nnascati  | 01 Mar 2015 4:31 p.m. PST |
So yesterday I received my long awaited boxes of Dreamforge Valkir troopers from the Warstore. Eight hours later, I managed to finish 24 figures. I discovered 5 figures into the Heavy Trooper box, that the figures MUST BE assembled strictly according to the directions. Why then make them multi-part?? The time required to assemble these figures is longer than should be required. If there is no actual variation, then the main body at least should be one piece! Nick |
| Wargamer Dave | 01 Mar 2015 6:09 p.m. PST |
The reason is that they couldn't get the detail onto a single piece body without undercuts so they had to break it up into smaller components. Hard plastic (high impact polystyrene) injection molds require absolutely no undercuts and precise draft angles in order for the two halves of the aluminum or steel molds to separate cleanly without breaking the parts or having pieces get stuck in the mold. This is one of the limiting factors of injection molded miniatures. With metal miniatures they are using rubber molds that can be bent to allow for parts to be removed. Hence metal figures tend to be more round and have detail on every side. Plastics have to be carefully designed in order to get the same look as the metals. |
| nnascati | 01 Mar 2015 6:14 p.m. PST |
Dave,
Thanks for the detailed response. I have seen some very well detailed 1/72 plastics in one piece, as well as some 28mm metal with stunning detail cast somehow in one piece. |
| Redroom | 01 Mar 2015 7:07 p.m. PST |
interesting, had no clue on how that worked either – thanks Dave |
| Lion in the Stars | 01 Mar 2015 8:22 p.m. PST |
Good mold designers can get creative with how the molds actually line up (ie, they aren't actually flat mating surfaces), and you can also get into slide mold techniques where there are more than 2 parts to the steel mold in the first place. But those are more expensive molds to make in the first place. |
| Wargamer Dave | 02 Mar 2015 8:13 a.m. PST |
nnascati – as I mentioned in my first post, metal miniatures will have more detail in many cases because they are produced using rubber molds that can be bent to release the figures. This allows for undercuts in the sculpt and the ability to get full rounded details. With 1/72 figures most are made of a more flexible plastic (Valiant and Plastic Soldier Company being the exceptions to this). They are injection molded but because the plastic is more rubbery/bendy it can be literally ripped out of the mold unlike the very hard high impact polystyrene used in 28mm figures. |
| ordinarybass | 02 Mar 2015 8:31 a.m. PST |
In addition to the mold limitations, I think the Dreamforge figs are largely being made to appeal to a gamers who were raised on GW plastic kits. The expectation from these folks is for multipart figures in order to allow for maximum conversion (even for figs with one intended pose) and I get the feeling these gamers have a bit less of a tolerance for detail-less sections even if it's on the undersides of models that will never be seen during gameplay. |
| Wargamer Dave | 02 Mar 2015 12:32 p.m. PST |
ordinarybass – that's a very smart observation. On the flip side of this I feel like historical 28mm wargamers would prefer plastic figures in as few parts as possible. Less expensive because they are plastic with minimal fuss to build and get ready to paint. |
| ordinarybass | 02 Mar 2015 2:33 p.m. PST |
Thanks WD,
I think you're also right. Historical wargamers are also likely to be fielding far more figures than even the bloated size of today's 40k games. When a unit is 10 power armored marines, convertibility and uniqueness is important and preferred. On the other hand when a single unit is an entire platoon of ____ (insert historical unit here)____ having a dozen parts per mini is significantly less appealing. Oddly WHFB still has huge unit sizes and multipart figures. Then again maybe it's not such an issue when they only sell you half the unit in each box and you can only afford one box at a time… |
| chironex | 05 Mar 2015 9:38 p.m. PST |
The problem is that outside of gaming, no-one ever refers to kits of multiple components as "multi-part". Consequently gamers seem to get confused when such a kit is in their hands (which isn't advertised as "multi-part," not that I've seen) and expect customisation to be built into the design, where no other modelling hobby does this. It really applies to kits which do have interchangeable parts, not just any kit which happens to be made up of multiple components. |
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