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So the questions in the title. What would you want to see in a cheap plastic scifi mini? I kinda picture it looking sorta like the old plastic necromunda minis. Remember we are talking cheap so the more you add the more it raises the cost. I will break it down as much as I know about the costs of producing a mini. I repeat this is as much as I know with the research I have done. Try to limit the trolling (I know it will be hard)

1. A mini sculptor wants about 1k$ to make a prototype sometimes less. The trick is finding one that understands how to sculpt them for production. Some injection molding companies can figure out how to make it “sprue friendly” for a cost.
2. Injection molds run about 5k$ a mold you get depending on size. Lets say the old necromunda goliath with shotgun about 4-6 on each mold. This is really depends on the makers you can make requests. You get a high yield per mold but the normally ask for at least 2 molds be made.
3. Materials are actually cheap imo ABS plastic in pellets depending on mass of object you can get a lot made with 1k$ worth. I think I did the math and you could get about 500 of the old single CSM biker blisters out of 1k worth of material.
4. Shipping freight from china if you package it right and know someone who knows the ends and outs it can actually be not bad.
5. Packaging and printing if you go cheap it can be as little as 10-14 cents a blister (this is what I have learned through some research. Picking GW blisters as a target.

So this should help you understand making the cheapo goliath. What would you want to see in a cheap scifi mini. Detachable gun? Ability to select or mix and match head, arms, legs and torsos?

If you really want to know the answers to your questions, contact the guys at Dream Forge games or shoot Adam Poots an email and see if they can get you the specifics since they've done this exact stuff.

I hate detachable guns, as they are always fiddly to put together.

Poseability is always good though, but I'd settle for mix-and-match parts i.e. a set of interchangeable torsos, legs and heads.For my grunts they don't need to be unique but it's nice to mix them up a bit.

To be honest, price being right I'd probably settle for a set of mono-pose minis with interchangeable heads, then I can probably avoid any duplicates in the same squad.

I'd want something original and well cast [no mould lines for example]

 sing your life wrote:
I'd want something original and well cast [no mould lines for example]

You do realise that is next to impossible right? It's the nature of having a mould made from 2 halves.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
I'd want something original and well cast [no mould lines for example]

You do realise that is next to impossible right? It's the nature of having a mould made from 2 halves.

Then why have many of the miniatures I have got recently have nearly invisable mould lines?

All i want from a plastic mini is modularity, the ability to pose them differently and swap parts. If I'm not going to have several of the same model in my collection/army there is no benefit to plastic and it might as well be produced at a lower initial overhead with metal or resin.

modularity .. and modeled with the intention of it being broke down into parts before going to mold .. so that it has more dimension to it then most cheaply designed single piece minis

 sing your life wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
I'd want something original and well cast [no mould lines for example]

You do realise that is next to impossible right? It's the nature of having a mould made from 2 halves.

Then why have many of the miniatures I have got recently have nearly invisable mould lines?

Your first expectation isn't invalidated by your followup.

You asked for no mold lines. Newer kits have very well hidden mold lines which are not very noticeable, but they are there, because it's impossible to get them 'non-existant' due to the nature of a mold being two halves of a whole. They will always be there, it depends on how well they hide them and how close they get the halves to match as to how noticeable they are.

 sing your life wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
I'd want something original and well cast [no mould lines for example]

You do realise that is next to impossible right? It's the nature of having a mould made from 2 halves.

Then why have many of the miniatures I have got recently have nearly invisable mould lines?

Nearly invisible and nonexistant are two entirely different things. The better your fits in the moulds, the fewer the mould lines and the less expressed they are - but in a 2 part mould, they will ALWAYS be there.

The more precise your tolerances, the more the moulds will cost to machine or the actual mouldings to produce.

The standard rules apply to this as with any other practice.}

Cheap
Fast
Good

Pick any two.

If you're talking ABS...

1-piece minis, lots of different poses. Extremely low price point.

Reaper Bones has it nailed, almost.. the plastic is too soft and lacks detail.

While there are some questionable aesteic choices I think the Wargames Factory Greatcoats meet all my check boxes.

3 bodies, 12 heads on the sprue, and 4 or 5 choices of weapons.

I think something similar with say 3 civilian rebel bodies or 3 robed cultist/insurgent bodies would be about right.

 sing your life wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
I'd want something original and well cast [no mould lines for example]

You do realise that is next to impossible right? It's the nature of having a mould made from 2 halves.

Then why have many of the miniatures I have got recently have nearly invisable mould lines?

The quality of the new realeases is quite above the norm, but there still are noticeable mould lines. No mould lines = no mould.

EDIT; I meant GW's new releases

What I want to see is a reason to buy it besides "it's cheap". If all you have to offer is a lower-quality version of someone else's designs then I'm not interested.

 -Loki- wrote:

 sing your life wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
I'd want something original and well cast [no mould lines for example]

You do realise that is next to impossible right? It's the nature of having a mould made from 2 halves.

Then why have many of the miniatures I have got recently have nearly invisable mould lines?

Your first expectation isn't invalidated by your followup.

You asked for no mold lines. Newer kits have very well hidden mold lines which are not very noticeable, but they are there, because it's impossible to get them 'non-existant' due to the nature of a mold being two halves of a whole. They will always be there, it depends on how well they hide them and how close they get the halves to match as to how noticeable they are.

That's what I meant.

 sing your life wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

 sing your life wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
I'd want something original and well cast [no mould lines for example]

You do realise that is next to impossible right? It's the nature of having a mould made from 2 halves.

Then why have many of the miniatures I have got recently have nearly invisable mould lines?

Your first expectation isn't invalidated by your followup.

You asked for no mold lines. Newer kits have very well hidden mold lines which are not very noticeable, but they are there, because it's impossible to get them 'non-existant' due to the nature of a mold being two halves of a whole. They will always be there, it depends on how well they hide them and how close they get the halves to match as to how noticeable they are.

That's what I meant.

Just a piece of friendly advice here, although from my experience you may not interpret it as such. Perhaps if you made posts that composed of something more than one sentence then this kind of thing would not happen. In no way in your OP could anyone reasonably interpret no mould lines to mean nearly invisible mould lines. In all forms of communication, what you mean and what you say are 2 different things, hence me prefacing this paragraph with my intent.

 scarletsquig wrote:
If you're talking ABS...

1-piece minis, lots of different poses. Extremely low price point.

Reaper Bones has it nailed, almost.. the plastic is too soft and lacks detail.

I'll disagree to a small extent. I think the detail is pretty good. I do agree that in smaller figs like skeletons and small swords it bends too easily. But my bones figs have a fairly good chunk of detail that was refreshing to see on a fig, let alone at the price point. It's as good in detail as the metal.

Kinda surprised at the responses I have read. I am asking you for a Christmas list. So the overall consensus other than everyone hates mold lines, is modularity. What if, you could buy a box for 20$ and it had 10 minis complete, 10 heads, 10 legs, 20 arms, 10 torsos and, just maybe some extra weapons or ancillary equipment. These ten minis would have a theme like “cultists” all robed and semi evil looking. Then you could buy another box of 10 complete minis this one with the theme “future soldier” all with some style of future armor on. But the best part is 100% of the heads torsos arms and legs could be swapped between the boxes of figures? To add to this what if you had say a lines of 5 different theme cultists, future soldiers, mutants, peasant farmers, and knight/soldiers fantasy that all parts could be mixed and matched. The producing company would then make expansions on the themes and new themes yearly. You would get virtually 50 minis for 100$ with thousands of possible combinations to build. Maybe this company would put up a vote at the end of each year asking everyone who buys minis from them to vote of the next year’s expansions or new lines of minis. Say you always wanted “notguard” with roman armor and Russian Cossack hats. Buy one Cossack box one roman infantry box, done! Want mutant cultists from space… you get the point.
You could have theme like (most of these I am steeling from lego lol):
Ninjas
Pirates
Woodsmen
Zombies
Vampires
Space miners
Aliens
Post apoc warriors
Robots
cops
The skies the limits as long as they stay modular with each other. Wants cyborg peasants? Robots + peasants = robopeasants.

I am actually saddened by the lack of response to this thread.

They do not need be multy pose multy component minis, think Mantic skeletons, arguably their best plastic sprue to date, what they need Above all are good sculpts, which incidentally are a minuscule fraction of the production costs, do not try to do it yourself, pay a decent artist to do it, the minis will sell themselves.

Theme wise, either space elves, some other kind of humanoid alien. I dont think any kind of humans are worth the shot, too many offerings out there already.

I'm looking for basically what Defiance did with it's UAMC marines, but with a bit more definition and detail.

 scarletsquig wrote:
If you're talking ABS...

1-piece minis, lots of different poses. Extremely low price point.

Reaper Bones has it nailed, almost.. the plastic is too soft and lacks detail.

Just a clarification, Bones is Not ABS. ABS( Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) is the hard plastic that LEGO and some model kits (though not most) are made of. Bones is a variation of PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride).

As for bones, I find them to be hit or miss. Some are really great and when painted are hard to distinguish from metal miniatures. However on some (especially those with delicate protrusions like a woman's outstretched hand) it seems like they haven't quite found a way to get the plastic to fill and hold properly.

In a cheap sci-fi mini having a variety of guns is key. Make all the arms without hands, and then a variety of guns with hands attached.

Also, I would love to see an alien in injection plastic. Most everything on the market outside of the Tau are all humans. Being able to build an alien army cheaply would be awesome.

It absolutely has to be made of something which can be bonded to styrene using butanone. If I can't attach plasticard and GW bits to it easily, I'm a lot less interested.

You want a shopping list? you got it!

1. Unique sculpts - Do something other people are not. I currently have about 1000 options for guardsman but like 1 for alternate tau and i dont want an army of giant tits tau.

1b. Multiple poses - 3 poses or even just 3 different sets of legs and arms makes it that much easier to not have a clone blob of troops.

2. Modularity - model should be broken down into head/arms/torso/legs. arms can have different weapon options on them for ease of building but i want to be able to swap parts from your kit into other kits or vise versa for customization.

3. Keep a standard scale - if you want to sell kits make sure the scale matches more GW than say infinity or anima tactics.

4. Material compatibility - use a plastic i can use plastic solvent on. I can use other bits and sculpt/ customize easier if i can melt the plastic with wonderful smelling solvent.

5. Add value to the sprue - pig iron does this, the centre sprue is actually sculpted as rubble, so if you save a few you can build them into terrain...genius. If you adhere to option 4 above, then i can graft it into terrain kits from gw or Pegasus etc.

Ability for lots of poses, and lots of parts for the converting nut

Pegs and holes/slots and grooves!

I don't have the finesse or patience for holding stuff in place, which is why one of my Devastators has an arm growing from his chest and loads of my skinks look like they're shrugging.

I'd be looking for a line that has unifying vision and style behind it, not just random models selected by committee. Going out and asking the public at random what they want to see is going to produce random results.

If you want a successful product you should first ask yourself what do I want to make? What do I see missing in the products lines that I wish was out there that nobody is doing (or doing well) You need to act on your own instinct and understanding of the market because that insight and passion is what drives you to make a good product. Buyers also react to a person that strongly believes in their own product and where they intend it to go.

Looking for feedback on a design or product is fine, but when you start by asking what should we do you are essentially saying hey I don't know what I even want but lend me your ideas, it creates a very weak impression and doesn't bode well towards establishing that you have the drive and passion to make anything beyond "cheap stuff" I don't know of a single successful gaming company that started out by asking gamers what should we do? All the successful companies have instead said I have this idea/vision and this is what we are going do with it.

Find out what you want to do first and use that vision to create something other people will want.


Right now you have almost nothing to put in context. Customer wants will reflect what the intended use for the product is for. A model that's being used for display will have a vastly different set of desires attached to it then a model that's a filler choice for rank and file. Is the model intended to fill a role where weapons or other parts are intended to be variable? Is it a model that ahs those options fixed? That impacts people's desire to have modular vs single components. To get worthwhile feedback I think you need to provide a bit more substance as to what the role and nature of the model will be.

It is very important to consider how people will be using these minis. I would use them in games of 40k or warpath. (They would be less useful to me in games of warmachine, as that is not scifi. Other skirmish games probably would not need so many cheap minis.) For the minis to be useful as 40k proxies, there needs to be enough different types of models to fill an army, or they need to have a common aesthetic with other miniatures that they can be fielded together. Thus you need your troopers, heavy weapons, assault units, etc. If you are lacking important types of units, then a force cannot be built from your figures, and other figures must be used. These other minis may look out of place with yours. An extreme example is that it would be strange to field a Tervigon with Veer Myn.

Thus, if I were you, I would start looking through GW codicies to see how many and what types of units you should produce. Space marine stand ins are popular, as are guard.

Modularity to me is not important. However, I do want a variety of sculpts.

I am most concerned with the sculpts. In this regard detail is important. However, the content of the sculpt is the most important thing. I would advise you to get a good sculptor, and do not approve the project until it is just the way you want it.