Miniatures Waffle 2

Howdy,
taking a breakfrom the batshiz bouncing and creative musing/waffling to do a little show and tell on some figures.

These would be the plastics, and today's subject is yet more starwars figures (i collect a LOAD of all sorts of miniatures, some being over 200 years old!) Its been a rewarding hobby, and a universal one, in that people from all around the world and from different cultures have all mad miniatures in my collection: everyone makes miniatures, and its great to collect them!
Brace yourself, there are a few pictures.

Above: generic nagamonk snake I've styled as a monk... Ive styled the rest as pirates or generic female thispassians. According to Ep2, associated comicbook appearances... this is an accurately scaled nagamonk too! I can't believe they never made him, nor that no-one else made nagas at all. I play tabletop Fallout RPG, set in Thailand, and there needs to be more generic nagas for that... I suppose you could use them in Warhammer as Slann apprentices or something...

Above: Obligatory bent wotc style blades; all the rares seemed to come like that. It was hard finding a match to that certain style, that certain quality that theWotC figures have: too detailed and painted too well, and the figure wouldn't sit well within the broader collection... it was a doosy! Great work once again by the sculptor of the year, none other than ExManus Studios. They make generic fantasy/roleplay figures of the highest caliber which lend themselves to adaptation and modification .

Above: The entire council assembles, minus Tyvokka, a decent Yareal Poof, Good Dooku and Syfo Dias. Kenobi might be in thepicture, or in another that didnt turn out right.

 Above: Luminous Beings Are We... a translucent hybrid figure, to represent a translucent stalk-eyed anthropomorphic crabmonk. The figure was supposed to have a lot more stalks... perhapsa generic stalky-crab monk figure might emerge down the line, and this figure can be revisited? The lighting effects are straight from the camera: no retouchment at all!

Above: I never liked any of the two official versions of this character, so I built her in this mode. Note the covered midrift; the high levels of exposure seemed rather unjedee like to me.

Above: the character from rear: I'm unhappy with the pose and my paint work (dont have dieting pills + esspresso and THEN try to paint a figure), but I'll revisit this when wargames factory makes acrobatic/circus clown female figure poses.

 Above: Hasslefree "turtle stalky lizard" head + wargames factory bodies = neat looking jedi! If only Wargames Factory didnt mold minis with that plinth thing (which is load-bearing; try to remove it by most means, and you either melt the minior it shears off at the ankles...). Only pet peeve there: Wargames Factory are premier resin producing miniatures company, that care for their clientele- they've always gone above and beyond. Thank goodness we have so much choice worldwide for minis providers - hasslefree, coolminiornot, wargames factory, exmanus studios... I couldgo on forever, but we've got choice!

 Above: a naga monk, replete with bendy (out of the booster) blades! I could paint and paint and paint all the bucket loads of detail in this AWESOME NAGA MODEL from EXMANUS STUDIOS, but then it would be TOO DETAILED and thus would look out of place!

 Above: Aayla and a companion. She became popular, he faded into obscurity... its funny how that often turns out...

Above: See, she's supposed to be force-pushing, as in the videogame Battlefront (that was so frustrating, i liked it when the only way to kill a jedi was either by exploding them off a cliff, squishing them with the ATAT... or landing a vehicle ontop of them...

Enjoy this decadent eyecandy... actually, it isnt so decadent.
Most of it is recycled, the customs I've made anyways (made,or composed... its just adult lego or combinatorics!)
the bases are made from local MDF, its sweet! And you can even make pepakura/papercraft figures: german, russian and japanese models out there have set the bar in terms of what you can do with papercraft models!

What minis might you like to see made, that arent and would not likely ever be?
What types do you collect, and what are your rarest figures?
How do the people closest to you handle your miniatures passion?
How do you store and or display your collection?
Do you swap/trade figures - with penfriends etc? Where has the furthest miniature in your collection come from? (ie, where did the mini in your collection that has come from the furthest away from your geographic location, where did that mini come from?).

Cheers!
EDIT: Now with stat cards

Waffling on Miniatures 2

Hi there! 

Welcome to another installment of the Miniatures Waffle Series: where we take a break from critical thinking and abstract waffling, and waffle instead on miniatures!

After all the emails, I can finally share an update on the tabletop figures front.

To Right: A Naga Monk Forms...

How do you feel about the accuracy of this piece? I'm impressed with the detail and accuracy to the comics depiction. I look forward to revealing the sculptor and where you can get the minis once the project is completed, so stay tuned!

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this piece and on the generic lizard mutant figures as they come (they'll be similar scale, and either pewter or resin...).

Now I've shared the good news first,

 onto the less good news:

there are some technical and quality problems with the translucent minis projects I have on the back burner: these are the 'holocronicular dice', the thrown lightstick, irregularly shaped lightsticks and lightwhips, double ended lightstick and jetpack contrails... the 'objective marker' set/customising components set.

The materials thickness and resolution for clear printing is not at a fidelity that you or I might like for our customising efforts... there is also a problem with the glues we can use with these plastics: its not entirely ABS or whatever that spool is, so with the pieces I've got as prototypes, regular glues like araldyte and tarzans' grip are melting the mini and warping the surfaces/making the mini turn brown...

Have you had similar experiences when using 3d Printer printed extruded plastics? Have you had problems when adhesing pieces of clear detail plastic: to other plastics, to other surfaces such as MDF or Acrylic?

I have a feeling these 'plastic problems' will spill over to the vehicle projects...

Hopefully they can be resolved swiftly, I feel they can be worked around or overcome.

Moving to the Chodak minifigs... 

there's 3 variants at this time. I feel its a  dynamic concept, and you could do a lot with the figures.

the internal splines and curves for transparent plastic are too small for most 3D printing at the moment;

we could upscale (not an option)

we could change the profile and shape (not a preferred option)

we can make the components separately, as the cavity in the 'mech suit' does pass the bar... whereas the suit plus an internal translucent mollusc do not. (my preferred option).

we can sacrifice the translucentness of the internal mollusc (I don't want to compromise finish).

Also, the same gluing problem arises, and these things are more brittle than resin (so, extra precautions will need to be taken in shipping).

What do you feel about these? Have your say via comments or emails.

Its full steam ahead otherwise!

So, for the vehicle projects,

it looks like the Dagger and the Dianoga will be up next:

I want the endprice manifold to be around the same as a papercraft version of these figures: I want it to be great detail for dirt cheap, and a solid base that customisers can then tinker with as they like, so we can have more 1/48th scale vehicle options.

You can still send in your suggestions for vehicle and miniature figures concepts or requests here or at bloomilk. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which might be the case here.

Bear in mind the key selection criteria (must have a 'what the?!' factor, and be something we can't get elsewhere and are unlikely to ever see elsewhere).

A small sketch or series of sketches helps to envisage the concept: maybe you link to existing images, or you make a rough sketch yourself...

I look forward to seeing your suggestions!