, and genuinely massive people like Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (The Mountain) are like 9 heads.

If it's about the marines, there might be demand for some kind of kit to "true-scale" older models. Like, bits you can add to those kits to give them proper abdomens and longer legs.