The road to production from green to a casting
1: Kev gets an idea, makes a basic armature (as he generally doesnt sketch his ideas) to fix the pose etc and then sits it on a shelf for a couple of months until he has decided what to do with it!! Once he has decided, he usually gets on with it and makes a green. As he has to fit this in around his freelance work this can take a few weeks.
2: That green is posted to the caster along with a few others we may have hanging around to be mastered. The master mould costs £58.75 plus each spin at about £4.70. We need ten copies of the master to go into a production mould.
If the mini casts well immediately with little wastage then the labour costs are low, but if there are problems then labour costs are high.
DID YOU KNOW? that to get 10 copies of the Demonette on the altar of a good enough casting standard to be sold there were 100 made?? The reason for this was the chains that lay across the altar top. Due to the body of the altar being so thick, the metal wanted to stay there instead of filling the loops. Hence the altar top has been reworked and the limited ten editions were sold on Ebay at one per week. Of course we then had the extra expense of making another master and production mould of the altar base.
3: Once the caster has ten/twelve good copies of the green they are used to make a production mould. These cost £58.75 each plus the cost of the metal which is factored in at a 'cost per spin'.
4: Generally the moulds stay with the caster but if we need to have the moulds at home then the cost for posting each batch of moulds is £19.50
5: Once we have told the caster how many of each copy we need, then they are cast and we are charged 'per spin'. So for example if we manage to get 10 copies of a figure in a mould and we need 200 copies to restock with then we are charged for 20 spins
6: Once they arrive with me they then need to be checked for miscasts, bagged with bases and labelled.
So what gets cast and when?
I often receive emails or comments on here along the lines of....
'why is something that Kev has only just sculpted going to be cast this month whereas something he finished 3 months ago has yet to appear?'
So i thought i would post one of my 'Hasslefree public information announcements'! in bullet form to make it easier to follow!
Moulding.
1: Griffin use an 11 inch vulcanised rubber mould for both master and production casting.
2: This mould can contain up to 16 'units'. A 'unit' is defined as a standard single piece 28mm sculpt or a sprue of weapons from a multi-part sculpt or a piece of a multi-part sculpt. For example HFA037 Harby has 3 units...a body/an arm sprue/a head sprue.
3: Each set of releases we can only afford to cast 1 master mould therefore have 16 moulding 'units' to play with so if we have more than 16 'units' waiting to be cast then we have to prioritise.
How we prioritise
1: Each set of releases has to bring in a certain amount of income or we cant pay our bills and the kids go hungry
2: Different types of figures generate different kinds of income.
3: We balance high income-generating figures with lower income-generating figures to balance out the ranges and keep everyone happy.
4: We balance quick selling figures with those that sell more slowly to ensure we have a high initial income from the release sales to cover immediate costs but also so that we can expect a 'rolling' income being generated from that release over the following few months
5: We have to factor in 'bought/commissioned' greens with those made by Kev himself. If we need to recoup money that we have paid out for greens then those figures may have to be cast before ones made by Kev.
And that basically folks is it! We juggle!
