Axis & Allies 1980s minis

BTW---the peoples of my little planet have declared war on the peoples of your little planet! Now if only I had plausible backstory and a game mechanic to simulate launching a war fleet from my profile icon up to yours...

I would think it's basically the same process, just a different material. Reading about casting & such makes me wish I'd paid more attention in chemistry---I can't keep all the different polys, ester, and ethylenes straight!

Also, if you haven't picked this up already, greens tend to run about $10US per millimeter for figures. A&A sized figures are probably 10MM. I'm not sure how that pricing carries over to vehicles (e.g. small tanks, ships, etc) however. Probably similar. If you get really serious about talking to a manufacturer, you might want to ask what kind of material they can use as a green. Not everybody can use everything, and vehicles are often done in different material than green stuff in order to get harder edges.

soulbeach,

Yes, I mean for a sculptor to produce a green. (for the record, I'm somewhat familiar with non-mainstream miniatures production---think Mongoose Publishing or Reaper Miniatures---but not so much mainstream plastics---Hasbro)

Most wargaming minis companies have a couple sculptors they work with for their lines, and many will cast items for you (in metal, with large orders being hundreds of figures). Finding decent independent sculptors is also pretty easy. I actually have a couple minis that we hired a guy to make for some games we're trying to eventually produce. We got good deals because he was trying to build up his portfolio, but you definitely shouldn't pay more than $300--400 for a 28mm roughly humanoid figure from a known scupltor and substantially less for a more unknown sculptor. Ditto ~$150--200 for a very good 10--15mm mini.

For a while there was a website called minisculptor.com where people could post their miniatures portfolio, art, jobs, etc. It was run by Black Orc Games, who make several miniatures wargames, but they shut it down earlier in the year.

You can pick up a lot of info/leads by hanging out on the sculpting forum of The Miniatures Page. If you post a job ad there, you'll get a number of respondees.

My minis were made by a guy named Jay Miller. He wasn't sculpting for a while recently, but may be back into it. He's pretty good, with the one critique that his poses are often poorly chosen (they're often just not interesting). But, if you really say what you're looking for, he can make pretty good stuff (esp. at 28mm). He's also very cheap and pretty good about keeping in touch/reporting on progress. If you talk to him, please tell him Joe Kopena from RocketShip Games recommended him. For reference, his 1:72 historicals and Relic Hunter are what we had him make. The RelicHunter in particular is really quite good. On a minor note, he is also in Canada (Ontario I think, but I could be wrong).

The biggest problem you're going to face though is production. I'm not sure what sort of budget you're under or what retail price target you have, but producing parts like these is going to be tough. I've been working on it for a while and haven't come up with a whole lot. Most small minis manufactures are not prepared to cast resin, so it costs too much, while I don't have the budget or production scale to make injection molding worthwhile. What sort of production size are you looking at (if you don't mind sharing)?

BTW, I like the prototype icons on your website very much.