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alright so i've never liked the 'box' speeder, I use the OOP pewter ones. right now i have 4 and a 5th incomplete in my bitz box.

now I want to use the new scout speeder; but my OOP speeders are rare and not to cheep or easy to work with. I want to mold my speeder so I can make my own scout speeder with the same design and size. how coud I make a resin mold for it?

I'm only doing this for me. I love this model and want to keep my army consistent.

So what exactly are you looking to find here? Do you seek justification for your endeavor to illegally cast a GW model or tips on how to go about doing it?

why is it illegal? I'm not doing it for comercial resons.

He means what are you trying to ask with your post? It has no questions and nothing for anyone to comment on. So why are you here posting what you posted?

oh, I"m building a gw model so I don't have to 'pay' for it.

they no longer have the product in their inventory but I'm sure that its still copyrighted to the sculptor.

I'll talk to the MLGS and see. if I do decide to go forward with this I'll call gw. other wise i'll build my own and cast it.


what I was asking is how to make a resin mold for a pewter model. that way I could make my own scout speeder and cast it to make more for my army.

edit: if I made it out of green stuff bought from gw would that be legal?
what I was asking about to is how to make a resin mold for my OOP land speeder so I could work with the resin instead of the pewter to make a scout landspeeder and then make a mold of that and use it in my army.

wash-away wrote:why is it illegal? I'm not doing it for comercial resons.

Whether you sell them or not, you're still illegally duplicating a copyrighted miniature.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

wash-away wrote:why is it illegal? I'm not doing it for comercial resons.

Whether you sell them or not, you're still illegally duplicating a copyrighted miniature.

*puts foot in mouth* sorry, I'm still new at this. I remember one of my art teachers saying if its 40% diffrent from the original its no longer covered in copyright. and since I"d be sculpting scouts and making everything else except the speeder that it would be okay. I'm still learning how all this works I've never worked on this scale before so I don't know all the rules yet

Casting and the law can be tricky depending on which country you're doing it in. If your goal is to make a cast of an existing model with the intent to avoid purchasing figures from GW, then you run afoul of both math and copyright law.

The math part is that resin is usually expensive. So much so that you wind up not saving that much over a production figure sold by a retailer. This isn't always the case, but consider that you have to factor in the cost of making the mold, the resin used in the cast, and the shipping costs of the raw materials. This is the main reason I don't cast resin.

There are exceptions to copyright law in the US that would allow casting of GW models, but what you intend doesn't seem to fit the bill. Simply not intending to sell your casts usually isn't enough. However, an example of a legal cast (in the USA at least) would be taking a basic Space Marine legs from the sprue, modified them significantly (new pose, added iconography, frill, etc.) and casting a few dozen to scatter throughout your army. In this case the more modified the original, the safer you are with respect to the law. But even with this example, we get back to the math. Is it cost effective to use resin? Or would it be cheaper to just get the bits and do a bunch of conversions?

There's also the prospect of partial casts. I'll link a thread to show how this is done:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/212855.page

In this case, the cast is simply a tool to change the form of a GW model from standard plastic to green translucient plastic. Perfectly legal around these parts.

Hope this helps.

While I have no problem with the ethics of making a copy, it's not really worth it in this situation. The start up costs to make the required molds and castings could easily cost you $100. If all you want is one speeder you're better off hunting one down on eBay and just converting it.

Go search around Finescale Modeler's website: there was an article a year or two ago on home casting (along with a pretty good legal instruction on what to avoid so you don't get in trouble/violate copyright laws/hurt someone else).

It sounds like you're looking to cast parts from an existing model in order to better use it as conversion fodder for an already purchased older GW model. It's probably borderline in legal niceties, but a real lawyer will give you a better skinny.

Arstahd wrote:While I have no problem with the ethics of making a copy, it's not really worth it in this situation. The start up costs to make the required molds and castings could easily cost you $100. If all you want is one speeder you're better off hunting one down on eBay and just converting it.

no I want a fleet of these things. plus having resin 'stand ins' for my pewter speeders I can put them on the plastic base without it breaking.

... making a 100% copy is illegal ... how ever if you make your own (roughly the same shape) and copy that, then its not (as you own the copy right to that model ... though not the idea)... also once you've made your model i find liquid latex works nice for making molds

If it's roughly the same shape, i.e. easily recognisable then it's till an ilegal copy (back to the 40% thing). This also sort of comes under plaigarism (which is also illegal, although Universities tend to deal with it 'in house). PLaigarism is passing off someone else's work as your own. THIS DOES NOT HAVE TO BE INTENTIONAL. If you were making your own version then you would have to make it completly from scratch, otherwise there is evidence that you have copied the original (riders would not count - they are not a 'fixed' part of the model. Effectivly then, unless you are scratch building you are breaking the law. GW permits scratch building....so go with their own advice as they tend to be lienient. Where they will come down on you is if your intent is to substantially cut their evenue and it is worth them bringing a case against you, which they have done in the past to set an example and show that they will not tolerate. This is where casting is a bit risky. Basically if your casting your own model there's no problem, if your casting a gw (or other companies/persons) without written permission this is illegal. Anything in between is whatever you want if you can afford the best solicitors. Don't you love our legal system?