Hello, good evening and welcome....

[aidancampbell]

Stuart

whilst I'd be more than happy to work with a budget of £500/sculpt I'd wait and see what you think of the samples, as in the past other clients have been frightened by some of the high prices I first mention, then having seen samples decided they will be quite happy with what I consider middle of the road, I am a pefectionist who is never happy with any of my own work and few clients ever spend more than about £300 on a green of these sorts of sizes and I've many very happy customers

Let us know where you want the samples sending and I'l get them in the post.

Aidan

Aidan

[StuartMiles]

Ok, lets have a look.

Our main business address:

Smiles Dental Care
3 Beechcroft Road
Upper Stratton
Swindon, SN2 7RD.

Regards, Stuart

[aidancampbell]

Stuart,

sample figure castings gone in the post first thing this morning, they should be with you tomorrow Royal Mail permitting?

Once you've got something in your hands to look at we can probably have a more menaingful chat about how to proceed. Since you are seemingly new to the miniatures side of game production there are possibly aspects of final mass production that you have not considred that play a crucial role in what and how you can sculpt. It is relatively easy to start with existing art work, get a sculptor to reproduce a 3D version assuming you'll look into mass production later, only to find that when you do so the sculpt you have isn't suitable for the method of reproduction you have chosen.

If this isn't something you and your colleagues haven't given any thought to then I encourage you to do so as it is far more senisble for me as a sculptor to work backwards from the requirements of the manufacturer(s) you chose to use reproduce my designs than ever it is for me to simply start sculpting.

Aidan

[StuartMiles]

Ok, I understand that, we will have a chat about this.

[StuartMiles]

Hello Aiden, just got the Saturday post and had a look at the figures, it seems that it is going to be too expensive for us at this stage. Having looked at them, we would have to be looking at the quality of the Henry figure and our budget is the lower end.

I will keep your info as we expand, perhaps we can can do some business in the future.

Regards, Stuart.

[StuartMiles]

Aiden, just a though, would you consider undertaking the castings, if so I could discuss pricing with you.

[aidancampbell]

Stuart,

I could consider casting for you, but the reality is I make my living as a sculptor. Also a lot depends upon the orginal sculpt. If you are not so sure about the full technicalties of miniature figure production it is very easy to commission the wrong thing and spend a lot of money on sculpts that may ultimately end up being unsuitable for what you require. It is here that there is a big difference between paying a sensible price to a full time professional sculptor used to dealing with the requirements of commercial reproduction, and getting a cheap deal from a guy who sculpts a few figures in his free time who calls himself a professional because he has a web site and once sold a couple of figures on e-bay. The last thing you want is bad advice which leads to you spending lots of cash only to have the guy who has to reproduce the sculpt look at the greens, laugh and say “sorry mate, they might be beautiful but I can’t cast them!”

Aidan

[StuartMiles]

Very good advice, which we need to think hard about.
Could be there be an agreement that enable us to pay you some of the fee at a later date on sales, we are doing this with our artists.

[StuartMiles]

Aiden, does your sculptor fee include mould making for casting or is this separate and what is the cost ( rough idea ) to do this.

[aidancampbell]

Stuart, Simon, Chris,

Without wishing to appear rude, the questions you are asking all suggest you really are totally unfamiliar with all that is involved and all you are asking for.

To very briefly answer your questions cost for mould making vary a lot depending upon the estimated number of casting required. You could spend less than £50 on a mould to cast a few copies of multiple designs, you could spend several hundred setting up a mould to mass produce thousands of copies of a single design. We also need to differentiate between master moulds and production moulds.

In terms of royalty based payment I am willing to discuss such an option but it would need to be a financially attractive package and I’d need to see some sensible projections of estimated sales and some assurance of how I will be able to verify the number of sales you are making. (Maybe I could sculpt the figures in my free time for a reduced fee, retain the legal rights to them and sell small batches of castings to you at an inflated price as and when you need them?)

In the terms and conditions section of my web site I do say that if a commission enquiry requires a lot of upfront in depth research, discussion and/or advice I will have to charge a consultation fee even if ultimately it does not lead to any work. None of the recommendations, details or estimated costings I give come with any form of legally binding guarantee of accuracy but they will be a chance for you to pick my brains, make use of my years of experience and give you a good heads up on the things you may want to go away and verify for yourselves. We could initially say £100 to talk through all that is involved, if you ultimately decide that miniature figures are a more complicated and expensive area of gaming than you expected and want to walk away then it will have been a lot cheaper for you than learning the hard way. However, it’s in all our best interests for this to be successful as you’ve obviously invested a lot in this game, and it offers me the potential, if we can get this right, of further work in the future.

There will no doubt be lots of issues to deal with along the way, and you’ll no doubt have lots of questions for me but in order to decide how best to proceed (if at all) and provide you with any meaningful idea of costs we need to be addressing the following issues:

1) How many games/sets of figures you plan to sell in order to financially break even, and how much of the total revenue generated you would be willing to set aside to re-pay the production costs of making the figures (cost of green sculpts, master moulds, production moulds, castings etc.). I’m not trying to pry into your finances but I need to know what sort of scale of project we are talking about to anticipate which methods of mould making and casting are appropriate.

2) Artwork showing the figures you want along with the height and general proportions and construction of the finished sculpt (eg, single piece casting, 28mm to top of head with realistic proportions or multi part casting requiring assembly, 35mm to top of head in disproportionate cartoon style etc.)

3) Which reproduction methods are to be used to replicate the green sculpts, each has associated draw backs which imposes compromises on the sculpting. Trying to sculpt to suit multiple/all methods can impose so many compromises the end results could end up looking bland.

4) This is somewhat of a vague open ended area of discussion but I’d need your thoughts on where you draw the balance between issues such as production quality, mould durability, materials costs and ultimately the tolerable discard rate, off set against meeting the artistic/stylistic considerations of the original art work.

All the above governs how closely I can follow any original artwork and where we need to deviate, simplify or modify either the sculpts, or the business plan so as to generate a commercially reproducible, financially viable end result.

As I say the questions you are asking are all very open ended, so I really recommend we all sit down and I talk you through all you will have to deal with if entering into this line of business. I can’t quote exact statistics but an estimate would suggest that only 5% of figure business actually go on to survive and become profitable, and that the average venture loses about £2000 realising that they’ve approached things from completely the wrong point of view. There is a reason I make my living as a sculptor for other prospective manufacturers and don’t try to make my living as a manufacturer or retailer myself.


Cheers

Aidan Campbell