"Old School Sculptor from Der Kriegspielers & Heritage" Topic

I started sculpting when I was still in High School for Uncle Duke in Dayton Oh. Later I moved to Texas after the merge with Heritage Models. My work includes figures in 25 mm Fantastiques, Dungeon Dwellers. I also finihed out some of the 15 mm Ancients, Naps and ACW lines after Stan Glanzer passed away.

Welcome!

OK, I've gotta ask-
Do you remember which Fantastiques codes that you did?

link

A photo of 1067 Spearman of Ringo, in Wargamer's Digest, is what launched my miniatures career in 1976.

Some of those figs were pretty nice. I love em! I still own a bunch. I was going to the Tin Soldier in Centerville, Oh when Duke had Custom Cast there. Ah, those were the days!

I remember visiting Custom Cast on Salem Ave in Dayton. Stan used to let us play Zulu wars with his beautifully painted (Stadden?) figs! I worked part time at Fairborn Hobby and was responsible for convincing the Parnells to bring in Wargaming stuff into the store.

Steve, any chance of adding more to Stan's line of 15mm? After all these years, they still are in great demand!

Best
Tom Dye

Welcome Bissett,

Love those figures greatly.

Please could you say what you sculpted the masters with? I've been trying my hand at sculpting and would love some tips for a beginner.

Also did you have any inspiration from pictures or other sources?

Another Dayton gamer that still has a lot of the old Heritage fig's. All of my 15mm ACW is Heritage, most of my 15mm W2 German's and American Infantry is the old Panzertroops line. And I have a lot of the Classics ancient figs.

@Bissett the Sculptor,
Have you done anything lately that would tie into any of the Fantastiques line? I loved the goblins!

I really like the Fantastiques range and would drool over the catalogue pictures – but in the UK, with import costs, they were just that little bit too expensive for a fantasy wargamer subsisting on pocket money….

…and when I had more money, they were nowhere to be found.

Dungeon Dwellers are such a part of my youth! I painted many of them badly but loved every one of them.

Fantastiques on the table as I type, and there were Napoleoniques out last month. Nicework!

I can say with pleasure that I met Stan on several occasions, in fact my very first miniature wargame was a Sudan fortress battle up at the old ROTC facility in Dayton Ohio. He was a good man and always willing to evolve everyone at the table. A real loss he died so young.

Tom, are minifigs ever coming home?

I remember visiting Custom Cast on Salem Ave in Dayton. Stan used to let us play Zulu wars with his beautifully painted (Stadden?) figs! I worked part time at Fairborn Hobby and was responsible for convincing the Parnells to bring in Wargaming stuff into the store.

I remember Fairborn Hobby very well. Had my mom take me there one day with the plan to buy a model kit. Walked out with some SPI flatbox games and some Airfix figures instead.

Welcome. I love the Condederals and Napoleonettes. I am working on your Russians now from the "great gray legion." I would love to match my Confederates with a Union army. Hint, hint. By the way, I know you can't produce those great vintage figures, but I can dream big, can't I?

Hi, Clay. Wish I knew. Was only supossed to be here for 3 years and on 1 Feb, it will be for 7! Minifigs is now owned by Dave at Caliver Books. Just met him at Crisis in Antwerp last month- neither of us had much time to talk.

Scot: Back then we were selling SPI flat-packs for $8.00 USD each or 2 for $12.80 USD (IIRC). I can remember when some locals came back from a con in Columbus and were all hot over Stargrunt from McEwan Minis. (Ralnoi and Drenai?) Could not keep 'em in stock.

I got to see the matrix figs for what became Panzertroops and was bummed when Stan would not sell me any to paint up. (They really looked the part for the old Comet tanks Duke had out at the time.) Little known fact: Panzertroops rules were written by John Hill and became the basis for Squad Leader! I had (until about 10 years ago) playtest copies of hand written Panzertroops and Johnny Reb, when I gave them back to Uncle Duke at a Con in K.C.

Hope we can see more in "True" 15mm scale from you, soon!
v/r
Tom

Lucius,

You asked

Do you remember which Fantastiques codes that you did?

I'm pretty sure everything I did that is listed on miniatures-workshop dot com is already marked as such. You linked to the 1000 series of the Fantastiques where I only have one figure: 1089 the Stone Troll. He is one the very first sculpts I ever did. Pretty poor quality but everyone's got to start somewhere.

Most of my Fantastiques were in the later 1100 series.

link

I also worked on Thermopolites (all figures) and
Pirates of the Caribbean (all figures except cannon).

Tom Dye

Steve, any chance of adding more to Stan's line of 15mm? After all these years, they still are in great demand!

Sorry to disappoint but I just don't see myself doing any 25mm let alone 15mm war game figures ever again. Takes too much time. I have moved on to working with polymer clay for larger projects, from time to time, just for fun. For example: I did a large wedding topper for my daughter a few years ago with figures of her and and my son-in-law (her in her wedding gown, him in his tux)

Kropotkin303,

Please could you say what you sculpted the masters with? I've been trying my hand at sculpting and would love some tips for a beginner.

Also did you have any inspiration from pictures or other sources?

When I did most of my sculpting (along with Max Carr, David Helber, and a few other lessors contributors) we used Brookstone brand A/B epoxy. Not sure it it is even still available. It had a consistency somewhere between clay and Play-Doh. It would set up rock hard and then could be filed or drilled. We usually set the figure on top of an inverted coffee can with a 75w or 100w light bulb inside to serve as a hotplate and speed the curing time.

Most figures started with a "dolly": a metal figure cast out of the same metal as the finished figures. We would cut or saw these, then solder them into the right pose then add all the details on top in layers. A spear would be made using a piece of brass rod.

For non-humans we might make a stick figure out of brass rods, again soldered together, than the basic clothes were added. These were cast up to make a few copies that could then be worked over with new epoxy to create different poses with alternate weapons.

I did not use the sculpting material of choice these days… "green stuff" except rarely. One exception is the hair and beard on the frost giant. The frost giant has a horn hanging from a "rope". I made that by simply twisting two pieces of copper wire together than "gluing" into place with 1 minute epoxy cement. After it dried I filled in the gap between the rope and the giants body with the Brookstone A/B epoxy.

I think the two tips I would give on sculpting is #1 take as much time as needed to make everything SMOOTH. You don't want tool marks or rough spots to distract from the finished figure. The 2nd tip is you build up in many layers. Example: Sculpt the shirt. Let it harden. Sculpt the neck tie. Let it harden. Sculpt the suit coat overlapping the shirt. Let it harden. Sculpt the coat lapels. Let it harden. Doing this takes time but it lets you use an X-acto blade to get sharp crisp edges on later levels without smooshing the bottom layers.

Oh. and yes, we had lots of art books, fantasy magazines, and historical reference to help and or inspire us at the office. My Frost Giant was heavily influenced by the the Frank Frazetta painting "The Snow Giants".

For those interested in seeing some other more recent sculpts you can check my Gallery on Board Game Geek (where I use my name "Ref Tom Green")

link

You may have to look through a few pages to get to the sculpting stuff.

"Tom Green" was my name when I was doing Women's Flat Track Roller Derby about 10 years ago.

I is confused-icated. You used to be a woman named Tom? And you did Roller Derby? I know it rolls with the times but…

I is confused-icated. You used to be a woman named Tom? And you did Roller Derby? I know it rolls with the times but…

To clarify, I volunteered for a few years as a referee for Women's Flat Track Roller Derby. The league I skated with was the "Dallas Derby Devils". All the players were women but men could help as referees, announcers, coaches, etc.

There is a long history/custom of using a "stage" name when participating on Roller Derby. I used "Tom Green" because at the time I looked like Tom Green the Canadian actor, rapper, writer, comedian, producer, director, talk show host, and media personality.

I still game with my Heritage 15mm Romans and Carthaginians. Ran Trebbia with them a few months ago. I loved that range. My 15mm Acw were stolen.

I still game with my Heritage 15mm Romans and Carthaginians.

I sculpted most of the command sets for those based on conversions of Stan's originals.

Awesome! I still buy small sets of figures from classicminiatures.net via email.

Dwarves and "smiley faced" lesser Orcs still rock!

Thanks Bissett for the advice. Always good to hear how sculpts are done by the pros.