Re: Forge World V’s other Resin Producing Companies

Posted by MortiS-the-Lost on Jan 07, 2010; 4:01pm
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/Forge-World-V-s-other-Resin-Producing-Companies-tp3617304p4267159.html

I first wrote this article to directly compare FW’s prices with those of other companies producing similar products in the same martial (Resin) and thus only compared them to other resin products. But despite this pretty direct comparison at lot of people still seem to be under the impression that that resin-casting is some how an expensive process.

What I’m going to do now is site 3 examples of why this is really not the case

First of all, have a look round the Grendel Products on the Scotiagrendel website.
http://www.scotiagrendel.com/Products/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2
Grendel have been making both Fantasy and Sci-fi resin since at least the late 80’s (and maybe even earlier) you can spot a lot of their products in old gaming magazines. Most of their sets, even the fairly large ones, cost less than £15 (bear in mind your hard pushed to find anything under £15 from FW) and a lot their sets are around the £6 mark. Also they very high quality pieces (I own quite a lot of their products and will eventually post some pictures) and the level of detail is brilliant (almost surprising considering how old their product line are). Unfortunately Grendel is rather let down by the quality of pictures on their website, but don’t knock Grendel products until you’ve really seen some, in fact I dare everyone here on tLatD to order one of their sets (their cheap, what do you have to loose?).

Still convinced resin is expensive to produce? Go into your local nik-nac store, Gift/Souvenir Shop or anywhere that you find cheap ornaments of wizards and dragons and the like (at lot of these seem to turn up in teenage girls bedrooms). Take note of the prices and the level of detail (also take into account the cost of the numerous glass orbs hot-glued to them).  

And finally some text stolen from the Eolith Miniatures website, where Steve Buddle explains that he now produces resin miniatures because it costs him less and is higher quality.

www.eolithminiatures.com wrote

Resin... why resin?

Well, there was the initial reason that it suited my business model better than metal but resin is awesome stuff for minis.

I love the lack of shrinkage. When you cast in metal the figure shrinks and flattens slightly and can end up not really looking quite as the sculptor intended. Resin castings are as close to the original sculpt as you can realistically get. And that means that multipart figs tend to fit together better.

Surface. I love that you have the lovely smooth surface on resin rather than the often rough quality on metal, particularly on larger pieces (my 54mm Dracula would have been nowhere near as nice in metal).

Weight. It weighs very little. Now I know some people like the weighty feel of metal but that can be aproximated by adding a coin or similar under the base. The upsides to the lack of weight are that I can ship less expensively and, from a modelling perspective, multipart figs require less pinning.

Ahhh resin. I genuinely believe it's the best choice for single miniatures as I sell...

I'll give metal the benefit of the doubt for producing units and armies though it's got a bit too expensive to be a bargain...

... and the setup costs for plastic are enormous.