Monday 25 February 2008

Officer almost commissioned


Made some progress on the first officer this weekend, he's just about there now, one more session on the detail and he should be complete. Here's how he looks at present.


For interest I've also included a comparison photo of a casting of the fusilier alongside and RSM 95 Prussian Grenadier figure (Neither figure cleaned up in this photo). As you may recall at the start of the blog, I'm making figures which will hopefully fit in with this range and the likes of the Hinchliffe X-range AWI, figures which I use a lot and really love.

Now I'm certainly not claiming that my figures are as good as the one's which Steve produced, but I'm quite pleased with the end result, I think its a reasonably good fit in respect to heft and height.

I must confess in respect to the fusilier, that this is not a figure I have cast myself. Because I will require quite a lot of these particular figures (I use 40+ figure units) I decided it wasn't worthwhile drop casting them individually. Don't get me wrong, as I've already illustrated you could drop cast this figure, and if I wanted 40 or 50 of them only, that's exactly what I would do. However as I probably want several hundred, I've had the master figure used to make up a master figure mould, from which the figure in the photo was professionally cast. These metal master figures will then be used to make a production mould for a centrifuge based casting machine. In terms of cost, even doing it this way, assuming that you are going to get a few hundred cast, its very competitive with buying commercial figures.

Whilst this approach will be fine for the "high volume" figures, I think I'll stick to drop casting for the more specialist type figures.

Next time, hopefully finishing the officer and starting the next, probably a drummer.

5 comments:

Fitz-Badger said...

Looking good!
This gives you flexibility to supplement commercial minis with ones of your own for a unique army. Plus there's the satisfaction of making them yourself.
I have had a couple of my sculpts cast in metal and it's amazing and cool to see the results.

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

...I don't want to "diss" the RSM figure, because they're very elegant in their own right, but actually, I think your figure looks nicer... well done!

Snickering Corpses said...

He looks very nice. Hopefully the final castings should come out nearly as good, and I think you'll have a fine troop next to the RSM and Hinchliffe. I have a comparison photo including some of those X-Range Hinchliffe and some RSMs over on my Hesse-Engelburg blog.

Who do you use for your casting service?

Bluebear Jeff said...

He does indeed look like a fair fit with RSMs. Good show, sir. Good show.


-- Jeff

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