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Author Topic: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings  (Read 3080 times)

Offline Doug ex-em4

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Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« on: May 09, 2019, 08:30:35 AM »
Someone started a topic about this on TMP and, as someone who is looking at producing more plastics, I thought I’d see what opinions are here.

Do you prefer plastic figures to come as a complete, one piece moulding or as multi-pieces requiring assembly? If the latter, do you like lots of bits or perhaps just separate weapons, shields and heads? Or something else entirely?

Doug

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #1 on: May 09, 2019, 08:34:26 AM »
Personally the attraction of plastics is the ability to convert, and add variety through the swopping of parts, weapons, arms, heads etc.

As long as the part connection points are sensibly made, multipart would be attractive.

Also worth bearing in mind that most gamers don’t just buy a range but mix and match, so compatibility with other existing ranges of plastics is a win-win.

 :)

Offline black hat miniatures

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #2 on: May 09, 2019, 08:52:04 AM »
I prefer single part as I find a lot of the modern plastics too fiddly to assemble.  I bought some Warlord WW2 and will be selling them shortly as I couldn't face putting them together.

Also, a lot of the figures can only be assembled one way which seems to negate the point of making them multi-part.

Okay, I know that people do assemble them into strange poses but a lot of them look really unnatural, IMHO.

Mike
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Offline Cubs

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #3 on: May 09, 2019, 09:20:13 AM »
For me one of the big draws of plastic is the ability to create your own poses. I understand how a single pose would be fine for people wanting lots and lots for building battalions of marching soldiers etc... but that's not my own bag, so multi-pose would be my choice. I hate to be another person just blurting out the Perry twins as an example of how it's done right … but I really do think the Perry twins are an example of how it's done right.
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Offline OSHIROmodels

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #4 on: May 09, 2019, 09:29:49 AM »
Multipose.

Like a Multipass only better  :D
cheers

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Offline SteveBurt

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #5 on: May 09, 2019, 09:32:51 AM »
Single piece plastics are severely constrained in the poses they can have otherwise you'd never get them out of the steel moulds. Just look at many of the 1:72 soft plastic figures which often have quite 'flat' poses. By making the figures multi-part, you give a lot more possibilities for interesting poses. I've always found plastic much easier to assemble than multi-part metal figures, some of which are a real PITA (that Salute freebie Mayan priest for instance was a nightmare).

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #6 on: May 09, 2019, 10:23:10 AM »
Even though I'm not always a big fan of fiddly little bits like those in Malifaux models, which sometimes look like they're intentionally being moulded in as many parts as possible, I came into this hobby from a plastic modeling angle, so for me, there's only one answer:
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Offline OSHIROmodels

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #7 on: May 09, 2019, 10:31:50 AM »
 lol

Online Ogrob

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #8 on: May 09, 2019, 10:55:50 AM »
Multipart, like North Star or Perry. Separate arms, and heads.

Malifaux plastics are a different animal, they are designed for dynamic poses not modularity. I like them for animals and monsters but prefer the Perry style for humanoids.

Offline Antonio J Carrasco

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #9 on: May 09, 2019, 11:22:35 AM »
Basic body -two or three dollies, tops-, basic weapons and choice of heads. Human brain is trained to recognize faces. If you put 24 figures in the same pose, but with different faces/heads your brain will tell you that they are all different people and the impression will be of individuality within a mass... For me, that's enough.

Offline zemjw

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #10 on: May 09, 2019, 12:13:10 PM »
I've used the old Empire plastics from GW in loads of conversions - made much easier by the fact that torsos, arms and lower bodies are separate pieces.

In contrast, their new Necromunda stuff is much more like a Tamiya kit, where there are loads of parts, but they only build in a certain way. Not so keen on that.

To some extent it depends on how many poses are in the box. If there are four identical sprues with five poses, then you're really working with five figures. For some folk this will be fine, but for those of us who like as many unique figures as possible, it's less good.

Offline Hu Rhu

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #11 on: May 09, 2019, 01:31:05 PM »
Definitely multi-part and multi-pose. 

There are plenty of plastic figures with separate heads and/or arms that you can only really assemble one way-  Wargames Factory/Warlord, Gripping Beast, Fireforge for example. That for me defeats the object of making mutli-part figures given the extra hassle of assembly compared to buying a set of one piece castings in different poses. 

The good sets (for example Frostgrave) offer variations of heads and arms/weapons that enable you to compose figures with enough variation for small bands say up to 12 or so.

Multi-pose and multi-part however (of which the Perrys are the exemplars) provide so much variation that you can almost assemble whole units without having another figure exactly the same.  That for me is the gold standard.

Offline Captain Blood

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #12 on: May 09, 2019, 02:21:28 PM »
For me one of the big draws of plastic is the ability to create your own poses. I understand how a single pose would be fine for people wanting lots and lots for building battalions of marching soldiers etc... but that's not my own bag, so multi-pose would be my choice. I hate to be another person just blurting out the Perry twins as an example of how it's done right … but I really do think the Perry twins are an example of how it's done right.

My sentiments precisely, on all counts  :)

What kind of era or genre are you considering producing plastics for, Doug?

Offline sukhe_bator

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #13 on: May 09, 2019, 03:33:03 PM »
I echo the sentiments of all those in favour of multi part with the option to multipose, more important with the current wave of interest in skirmish and small scale action games. I'd argue that even when wargaming the big battalions you'd never see a line of spears, rifles or bayonets in exactly the same position. I've lost count of the number of times I've tweaked countless miniatures over the years to achieve a less uniform uniform result...
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Offline Fighting15s

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Re: Plastics - Single or Multi-piece mouldings
« Reply #14 on: May 09, 2019, 04:43:07 PM »
I prefer single part as I find a lot of the modern plastics too fiddly to assemble.  I bought some Warlord WW2 and will be selling them shortly as I couldn't face putting them together.

Also, a lot of the figures can only be assembled one way which seems to negate the point of making them multi-part.

Okay, I know that people do assemble them into strange poses but a lot of them look really unnatural, IMHO.

Mike

I'm with Mike on this. Some multi-part multi-pose figures are really quite fiddly. But it depends whether you are making plastic figures for massed units (less individuality required) or skirmish games (more individuality required). You only have to look at forum posts asking whether painting services will assemble plastics to learn that for some people the attraction is not that of having to stick everything together.
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