Gallium starship fleet from Butler's Printed Models

[Chief Lackey Rich]

So these are new:

https://www.butlersprintedmodels.co.uk/spaceships/gallium.html



Those very much appear to be Gorn proxies for Star Fleet Battles.  It's not my imagination, right?  I mean, the details are different, but the overall designs and ship classes seem meant to fill in nicely. 

On a related note, Shapeways (the previous source of most ADB minis) is out of business as of early July, the ADB site itself is looking pretty dead as well with the only activity I see on Facebook, and according to FB Steve Cole in rehab following a fall and hip replacement surgery.  Given how small teh company was, that's got to be pretty impactful.  Anyone know more about their status at the moment?

[Rick]

I hadn't noticed those, but now you come to mention it...

I think we're seeing a pattern emerge - I noticed Mel Miniatures (and others) have moved from Shapeways to Only-Games in the uk. This is likely to be the next stage; designers moving their designs to established (or newly formed) 3d printing sites as a sort of 'design collective' where the company prints their designs for customers and gives them a royalty for each design used, but smaller and more regional than the monolithic Shapeways store.

As to ADB, I'm not sure - Steve Cole has always been a bit of a micro-manager, Starfleet Battles is his baby and he's been (justifiably) protective of his product; nothing goes out under ADB's name unless it's passed across his desk (and usually been rewritten!) In his absence I can't see much happening at all.

[Chief Lackey Rich]

I think we're seeing a pattern emerge - I noticed Mel Miniatures (and others) have moved from Shapeways to Only-Games in the uk. This is likely to be the next stage; designers moving their designs to established (or newly formed) 3d printing sites as a sort of 'design collective' where the company prints their designs for customers and gives them a royalty for each design used, but smaller and more regional than the monolithic Shapeways store.

Yeah, Shapeways' rather sudden and total collapse seems to have caused a bit of a shakeup that disrupted not only people selling through them (eg ADB) but folks using them for printing services.  It sounded like Studio Bergstrom was relying on them to print masters for him and had to go looking for a replacement.  Not sure who Brigade was using, but they haven't said anything publicly about it so maybe they were/are using someone else.

[The_Beast]

Thanks, Rich!

Always glad to see new sources and designs, though cross-pond shippage is always a challenge.

Too right about top-down viewing brings to mind SFB Gorn; much less so when viewed from the side.

Of course, home printers have clallenged the print on demand model, but I haven't found them home appliances. Plenty of folk disagree, obviously.

Doug

[Rick]

Home printers have advanced tremendously in the last few years - a £250-400 machine will give a decent print size and incredible quality that used to be only available in the £2000+ price range. My brother has both a resin and an extruded plastic printer, the quality is amazing but you do need a top-end computer to run the software on, that's the key to good print quality.

[The_Beast]

Not quibbling about the quality of results or cost, but skill and patience required of the user still daunts me.

Ergo the use of the phrase 'home appliance...'

Doug

[Rick]

Well that's true. But there are thousands of free stl files on various sites across the internet, as well as more that are cheap to buy and keep printing from. The skill in setting up and supporting a file to print is relatively simple and straightforward compared to the job of designing them in the first place!

[Chief Lackey Rich]

Always glad to see new sources and designs, though cross-pond shippage is always a challenge.

About to get a whole lot worse if/when the longshoreman strike hits the US East Coast, too.

Too right about top-down viewing brings to mind SFB Gorn; much less so when viewed from the side.

The overheads also reminds me a bit of the invader counter silhouettes from the old SPI board game Worldkiller.  Doesn't seem likely as an inspiration, so probably pure coincidence.