My Birthday!! ...A zombie and some PDF Stuff

Welcome to the new followers! I hope you will find many things to keep you interested!

Two days ago it was my 28th birthday. I had a lamp which has 2 magnifying glasses built into it from my wife. It really helps a lot when doing really small details on the figures so will be extremely useful in the future (and hopefully help save my eyes!! haha).

From my parents I had a Roman centurion sword! Its a working replica, so it's basically a real centurion sword made how it should be (just made in the 21st century haha).
The centurion sword has solid brass parts, a thick blade and a super sharp point. It also has a leather scabbard/sheath. It's pretty heavy for its size!

I now have a large collection of swords. Mainly Samurai swords (a mixture of Katanas, Wakisashis, and Tantos), about 11 or so I think. Some are display models which have thinner blades and are blunt, and would not stand long in a fight, and some are working replicas. Basically that means they are built how they should be, sharp, and thick blades. I have a real samurai sword from WW2 ... or 1... I think WW2. I have a working replica of the "Kill Bill" sword, which I can't seem to find online anymore. It's all the blunt versions, or ones where the handle isn't wrapped in leather.

Ok... Now Grekwood Minis News:

I have been working on the supermarket PDF. I have been making the shelves to decorate the interior (although not as detailed as Joe's supermarket over at Zabadaks Blog..you should check it out, it's super impressive!!). I have tried to customise each piece on the shelves so that it isn't just colour blocks, so this is what I have so far (below). I still need to fill up the shelves a bit more. I don't want "fully stocked" shelves, so there will be the odd gap or two where products have been taken off by customers, to help add a bit of realism.

Hospital PDF
I do still plan to bring out the expansion pack for this hospital. It may have to wait until early spring as I have a lot of stuff going on at the moment, but I haven't forgot about it, so keep an eye out!

Zombie bust
Last thing: here's a WIP of the zombie bust I am making:

Ok, that's all for now. I need to try and get back into the blog scene, with more blog updates as they are becoming less over the past few months.

Cheers for looking!

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 :)

Residential Roads PDF

I want to start by showing off the "new" logo. I redesigned the monk part to incorporate Gareth more, as he is of course "Grekwood". The old one never quite looked finished as it was more of a "sketch" look. So this is a proper picture now.

Now...for those roads!

As mentioned in an earlier post, we have been creating some roads for personal use, but have decided that since they have been made, why not pop them on the website for others if they want them. If not, we haven't lost anything as we wanted them to begin with, So it's a win win!

We made 6 basic road pieces which should allow for the creation of most road scenarios. The plain roads with no lines are for side streets. It's probably worth pointing out, these are for residential areas and not cities or towns. 

Click to zooOOMM

I have almost finished a documentation/instructions, so they will most likely be online soon. Finally, the corner was made as a "right angle" to make it easier to build and you don't get waste paper/cardboard which you do when cutting out a curved corner.

Each piece is 6" by 6", with the pavements being 1" and the roads being 4" wide. The pavements are also designed to be "raised" by 5mm. But this can be changed. I will explain how to do a conversion in the documentation, but it is really simple to do. So it means you can either have them flat, raise the pavements by 5mm, or anywhere in between.

That's it for now, cheers for reading, comment as always are welcome!

WIP Zombies, and Roads...

Once again it has been over a week since my last bog, so here's another one! I don't have a huge amount to talk about as I've just been busy jumping between a few different projects.

I sent off the 4 figures, HammerMan, Princess Bexi, Grekwood in a Fez, and, finally the sci fi alien. They are currently with a caster, but not sure when I'll get those back.

"Roads, where we're going we don't need roads!" (Back to the Future)...
We are currently working on some "road sections" which are designed to be mounted to foamboard (for pavements) and for the base. Although you can use thinner card for the road part. Either way, the pavements have to be on foam board (I guess if you wanted to you could alter it some how).

We plan make them for ourselves, but as I have a webstore, I may as well pop them online in case anyone else would like them! We will make a few different versions, such as tarmac roads with residential style tarmac pavements. Then roads with yellow lines, and then some with paved pathways etc etc. So we should be able to mix and match and get every combo we need.

Next Batch of Zombies: WIP
Here's a little WIP of the current batch of zombies, which is going well. A few of them are finished (such as the ones to the left on black bases). The two in the photo are almost there. The photo is a little old (like a few days), as the two figures have progressed since then. So remember, they are WIP, which means what you see isn't how the final thing will look... It's just a taster.

Clik to zoooOOOOMM

CGD Society Get Together Weekend

Here's a photo of me and Kate from the CGD weekend get together we went to last month... I should have worn the wig... but it was too hot in there! Anyway, who says a pirate can't look after their hair?? :P

Click to zooOOOMM

Ok, that's all for now! Comments as always are welcome :)

Supreme Dalek Princess

I have released to the world of Facebook my Supreme Dalek Princess! Here she is below:

I'm happy with how she has turned out, and Bexi (who it is based on) seems to be very happy and excited about it too, so yay! 

I have one last figure to complete (the 9ft tall man with an axe/hammer thingy-ma-bob). He is coming along nicely, and I am aiming to finish him by next week. Then, it's off to get them moulded along with the Grekwood Mini sculpted by Inso. Hopefully if all goes to plan, these will be available in time for Christmas.

In other news, the Hospital PDF has now be adjusted for American "Letter" size paper. I never thought about converting it from the UK paper size until the other day, as a customer from America bought everything hospital related on my website, so I decided to re-arrange some of the longer printouts so that they fit on American size paper.

So for future note, if anyone from America reads this, the PDF is now available in "Letter" size!

Finally, zombie progress is...progressing. I have focused my time on getting the big 45mm guy and the princess finished so they can go off for casting. But as soon as they are done, I'll be back onto the zombies.

If you haven't already, sign up to the newsletter too (if you want!).

Cheers...

Zombies... And A PDF Hospital

I have finally finish the PDF's for the Hospital and I have uploaded it all to the website http://www.grekwoodminiatures.co.uk/PDFBuildings.php.

It costs £4, which is postage free as there is no postage! It consists of 3 files, which once purchased I will send through e-mail. Can't quite work out how to automatically do it. So please allow up to 24 hours for it to be delivered as I'm not ALWAYS on the internet... even though it may seem that way! haha

Ok so here's some painted zombie nurses!! I think they look pretty decent. I painted/made the bases (which are also available on the website). I've now uploaded this to the website :)

I need to do one last photograph with these for the big bundle deal as I think the old bandaged face nurses are in the "buy all 4" photo... eek! So expect photos of that soon.

Righty oh then, I think that's all for now. So until next time, have fun, and don't get bitten by any zombies!! ..arrgghhh

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!

28mm Scale Hospital Almost Ready!

This is my 40th post. I didn't realise I had posted 40 already! Seems like only yesterday I arrived at blogger.

Hospital PDF
Yesterday I started some work on the hospital building documentation. I really want to just get this sorted and online. So I spent most of yesterday doing it and I managed to finish the instructions for building the ward. Only bits left are the roof, and the joining hallway which I will do in the next day or two. I'm hopefully looking at an upload of the PDF files (there will be 2) next week, early if possible.

When I say 2, I mean one set of instructions, and then another file with all the printouts. The documentation is long, but it is a step by step guide which has step by step photos. Hopefully this will make it easier to follow and construct. I plan to release the hospital as just a building, so no interior furniture.  One day I plan to create some resin furniture to be released at some point in the future but for now I want to get this done quickly as I want to "move on" from the hospital setting and onto different things!

Here's a photo example of one of the steps, so you can see what I mean. I photographed it on my pool/snooker table. I thought the green worked well hehe

Grekwood Sculpt, Dalek Princess and more!
I have decided that when I get the Grekwood sculpt cast, I will put him in a mould with the Dalek Princess (in previous post), 8 figures from a new range, which will include a horse, and then maybe an extra one or two "special" figures, possibly zombie related. No idea when this will be done though, but if I work hard I can aim to get it done before Christmas. When casting figures I tend to fill up the mould as rubber for the mould is very expensive, and it just works out cheaper this way (which as a new hobby/business I need to keep costs down). Maybe when I am established like the big companies out there, I can bring things out quicker! I'm currently working on another 16 zombies, so I will work on everything else here and there.

In case you didn't see my last post, here's the Dalek Princess I am talking about.

Click to ZOOOOM

Kate - She's on TV!
I realised I never gave an update about Kate. Her liver biopsy was confusing and didn't specifically pin point anything. So they gave her some steroids (not those anabolic ones!), and that seems to be bringing the levels down.

On a plus, she went to Tenby (South Wales) yesterday as she is filming as an extra in a TV series which I think will air next year. So gotta watch that to see if I can spot her!

Long hair no more!
After just over a year, I got my hair cut. I went from a pirate look, to more of a Dr Who look, something in-between the current doctor (Matt Smith) and the previous one (David Tennant). It took around an hour to cut (longest it's ever taken). I apparently had so many kinks in it that they had to use a hair dryer (to dry the water they put in), then hair straighteners and tons of spray, all to make it easier to cut and help get rid of the kinks! It looks better now :)

Righty oh, have a great day!

Pirate Accessories and 28mm Scale Hospital!

This week I have been working on my pirate costume. It was in need of a sword and a gun, so using some Amazon vouchers which my wife got for doing some surveys, we purchased a nice cheap gun and sword all for under a tenner (so for free with the vouchers!).


The gun was all silver when it arrived as seen in this photo: (that's not my hand.. it's taken from the Amazon website as I forgot to take a "before" photo...). So, I wasn't keen on the silver finish, or the orange tip, so I decided to give it a make over.

As you can see, I sprayed it gold, then gave it a brown wash over the detail. I then painted the inside of the gun black, and "aged" the tip to give it that "used" look.

I think it looks much better and looks less "plasticy".

What do you think?

Second up is the sword! I bought this for two reasons. Most looked small (short) and kinda of childish (as they are toys!). This one had a longer blade, and quite a cool looking handle compared to bare metal.

However, when it arrived the blade was broke. So I had to pin it, glue it, and stuff some Miliput over the join to make it stronger. The join is noticeable, but at least it wont break now.The blade was also black and not silver like Amazon shows. So I didn't like that. Also the skull needed something... so in my next photo you'll see the difference!

I painted the teeth, and put in a gold tooth, and also painted the blade silver. I wasn't liking that black colour!

Here's the finished stuff... well, the gun still needs some painting on parts (trigger area and such). But I think I have made cheap toys look better :)








Ok, so here's some pictures of the hospital which I thought I posted, but apparently not. There was some questions about whether it was one piece or many. The answer is, it can be either. It's designed to be separate as shown (for easy storage and moving).

BUT!! If you are up to the task, it can easily be made as one large piece as shown below: It would just need some calculations to get the floor and roof as one piece, but it shouldn't be too difficult. Ideally it comes apart as this version is only small, and it's designed to eventually be bigger. But that's your choice :)

In the documentation I will provide all the measurments to make it one piece or separate. So it's up to you then how you want to make it. But keep in mind I will be expanding the hospital with new parts ad so forth.

Anyway, that's all for now. Sculpting has once again begun, so yay for that. I'll do some more in a bit. I tend to split my time between quite a few things (not all business!). Anyway, I hope that helps with whoever had those questions or thoughts.

Feel free to leave comments as usual, but until then, over!

Video of the 28mm scale Hospital Building

I have pretty much completed the Basic Hospital and I am pretty happy with the way it's turned out. I was a little bored after I stopped for the day, so I decided to make a video with some interesting music from Mass Effect (first one).

 

 

 

The filming is jumpy, and not "flowy", but it's not meant to be taken seriously, it's just a bit of fun!

 

 

I still have a couple of things to add to the hospital, minor things such as sky lights and roof stuff but by the time I write a new blog it will be complete (that's the plan). I made a mini entrance for this version but I will eventually make a larger entrance/concourse area for bigger versions of the hospital.

 

Ok, so that's all for now. I didn't plan to write a blog today but I couldn't resist posting my ever so awesome (ha!) video hehe

 

On a sad note I have to take my wife to hospital tonight. She needs to have a liver biopsy and will be away for the night (possibly longer...but hopefully not!). Hopefully it's nothing serious and they can sort out why the levels in her liver have been abnormally high the past 2 months. She hasn't been well for the past two month, so I'm hoping this will finally sort things out.

 

So anyway, enjoy the video, and I'll write a new blog in a few days :)

 

Cheers...

 

 

28mm Hospital almost complete!

Here are some more WIP photos of the hospital I am building.

A day or two ago I decided to finally put a roof onto the building. So I spent part of yesterday putting all the wall pieces together on the computer, printing them out, then glueing them to the ceiling wall sections. So here are the photos.

Front Angle: in the middle of the "link" hallway, I will be putting an entrance door. maybe a small step to get into the building, maybe even a ramp for disabled people (need to cover every possibility!).

Rear Angle: That's pretty much all it is!!

 Front: The entrance will be in the centre. I still need to put the paving stones around the top of the "ceiling wall". There are some already on at the back of the left ward.

Finally here's a photo of how it all breaks down for easy storage. We plan to have 10 wards made (full scale ward for a game (2 story building). So they all stack nicely on the top shelf of a cabinet.








I have had a bit of trouble making this, not because it is complicated, but because the foam board I was using was dodgy. It's meant to be 5mm thick, but I found myself working with 6mm and even 7mm thick foam board (from "The Range"), which varied in thickness from one end to the other. So when putting the building together there are some gaps. Anyway, it's designed for 5mm foam board. So as long as that is used there should be no problems.

My dad bought a few sheets from Hobby Craft about a week ago (it was less than £3 for an A2 size sheet). They are all 5mm, so my dad is helping to build a few extra wards as I'm busy packing (house move), and trying to get a bit of sculpting in here and there. I have build 5 so far, my dad is going to make 4, and I need to make one more to take photos of for the documentation (which is almost written).

Anyway, that's it for now, oh that figure in the photo is a new sculpt, but you probably can't see it that well as it's far away.

Cheers for reading :) I'm hoping to have the "basic" singe story hospital online in September.