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 chris_valera wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:
Now if only this was a move to plastic or restic.....

Pretty much. Chris Fitzpatrick's stuff is great and I'm sure he made the right move leaving GW, but adding two new armies is a non-issue.

He'd be better off tooling some of the basic infantry in plastic.

--Chris
www.chrisvalera.com

So I explain this a lot go people because plastic tooling is not cheap. In fact one box can run you between 30-80k just to get the tooling done to make them. Plastic for small companies is just not viable plastic resin isn't bad though.

Word on the street is that the old "$30k to $100k per sprue" chestnut is no longer accurate.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Word on the street is that the old "$30k to $100k per sprue" chestnut is no longer accurate.

Source on this? Not meaning to be flippant, but actually curious as to what sprue costs are supposedly down to these days? I assume that is for production in China?

Even $30 to $100k is a massive range.

silent25 wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Word on the street is that the old "$30k to $100k per sprue" chestnut is no longer accurate.

Source on this? Not meaning to be flippant, but actually curious as to what sprue costs are supposedly down to these days? I assume that is for production in China?

I said "word on the street" because so many threads discuss how businesses like PDC, Eccentric Minis, Proxie Models, Dreamforge, etc. are able to churn out kits for seemingly spare change in comparison. I have no actual source, or I would have linked to it and jumped up the snark. Mostly, I was debating the numbers in the scores of thousands of pounds range since they all seem to stem from an earlier era, with sources like "some guy at GW" or "Renedra, I guess".

Given the massive problems Dreamforge is experiencing due to outsourcing production to WGF in China, I would be wary of using them as a positive example of affordable production. They're looking at something crazy like 6-9 monts delay on Waves 2 and 3.

Nod. DF is hardly "churning out" anything at this stage.

My source is me personally and yes my numbers are accurate as I took quotes for my upcoming game release.

I've also researched this, and you can do some things for less. It really depends. But, obviously, PDC is making 4 or 5 sprues for 10K pounds. The line where small outfits can get access to non-metal casting is blurring / shifting a bit, which is a good thing.

I think the key to that is PDC is in the industry already with access to their own machines (in 'down' time from their paid work), skills etc

if they had to outsource the 3D modeling, the mould cutting & polishing and the eventual casting it would be a lot more expensive for them

Well Reaper does not tool the parts. they only have the casting machine. So they have the molds made in CHina and the then have those molds shipped here where they handle all of the actual casting. PRetty damned smart set-up.

 tre manor wrote:
Well Reaper does not tool the parts. they only have the casting machine. So they have the molds made in CHina and the then have those molds shipped here where they handle all of the actual casting. PRetty damned smart set-up.

Oddly enough true but I think we're all way off topic ATM. BTW reaper is still a big company and their kickstarter made over 3 mill so big difference.

I've got some experience in making plastics, I worked on a number of them when I worked at the GW Studio (Dark Elves, Dark Eldar). I've also done some research in the last couple years into producing plastic kits, and the prices I've been quoted started in the 30k usd range per sprue - just for the tooling - not production, and we don't even own any kind of injection machine. To give you some perspective, based on these prices I can make 300 molds for metal miniatures for the same cost as 1 plastic mold. With numbers like that, plastics just don't make sense for us yet.

We're not even getting into the area of quality either - for me, I personally prefer metal miniatures, rather than fragile plastics that fall over when I sneeze!

--Fitz

 Chris FitzPatrick wrote:

We're not even getting into the area of quality either - for me, I personally prefer metal miniatures, rather than fragile plastics that fall over when I sneeze!

--Fitz

I have never had any plastics do that. I've more metal minis tip over and bend or break for no reason, though. The only plastics I've had that broke were models I dropped a box full of textbooks on or stepped on while moving furniture, and I doubt any metals would have survived that,either.


However, it really isn't a dealbreaker here. I'm pledged already, and I am willing to deal with metal for amazing sculpts, which the demigods and Amazons are. Plastic is simply a much more exciting medium.

As for DFG, They are still producing plenty of wave 1 stuff, which is incredible in quality as well as utility. The delay between wave 1 and wave 2 is annoying, but I can hardly think of a Kickstarter that hasn't suffered such delays...or released depressingly poor models to make the deadline.

OK guys, the Oracle of Delphi has now been unlocked!

She's a free miniature that will be added added to most of the $160 reward levels (Council of the Gods, Skirmish, Warband, Army).

I'm going to be sculpting this one too, and looking forward to it!

--Fitz



At last your warband arrives at Delphi, and you ask the Oracle what is needed to defeat your enemies. Her answer is mysterious: "Only with arms of bronze and fiery hearts can you defeat the stallion-breaking sons of Troy. Yet with either victory or defeat, journey home will take you through lands from whence no mortal has ever returned."

Any chance of a sneak peak at the automatons? (Or if there has already been one, a link to such, etc)

 RiTides wrote:
Any chance of a sneak peak at the automatons? (Or if there has already been one, a link to such, etc)

BAM!

 Empchild wrote:


So I explain this a lot go people because plastic tooling is not cheap. In fact one box can run you between 30-80k just to get the tooling done to make them. Plastic for small companies is just not viable plastic resin isn't bad though.

If the plastic tooling is 30-80K for a single box, how did DreamForge manage to tool two different Titans (!), with dozends of variant weapon-options, in both 28mm scale and 15mm, some 3 or 4 different infantry boxes, a whole APC with different weapon options, heavy weapon teams and an additional 3 or 4 Kickstarter-exclusive miniatures, all in injected hard-plastic, from a 200K Kickstarter?

Looking at the pledge manager, that amounts to about 35 different boxes http://www.dreamforge-games.com/kickstartshipping/DFCalc.htm

And that is counting stuff like this as only "one" box


Sure, DreamForge possibly may have had some additional finance besides Kickstarter, but at the costs for plastic tooling you're quoting, DreamForge would've been looking at costs between 1 Million and 2.8 million just for the tooling.

That is clearly not what it costs.

We're not in the year 2003 anymore.

 Empchild wrote:

 tre manor wrote:
Well Reaper does not tool the parts. they only have the casting machine. So they have the molds made in CHina and the then have those molds shipped here where they handle all of the actual casting. PRetty damned smart set-up.

Oddly enough true but I think we're all way off topic ATM. BTW reaper is still a big company and their kickstarter made over 3 mill so big difference.

A recent Kickstarter made a bit under £11.000 and they'll be tooling 5 plastic molds for that money. The currently running Maki Games KS is financing one mold for about every $5k-10k pledged. Granted, these are simple CAD shapes and not fully detailed miniatures, but the difference in cost cannot be an order of magnitude.

silent25 wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
Any chance of a sneak peak at the automatons? (Or if there has already been one, a link to such, etc)

BAM!

Thanks!

That bronze bull and minotaur could be very useful for chaos dwarfs... I'll be watching

The owl looks like fun. Guys he has already said no to the plastic so seriously just move on. If you want to know how dream forge did it then go ask them but most companies will tell you the same thing all of us who produce minis are saying. To that end let's leave that topic alone and just move on as it's already been answered.

 Empchild wrote:
The owl looks like fun. Guys he has already said no to the plastic so seriously just move on. If you want to know how dream forge did it then go ask them but most companies will tell you the same thing all of us who produce minis are saying. To that end let's leave that topic alone and just move on as it's already been answered.

I don't care how DreamForge did it. DreamForge is but one example that shows how wrong your numbers are.

I know the topic has been answered. But that doesn't mean evidently false statements like the one you made above should simple stand uncorrected.

 Zweischneid wrote:

 Empchild wrote:
The owl looks like fun. Guys he has already said no to the plastic so seriously just move on. If you want to know how dream forge did it then go ask them but most companies will tell you the same thing all of us who produce minis are saying. To that end let's leave that topic alone and just move on as it's already been answered.

I don't care how DreamForge did it. DreamForge is but one example that shows how wrong your numbers are.

I know the topic has been answered. But that doesn't mean evidently false statements like the one you made above should simple stand uncorrected.

OK now your just being rude. First of all mines not false as Chris said the same price and I have been quoted that price as well by both companies in the U.K and in China so instead of showing that you can be rude give it up and love on. If you don't like it don't buy it but my statement is not false as even SWM stated that cost recently. So by my count that's three miniature companies to your one trolling. Now if you want to maintain that our statements are lies then that's your choice but a fact is still a fact.

 Empchild wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:

 Empchild wrote:
The owl looks like fun. Guys he has already said no to the plastic so seriously just move on. If you want to know how dream forge did it then go ask them but most companies will tell you the same thing all of us who produce minis are saying. To that end let's leave that topic alone and just move on as it's already been answered.

I don't care how DreamForge did it. DreamForge is but one example that shows how wrong your numbers are.

I know the topic has been answered. But that doesn't mean evidently false statements like the one you made above should simple stand uncorrected.

OK now your just being rude. First of all mines not false as Chris said the same price and I have been quoted that price as well by both companies in the U.K and in China so instead of showing that you can be rude give it up and love on. If you don't like it don't buy it but my statement is not false as even SWM stated that cost recently. So by my count that's three miniature companies to your one trolling. Now if you want to maintain that our statements are lies then that's your choice but a fact is still a fact.

Is it?

On this very page alone, there're three people pointing to three different companies that contradict your statement. If you count that as "one trolling", it's another fairly obvious indicator that you might want to brush up your math (and change your business partners).

The price Fitz is quoting is accurate for the services of the better quality molds and production methods ( impact resistant injection plastic. ) I have heard of companies charging as little as $5,000.00 per mold for the softer plastics but you are talking about a lower quality material and a significant loss of detail. I honestly do not know how Maki is going to profit from the models quoted above or IF that even is the actual model they are employing. Unless they are using some other manufacturer or unless the prices have dropped due to the recent explosion of plastics demand ( which honestly probably would cause prices to increase as availability decreases. ). It just seems AWFULLY cheap for plastics production.

Of course it may also have a lto to do with whatever Maki is making or the materials / methods beiong employed.

I'm guessing they (Maki) may be in a similar position to PDC with the owners also owning/being involved in another company that does tooling/injection moulding

If they had access to machines/machine time at 'cost' it would explain how they can do what they seem able to do

Noone's seen a Maki product yet. DreamForge, on the other hand is out there. It's as hard as GW's stuff, made with steel slide-core molds. It even has those ball-joints that make the Leviathan stand, yet remain fully poseable after (!) assembly. You cannot do that with "soft" plastic.

And even if they blew 100% of their Kickstarter-take on tooling, paying everything else out of a different source (incl. Shipping, Kickstarter-fees, the actual material and post-tooling production, the boxes, digital sculpting, whatever), they'd have to have done it in under 6K per box (with multiple sprues per box) to come out of it with zero-profit.

If I remember correctly, DreamForge has recently even been hiring, so they likely did significantly better.

 Chris FitzPatrick wrote:
I've got some experience in making plastics, I worked on a number of them when I worked at the GW Studio (Dark Elves, Dark Eldar). I've also done some research in the last couple years into producing plastic kits, and the prices I've been quoted started in the 30k usd range per sprue - just for the tooling - not production, and we don't even own any kind of injection machine. To give you some perspective, based on these prices I can make 300 molds for metal miniatures for the same cost as 1 plastic mold. With numbers like that, plastics just don't make sense for us yet.

We're not even getting into the area of quality either - for me, I personally prefer metal miniatures, rather than fragile plastics that fall over when I sneeze!

--Fitz

As already noted - this campaign isn't going plastic.

Please take all further Plastic discussions elsewhere.

Thanks!

Really though, if "at cost" access to the tooling machines makes an order of magnitude in difference, someone's profit margins are way, way out of whack. That's just gak, really.
Why are 'traditionally' tooled plastics so damn expensive? well, for starters look at the cost of having someone pantograph the whole damn physical sculpt (and several times over, just to get the fine detail in everywhere with a plethora of different bits) as opposed to just getting a bunch of computer-controlled tools to work from a digital model - on a programme expressly set up in an efficient manner which is hard to get the 'traditional' way for starters.
Now go have a look what it costs to manufacture really, REALLY detailed pieces of computer cut hardened metals. Yes, it's expensive. No, it's nowhere near the tens of thousands of dollars mentioned everywhere. not anymore.
These things aren't dark magic - they're just that, detailed pieces of hard metals. No more.
Now some issues remain: to get minis to cast up properly in that tool, you'll have to make sure that the vents are placed right etc. and that the mini itself has been correctly designed.
The reason 'traditional' sculptors only used to rubber molded metal models get quoted 'insane' prices is that there's a LOT of work they simply can't do in advance - and a lot of sculpting might have to be 'fixed' for plastic production by the manufacturer. That costs money.
Something like dreamforge's leviathans probably took a bunch of work like that as well - but at least he supplied them with a set of CAD files it's a lot easier to work from (and from what I gathered he seems to have done a lot of the work himself already). Malifaux plastics? Same thing, in all likelihood.
So probably, everyone's sort of right. CG isn't set up for this - just doesn't have the expertise of the 21st century, so to say so yeah, they'd be out ~30K on a tool while someone using a more modern approach, who might just have a bit of education in the dos and don'ts of plastic production could be cheaper off.
I know my money's going with the more modern approach, but let's quit calling each other liars, okay? Badly informed is probably more like it (and I'll readily admit I'm just as happily speculating away ).

edit sorry, was already typing when you posted. Really, I didn't write that block of text in under a minute

 Alpharius wrote:

 Chris FitzPatrick wrote:
I've got some experience in making plastics, I worked on a number of them when I worked at the GW Studio (Dark Elves, Dark Eldar). I've also done some research in the last couple years into producing plastic kits, and the prices I've been quoted started in the 30k usd range per sprue - just for the tooling - not production, and we don't even own any kind of injection machine. To give you some perspective, based on these prices I can make 300 molds for metal miniatures for the same cost as 1 plastic mold. With numbers like that, plastics just don't make sense for us yet.

We're not even getting into the area of quality either - for me, I personally prefer metal miniatures, rather than fragile plastics that fall over when I sneeze!

--Fitz

As already noted - this campaign isn't going plastic.

Please take all further Plastic discussions elsewhere.

Thanks!

Seriously?

Last warning.