Zombies, 28/15mm roads and buildings

I have decided to release the Roads and Hospital PDF in 15mm scale. I know most of my followers work with 28mm, but as 15mm is also very popular it makes sense to do this.

Converting them to 15mm is not as simple as it sounds. For the roads I have to chop them up and get rid of the "raised paths" because in 15mm it would be almost pointless. So the roads will become flat for 15mm. Each section will be sized to 3.5", but to save space I will attach 3 sections together to fill up the page as shown below. Two "straight" roads. both contain 3 sections each.

 

Converting the hospital is a little easier, but still not easy. Whilst I can easily reduce the size of the images (using the PDF files as the originals were lost... see earlier posts), I then have to measure everything, work out new wall section sizes and so forth. I'm guessing I would have to use some 2 or 3 mm card as 5mm would be too think, like a 2 foot wall or something!

 

So yeah... in summary, 15mm buildings/roads are coming soon :)

 

Supermarket Zombies and New Hospital undercarriages

The Supermarket zombies have arrived. I have almost finished bagging them up, but they won't be on sale until after Crusade. I have a LOT of stuff to get ready in time for the show, so it's better to release them afterwards when I'm hopefully not as busy. Also the new hospital bed undercarriages will be sold at Crusade and there after. So the old carriages will no longer be sold, and therefore the price increase will occur at crusade and thereafter.

 

Bad News...

The mould containing the Grekwood Sculpt, Sci fi alien, Hammerman, and the Dalek Warrior has had some problems. Hammerman and the Dalek Warrior seem to have broke in the mould *sad face*. As far as I am aware the Grekwood sculpt and sci fi alien are fine though, so that's something.

 

So what's going to happen?? I have a metal version of each figure which includes the cracks/dents where the green broke. I will go over the two which broke, and alter/fix them. It shouldn't be too big of a problem. I will then send them all back and get a new mould made. So fingers crossed it'll work then.

 

So yeah... bit of bad news, but nothing that can't be fixed. It does mean they will be delayed, but they WILL be available eventually.

 

Snow Flock

To end on something fun... I will be stocking snow!! The flock... not the real stuff. It'll sell for £3.75 per pot as it is from the "Battlefields" range, and will therefore be in that section of the website. Here's a quick pic:

 

 

 

 

 

Coming up in 2013

Happy new year everyone!!! Ok, this is a very text-y blog, outlining a few of the things I have planned for the coming year. There is more planned but that'll be announced nearer the time when work begins on it. So for now, here are a few things to look forward to :)


1. Go to Crusade (not that type of crusade... it's a war game show in Cardiff).

2. Launch Supermarket zombies (They will launch at Crusade, and will be available on the website after that).

3. The NEW hospital bed undercarriages will also launch at crusade and will be available on the website with the beds thereafter. A price increase will occur, but it will still be cheaper than a figure.

To help with a comparrison of pricing the beds, heres the calculations:

Our figures sell for about £2.37 each (which is quite cheap-ish in the wargaming world), so for two figures it would cost £4.74 and for 4 it would cost £9.50.

Hospital beds are sold in packs of 2, and currently sell for £2.75 per pack. So this works out at £1.99 cheaper than 2 figures. Also, keep in mind each bed has 2 parts, so you're actually getting 4 parts and not 2.

Each undercarriage (in metal) weighs the same as an average figure. If we sold them for the same price, we would therefore have to sell them for £4.74 (2 x £2.37) and then add the price of the bed part on top of that price.

So per pack, they would cost around £5-6 per pack of hospital beds/carriages.

So back to my main point; Currently (old carriages) sell in a pack for £2.75 (which gets cheaper as the deals get bigger). Which is WELL below the £6. So as they are now costing more to produce, I will have to increase the price. I will most likely make the packs £3.50 which will decrease with the more you buy.

I hope you understand, as I can't make them any cheaper without making a huge loss (which would be bad!)

4. A Supermarket/ local store PDF. Made so you can make it as big or small as you like, with all the extra trade rooms (bakery, butchers etc).

5. Hospital Expansion Pack

Bad news here... I have lost all the files due to a corrupt hard disk. They are the original files that I used to create the hospital. All the colour wards I did have been lost, and the expansion stuff. So I need to replicate everything (rebuild almost from scratch). At least I still have the PDF files for reference which will speed things up immensely. But not to worry, it can be done! (positive thinking and all).

6. Another batch of figures will be started this month. They will not be zombies, well, kinda but not. I plan to do a range of minis, but some of them will be zombie-ish (more undead...same thing?!). More like a walking dead/zombie army (with weapons). So I guess they could be used for zombie games if you wanted to, but they are mainly a walking dead army who are able to fight.

7. More roads! Yes there are more. It's all part of making it super customisable, and you only have to buy the sections you want :)


Ok finally... personal news. Kate (the misses) went into hospital on the 27th of December, but she came home yesterday. She has a hole in her intestine (I know how that feels, I had two back in 2005!). She needs it stitched up, which is scheduled for later this month. She feels fine, which is the main thing, and it'll all be sorted soon. Until then, plenty of rest!

Righty oh then, that's all for now.

Happy new year once again to everyone, and here's to 2013 :)

Roads PDF

First off I'd like to thank and welcome all the new people who have start following my blog. I hope you will find it plenty of interest here in the future :)


PDF Roads
Later today I will be uploading the "residential roads" PDF download to the website. They will cost £1.50 to buy. The PDF will consist of 6 sections: straight main road, side straight road, T junction, Cross-roads, corner and dead end (everything in the photo). In the documentation I have explained how to convert them so they can be either "flat" or the pavemens raised to a different thickness. It also explains how to fix everything up.


We have also created a couple of "place fillers" to be placed between the road sections to help bring them up to the same level as the pavements, and to fill in any gaps around buildings and so forth. They are there to help with the appearance of the playing board instead of having a bare table, and a cheaper alternative to buying grass mats and all that (also, they are 6 x 6 inch squares). They include: Grass, Mud, paving area, smaller paving stone area, and finally a some tiny stones, so possible could be used as cobblestones and finally a tarmac area.

The below image shows a corner of the full piece. I didn't want to post the "full" piece as people can just print it from the photo. So I cropped them all to show part of it. So the selection is below. They will also be £1.50 (I think... need to check up on that).

Ok, so hopefully the roads will be online later tonight, and the "filler" things will be online some time during the week. I just need to finalise a few things.

Hospital Beds
These have proved to be extremely popular. However, as we are casting more and more, the undercarriage is causing problems with casting (wheels not coming out right and so forth). We are throwing away about half of what we cast. So after a LOT of calculations and thinking, I have decided to redesign the undercarriage, and get them cast in metal. This is a more expensive option, but we are currently getting a lot of miss-casts, so it's very time wasting. Therefore, getting them made in metal will free up our time for other things, and also, we will get a 100% casting result.

As I am redesigning them, I can add a bit more detail and change the design slightly  as a casting machine will pick it up better than hand casting. It also means I will need to increase the cost of each pack by a little bit. No much though, so they will still be relatively cheap to buy.

Anyway, I think that's it for now, So keep an eye out for those roads! We are planning to produce a few varieties, so stay tuned!

Cheers!

PDF Hospital Building, Zombies, and Armless Beings

Yesterday I went to my parents house to set up the single story, two ward hospital. It went pretty well. We set up the table with a grass mat, then placed the hospital down, and placed some trees around the perimeter. There was a gap at the edge of the table, so we placed some buildings at the end of the table to make it look like the edge of a town.

So here's a photo of the end product:

I think it turned out really well. We used some resin roads which my dad made a long time ago for a war game with my brother Gareth a.k.a Grekwood. 

Here's a view of the inside. We set up some hospital beds inside, along with some doctors and nurses, but we didn't have any normal doctors or nurses, so they are all zombies... but they aren't meant to be!! That'll be saved for the derelict version (post apocalyptic version) to come at a later date!

Finally I shall end with a photo of  how the table as a whole looked. We  arranged the trees in a way so that they were all in frame. We thought there was no point filling the whole table if it wasn't going to be in the photo. So that explains the weird arrangement of trees below!

I will finalise things today and the PDF file will be uploaded (hopefully) tomorrow or the over the weekend. I'll update the blog/Facebook when this is done!

Oh and here's an image of the Armless Beings now they are all painted :)

Cheers for looking, all comments are welcome as always!

Hospital PDF Coming Next Week!!

I have been working extremely hard to get the documentation for the PDF Hospital finished. It's almost there.

Below is a screen show (from MS Word) which shows the documentation/instructions. It is about 23 pages long. I know this probably sounds crazy, but I made it as detailed as possible as not all customers have English as their first language. Therefore there are step by step photographs as well as a description.

It is quite a big build (even though it is a small hospital... I plan to bring out expansion packs/apocalyptic versions). It tells you how to build two full wards, two hallway end pieces, a center entrance piece, and finally some entrance steps, not to forget all the different roofing pieces to go with it. Remember, you don't have to print it out as the images can be zoomed in on when on a computer!

I am in the process of designing some signs which will be on a separate page for people to cut out and stick where they want. I want them separate so when they are glued in place, they can be stuck to the wall however you want, for example: at an angle, with an edge curled up and so forth. It's a bit of personalisation. I also have multiple door signs, so people can choose if they want one room to be a storage room or a kitchen or even a staff room or office.

I think on Wednesday I will be heading to my parents to photograph the 2 ward hospital with some proper scenery. We opened up a few bags of trees (from our tree range here: Grek Trees), so we can make a bit of a woods in the background on the image. Once this has been done, I should be ready to upload it to the internet! I have been advised that for this size and complexity, I should charge about £4, but it will be postage free of course.


We are currently in the process of casting some more hospital beds as we have almost run out. I'm also trying to promote the page on Facebook as much as I can, so if you are on Facebook, remember to "like" and share it to anyone who may be interested.

Cheers, and have a great day!