Basically just what the title says? I dabble in miniatures and the times I've come across a miniature cast in resin is just seems to be more expensive, and in one unfortunate case quite brittle.
So, those of you who deal with miniatures, why should I pick up a resin miniature?
When discussing the plastic used in miniatures, you have soft, flexible stuff (Reaper Bones, Pathfinder Minis, D&D Minis), and hard-plastic stuff (Games Workshop).
If you compare, you will see that the harder plastics have potential for much higher detail than the softer plastics.
Resins are similar to the harder plastics. While brittle and easily breakable, you can get extremely high detail in a resin figure, and the narrow or elongated portions of the model don't tend to be 'floppy'. Also, when you cast in resin, you aren't required to use the molds that have the tolerances that a Games Workshop style mold requires.
This allows you to use cheaper molds to get higher quality miniatures while still casting in a non-metal material.
The only reason to choose resin over a different material is if you feel it looks better than the non-resin version.
And a related Q: Why make it out of resin instead of out of metal?
A: Because pewter is getting really, really expensive, and the countries controlling most of the world's available tin mines have been limiting the supply and raising the price for the past decade. By contrast, resin is still cheap.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yep. If you want a really lovely, super detailed mini, it will definitely look best in resin over another material. When I played 40K with mostly metal minis, I bought Forgeworld resin accessories to help pimp out my vehicles, and it was amazingly high quality stuff.
If you ever decide to splurge on one, word of advice: wash it in a little soap and water before you prime and paint. While this is actually a good idea for most minis, mold release agent (chemicals used to help get a miniature out of its mold once it's been cast) seems to particularly stick to resin, and will make it harder to prime and paint.
(DeathQuaker learned this the hard way, and still weeps quietly about it sometimes.)
Chief Technical Officer
|
And a related Q: Why make it out of resin instead of out of metal?
A: Because pewter is getting really, really expensive, and the countries controlling most of the world's available tin mines have been limiting the supply and raising the price for the past decade. By contrast, resin is still cheap.
This is why even companies that do mostly metal will usually go to resin for really big figures. An enormous dragon made of resin is cheaper and lighter—and because elements like wings, tails, and heads are lighter, they can feature more dynamic poses and less beefy-looking sculpts.
I have to admit I don't like a lot of the resin stuff I have held. Detail is great but the pain of filling every little bubble (GW Fine Cast) or fixing the details that broke in transit.
For the master painter, I get it. For me, I find the extra cost for the added details is not worth it.
Why Resin vs Metal?
Because when on of your @#$&^# players/friends:
A) Flicks the mini across the table
B) Drops the mini onto the table from a few inches
C) Thinks they are helping clean up by scooping all the minis up in their hand at one time
D) Accidentally?? Rolls dice into the mini
E) Balances the mini on others minis, sometimes in rather sexually exploitive positions, until they fall over
F) Accidentally drops the mini on the floor (even the GM who painted it can be guilty of this a few times)
When they do any of the above with a metal mini, despite the hours you may have in on its painting and customizing, paint WILL be chipped off of it. Despite several gruelling tests of all the above, the "plastic" minis tend to fair far better as does their paint.
Frailness is another consideration though, and although metal minis may be more resistant to breaking, they are much more difficult to repair than plastic/resin.
Reaper Miniatures
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yep. If you want a really lovely, super detailed mini, it will definitely look best in resin over another material.
I see this a lot, and it's one of my pet peeves. I call BS. Sorry, but here you go:
I have worked in the manufacturing of figures for over a decade. The material in which the figures are cast makes no difference in terms of detail. The molds are both exactly as capable of picking up as minute a detail as you can see with any magnifier that is reasonable to use at the table (3x, 10x, etc.). The materials involved are both exactly as capable of reflecting that detail. A tool mark of 1/1000th an inch is just as visible on the finished product of both materials. The ONLY place resin is superior (and I'll qualify this away, too, in a moment) is in thickness.What???? Explaining. if you have a large, thin, flat surface, like a Dragon's wing, for example, it's much easier to get the resin to fill out that shape, as it stays liquid longer and can be more easily forced to flow into the shape by rotating the mold, etc. Pewter has a low melting (and conversely, freezing) point and we work with it at about 650º F. It freezes when it gets to 450º F. It loses those 200ºF in about 15 seconds. Inside a centrifugal caster, such as we use at Reaper, if it left any air pockets (or the much cooler mold froze the metal over the very thin membrane before it had completely filled in the piece) then it won't work. For me, trying to fill out anything with a surface area larger than 2-3 inches but thinner than 1mm is next to impossible in just 15 seconds. With Resin, you have a slightly longer working time, and aren't usually spin-casting, but tap casting, and can make that work better. Heck, If I had 2 minutes, instead of 15 seconds, I could make it work in metal, too.
So resin makes really large thin pieces better. Dragonwings, etc. Usually. I know that, for instance, the upcoming Clockwork Dragon for the kickstarter, rather than make the prototype wings out of metal, we had them made in resin, precisely because they were too thin to be feasible in pewter.
But I said I'd qualify that away, and I shall. If I can heat the mold up above 400º F, which takes a LOT of effort, I can keep the metal from freezing for several minutes. It will severely damage the mold, but will enable me to cast what is, under normal conditions, impossible otherwise. We could have manages to make those wings in pewter, but it would have taken hours.
So why does everybody say resin holds more detail than pewter? Marketing is one part of it. The resin people work very hard to convince you of this. the other is Sculpting. When you know your piece is going to be sculpt in resin, you tend to put more really thin bits - the hair fine filigree, the thin membranes, etc. because they THINK that it will show up better. I can tell you that as far as filigree, surface textures of less than .5mm are no different to me than if there were no texture. You take a green, cover it with human hair, and when I cast it, the hair will still be perfectly visible. It's if you make a membrane of hair, then I can't really do it.
Show me a resin piece that isn't a membranous object that I could not replicate given the legal right to make, and I'll eat my hat. But I'll swear up and down that that's the difference (other than price) between pewter and resin. Membranes. NOT detail.
I'll get off my soapbox now.
Great info, Bryan. I don't have any direct experience with this but what you say makes sense...and you should know. I've always assumed the differences were as outlined in the posts before yours.
M
Fair enough, Bryan. Most of my experience with resin is Forgeworld, which I used at the time I used almost exclusively Citadel miniatures (which at the time were either white metal or their oldschool gray plastic). It struck me there was a lot more detailing and "crispness" in their minis than in equivalent Citadel minis, so that was the impression that was left with me. However, your statement about large, thin pieces makes a lot of sense though -- most of what I used from Forgeworld were not entire minis but adornments to add to existing minis, many of which were quite delicate. So that may well have been more of the issue than the detail itself, I just misunderstood/misinterpreted what I had in my hands and why it was the way it was. My bad.
In truth, my personal preference has always been metal minis simply because I prefer the weight, let alone anything else.
Thanks for the replies, especially your's Bryan! I thought it could possibly have something to do with the level of detail but when i got burned with some minis who where frail as hel and not overly detailed I grew kinda skeptic of the material. Then I thought perhaps it had something to do with the price but stuff like this and this had me confused.