Update!

I'll split this blog into two sections, one with things concerning Grekwood Miniatures, and the other for some more personal stuff!

Grekwood Minis!
The hospital beds went on sale a week ago and have had decent success so far, so thank you to all those who have bought some! We cast a few more as stocks were going down, so hopefully we have enough for now.

I plan to continue work on the hospital building over the next few weeks and get that up on the internet at some point as a PDF download. I have started work on my next batch of 16 zombies *insert zombie sound here*. Once again I will be keeping the gender mix to 50/50 with 8 females and 8 males. Most of you know that they will be supermarket based, and again split into 4 packs with a combo deal as always!

I have some rock bases, and some wood flooring bases, which I might as well pop on the website too sometime. Also, hopefully the production lot of figures will arrive soon. I might have to ask about them...

In personal news:
We have been looking at places to move to which has turned out to be a nightmare. We currently live with my parents in a large 4 bedroom house, so everything we are looking at is obviously going to be a lot smaller. So the hunt began...

Over the past two weeks, we arranged to see 4 places. This excludes a couple of places we called up about and they never got back to us.

The first place we saw was nice, but a bit small. The second was larger (from photos) and in a different village, but on the day of the appointment (before the appointment) we had a phone call saying "it's now gone". Third place we went to see we waited for 15-20 minute outside the apartment, and the estate agent never showed up. We called them and they said they can't get hold of anyone in the area. So we decided against the flat because the service was poor. Fourth place; we made an appointment to see a house last Wednesday or Tuesday. Yesterday we had a phone call saying "sorry it's gone". I mean what the hell?!

We asked for an earlier appointment, made it very clear we were interested, and suddenly it just goes before we were even able to have our appointment. It's just rude and wrong to say no one is seeing it until Monday, and then offer it to someone else before we have had our scheduled appointment.

So pretty much all of the places we have looked at have gone apart from the first place we saw.  So we are thinking about moving into that flat... I mean apartment... Don't get me wrong, it's small (might struggle to get a wardrobe in the main bedroom) but nicely decorated inside. Wood flooring throughout, a bathroom and an en-suite. 2 bedrooms and a open plan living space/kitchen.  It just means we'll have to plan wisely and only buy furniture we really need and not just want.

At least this way it gets us onto the "rent market" ladder, and we might stand a better chance at getting another place as we are already in one. Estate agents keep asking "how are you going to pay for it". So by being in a rented place at least they will be able to see we can pay for it no problem.

IF we do move into this flat, it will most likely be short term until something bigger pops up that we like. Who knows, we might move in and actually love the size and not want to move!

Anyway, sorry for the rant!!

Cheers for reading!

Hospital Beds - Now on Sale!!

Short blog this time just to let you know that the hospital beds are finally on sale now, so check out the website: http://www.grekwoodminiatures.co.uk/HospitalBeds.php

Here's a photo of some packaged up beds:

Reminder, contact me for postage if you are outside of the UK. I can't stress that enough as normal postage doesn't always cover countries outside of the UK.

Also, once again, if you want the normal zombie nurses and want to save on postage, then please wait until next week as that is when I should hopefully have the zombies for sale.

If you know of anyone who might like these, whether on forums/facebook or whatever, please post a link to them :)

Cheers to everyone who has commented and been patient the past month or so. It's been a while getting there, but I finally did it!

Until the next blog...cheerio!

Painted 28mm Hospital Beds

I finished painting the beds yesterday. I admit they are not painted to best of standards, but as they are more war gaming pieces rather than "figures" I don't think it matters as much. You can kinda get the idea of what they are meant to look like though, which is the main thing! So here they are set out into their 8 different packs:

Below are he 4 empty bed packs. They are pretty self explanatory.. You can't zoom in though sorry! I uploaded the wrong images, and it took ages to arrange them (it was jumping all over the place!)

Below are the 2 packs which have alive patients in them. The male pack contains one guy sitting up holding a glass, whilst the other lays down with a sick pan thing, because he's just not feeling too good. Female pack has a female sitting up with a bed pan on her bed, and one laying down..maybe she is tired?

Below are the two "zombified" eaten people. And their corpse counterpart before they spring back to life!

These will hopefully be ready for sale on the website early next week!

IMPORTANT: The "normal" zombie nurses will most likely be available the week after (if everything goes according to plan), therefore if you would like both the hospital beds AND the nurses (and would like to save on postage) it is best to wait until the nurses are available. That way you save some postage..

If you plan to wait for the nurses, you can still let us know exactly what you would like to order (bed wise), and we will put it aside for you until the nurses come into stock and you are ready to make your order :)

ALSO... it is very important that if you live outside of the UK, contact me (through the website) with your order so I can calculate the correct postage, otherwise I cannot send it to you using the normal postage as that only applies to the UK.

28mm Zombie Hospital beds - almost ready for sale...

I have some news which I think some of you might be glad to FINALLY hear. The hospital beds will be ready for sale in the next week or two (hopefully). We have cast loads so far, so many that the moulds have started to split (literally!).

Because of the shape of the beds, the moulds require bending quite a bit to get the beds out of the mould. So slowly little bits start breaking off in the mould. Luckily we have managed to get all those beds in the photo out first (see photo).

Click to ZOOOOM

So currently there is a limited availability, but we are going to remake the moulds so we can make more. I am probably going to do some work to the originals to make them pop out of the mould easier (to make it last longer). Nothing visual will change, it's all "behind the scenes" type work which won't make a difference to the actual look of the beds.

We plan to spray them with a white primer (nothing definite yet), because they just look better when they are white (also it'll make painting a lot easier as paint doesn't stick too well to the bare resin). So we thought we'd help everyone out a bit more. Plus white helps show up the detail far more.

Progress on the hospital building has slowed down currently as I am focussing on getting the beds ready for sale as it's been a while since I actually added new stuff to the website...gaahhhhhh...

I think that's it for now... so until next time, all comments are welcome as always! Thanks for reading :)

28mm Hospital Ward Complete!

This is the 3rd prototype, but I think it is the final one. I made the room at the back wider for a couple of reasons: Figures on a 25mm base take up a floor area of 5ft x 5ft, rather than what a real human takes up, about 2ft x 1ft. So a room scale room at 9ft x 9ft can only fit one figure in, whereas in real life it can fit quite a few people. So this was my first problem to overcome. I had to make some of the rooms (day room area/storage room and toilet) a lot larger to fit figures in. So, for example, the storage room is double the size of what it should be to compensate for bases. So it's no longer "true" scale, but it is visually better, and more playable for a game. Ok, now the fun part, here's some piccys!




Overall view of one ward. Notice the back part has been made bigger because of the reasons started above. It is actually more like the shape of the hospital I am basing it on (Llandough Hospital).

Bigger windows in the day room, with an emergency exit in the middle image.

I also created wall corner pieces to cover up joins and awkward corners. It helps make it look more detailed. It's a pain to cut out though, well, more boring that anything lol








Photo 3: So "cool" angle shots... I mean "artistic" shots :P Pretty much jst showing the basic layout. A front desk will be pt where the black figure is. The the small room will have a shower and a toilet/sink in it. There will be enough room to fit a figure, I mean you don't get people sharing toilets!






A closer view of the day room area. The large carpeted area is the day room. It'll have a couple of sofas and a tv in it. The room where banana man is in will be a storage room. I'll be making cupboard out of resin to fit in this room. Finally the small room is a toilet. Big enough to fit one figure in. Again, we don't share toilets!




Another angle to show the emergency fire exit door (with signs!). As the wards will be upstairs, I plan to make a little staircase to go up to them.

Finally a birds eye view of the ward... just because!









Something a bit different. This is the floor plan idea that I have come up with and I am building. The wards will be on the 1st floor (2nd floor depending where you live.) The ground floor (or first floor) will have the entrance area, x-ray dept, outpatients and so forth. It is designed so that the building can be as many levels as you like :)



Ok that's it for now. I should get back to design work or building or something...

Cheers again for any comments and for reading!

A Bit Of Everything

Hello!

I would like to start by saying hello and thank you to those who have recently started to "follow" me.

Zombie Hospital

I have been busy all day with the hospital building. I have been taking photos of each stage and writing a documentation explaining how to put it all together. Once finished, I plan to put it on the website as a PDF download which people will be able to purchase. I thought I may as well as you never know who might want it. I have created a number of floor/ward colours, such as light blue, green, red, pink, and tomorrow I will probably make a yellow and dark blue ward. Each floor is checkered with the ward colour and white tiles just to make them different.

Once the wards are complete I will start work on a hallway, well, multiple hallways, depending on how I want to lay out the hospital wards.

Latest Releases

I am currently awaiting a parcel for the new zombie nurses/mutants/demons. I'm not 100% sure whether this is just the masters, or the production figures as well. I hope it's both as I really want to start selling them. I originally wanted to put them on the website near the end of June/begining of July, but there were a few casting delays, but I have been informed I should have them early next week. So fingers crossed for that!

As soon as I recieve them I'll update the blog for people who are interested in them.

Hospital Beds

The new resin seems to have a better viscosity, but it sets pretty fast which is a bit of a problem. Because it sets fast, bubbles are difficult to get rid of as it becomes thick quickly..soooooo... We have an idea; building up the moulds in layers rather than in one go. The idea is to pour a small amount of resin into the moulds, poke it into place to get the detail, and when it is dry, top it up with more resin. It's a plan which I hope works. 

If this fails, then what I might do is touch them up with some putty (the bubbles are so tiny it's crazy), and sell them that way. Once painted you wont know it's there. So that's an option, what do you think?

We'll keep trying, but that is a last resort...

Final thought...

Hopefully over the weekend I will post a blog which shows the hospital coming together! I decided to open up a bag of 50 trees (Tree link!) to decorate around the hospital when done. I am making a few alterations, such as putting them on sturdier bases, and spraying them with green sprays to give more variety :) 

Okie dokie, that's all for now. Cheers for reading if you got this far as it's bit of a long blog without pictures...

As always, comments etc are welcome. If you're new, check out our website. Things will be added next week :) Grekwood Miniatures Website

WIP Zombie Hospital!

Helloo :)Here's some WIP photos of the hospital I am making. It's a prototype so make sure I get sizes/proportions correct. It's all pretty much working so far.


I have started off by making a ward. It will have 8 beds in it, a front reception desk, and a bathroom/toilet in the main ward room. Towards the back I decided to put an "extension" on, which will include a "Day Room", storage room, and another toilet/shower room, as it's a ward, you need a few toilets... one may cause problems :P As it is a prototype, the "proper" ward will have long continuous sides of foam board, rather than a separate piece for the day room.


To the bottom right of the photo is a nice chocolate/caramel shortbread cake... I recommend them, they taste goooooood!

The photo to the right now has interior walls! It took ages to line all the windows up and repaint the walls.

I decided to put some beds in there to show scale along with a few "survivors" from various companies.

Photo to the left shows the exterior view. Larger windows in the day room. A smaller window can be seen at the far end where the toilet will be. We don't want people peeking whilst someone is in there!!!

A close up of the day room shows the banana man chatting up Ashley Campbell from Hasslefree (Nice one banana man!) The plain white wall is a WIP of where the bathroom/storage room will be.

FINALLY... I took ages colouring in all those blue squares(using Photoshop) ...totally forgetting that I could have just created a small area and copy and pasted it all!!!!! Oh well, it's done now and looks pretty decent. I plan to have about 6 wards. Each with it's own unique colour, so pink for maternity ward and other colours for random wards. Makes it a bit different rather than all the same.
The hospital will be quite large, but it's meant to be the main focus/scenario of a possible game, such as clear the hospital of all infected and save any survivors... so there may only be a small exterior surrounding it.

I plan to make it so that it will be a number of pieces which are connected together. So the hospital can either have loads of wards spread over one floor, or be a small but tall hospital or whatever I feel like at the time I play. What I mean is, it's not a set size, it can be altered, so it can be made bigger or smaller and any shape, that's the plan anyway if that makes any sense??

So that's all for now. Hopefully tomorrow we'll try casting the beds again so fingers crossed. Oh apparently the zombie nurses are being case today... so we'll see what happens with those. Fingers crossed they'll be ready soon (I know I keep saying that....).


Cheers for reading! Now I'm off to eat some fish and chips...yum! :)

1000 Page views!

It's been about 2 months now and I have hit the 1000 page views point. May saw about 200 views, and June had increased to roughly 800 views. So I just want to say a big thank you to all who are "following" me and to all those who leave comments!

New Resin: Hospital Beds
The new resin arrived today, nice and quick, so thank you to Tiranti! It apparently needs a warm room, so hopefully the sun will pop out at some point. I think we may leave it to the weekend to try and cast the hospital beds. We plan to use all the "miss-cast" beds for our own personal use. We can patch them up and they'll look normal then, but I can't go selling patched up stuff, so it's best not to waste them.

EDIT: I just took a look at where the main problems were occurring with the casting. So I've taken back the originals and I'll sort them out to make them better for casting. Hopefully it'll work and we'll have more luck next time! Which brings me onto the next point... 

Hospital Building
We have decided to build our own hospital. Yesterday we spent an hour or so working out floor plans and what to include inside it. We decided that there should be a basement with a morgue, laundry room, and a boiler room. Ground floor will have an outpatients area with offices and communal area. The the first and second floor will be wards. Today I have been using Photoshop to put together walls, create windows and design it all. Hopefully I can put together a mock-up of a ward to see how it all looks. We'll have to get more foam card at some point, I only have about an A3 sized bit left.

I shall leave you all with a bit of painting I did. I was bored the other day, so I decided to grab one of my figures (the ogre) and decided to paint him to practice my painting skills. He's a WIP, so I'll add to him at some point. I might sell him on eBay if he turns out ok.

Enjoy, and thank you once again. Oh still no word on those zombie nurses/mutants/demons. I shall contact the caster again today.

Finished! 28mm Hospital Furniture

I finally finished the hospital beds today..yay! It's taken a while but I finally got there. I've taken a few quick photos, so the quality isn't great, but you can get a rough idea.

The plan for tomorrow is to make moulds of everything and hopefully cast one batch to check that everything is ok. Sunday I will begin painting them, and hopefully early next week I'll be able to post a photo of how they all look painted. In the mean time, if they turn out ok, my dad (he's the one who does the resin casting) will cast loads ready for me to package up!

I have only made 4 base parts, so in the photo which shows everything (last photo), only 4 are set up correctly.

If you didn't see the prices/pack contents/discounts, please see my previous blog which I posted yesterday. Otherwise, cheers for looking and I hope you like them :)

Postage: For those who haven't been on my website, there is a red banner at the top which mentions that people from outside of the UK need to contact me for postage. This is because Paypal only lets me set postage rates for one country. Depending on what and how much you order, it may be covered by the normal postage. Sorry in advance for any issues it may cause...

LAST THING! I've put a discount (reduced price) on the 45mm Monsters and Demons (apart from Executioner Steve).  It's a permanent change :)

Okie dokie, cheers for reading once again! Now, I shall rest with some TV!