Grekwood Minis Display in Detail

Apologies for not getting around the blogs as much, I have been extremely busy getting everything ready for our first ever show next week, and I have been running back and forth to the hospital as my wife Kate had an operation  about 5 days ago. She is doing better though and will hopefully be home on Monday or Tuesday!

So..Grek Minis news! It's just under a week until Crusade here in Cardiff (UK), the first ever trade show where Grekwood Miniatures will be selling! I have been working hard to put together a display which looks decent enough to "launch us", and I think I haven't done too bad. Here's a few WIP photos of the display which I set up on my pool table which rarely gets used for pool! The edges of the table made things not sit right, but its good enough for a tester.

There are a few things missing from the cabinets as I have them elsewhere for photos. But you should get a general idea in the next couple of photos...






At the front I have the scenery stuff to the left, which I have placed on raised display stands which I made.

To the right (at the front) I have displayed more scenery items including ball bearings, bases, steampunk parts and so forth. I still need to put labels all over it.







Next up, is the cabinet. The right cabinet is all zombies and hospital beds, and the left cabinet is the sci fi/fantasy cabinet, along with putties and glues (and the snow) at the bottom.

If you look closely the Grekwood Sculpt is in the left cabinet. I'm making a label so it'll say coming soon!






In the left cabinet I have put a road section with my new convertible mini (if only it was real!). It's to help give scale and to show that it's what the PDFs should look like.











Next up is the space next tot eh cabinet. This is a "mock up" design, and not the final one. It was just to give me an idea of what it would look like. As I can't take the PDFs with me, I thought it would be nice to alert people that we sell those too.

The Pro Arte brushes and the paints. Those are not the correct paints. They are my collection so they don't all match up. But they will be the proper things on the day. The brushes will also be taken out of their plastic wrappers.

 Finally, here's a little photo of the new design hospital bed undercarriage. They are mainly made because of casting reasons, but they are narrower, which allows figures to "tuck" under the bed more closely, to help with space.







Maybe next year we will get a 12ft table, and actually put the hospital building out on show with our road sections, which by the way, we have 10 different versions now, all of which will be online soon.

Thanks again for all your support!

Displays and Resin!

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Share it to anyone who you think will like zombies, or accessories of some form!

I bought some stands the other day so that when/if I go to shows next year I can display the figures nicely. I went with mirrored "step" displays as I want people to see what the figures look like from behind as well as the front. The horizontal part where the figures are will be decorated as mini "diorama" type areas, so road surfaces, grass areas, tiled floors, all depending on what figures are there.

Still no news on those production figures... I'm actually starting to fall behind of production schedule now :( It's a bit annoying as I was hoping to have them back last month, but it's out of my control.

I have been thinking of going down a resin master route. It won't change anything from a customer point of view as I will still sell metal figures (more weighty so you feel like you have more for your money), but the actual master figures which are used to create the production moulds will be made out of resin instead of metal.

This is the process: I make a "green" (or grey if you use procreate), which is then sent to a caster who makes a "master mould" of the green, and then the metal figures which are cast from the master mould are used to create a production mould. The moulds are made under extreme pressure so slight (ever so slight, almost not noticeable) shrinkage happens.

With resin, I think the green is turned into resin, and then that resin figure is used to create a production mould, so hopefully reducing any shrinkage. Also, resin photographs better for a website which might mean I may not need them painted as often.

The main reason is I think it would be cheaper to do the master figures this way, but I'm not 100% sure.

Anyway, that's it for now!