Ritual/Summoning Circles

Hi everyone,

It's been a while again since I wrote a blog. I don't really come here much any more as I get occupied with Facebook or other matters, so apologies for not "getting involved" with things.

I uploaded a few more items to our website. So here they are:

Ritual Circles (http://www.grekwoodminiatures.co.uk/RitualCircles.php)
These come in 3 sizes (S M and L), the smaller ones are perfect for markers or for placing underneath a characters base. The M and L ones are perfect as more of a centrepiece or something eye catching on a table. They can be used to summon demons/spirits, cast spells, make sacrifices, or even used as teleportation devices to get from one realm to another... or just to get from one part of the table to another.

For all you zombie fans, maybe it could be a place where the darkness originated and spawns from?!

So anyway, here's some photos (Click them for size info and bigger pictures).

 

 

Clear Police Box and Solid Post Box (http://www.grekwoodminiatures.co.uk/StreetFeatures.php)

Below is a clear resin police box. The clear resin means the it can be painted and the windows can be left clear to give a "real" glass effect.

Also below is a nicely detailed UK post box! It's a perfect combo along side out telephone box, so go check it all out!

Cheers guys!

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!

Zombies, Aliens, Humans, and a Banana Man

Hi guys!

Apologies for the delay in getting a Blog out there and for not getting around the blogs as much as I should!! I've been very busy with personal things as well as the business stuff.

I have been up to quite a bit, which most of you probably know already through newsletters or Facebook, but here it all is for the past month-ish with some future plans:

New Releases since the Werewolves: Click photos to zoom!

1) The Tenderiser

2) 4 Resin Vehicles

3) Bexi Warrior Princess (painted and unpainted)

4) Space Ranger

Coming in July/August:

5) Latest additions from Crooked Dice: "Time Lost Detectives".

6) Zombie Bust (possibly)

7) Some Sci-Fi plastic miniatures... but more on those closer to the time :P

8) Extended Bioblyte range: Will include runners with claws, and alien army with guns.

Ok, so that's the plan for the next couple of month/releases. I'll send out a news letter as and when they are available.

No photos for number 7 and 8, and it's a little top secret and 7 isn't 100% confirmed yet, but hopefully will be soon.

All items can be found on our website: www.grekwoodminiatures.co.uk

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Win a Painted Hasslefree Resin Master for Charity:

Finally, but by no means least, Hasslefree have donated a resin master figure and Ben Brownlie, has painted it up (to a very high standard) and is now auctioning it off in memory of my brother Gareth (aka Grekwood). All money raised will go to the CGD (Chronis Granulomatous Disorder) Society Charity, which deals with research into cures and medications to help people with CGD.

CGD is a rare immune system disorder which leaves the individual unable to fight certain infections and can often be life threatening.

A £5 donation gets you 1 ticket in the "hat", and a donation of £10 or more gets you 3 tickets. Auction will take place on the 24th of June (i think), but you have until the 23rd to donate.

All donations can be made here: http://www.justgiving.com/Gareth-K-Sutherwood

PLEASE leave your name and/or blog name so we can contact you if you win.

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Before I sign out, I would just like to wish Bryan (aka Vampifan) a speedy recovery, and I hope we will see him back very soon!

Cheers everyone :)

Displays and Resin!

If you are on Facebook then please feel free to follow us on there by clicking the link: Grekwood Miniatures on Facebook

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!

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! :)

New Releases - Resin Bases

So I decided to work all day today (Sunday) so that I could upload some new items to my website (Grekwood Miniatures). With help from my dad we have uploaded 4 new products to the website. They are 30mm resin bases which you may have seen in some of the photos on our website (In the zombie photos).

They include:
6 x Cobble stone bases
6 x Floor tile bases (Shown to the right)








They also include two types of pavement/road bases. These are:

6 x Tarmac pavements
6 x Flag stone pavements (Shown to the right)



(More photos can be seen on the website or Facebook Page.




Each of the pavement/road packs include 2 different corner bases, 2 different straight pavement bases, 1 drainage base, and 1 road surface base. Each pack is only £2.25... it's a bargain, well, we think it is!

So that's it for now. You might like to know that new zombie nurses have been sculpted. These will have normal zombie heads and will be more "animated" in appearance. I am currently working on some sci-fi mutants too. I am hoping to get these all finished by the end of the month to give to the mould maker. But we shall see how that goes.

As always, cheers for looking and thank you to those who have purchased from us already! If you buy something and post photos online, whether on blogs or Facebook, then send me the link as I would love to see. If it's on Facebook then feel free to "TAG" Grekwood Miniatures :) Remember, Facebook is generally first to receive updates so follow us on there (If you are on there).

Cheers, Carl