New Stuff: Zombies, Roads, Buildings and a Bust

It's been a while since I did a blog post, a week and 5 days in fact!

So new releases:

I have uploaded 2 new road packs to the website. This completes the "town" range. The two packs have single yellow lines, and double yellow lines, along with an extra minor side road which has either a cobble style road or smaller paving slabs.

Here are the large photos from the website, I decided to put a car on there for "scale".

Town Centre - Restricted Parking (Single yellow lines)

Town Centre - No Waiting (Double yellow lines)







I still haven't uploaded that snow flock I have... So I must get round to doing that.

Supermarket zombies and building
The supermarket range should be coming back from the painter next week, so my next blog post will hopefully be showing off them all painted.

I have decided to build a local store as well as a large superstore. I am part way through designing the local store. It will have a small staff room, store room (not warehouse) and an office. It will also be the first building that I will be fully furnishing with paper freezers, shelves, veg stands, counters and so forth. The local store will be 12" x 12" in size, perfect for use with our roads (or with other companies products of course!).

Bust
Here's the bust I have been working on. The image is a few days old so it is a bit different now. What do you think? Still early days... and she will have long hair (yes I decided to go with a female), so features are less dominant than what a males would be. If she turns out well I will cast her in resin. I'm going with a mini head wound, a cheek wound, wearing around the mouth, and a neck wound which hasn't been done yet).

Finally..

I think that is all for now... Apologies once again for not getting around all the blogs I usually go through, it's just been a very busy couple of week. January and so far February have been extremely busy with online orders and other shenanigans!

Thanks to all for reading!

Zombies uploaded!

Last weekend I was a first time trader at Crusade here in Cardiff! It went well, I mean I have nothing to compare it too, but I made a profit, and helped get the name out there a little more, so all is good! The weird thing though was that the items that sell well online didn't sell as well at the show, but the items that don't usually sell much online did really well, so it was strange, but a nice strange.

So with the show out of the way, I have now been able to release the supermarket zombies. If you haven't yet seen them then here they are:

Click pic to zoom in!

 

 

So what am I to do now...

I am currently fixing up the figures which broke in the mould. They are pretty much done, but I decided to make a few improvements to Hammerman, Bexi - Warrior Princess (dalek looking figure) and the small alien. They should be finished off tomorrow as progress today went well.

 

Sculpting A Bust

On a side note, I have decided to try sculpting something a little larger as I feel like a bit of a change. I am going to attempt sculpting a "bust" as I saw a few at Crusade which I thought were awesome. So it'll basically be a head with shoulders, and maybe a bit of torso. I am thinking a zombie who is all torn up and decaying, but I'm not sure. I was thinking of a normal person as well, but a zombie seems to fit in with what I'm doing now. I probably won't sell it unless people really liked it and would want one for themselves, so it's currently just a bit of fun to see how it turns out. Who knows, it may be a disaster!! haha. The head/face will be about an inch tall, so not to huge, but not as tiny as my other stuff.

 

Righty oh then, That's all for now. Maybe some pics of the bust in progress in my next blog. I haven't started it yet... well, I rolled up tons of green stuff and made a head shape, but it's just a round ball at the moment.

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 :)

Supermarket Zombies Finished!

So the supermarket zombies are complete. They won't be available until early next year, but rest assured they are finished and on their way! I took some very quick photos, and because of the multicoloured putty used, I changed them to black and white. So apologies if that makes them a little difficult to see. They were just quick photos and not "promotion" photos.

What Next?
So what to do now they are finished? Well I have plans... important plans!

I have been asked by a couple of people about whether I will create a supermaket PDF. I have also been asked about supermarket accessories especially carts (I guess they mean shopping trollies??)

So... after some consideration, I have decided to build a supermarket PDF. It seems like that's going to become a theme, make some figures, and create a building to compliment them!

Shopping carts are a little more complex. Whilst they may seem easy to make. They will not cast in resin so easily because they are so small. Even card ones would prove tiny and fiddly to make. If there was a "train" of trollies, as in when they are all pushed together, then that might be a bit easier, but still awkward to make, but I'll see what happens.

More roads!!
On another note, we have 2 more road section PDFs to upload soon in the next couple of days. I just need to photograph them for the website, and combine all the PDFs into one file. The two packs are the "riser/fillers" pack, featuring squares of grass, tarmac, cobble stones, paving slabs and so forth. The other is similar to the residential roads pack, but rather than having tarmac pavements it will have paving slabs. This is to accommodate for different roads, as towns and such don't have tarmac pavements like residential areas! A screen shot is shown below...

Again these will only cost £1.50 each, and the will work perfectly with each other.
Finally, there has been no news on any of the castings I sent off (Dalek warrior/princess, Hammerman, Grekwood mini, and the sci fi alien dude), so no idea when those will be available, which makes me a bit sad as I wanted them for the show in January, but I'm thinking it may be unlikely..Ok, so that's it for now

Cheers for reading, comments are always welcome!