conflictingkingdoms.co.uk

Hi,

I'm not really one for computer forums so you probably won't hear much from me here, but Stuart Miles has approched me about sculpting for this project so I've signed up to the forum as he requested. You have my e-mail Stuart which is by far the easiest way to reach me, but I may start checking in here if it looks as if I am going to become part of this project.

Cheers

Aidan Campbell

hi aidancampbell, i have added you as a beta tester. this is so you have access to all forums. Im not sure what stuart has said to you about this project as it would have been in an email to you from him. this is the main reason why we use this forum to communicate. its simple to use and allows all three directors to have input in any of the discussions that may take place. if you wish to work for conflicting kingdoms, the use of this forum is a must. if you need to ask us a question, this is the place to do it as we are on here every single day. as stuart may have explained already, we need 4 figurines that will definatley need to be released with our first print run which we hope to see on the shelf for next christmas. we do, however, require a further 32 sculptures (2 of each race) as we release further starter decks.

we also have a war game version which will require sets of the races. this may consist of sets of races, for example, 6 different dwarves and 6 different orcs.

as you can see this is a very ambitious project and we have a fair portion of the funding in place, we have about 90 illustrators on-board and a dedicated team at the studio working on the project.

do you have a link to a website or do you have some images you could post up for us to look at?

i would also be grateful if you could pm me a tel number should we wish to contact you directly

Ah, hi Aiden, I just emailed you before I checked in here, welcome.

SECOND EMAIL SENT BY AIDEN


Stuart,

Sounds an interesting project, and more importantly it sounds as if you have actually thought this through, you’d be surprised the number of enquires I get from people who have no idea what they are asking for or expect to get original sculpts return of post for the same cost they might buy a casting from a mail order business.

In terms of short notice I’m actually in the midst of a large diorama as a private commission and have, literally today, confirmed a big corporate rush job for Rolls Royce so I’m going to be pretty busy over the next 5-6weeks but thereafter I should have increasing amounts of free time in my diary. If you really need at least one green for Jan 26th, well nothing is impossible, it could just mean late nights and long working weekends.

In terms of sculpting I always tell clients that a job costs as much or as little as they wish to spend, they simply get the quality they pay for. There really is no such thing as best as you can always tweak and improve sculpts if the budget allows more time. With this in mind asking to see samples is a bit of an open ended question. Did you have a budget in mind per sculpt and an approx height/scale for the figures? I can then see what I’ve got around the workshop that comes close so as to send you a sample or two, although admittedly most of the castings I produce are for the cheaper end of the market, my best work tends to be one off originals for other manufacturers who make their own moulds, and as such the greens tend to go to clients so I’d be limited so this would restrict what I could send out as samples. I suspect the best bet is that if I send you castings I have in at the moment that may or may not be in line with your needs in terms of size or quality and if you still think I may be able to produce what you want, then you could commission a single green as a trial so as to more formally show you what I could do for you, as opposed to what I’ve done for others with different needs and budgets.

In terms of mass production, a lot would depend upon quantities, my workshop is primarily set up for limited short runs so whilst I can cast white metal, pewter, brass bronze, gold, silver, wax , resin and much more there is a difference between turning out a batch of 25 or 50 and perhaps needing 1000 or 3000. When you mention “plastic” if you are referring to injection moulded plastic then this can be a very expensive set up with very high tooling costs so is really only suited to very large batches where the low unit cost becomes an advantage and as such would need to be outsourced to those with the specialist equipment. Larger volumes of metal castings may be less of a problem as I’ve got most of the equipment, it’s just packed away as It gets little use.

Let us know what sort of sized figures you might be wanting and any thoughts you have about either total budget, or cost per sculpt and I’ll see if I can sort out an appropriate sample or two.

Aidan

My reply...

Hello Aiden, thank you for taking the time to relay this info.

The scale of figures is the same as warhammer, I think it is 25mm ? Not sure tho, this is a new area for us.
Firstly, before I forget, where are you based?
The budget we have in mind and let me know if I am off the mark here but £100 per green was what we were expecting and the quality is very important, high quality is required.

Please let me know your thoughts so we move forward.
Regards, Stuart...

BTW, please register on the forum, we can discuss everything there its easier than by email.

The Conflicting Kingdoms Team
Simon Miles
Stuart Miles
Chris Miles

www.ConflictingKingdoms.co.uk
www.ConflictingKingdoms.co.uk/forum

AIDENS FIRST REPLY

Stuart,

Just taken a quick look for a conflicting kingdoms web site and assuming
I've found the right thing it looks to be more of a card based game rather
than a table top miniatures game? You seem to be looking to recruit
illustrators more than sculptors for this project but clearly you've
additional ideas relating to this project?

Drop me an e-mail, or give me a call (07801-278044) with a bit more
information about what you are wanting and we can discuss how to proceed.

Aidan

My reply to Aidens first email...

Hello Aiden, yes you are correct, the game is card based, however it is a board game version of a TCG ( trading card game ) if your not familiar.

So, initially, we need four avatars that will be used as counters and then a further 14. These will be sold both individually and as part of the deluxe card sets.
We are spending 60k to launch this game, hopefully before Christmas this year so its a serious venture and im not here to waste your time.

I would like to see a sample if possible and hopefully speak more, we were hoping to have at least one "green" model in time for January 26 as we are going to a show in London, our current sculptor has let us down to be honest and has left us with this short notice so dont worry if this is not acheivable.

As the game progress we will also require the conflict cards to have miniatures and here probably another 20 or so models.

Once the greens are made, we will then be needing both plastic and metal castings if you are able to do this?

I have sent you email from the wrong email address, actually its conflict@hotmail.co.uk

Please register on the forum as you can then speak to Simon, Chris or me, one of us is usually always on-line.

Regards, Stuart.

Link to Aidens website, I liked Aidens worked as the models have a cartoon feel about them, would work well with our comic characters

http://www.aidan-campbell.co.uk/gallery ... odelsSmall

Here is Aidens last post...

Stuart,

Games Workshop Warhammer figures are called “25mm” but the reality is that interpretations of such a size vary, it used to be a standard across all wargames manufactures as a true height of 25mm to the top of the head, then when GW sculptors started exaggerating and stylising for fantasy figures heads grew dis-proportionally large other sculptors followed the GW example and many 25mm figures now stand about 40mm tall, so you may want to check and confirm if you want a true 25mm figure of something a little larger. In terms of sculpting the difference in size causes no problems.

In terms of location I’m based in Hoylake on the Wirral (NW England)

In terms of budget £100/green is achievable but it’s what I’d put at the low budget cheap and cheerful end of the market. For figures of the typical wargames sort of sizes we are discussing I would not want to go below £100/green, and at the other end if I were sculpting solely for myself with no thought of budget, then the time involved is the sort of thing I would have to charge clients much closer to £1000 for. Though the reality is that much of that time and work would simply be me wanting to challenge myself and push my limits, so for what most average gamers would recognise as a reasonable sculpt I’d allow a budget of upwards of £200, and as you say quality is very important I’d encourage you to think as much above this as you can afford. Obviously such discussion is fairly meaningless without actual standards to look at, for what one person may regard as high quality another may regard as cheap and cheerful, so if you let me have a postal address I’ll send some samples to you so we both have a better idea of the sorts of standards we are talking about. Though I sculpt fantasy figures for others, principally the stuff I retail is a more restrained and less stylised civilian/historic, so these will be the sort of samples I can provide. I’ll include castings ranging from 1/76th scale at approx 25mm tall to 1/43rd scale at approx 40mm tall ranging from my cheap and cheerful budget end of the market to higher standard more expensive work.

In terms of registering on your forum I have done so, but the reality is e-mail is a much easier, quicker and universally used system I routinely check to communicate with all my clients rather than having to have a separate system to log into for each client. If I end up doing a lot of work for you and I need to communicate regularly with lots of people involved with your game then obviously the forum will be more appropriate.

Aidan

Ok, it seems that £500 is roughly going to be the cost for each Avatar. Ouch, clearly a lot more than we expected, we do not want to have poor quality, once the green is done, it is then quite cheap to produce metal castings, we could even source this from China or something but that is going to be a heck of a lot of figures to sell to get back the investment.

The deluxe starter packs will have four figures. So we can take the sales of this into account.