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 Artemis Black wrote:

These questions are not going to go away, we've passed the easy money stage of Kicksarter. If you aren't an established company then you are going to need the answers to these, and probably more, from this point onwards.

Exactly.

The "Golden Age of Kickstarter" is over in the sense that promises and concept art alone will be sufficient.

More information, planning and clarity up front are needed now, and will be a benefit to all involved.

Creator Eric J. Sexton 23 minutes ago
Hey Phil,
If we did injection moulds they would cost about $4000 per mold. When we first started building this campaign the numbers for the molds and manufacturing was flipped. The cost of the plastic was much lower and the molds were much higher. Now we are using a company that has a special process that does spin casting with their own custom material. The molds are crazy cheep but the cost per mini is a lot more expensive. We are giving you guys a good price by not taking as much profit as other companies expect to make per mini.

Latest Update - so this would seem to be either Trollcast, or (and I really hope that this isn't a remote possibility) Defiance trying to pass themselves off as a manufacturing company again.

richred_uk wrote:

 Vertrucio wrote:

Such as the conversation we're having now. Even if I hadn't stepped in to comment, the negative posts would have just kept piling up until the thread was a majority of them.

Which might suggest that this campaign has issues.

Here's an issue that's been bugging me since the start of this one. The sculptor is a guy called Alain Viesca - the blurb on the KS page says "Alain has already played a key role in several successful Kickstarters ..."

Now I've never heard of Alain Viesca, so I don't know whether the role he played in the other Kickstarters was to lead production, concept art, sculpting or what - and I don't know whether these Kickstarters were for music albums, technology etc. So I just took a little time to google him. He's a great artist - pen and ink, painting, comics etc.

Potential Red Flag for me - is he like the kid who designed the Torn Armor stuff - dabbling in 3D for the first time - designing miniatures that can't be cast? Dig a little further and find that this guy has sculpted a bunch of the Raging Heroes stuff - now it's not to my tastes, but it shows he has proper form, here's a name in this Kickstarter team that has worked successfully in the miniatures field - lots of people have liked his work.

Why keep that info hidden (I don't mean that maliciously) - I'd be shouting about it - "We've got this guy - you liked him on <these> GW proxies, you'll love him on <Our> GW proxies".

Do you see how criticism can be helpful? Do you understand that if lots of people think that you are doing it wrong, the odds are that you are doing it wrong?

Alain Viesca is a great 3d-sculptor in my opinion. He has done sculpts for the Modern Pinup Miniatures kickstarter:

grefven wrote:


Alain Viesca is a great 3d-sculptor in my opinion. He has done sculpts for the Modern Pinup Miniatures kickstarter:

See - that's really nice looking stuff (not my tastes, but obviously talented) - don't hide his light - shout about how great he is - bring in fans of his work.

There is only one US based manufacturer that can deliver "plastic " at this scale ( volume of product ) for that price.


And I think it is perfectly reasonable to look askance at these guys.

I am not one to attack new comer simply for the fact they are new comers but these guys really do not seem to have the first clue about table top gaming or minis outside what they have likely gleaned from searching Kickstarter. The ruler lying flat should have been the first clue and then the ruler stood with the inches side on to the minis should have been the confirmation. I am US based and even in my earliest days I knew that minis are measured in millimeters.

" What difference does it make whether or not they are minis lovers? "

Excellent question....... The difference it makes will only show itself when the going gets rough in the fulfillment of this kickstarter and the company's practices moving forward after the kickstarter closes.

For me failing the delivery of my first kickstarter was never an option. NO MATTER WHAT. That was because being a minis maker is what I WANT to do whether it is profitable or not ( Dameon can attest to my stubbornness on that regard. ). That means that even if it does not profit me to do so I will see the effort through to the end no matter what comes. It also means that when I plan a new project I am looking into the future well beyond the delivery of the kickstarter.

Trust me it is VERY important whether a project is run by an enthusiast or someone who simply sees some money to be made.

It is also a measure of whether or not the creator even knows what they are doing in planning the costing and production and delivery of the product.




Caveat Emptor should never be considered an insult.

richred_uk wrote:

Creator Eric J. Sexton 23 minutes ago
Hey Phil,
If we did injection moulds they would cost about $4000 per mold. When we first started building this campaign the numbers for the molds and manufacturing was flipped. The cost of the plastic was much lower and the molds were much higher. Now we are using a company that has a special process that does spin casting with their own custom material. The molds are crazy cheep but the cost per mini is a lot more expensive. We are giving you guys a good price by not taking as much profit as other companies expect to make per mini.

Latest Update - so this would seem to be either Trollcast, or (and I really hope that this isn't a remote possibility) Defiance trying to pass themselves off as a manufacturing company again.

Thank you for asking this, and getting clarity.

With the price they are giving, and their describing it as spincast, I agree it has to be Trollcast.

That said, Trollforged is really rolling now on delivering product- RBG's first campaign was finally finished, but along with that, Impact's latest small Kickstarter is going to ship two months early. Their own campaign is just waiting on Ed to finish the sculpts, which he is posting steady progress updates on (a new one came out just this morning, in fact).

So, that is a reasonable explanation of their cost structure, as Trollforged is miles cheaper than any other similar option. I would be more worried about the creators than the caster, in this case, although there is still quite a queue that Trollforged is working through, even if they are getting MUCH more efficient at it (again, referencing the recent Impact campaign which is shipping 2 months early).

Ok After reading the guy's blog it appears that he is a table top gamer from the way back....... I guess the ruler was honest flubbery. Odd but honest.

The next question would then be, could Trollforge get the figures cast in their current state, and how many pieces would we be looking at each figure being made out of?

Ed is a wizard at casting things- I got a bunch of horses from the RBG kickstarter which were cast with all 4 legs as a single piece! Granted, that did cause some bubble formation on the bellies... but it was amazing that he could cast them in a single piece.

So, again, at this point I'd be mostly worried about the creator... I don't think those somewhat chunky designs are going to be much of an issue at all in Trollcast. The only real problematic models I received in it (and soon I'll have received models in it from 4 different campaigns) were RBG's most delicate sculpts, and I think that was a lesson learned for all involved... like many "resin" models, super thin features just aren't a good idea in the material, and are more suited to metal casting. And Tre can sculpt amazing detail on a pinhead, so there's that

richred_uk wrote:

grefven wrote:


Alain Viesca is a great 3d-sculptor in my opinion. He has done sculpts for the Modern Pinup Miniatures kickstarter:

See - that's really nice looking stuff (not my tastes, but obviously talented) - don't hide his light - shout about how great he is - bring in fans of his work.

He's based out of Oklahoma City, not far from me. He's got some great art on his website as well.

http://alainviescaarts.com/HTML/ArtBio.html

He has the Pinup Zombie Hunter on his website and has it cut apart for casting; he looks like he knows his stuff to my inexpert eye.

Obviously, they can't advertise the exact kickstarters that this guy has worked on, that would entail getting permission from those companies etc. I'm hoping that since they have him on board now, they'll be showing some of the same type of stuff later on.

I've never seen any kickstarter start off with their entire line represented by 3d sculpts etc.

I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until the evil "restic" came around. Bummer.

Trollcast isn't 'restic' though - is it?

From what I've seen of the material - in person no less - it can be 'trusted'.

 Alpharius wrote:
Trollcast isn't 'restic' though - is it?

From what I've seen of the material - in person no less - it can be 'trusted'.

Oh, ok then. What is it then? It's resin?

Just to be clear, spincast resin is not PVC, which is what is usually called "restic". It really is it's own animal. I'm going to make a descriptive article up on all the different plastics used in wargaming models soon so that we can just point to it, as it's coming up more and more now! Which I think is a good thing as gamers become more informed about the various options available

Spincast resin tends to hold better detail than PVC (similar to hand cast polyurethane resin made from a flexible silicone mold, although nothing really matches that). It also is not prone to the same terrible quality issues that PVC has, although it does have it's own separate issues with quality- particularly with bubbles. It seems to be a real art and Trollforged is the only company I know of which is successfully spincasting wargaming models at the moment.

Quoting from another thread where this was discussed, here are the 3 "normal" plastic options, which are described in the quote below. The other two most common options are metal and spincast resin. I'll add detail on spincast resin after the quoted text here:

Wehrkind wrote:Resin : The resin we think of when we think of high end boutique miniatures. Hand cast, hard to do in very large volume. Holds detail very well, and is easy to clean up. Also called Urethane Resin, or Epoxy Resin, which seem to be subsets. Urethane (poly or otherwise) are the normal sorts you see. Material properties can vary a good bit, with Ramshackle using a somewhat brittle resin that is stinky while other brands (and many home done models) use a less brittle and not so stinky resin.

PVC (poly vinyl chloride) Same sort of stuff they use in making pipes. Privateer Press, Mantic and others use this material as it is much cheaper to make the molds compared to HIPS, but can be mass produced better compared to resin. Downsides are that it tends not to hold sharp detail well, and filing/cleaning is a pain due to the toughness of the material. Goes by the other names of "restic" and "plastic". Huge range of variability in the final product due to huge range of variability in material properties.

HIPS (High Impact Polystyrene) The kind of plastic used in modeling kits, GW and Wargames Factory models. Usually considered the gold standard for mass production, as details can be very fine and parts fitted together very cleanly, as well as being easy to clean up on the user's end. Plastic glue can be used instead of super glue to weld pieces together. Downsides on the producer's side is that the mold tooling is very expensive, and you cannot have undercuts.

Spincast resin is closest in results to "resin casting" (i.e. hand cast resin, using a flexible silicone mold and making casts by pouring in polyurethane). It suffers similar defects (prone to air bubbles, which are sometimes removed from hand cast resin by placing the silicone mold in a vacuum pressure pot while the casts cure). Both are also brittle and can have difficulty with really thin features.

They both have the same benefits too, though, of giving really great detail and making undecuts less of a drastic issue due to the molds being somewhat flexible.

Spincast resin is basically "mass producing" in a similar material. So, you won't have the same insane quality that some resin casters achieve, but you will have excellent quality if you can make sure the defects are kept to a minimum.

Thanks for the info RTides. I've a little experience with GW resin, I have a Barracuda, and didn't really enjoy working with it too much. Is this stuff any different?

The main issue with Trollcast, that is almost certainly the cause of those variable results I mentioned earlier, is it 'seems' to have a high level of shrinkage.

That can cause serious issues with thin parts and is the likeliest cause of past problems.

Whether or not it's still an issue I don't know, but I would guess it always will be as a side effact of the material itself. It can obviously be planned for but it's not an easy job as shrinkage is one of those things that isn't always uniform.

No idea whether it'll affect this particular Kickstarter, my guess is it won't be an issue as i still don't believe this will fund.

Eeeeh, I remember when all this were lead. Then pewter...

So wait... They said polystyrene, now it's troll cast?

WTF will it be tomorrow?

I think they simply made a misleading comment because trollcast contains polystyrene. As I mentioned earlier, no one at Trollforged calls it that- they specifically mention that it is not that.

Also, Trollforged hasn't confirmed they're being listed as the caster, it's just that they're the only US-based company successfully doing spincast resin, so you can arrive at them by simple process of elimination!

Artemis- when I make the article on various materials, I'll put up some pictures of the items I have from 4 different campaigns made in trollcast. From what I know, shrinkage is not necessarily more of an issue than it is in other materials. The main issue is quality of the production, as it's quite an art, and keeping out air bubbles.

My folks are in town this weekend but I'll try to have the article up by late next week

Agnosto- I've received a lot of hand cast resin from Wehrkind, who does casting in his basement and did production for On The Lamb Games for some time. I also have resin from Forgeworld and other small miniatures companies (although "finecast" from GW is my least favorite resin, by far). I would say working with the spincast resin material is quite a similar experience to working with normal resin models. If you don't enjoy working with resin models, you might not enjoy working with spincast resin either, since as I mentioned it has a lot of the same benefits and drawbacks, and is basically just a more mass produced version of "resin".

 Cyporiean wrote:
So wait... They said polystyrene, now it's troll cast?

WTF will it be tomorrow?

Polygons.

That's the ultimate objective for them it seems.

 RiTides wrote:
I think they simply made a misleading comment because trollcast contains polystyrene. As I mentioned earlier, no one at Trollforged calls it that- they specifically mention that it is not that.

Also, Trollforged hasn't confirmed they're being listed as the caster, it's just that they're the only US-based company successfully doing spincast resin, so you can arrive at them by simple process of elimination!

Artemis- when I make the article on various materials, I'll put up some pictures of the items I have from 4 different campaigns made in trollcast. From what I know, shrinkage is not necessarily more of an issue than it is in other materials. The main issue is quality of the production, as it's quite an art, and keeping out air bubbles.

I'm not privy to the internals of Ed's process but judging by what I've seen, shrinkage is, or at least was, an issue. As you can see the quality remains, but that is definitely a fair level of shrinkage beyond what I'd expect of metal casting.

It's also a very fitting explanation for what happened with other kickstarter's items where thinly sculpted parts came out see through or with holes in even, not air bubbles, just holes because the material was thin and brittle.

Note this isn't an insult, as we've both said, Impact have done well via Trollcast but they don't do too many thin parts and they have now had enough exposure to the material and the process that if they do want a thin part and shrinkage is still an issue they can work around it on purpose.

I'm sure this will become more relevant in the futrue as a better project will go the Trollcast route

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:




Why do you say things to make me sad.

Somehow a company that ONLY produces minis based games (Soda Pop in their new legal incarnation of Ninja Division) and a 30+ veteran RPG company (Palladium) thought that the breakdown of the render done by the Chinese factory engineer was "almost perfect" as shown below. Admittedly the model and parts are 3d printed and not plastic as it is a prototype but the fact that they opted for $10 white sturdy mediocre quality 3d printing is additionally telling. They've since changed the design somewhat in regards to the seams across the front along with the part count (the third pic) so I can confidently say that the design is of the same quality now as 1980's/1990's gashapon or at best 1/200 kits... which is hardly a ringing endorsement in 2014.




I think folks are, as Alph said, more critical (in terms of actually looking at details and asking "why?"... not the popular term now using it as a synonym for negative) of kickstarters due to both the rare high profile complete failures and the much more frequent letdown. It is a bit of a perfect storm when you get talented and well meaning creators working with practical shortest path is a straight line production engineers in the same bucket with no one who has a hand in both industries let alone a focus on what the customer wants. This guy may have been a wargamer back in the day from the posts above but the amount of begging and facepalming just to get a size shot is borderline ridiculous from reading this thread considering it should have been there on day one. Then add in the perplexing refusal to mention his production company (is it confirmed or denied to be Defiance?) along with comparison shots next to other minis (hell... just put in a damn huge disclaimer on every comparison photo)... is just double odd. Tre has made metal minis (I bought stuff from him when he only had a dozen or so!) and he still had alot of growing pains using an established minis producer for a different medium. I think that the amount of practical effort put into the initial kickstarter is a good indicator of the behind the scenes effort beyond just artistic endeavors put into making a physical product.

yeh there is definitely shrinkage in TrollCast.

TC is a great product and Ed and crew have CERTAINLY had a lot of practice to develop their system. I do not doubt they can deliver. It did nto work for me but I am sure that by now they have all the bugs figured out and it will work better from here on.

Hey Tre--

How "firm" is Trollcast?

Artemis- Good find, and I think you're right, although that is an early trial so as you say I think it might have improved on that front.

Tre- Great to hear you say that

Cincy- Regarding firmness, Ed actually shared that he has been experimenting with making the mix slightly more flexible (and thus less brittle). Wish I could share what he showed but let me just say that looked very promising as brittleness on thin parts was one of the main drawbacks I had observed of it.

I don't want to take this thread out of topic, but as the discussion is touching on the material it will be cast it, I figure I can at least post my opinion about TrollCast (my experience is from RBGs KS). The material itself can be of a high standard, in my opinion, if the cast comes out clean. So if they actually will get Trollforge to cast it, I wouldn't personally be worried about the quality. Of course, as Tre mentioned, it will have to be used with the right sculpts, though.

 Artemis Black wrote:
... shows that this kickstarter has put aside $9680 for manufacturing. That is not a reasonable costing even for China, and as they have a big 'Made in the USA' stamp on their page it's considerably less reasonable. At that point I think it's totally fine to start questioning then on it. Again, not necessarily to name their partner as 'We aready have $100000 from outside investment, this is just the rest we need' is an acceptable answer imo.

What are you basing your figures on that determines "not a reasonable costing even for China"? Are we talking about injection molding or spin cast. They aren't going to be injected molded from the responses and what I have seen, so that means they will be getting them spin cast.

They estimated $4520 for molds and $9680 for manufacturing but since these would be done by the same company, the correct total amount is actually $14,200 which is fairly accurate.

It is roughly $80-300 for a 9"-12" mold. These would most likely want to be done in a 12" mold. Given the many duplicated pieces a 12" would make more sense. They could put roughly 16-24 miniatures on one mold disc. The mold can usually survive for 400-450 spins for metal and 200-250 spins for resin before needing to create a new one.

It is about $8 a spin for a 12" mold. If there are 20 miniatures in a mold, then for a 400 spins ($3200) and create create 8000 miniatures. Looking at a snapshot of the Kickstarter with the current backing they need to create 6188 miniatures to fulfill that. Since that is only about 25% of their funding, they would need at least 24,752 miniatures to fulfill their $40,000 fund goal. With the budget outlined they can create over 24,000 miniatures. Granted I'm basing it off the sample given of current backers, that could easily change. Most of the pieces are human except for a small amount of Kelk, the rest don't unlock until stretch goals in which case their estimates scale up appropriately. They also gave themselves leeway for damages, which means part of the miniatures manufactured are coming from the $2480 along with the $4920 for shipping, that is essentially their buffer.

Now if they were doing the miniatures themselves they can drop costs more but it has a larger start-up as they have to purchase the equipment and training. Ultimately if they want to continue to do miniatures at affordable prices they will need to look at doing it themselves at some point. Depending on the labor costs you can cut manufacturing costs down greatly... that was what Reaper did in the beginning.

To drag it back no topic, these are quite small aren't they? It's difficult with the imperial measurements and the big bases but they look 30mm tall at best, to top of head. Space Marines are around 33 to top of head?

Has anyone asked Ed if he can confirm or deny TF's involvement?

Because this stinks of Tony Reidy's style of obfuscation.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Has anyone asked Ed if he can confirm or deny TF's involvement?

Because this stinks of Tony Reidy's style of obfuscation.

Someone asked them directly on the KS...

Aaron Haney about 3 hours ago

@Eric so is this 75D Polyurethane vice polystyrene? Also, is Defiance games or any portion of Defiance games involved in this Kickstarter? Thanks.

How does the actual Trollforged stuff feel? I have some of Defiances horrid Trollforged Germans and the material is just weird feeling. I'm sure that their mixture was off, but the material has a strange, slimy feeling (even after being submerged in Simple Green and washed repeatedly) and super glue never wanted to adhere to it. I can also see what you mean about the air bubbles and holes appearing in thin parts. Those issues were very prevalent on the Defiance figures.