Dragons Teeth Tank Traps

A month or so ago I used some 3D software to design some tank traps aka "Dragon's Teeth" and I gave some to my dad who built some scenic pieces.  I've been casting those up and I must say they look pretty cool when all stuck together!

There are straight sections, and corner sections. Each corner section is made up of 3 pieces, one being 15 degrees, another being 30 degrees and the final one being a 45 degree angle. There is also an outside corner piece for curving the other way (makes sense when you see it).


The Casting Bore...
I get bored of casting as the first cast is always held back as a "master" as the original piece sometimes gets broken when de-moulding. I then need to cast up a set for painting/displays, and then I need some to "destroy" a bit with weathering, war stuff etc. Finally after all those are cast I can start casting for selling... It's a lengthy process and not too bad if only one cast is needed, but when a set include 4 or 5 of the same item, it means I have to cast up tons before I can even start casting items to sell. Gahhhhhh... gotta get done!

Season Greetings!
Finally I'd just like to wish everyone who stumbles across this page a Merry Christmas or happy holidays for whatever you celebrate this time of year. ...and if you don't celebrate anything this time of year, then I hope you have a great few days anyway!

Blast-Tasitc 2014

Yesterday we headed to Bristol for a new wargames show called "Blast-Tastic". It was a show purely about Sci-fi, which was cool to see as so many have historical figures everywhere.

Overall it was a decent day. We left Cardiff around 07:20, and got there around 08:10-20 which gave us plenty of time to set up our stand (see image right). As soon as we finished setting up, we got our first order, and from then on there was a steady flow of customers throughout the day. There were a couple of quiet moments, which were welcomed (always nice to have a sit down!), but in general it had a nice relaxed atmosphere which was great from a traders point of view.

Amongst greeting customers, I finally met Colin from "Down Among the Lead Men", he's been a great supporter of Grekwood Minis, so it was cool to meet him. We started to have a chat and then I had to deal with a customer, so we only had a brief chat, but I'm glad I finally met someone from the blogs!

There were quite a few games going on, which we slowly watched from behind our stand. My dad (who is in one or two of the photos) had a look around and said he saw some pretty cool stuff happening. I didn't really get a chance to have a close look around, but I guess there's always next year! The table next to us (Precinct Omega.. above photo) had developed some rules for the Dreamforge figures which we stock, so that was pretty cool!

So yeah, great day! We'll definitely be going next year. I just want to say a big thank you to Michael Stockin of Angel Barracks who organised the show. Also to everyone who bought from us or came along to say hi, thank you, your custom is always appreciated!

Grekwood Minis - 2 Years Old!

It's been a while (again!) so here's another update. This post will be a mini update for everything over the past month and future plans:

Grekwood Minis is 2 years old next month!
Yup! I've managed to stay around for 2 years! Huzzah! Hopefully there's another year or two in it. I've expanded like crazy over the past 2 years. I started with only 25-ish minis (as you may remember) and the site has grown considerably, which is awesome!

I am trying to increase the number of followers on my Facebook page since it's where I do most of my advertising/updates. I tried posting a message for people to share, but only a couple did (which I thank those who did), but it only generated about 6 new likes. So I think the only way people are willing to "share" something is if there is a chance to win something. So I'll have to think of something to "give-away" to a winner...

1. Police Boxes and Telephone Boxes
These were released last month. If you haven't seen them then they are very worth checking out. They are larger than the Fenris/Hasslefree one, but about the same price I believe. They come in blue resin, so with some blue highlights they can look pretty amazing! The telephone boxes are extremely accurate, and even have hinges, door handles and a solid pannel at the back where the telephone goes. Again, a great piece of scenery.

2. March

March saw the release of some Shadowforge miniatures. 10 individual characters which are spread out across the different categories of our website. They have been around a while, but there are some great minis in there.

4. April 1st

Heading into a new financial year, I will be releasing quite a few minis! I'll be starting off with some Crooked Dice "Detectives and Lowlifes". I recognise similarities for 3 of them, but the guy with a hat is totally lost on me...any ideas? Either way, great looking figures!

urther more I will be releasing more Shadowforge minis. this time some sci-fi females! I really like the look of these figures, so will be taking some for myself. I like the futuristic style of the armour.

I also had some great news, that being that these three fellows would be joining my website as soon as they are launched. So I'm really excited for these (I'm sure you know why!). I do feel that the guy on the left needed to be a bit thinner/taller, but apart from that these are superb!

Ok, so that's my plan for April 1st and sometime after (with the giveaway).

Cheers for reading!

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...

 

 

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!

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! :)

Sculpting, Laptops and other stuff

Hey there, I have split the following blog into sections, so feel free to skip to the part which may interest you!

New products on Grekwood Minaitures:

I am sitting here, waiting for an order of ProCreate putty to arrive. I missed the delivery yesterday, so they said they would deliver it today. As soon as I receive it I will post it up on the website ready for people to buy. It'll be £7.99 which I think is slightly less than the RRP.

If you are not familiar with this putty, it's like Green Stuff but I find it much smoother and far easier to mix together. Also, if you haven't already, check out my previous blog for the new resin bases which we are now selling.

Sculpting:

Sculpting is going ok, slow, but steady. I'm really happy with 4 of the new sculpts i've done. They are kinda of mutants who have large guns. They will work for zombie games, or alien invasions, or pretty much any sci-fi game where you want beings who have been experimented on. I think my sculpting on them has improved dramatically. I'll post photos soon, but not too early as I don't want anyone out there taking the ideas and producing them before I can. I'm not saying they would, but it's always a possibility, and I'm paranoid about that kind of stuff.

The new nurses look pretty decent. They are conversions of the current zombies, but I chopped them up, reposed them quite a bit, slimmed them down so they look totally different. They also have normal zombie heads too! In addition to the heads I extended their dress to the knees, added shoulder lapels, and added sleeve detail. I took away the weapons, but added some slight damage to two of them (like with the rest of the hospital packs).

New Laptop:

I recently had to buy a new laptop. My other one just decided to stop working. The screen had been "going" for a few months, so I knew it was on it's way out. Money is a bit of an issue, so I had to go for the cheapest laptop I could find (which did what I needed it to do). I ended up getting an ASUS K53E. It's not the most advanced laptop out there, but it was cheap and still looks nice (which is good!) and it does everything I need it to. 4GB of RAM doesn't seem too high these days, but it's more than enough for me as I don't play games on it (that's what the Xbox360 is for!). I mainly use it to edit photos, use Dreamweaver, and basic Word/Excel files, oh and the internet. So yeah, pretty much a great laptop for only £300.

Other:

Grammar has been bugging me on TV lately when they advertise movies and they say "out on May 25!" rather than "25th". I've said it before, but it seems even professional advertisers are just lazy or have bad grammar these days. I don't have the best, so I'm sure there are errors in this blog, but if you are professional and on TV you should have good grammar!!

Also, why is ASUS pronounced "A-soose" or "A-Zoose", surely it should be "A-sus" as in sus-pect?

Right I better get back to sculpting... but it's almost lunch time, bacon butty I think!! :D