mrbuddylee

wow! that looks great! how much time was involved in putting that together?

Hmmm, it looks pretty good, as for pointers, I might not be able to help much, but perhaps a few more highlights on the highest points of the cloak, and possibly the blue as well. Looks good though, I'd like to see it when it's done!

I'm very impressed, looks great. A friend mentioned that this picture would be a great cover for a 80's hair band. ::)

I really like the female's base, very well done! I've never liked the first guy's pose, but as for the paint jobs, the capes and armor look really great!

http://top40-charts.com/chart.php?cid=12

Well, first, a little backstory. I tend to get ideas. Some of them are good, some are not. Sometimes I go overboard. I also tend to feel the need to flex my website programming muscles and give them a bit of a workout. On the downside of that, I can program like a madman, but I can't come up with nice designs. So anyways, I decided last week that I needed a website to post my minis. I don't know why I decided this, but for some reason I did. I sat down at my computer and started some programming. I went ahead and created an .asp website running off of a backend database, but while I was working on it, I thought: "hmmm, perhaps I can make this bigger". You see, I have a problem. I tend to make things larger than they should be. So, I thought, well, instead of creating a website for just myself, why not create one for people that don't want to/can't create one for themself. So, I decided to make a website that I could use, and other people could use as well. About three days later, and viola, I have a website that both I and others can use. I have 20 gigs of montly bandwidth, and some hard drive space to spare, I decided to pony up the $8 for a domain name, and DisplacedMiniatures.com was born. So, here's the thing, if you have pictures of minis sitting on your computer and you want to share them with the world, but you don't know exactly how, this website may help you out. Anyways, I don't know how much use I can expect people to get out of it, I don't know how much use I can even get out of it, but like I said, sometimes I just get these wacky ideas... If you're looking for a home for your miniatures, check out DisplacedMiniatures.com. To see what your site will look like, you can check out my site at: DisplacedMiniatures.com/buddylee. It's all free, and as long as I don't run out of disk space or bandwidth, it will stay that way. Sign up is instant, and in theory, you can have a gallery website up and running in about 10 minutes. If anyone has any suggestions or comments, that'd be great. At this point I'm not really planning on advertising this anywhere, but feel free to tell your friends if they need a place. Anyways, that's it! I hope to add a way for users to add articles and links in the near future, and I'm open to suggestions and/or comments. If no one decides to use this, it won't hurt my feelings, but maybe some people will dig it.

London Stock Exchange... Duh British company... should have dug a little deeper. Thanks for the replies. Since small companies do their own casting, is it a cheap process? I always envisioned it had some high start up costs, but then again, a local brewery here bought all their equipment second hand, so I guess mini companies could do the same.

Alright, a friend and I were talking about this with a local hobby store owner and I was wondering if anyone here could shed some light on the following questions for us. 1) I've heard that sculptor can make anywhere from $50-$500 per sculpt for a company. Is this correct? If this is correct, how many sculpts must one person sculpt to make a living? Do sculpters do non mini sculpts or have side jobs? It seems like there are only so many companies out there that are producing minis, I would think a person would run out of places to sell to eventually? In a following up question: Reaper seems to push out about 10-15 new minis a month. They seem to have 5-8 sculptors making sculpts for them, so that's about 3-5 sculpts per sculptor per month. Unless I was told completely wrong, that doesn't seem like much. Do sculptor's get a cut of the total sales of a mini? 2) It seems like the number of companies supplying high quality minis has really grown lately, but when talking with my gaming store owner, he said his total sales have been down 15% over the past year, and his mini sales make up about 25% of his business, he wasn't sure how down they were. So, with the new miniature companies firing up how can they expect to stay in business (Privateer Press, Magnificent Egos, Wargods of Aegolis, etc)? 3) It's hard because of the fact that every miniature company is privately traded, but what do you think the industry leaders (GW, Reaper,etc) sell each year? And what kind of overhead would they have per year? I just have a hard time grasping numbers. 4) How many people would a standard mini creation place employ? Do most cast their own minis or is there an industry casting company that many companies use? 5) Did Reaper create Warlord because their figs were selling well and they thought a game would increase sales or because their figure sales were stagnant and a game was a way to increase overall sales? 6) Why did Ral Partha go under? Weren't they really the biggest and best place at one time? Anyways, I know it sounds like I'm going to start a miniature company or write an essay on economics, but I'm really just a curious person. Thanks for any responses!

I really think it looks good, the weathered look of the cauldron is great, the shading/highlights on the cloak, beard and face are great as well! Very impressive!

Look very nice, I wish I could see a litte bit bigger picture, but from this view it looks great!

You know, I feel a bit sorry for the cow. Where's our dire cow to fight the eagle infestation. Anyways, looks good, I'm wondering what kind of problems you had with the paints though, all looks great to me!

Looks great! As for cloud bases, I've never seen one that I really liked, I think they're hard to pull off, but if you can do it, then more power to you! Everything looks great at this point though!

Thanks for posting this, I have the hardest time getting pictures to turn out right, I'm going to use some of the stuff discussed here. yours look great. I would like to see the gobbo on something other than blue, it looks good, but a different background may make it really pop out, I think you're losing something with the blue on blue, but again, I'm no expert. :)

Looks good! You may need to experiment with the lighting to avoid the shine on the raised areas, I'm no master at photography though. Maybe just a wash or drybrush on a few areas to make the stand out a little more (the hair was the first thing that came to mind). Nice work though!

I'm not a big fan of samauri minis, but this is very nice, good work!

Here he is in his close up glory.

This was a pretty quick paint, tried for a little chaos type feel, just kinda messed around with him. He's a Mage Knight Metal Mini, standard scale.

Looking from the consumer perspective, I'd say that you should charge more than you would on Ebay. If you have a mini that sells on Ebay for $20, sell it on site for $30. The extra 50% is well worth it to hold something in your hand, I'd be much more willing to buy sometime seen than through pictures, and I'd pay more for it. So, on to what to charge. Are there other painters in your area? If so, you're going to have competition unless you're either much better (or much worse) than they are. I'd say you're going to get the bulk of your sales through comissions that aren't done through the store. If I were you, I'd push that aspect. If you're going to pay 40% to the store, you can either mark them higher than your comission pieces and charge people that contact you directly less, or you can look at it like you're not going to make any money off of those in the store anyway and you can sell them cheap to get your name out and charge a higher price for custom pieces. Of course, it looks like the store is going to be your 'pimp' so they may come looking for a cut even if you do custom solo work. I would suggest you renegotiate the 40% on the basis that if they want 40%, you display your extras there and any custom business you get through them, they get 10%. And, looking at the minis in your www page, I would think you could get anywhere from $10 - $40+ per figure, (quite a range right :) ), but if this is a trial, I would start low and increase price, if you have the inventory to spare and aren't worried about profits right away, this is the best way to get your name out and show the store that your stuff sells. Increase price later as your workload increases and if you can't negotiate now, negotiate when your sales increase and they're making money off you. One final suggestion, if you're certain you can make money, offer to buy the space for a set price per month. Like $50 per display case, that way they get money regardless and you have the change to make quite a bit.

very nice, great fur, placement of the white is terrific looks great!

Just a quick time to say thank you, I'm going to share this thread with my wife this evening, and thank you all for your thoughts and prayers and general niceness :)

Thanks Enchantra, we appreciate it!

Hi, I dont post much here in the general discussion or on the boards at all for that matter and I really debated on posting this here at all, but I'm sure there are people that are going through similar situations, and sometimes hearing someone else is going through these things makes your own burden easier. But anyways, my mother-in-law passed away last night from cancer, and as you can imagine, the family is pretty torn up. She'd been sick for some time, but it's still tough to lose someone, even if you id expect it. She was in her mid 50s. Her and her family are very strong Christians, and their faith has helped them through many of the hardest parts of all this. I am a believer that everything does happen for a reason, and there is a plan greater than we can see, so that does give some comfort. Anyways, if you feel like keeping her family in your thoughts and prayers that'd, be swell, even if you don't know someone the spreading of good thoughts and prayers can be helpful (at least I believe that). I'm always reminded of the Gandalf quote from LOTR (which I can't remember word for word): Death is not the end, just another path we all must take. I don't want to be a downer, but if you have families, tell them you love them, if you have problems understanding why you're here and why things happen, try to figure it out. Don't take life for granted, and enjoy it. Also, if anyone does have someone they love going through something like this and you're not sure what to do and you need to talk, let me know. My wife was able to get some great comforts from her online friends, and talking to people does help, because you're never alone if you don't want to be. Anyhow, just wanted to share. -Brad

Thanks for the kind wishes! Just got done watching my present of the Extended Edition Return of the King. Ice cream cake and game night tonight, hooray!

hooray! thanks for the update!

new better pictures :)