I haven't posted for a bit, but have read some comments about materials and such with folks commenting on resin or metal for figures and vehicles etc....
My thoughts based on experience are that high quality resin is the most detailed material for making castings - they are extremely beautiful and we do all of our mastering in resin. However, it can be brittle for parts like bayonets and rifles and for figures, I think metal is a better material for mass production plus metal figures feel better in the hand. Marco mentioned that the cost of resin is supposed to be cheaper than metal. Well, that of course depends on the resin as not all resins are made equally and some are far higher quality than others (stronger, less shrinkage, etc...). However, the bigger issue is that the molds used to make resin figures have an extremely short life while metal molds last about 8 times longer, so the cost of the molds and scrub rates have to be factored into the overall price making resin not a very suitable material for making hundreds/thousands of figures.
When it comes to plastic, the figures tend to be lower detail than resin, particularly the sides, because of the way injection molds work and the limitations of them. The advantage of plastic is that the part comes out of the mold very accurately every time you make a casting (i.e. the molds last pretty much forever and the parts don't degrade like they do with resin or metal molds). The downside with plastic of course is that the steel injection molds are terribly expensive to make. The plastic parts that come out are inexpensive to make, but unless you're doing thousands of something it's not really worth it to invest in the molds and this is probably the biggest reason why plastic isn't used very much in small run markets like pre-painted figures. When companies like Dragon or Tamiya or whoever who make model kits use plastic, they make thousands of them and then they reuse the same parts (and molds) in many many different kits, so it is economical for them.
Finally, when it comes to figures and how they are priced, there is more to consider than simply the level of the painting. Yes, the painting is a big part of it, however, the costs of the sculpting and the number of separate parts to the figure also play a factor. It's not unusual for a First Legion figure to have 10 to 12 or more separate parts to a single foot figure, nearly double what most other companies put into their figures.
In regards to making vehicles, I think resin/plastic is the best core material and then supplemented with other materials for added detail. Our vehicles for example are more highly detailed than plastic kits (of course, they're bigger than 1:35th kits and the extra size allows for extra detail). I also think (and some of you will laugh when I say this given that this is a polystone world!!!) that plastic vehicles are too light. Our tanks are very light when compared to polystone, but still about 6 times heavier than a plastic kit is. What makes people rave about 1:35th tanks isn't so much the kits themselves, it's the modellers who build and paint them to exceptional quality. And those guys tend to use a lot of after market resin and photo-etched products to customize the kits. Where plastic kits shine in comparison to most "toy soldier" vehicles is in the track and bogey wheel setup and the number of separate parts. When we created our vehicles, the highly detailed track setup was a huge priority as was making pretty much everything (ie. all detail parts, all view ports even if closed, grills, etc...) separate parts. More separate parts = more detail and better castings. In essence, we determined that we would create the most highly detailed vehicles that we possibly could and paint them as well as we possibly could without compromising on anything. We did this because there are already so many other companies that make polystone tanks and they make them well, so we decided we'd do something different and provide a much higher level of accuracy and realism. We feel we've achieved this, but that of course comes with a price as has been mentioned in discussions elsewhere.
Speaking of price, I also noticed that UK Subs made a comment that the new JJD tank makes our look over priced.
This obervation is a bit misguided I'm sorry to say. The JJD tank is about 1/3rd the total size of our Panzer III for example, doesn't have nearly as many parts, the painting, while very nice, isn't nearly as detailed as ours, and it doesn't come with any figures as far as I know. It's a very nice tank to be sure, but when you put that tank side by side with our Panzer III for example, you'd understand where the difference in price comes from. I would like to think that if First Legion did a Panzer I, it would be under $200 as well...I also imagine that if one of the companies who makes Polystone tanks did something as small as a Panzer I, it would be under $100. So pricing is entirely relative to the materials used, the number of parts, the total size, and the level of the painting.
Just my thoughts...
Best,
Matt
