Cancelled Proxy War custom minis - Nov 5th

[SamuraiJack]

Proxy Army is a minis company that’s going to specialize in making custom-made minis to your specifications. They’ve announced they’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign starting next month.

Source

From the announcement:

Proxy Army is a new miniatures gaming company using 3D printing to give gamers the opportunity to fully customize and personalize their units.

Proxy Army gives you command of every part of your army. With our modeling and 3D printing process you can clip together a new model like Lego, using our extensive database to bring your visions into reality. From concept to beautiful ultra-detail model, you direct every step of the way. You can even work directly with our team of designers and get entirely original units made, giving you the power to craft an army limited only by your imagination. We’ve got 2 levels of miniatures; personalized and original.

When you order a personalized Proxy War model, you log onto our database of parts and grabs torsos, limbs, chassis, mutations, powers, equipment, and technology. You then clip them together to create an entirely custom model you can pose and personalize to your tastes. Personalized models can be 3D printed in any of our three materials; high detail plastic, regular reinforced plastic, and colored sandstone.

With an original Proxy War model, you partner with a three man design team: a character artist, an illustrator, and a 3D modeler. They work with you full time to go all the way from a concept to a finished high-detail prototype. We then help you share your creation with the community, putting it up on our website and giving you a percentage of the profits.

We will be coming out with a Kickstarter for Proxy Army on November 5th

 

[Smokestack]

Kickstarter is live.

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/proxyarmy/proxy-war-custom-3d-printed-miniatures

 

I am in for a squad (10) 28mm customized minis... I am hoping for some female swashbuckling types so I hope they have rapiers and floppy hats... There is a $25 option for a single fully customized character mini so I may try to have my favorite Dual rapier wielding NPC made as well...

 

Hope this gets funded...

[Sae]

This one has a lot of potential. I wish the design-your-own figure was a little cheaper. The more people that design their own figures the larger the pool of available stuff grows for anyone mixing and matching...

[unidentifiable]

3D printing is still way out of its league compared to sculpts.

 

250 microns is huge when most details on a pewter mini are <20 microns. Heck, the Makerbot 2 has 100 micron resolution, so whatever they're using is lower quality than a $2000 printer. At $7 per mini, you're talking the same price as a pewter mini too.

 

There's still a great variety of sculpts you can print, but details will have to be painted on. As an example of what 3D printers can do, all of Dutchmogul's stuff is free, and it's brilliant: http://www.thingiverse.com/dutchmogul/designs/page:1

[Smokestack]

^{The creator commented that the can do detailed "normal" 28mm miniatures. The only example of the 28mm minis are the big head small body ones. If they CAN make them detailed enough to not look out of place with my other table top minis... then this will probably be where all my money goes if they get funded and set up... Being able to make a close approximation for my rpg characters or custom armies is huge...}

 

^{The create your own level is a bit out of my price range ($350), but they say you can send a picture of a real person or concept art and they can make it... Thats pretty cool...}

[GregR]

3D printing is still way out of its league compared to sculpts.

 

250 microns is huge when most details on a pewter mini are <20 microns. Heck, the Makerbot 2 has 100 micron resolution, so whatever they're using is lower quality than a $2000 printer. At $7 per mini, you're talking the same price as a pewter mini too.

 

There's still a great variety of sculpts you can print, but details will have to be painted on. As an example of what 3D printers can do, all of Dutchmogul's stuff is free, and it's brilliant: http://www.thingiverse.com/dutchmogul/designs/page:1

 

Guessing there was a typo when you saw the page? It currently says 25 micron resolution. I'm sure they're using photo-polymers and SLA; not FDM like the MakerBot and its progeny. This gallery is much closer to the state of the art today, including some nice miniatures with 6 - 10 micron features --

 

Edited November 8, 2013 by GregR

[unidentifiable]

Well I'm impressed.

 

The only remaining problem is the cost then. Those dino heads were from IPFL, but I can't for the life of me find out what machine IPFL is using to create those. The EnvisionTec stuff looks awesome though, saw some printers on their site that were 15 micron. Like you said they're all using a photopolymer of some kind.

 

The other miniatures shown on your link were made of wax, which is probably why they were behind glass :(

[GregR]

Yeah, I should mentioned I'm not in on this kickstarter, and I'm not making any assertions about what quality they're going to achieve. They're saying "25 micron" but that could be with or without banding (layers not aligning perfectly), or thin layers but poor x-y resolution, or the automatic 'support' structures they have to put on the model to support it during printing might be a pain to remove, or interfere with your design, etc. As with all kickstarters - buyer beware.

 

Anyway, I love the idea. I even imagined doing something like this myself "someday". But this is an area where the technology is moving so fast, prices are likely to continue falling pretty rapidly. As an example, 18 months ago the B9Creator was Kickstarted and offered 50 micron layers for $2375 using a DLP projector to polymerize the resin. About a year ago the Form-1 was Kickstarted and offered 25 micron layers for $2300 with lasers. Six months for double the resolution.

 

The one relative constant, however, seems to be the photopolymers. It's an expensive material, and hasn't fallen in price despite the popularity. But the falling prices of machines will allow competitors to squeeze earlier adopters' margins. It's going to be an exciting ride for the rest of us though!

[Orlando_the_Technicoloured]

It'll end up like ink jet printers before compatible cartridges really took off.....

 

I remember at work when it was cheaper for us to buy a new printer with 3 free cartridges that it was to actually replace the ink when it ran out. We ended up with a storage cupboard stuffed with functional but useless printers

[Sae]

I'm happy they finally showed the customization of a character that didn't look disproportionate. That was the main reassurance I was looking for the entire campaign.

[Malgus]

I hope this one works out. I have more than enough bones, etc to keep me busy until this technology matures...

[ChaoticBlues]

Interesting, and I wish I had the cash to back it, for the terrain set if nothing else. That and the big cannon, that thing looks cool.

[Broken Toy]

It'll end up like ink jet printers before compatible cartridges really took off.....

 

I remember at work when it was cheaper for us to buy a new printer with 3 free cartridges that it was to actually replace the ink when it ran out. We ended up with a storage cupboard stuffed with functional but useless printers

Hopefully it won't become like that.

 

The 'home' 3D printers of today are based on open source technologies; anyone can step up and make their own line if the need arises. It's almost impossible to 'lock' a printer down to a specific cartridge or material unless you design it that way, so printer-exclusive cartridges on FDM printers would get weird looks and be called the 'retard kid' by everyone because nobody 'locks' their cartridges in this day and age. On STL printers (the ones that can make 25 micron minis) it gets better. Even on a 'closed' system like the Form 1, other resins have been found to be compatible and sometimes outperform the original due to denser pigments, and there is no 'cartridge'; you must pour the resin in an open vat. Therefore, the issue has been sidestepped on every side.

Edited November 25, 2013 by Broken Toy