1:6 scale miniatures.

i recently received my first order from shapeways (in four separate shipments?!?!?) and am quite pleased..

i was mostly attempting to see what i could do with the image popper and to assess the pros and cons of some of the various materials for making 1:6 scale action figure accessories...

the swords came out way too thin because of some problem with the image popper.. possibly my own error. but the other stuff came out great... i'm particularly excited about the FUD material and the Stainless steel...

I've already made a second order of several much more complex models and am eagerly awaiting it's arrival.

Nice job... I've done the same thing using rings instead of swords... I'm still waiting for 3 of them...
What's the size of those swords?

everything is roughly 1:6 scale... the steel one at the top is 2.5 inches long.

Dude, I think the 1/6 community would FREAK over the endless possibilities with Shapeways. They are always looking to kit bash and make more unique weapons/armor/gear etc that no one else has or sells. You should post these on onesixthwarriors.com

I've always dug the stupid insane details on 1/6 figs but just wanted to do my own creations so I never got into it. I want to kick myself for not thinking of applying this to 1/6 scale. SNAP! I mean that is a large community of customizers that are just pining for different weapons and gear. With FUD the reality of it would be insane. I would kill to make some custom heads in FUD but am wondering if the material could take the punishment of being fit on a figures neck hole. No idea. Cast heads in resin can so...

But wow, that is just a huge community that could literally start its own category on Shapeways with sub genres of gallery's and works.

Again I'm just outright kicking myself. I check in on the 1/6th community from time to time because I love the scene but just wanted to make my own tricked figures with crazy gear and heads. Now... Just WOW! Man I'm slow...

Hi RogersX,

I actually posted about these over at onesixthwarriors before I posted them here...

I've been active on that forum for quite a few years... I have over 4000 posts there. i go by the username Auret there.

I used to make 1:6 scale custom weapons and gear (mostly swords, knives and things like that) from steel, wood, bone etc... until my wife and i had our daughter and my workshop was destroyed by a flood...

for the last few years I've been publishing SIXTHSCALE, a series of bookshelf format periodicals about 1:6 scale customizing. There are 6 volumes so far.

now i'm teaching myself 3d modeling in the hopes of reviving my custom items business without all the hassle of rebuilding my workshop.

i have dozens of models already uploaded to shapeways... i think shapeways can revolutionize the 1:6 hobby and help fight the rising costs of the high end companies products... basically democratizing the 1:6 industry...

the potential for this technology is amazing... and shapeways can print stuff that companies like hot toys could never mass produce by traditional casting methods... undercuts , moving parts without assembly required, etc....

i think FUD would work just fine for headsculpts... the samples i have here seem pretty durable and have much more flex to them than most resin heads on the market do.

Nice!

Yeah big time. Companies like Hot Toys, Dragon, Triad etc seem to charge a fortune and if you just want one little thing you have to grub for it on eBay for usually a ridiculous amount. I just couldn't justify the price of making a truly custom figure for $300 bucks in addition to a ton of work to make it custom instead of just kit-bashed. And in the end I still feel it wouldn't really represent entirely what I wanted. Shapeways and FUD is definitely a game changer.

I think once the ball gets rolling the custom market via 3d on demand printing will be huge. Very excited about this.

Excellent to know!

Quick question, in your opinion what is a good company to buy base male/female bodies from? I don't care about the heads as I will make my own but hands and feet included are a must and for semi/modern figures compatibility with clothing/footwear would be nice.

Also if you also have any thoughts on good companies that make seamless figures for torso's or lowers i.e. similar to the Rambo Hot Toys figure, again both male and female.

Thanks again!

for male base bodies... the industry standard seems to be Hot Toys true type body but they generally run around $40 each... they do include heads, hands, and feet.

i'm a bit of a cheapskate though and tend to buy less expensive bodies. Dragon makes decent bodies that can be found very reasonably priced, but they have inferior wrist and ankle articulation.

Soldier story makes a good male body with nice proportions and articulation.. the heads sometimes are slightly underscale though. they can often be found on ebay or through the various loose parts dealers for around $20 each

companies to avoid include Medicom and Triad Toys. the breakage issues and the design flaws just make them completely not worth the money and hassle.

for female bodies there aren't a lot of great choices... Hot toys new female body is quite popular and looks great but has been selling for around $40 on ebay without head hands or feet.

Takara's classic "Cygirl" 2.0 body is excellent but can be hard to find these days

TTL may be a good alternate choice but i don't own one

I've heard good things about Triad's Alpha body but their Otaku body is a poorly designed (but beautifully sculpted) disaster that breaks if you so much as look at it... and their EVA body is ridiculously badly made.

as for seamless bodies there are two options... Phicen and Hot Stuff both have gotten mixed reviews but they are the best seamless bodies any company has made so far...

if you are looking for parts and bodies, i recommend shopping at some of the 1:6 dealers rather than ebay... Goodstufftogo and Monkey depot are both excellent.

Thank you very much for your replies and time, I appreciate it and will definitely follow what you said.

My second and third orders finally arrived...

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Very cool print order, loving the Tom Brown Tracker (bottom left), one of my fav knife designs and the gun blade is a riot, will definitely make your 1/6's stand out. Also digging the Riddick Blades, the Buck Rogers laser and that other fat looking revolver, very nice and mean looking. Along barrel version of it would be killer.

Did you have to use any chemicals to clean excess support material from the FUD items? Just wondering since it was a large FUD order from the looks of it.

rubbing alcohol seemed to work pretty well in cleaning the detail materials...

i'm still not entirely thrilled with the print quality of the FUD... some of the pieces had large portions of the piece print badly... the "frosted" parts are sometimes porous and soft and less detailed than the smoother sections... frankly i like black detail better for a lot of these items... i just wish all of them could be printed in black detail without being rejected.

Yeah FUD really seems to be hit and miss, specially on larger surfaces. I wouldn't classify it as the most consumer friendly material. I ordered a mini I sculpted and it came caked with support material. Have ordered two more test miniatures to see how they clean with Acetone.

I can see how that is quite the pain, certain details expected on 1/6 accessories are much harder to get around design wise with the detail materials whereas FUD has almost no practical limits.

Gentlemen, there's a whole 'nother market untapped just waiting for your skills: Ball Jointed Dolls. Standard scales are 1:2.5, 1:3, 1:4, 1:6 and 1:12 with an oddball 1:5. These dolls 'need stuff' and if you're willing there's some eager buyers, who are accustomed to spending big bucks on their dolls, looking for stuff other than Japanese keychain toys.

PM me if you're interested in some website and forum links.

i've done some commission work making weapons for Ball Jointed dolls in teh past... back when i used to have to grind the steel and carve the wood by hand....... It is a huge market... but there are some difficult hurdles to marketing stuff there... in some of the larger sizes 1:3 and 1:4 for example there is already a ton of swords and guns available on the market for those who know how to look,,, keychains, letter openers etc....

another challenge is the price increases exponentially with the scale... even in 1:6 the prices for larger pistols leaves a thin profit margin...

another problem is shapeways weapons policy prohibits guns over 10 cm long.

Okay, time to throw the box away... first, if you REALLY wanted to, you could probably make a gun in three or four pieces to be assembled by the client. But you have so much more that you can do besides guns. And letter openers are usually 1:6 or 1:4 scale, not 1:3.

Elves need elvish jewelry, headpieces, belt buckles, bracelets etc. Unlike metal items, the nylon of WSF and WSFP won't damage a resin doll. This is a BIG selling point! People have storylines for their dolls and need props for those story lines. A finial for a walking staff, small jars and bowls for an alchemist, magical items, boot soles and heels for high heeled shoes.

Then there's Vampires, they need fancy 'goulish' jewelry and other accessories. There's Wings (generally held on with magnets under the clothes.), Tails, Ears.

Dishes, pots and pans, plates and dinnerware, mugs, candle holders, Genie bottles,

Then there's the humans: jewelry, knives, dinnerware, it's endless.

Many of the dozens and dozens of letter openers i own are 1:3 or 1:4... relatively few are 1:6 and i've been actively seeking out 1:6 ones for a decade.

an unfortunate amount of what's on the market has a 1:4 or 1:3 scale handle with a 1:6 or 1:7 scale blade..... the beautiful united cutlery Lord of the rings line is mostly 1:5.

the denix line seems to vary from 1:3 to 1:4 depending on the sword.

you make some excellent points about jewelry and other accessories... i've mostly not considered that because of the difficulty of doing it in 1:6 the tricky part about rings is not having finger measurements for the various dolls... and not wanting to buy a 500 dollar doll to measure their fingers.... i think i'll contact a customer of mine who sells custom clothing for bjd's and try to get some info as to what she sees a demand for.... we've collaborated successfully in the past and i trust her judgment...

for a lot of items it would be a relatively simple matter to scale up the models of my 1:6 designs and offer them in 1:4 or 1:3...

thanks for your input... you've given me some interesting ideas... .

I was hoping you (and others) were receptive to the concept.

Time and again the lament is that a collector wants (NEEDS) a particular item in their doll's scale, but it's only available in another, or, worse, it's just thiiiiis much off. Many collectors create Photostories with their dolls as the actors, so properly scaled accessories of ALL kinds, from knives to cell phones, are a must in order to fool the camera as much as possible.

Items with an Elvish look to them would be perennial favorites, as that is the largest 'sub-group' of collectors. Fantasy items and accessories like wings, horns, etc. which are held on with high strength magnets will also be popular. Don't worry about supplying magnets - get the dimensions from the customer, make the well large enough to take it with a bit of ZapaGap and they'll take it from there.

For the sculptors out there, replacement hands are another keen topic, as well as feet in different sizes, as some dolls have feet that don't fit any of the readily available doll shoes, too big, too small, whatever, and simple foot shaped 'plugs' will fill the bill. These are something that will require leaving a large enough opening that uncintered material can be removed and filled with plaster or some other weighty matterial. But that's a whole other convo, as there are multiple methods to attach these appendages, some of which won't work with the product at hand.

Looking forward to what the future brings,
Donna