DDM SKirmish has ended

[justanobody]

While using colored plastic would potentially save a lot of potential deco, the problem is there are multiple figures in a single mold. This is the ultimate reason why I can't do transparent commons -- all the commons need to fit in one mold, so if I were to have transparent commons, all of them would result in being transparent. If I filled a mold with green plastic, I wouldn't have just one green monster in the set, I would end up having closer to 8 parts that would be that color.

The end result is a much more monochromatic set.

But it could be feasible depending on the working model used to mold the minis.

Take Games Workshop for example. While most models are sprues with all the parts on them made from that dull gray plastic, there were a few that were pre-colored.

Taking the advantage to use the different color to make specific parts in the molds would allow less painting.

The trees from the older Space Marines army sets had green plastic for the foliage parts, and brown plastic for the trunks of the trees.

Easy enough for people to snip them off and to assemble and have a ready tre if you didn't even paint.

Taking this approach for DDM isn't too much of a problem as all minis come preassembeled, so you end up with bucket of parts anyway that must be combined into a mini, so no real differences.

The big problem is that the parts themselves aren't from the different colors of plastic.

The arm has the shirt on it, so cannot be all green. MAtching the paint color to the plastic color could also be a bit of problem, but IF you could mold the parts as parts rather than whole minis, it offers the chance of using the cheapest color of plastic to make the part and less painting needed for the finished mini and the plastic is already the base color for the part save for the extra bit of shirt on the arm prior to connecting it to the torso. The torso will likely already be all the same color, and just ned those minor touch-ups for buttons IF added.

It is what HASBRO did for many a year with GIJoe products so they didn't have much to do but mold the part the majority color and let the kids assemble it later and no paint required.

This also means you don't have to worry with perfectly matching all the paints to the layer they are applied to and what is applied to them, and some parts don't get paint as they are already colored plastic.

That aside on how to make the production cheaper by a little reorganization of the molds and ended sprues to use specific colored plastics for the parts..... I would still prefer you painting each minis...So get back in your dungeon cell and start putting them NMM skills to use!

Of course there are other options to paint the inside of the molds and when injected the minis will come out pre-painted for the most parts no matter what the original color plastic is and just need little touch-ups on spots to finish the paint scheme.....

Still I expect a LOT better paint jobs with you there and the price going up as well.

(Mailing me a Snowball Beholder or three may allow my expectations of the new mini line paint jobs to lower however. )

 

[JoeGKushner]

But then wouldn't the opposite be possible?

Take the miniatures you know will be out in set X and write the adventure around them?


Or do the contents of the miniature boxes themselves change at a fairly rapid clip?

Yup, you're right. I'm working on it. Here's the problem:

The miniature path is close to 18 months to go from concept to your FLGS's shelf. The path for getting a module from concept to your FLGS's shelf is a lot shorter. Skalmad was put into the pipeline before the module was written -- all that existed was a name for the module.

This is the biggest issue that the miniatures have as an RPG supplement. Take Dragonborn, for example -- to have miniatures coincide with the release of 4th edition, they needed to start down the miniature pipeline months before the concept art was even finished! We had three proto-draconborn slated for Dungeons of Dread that ended getting cut because it didn't match the concept art for the race.

We're trying to reduce the time to go from concept to market with these miniatures, but for now it's a very difficult problem.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Note also that the 5-pack contains two *large* figures, which also increases the price.

First, I'm pretty sure that the official word is that the visible mini will be Large, and possibly one of the other four will be Large. (Meaning it's random.) Second, there's been the potential for two Large minis in a booster for at least 10 sets or so, and many of the most recent sets have had the potential for three Large minis in a single booster. It wasn't even all that unusual.

 

[MerricB]

First, I'm pretty sure that the official word is that the visible mini will be Large, and possibly one of the other four will be Large. (Meaning it's random.) Second, there's been the potential for two Large minis in a booster for at least 10 sets or so, and many of the most recent sets have had the potential for three Large minis in a single booster. It wasn't even all that unusual.

Thanks, Jeff. I misread it the original time. Fixed it in some of my later posts, but missed it in this one!

Cheers!

 

[Kishin]

This thread makes me very glad I absolutely don't care about coordinating the right Minis with the right monster.

That would have been hellacious in 3E, with all the weird stuff across the Monster Manuals.