Western Minis (well, mostly western) NOT by me.

That would be great. They're all really cool and usable figures.

Great compilation Revgunn!! Thanks ;D

Eee-Hah!!! By Gum, those are GolDurn Fantastic, Tex.

Thanks Heaps and Gobs

Excelent work Cowboy!! ;D thanks

I was sick with the flue my first couple days off, but I'm getting better. I don't like the mummy and the stoney guy is less than ideal but the others are good and I don't know what to do about the two I don't like without changing the outline.


PatricMonsterBACK by cowboyleland, on Flickr

They look great. Thanks lots Cowboy.

You are very good at that. Hope you are feeling better.

I personally think Al Gore and his cronies shot down the rocket carrying the NASA satellite that was supposed to be investigating global warming today... not really

I am all for saving the environment, but I'm not for the controlling mechanisms that most of the global warming supporters are in favor of. Al's sure made a bunch of money by pushing the global warming agenda

These are great, thanks for the hard work!
Personally I think that doing something positive for the environment is never a problem and should be done with or without the approval of a former vice president. If you are going to drink any Kool-aid, this is the stuff worth drinking.

So it wasn't just me that thought there were scaling issues.

Between your hard work on the backs, and Josedominguez talking about how the laziness of unpaid guys like me are destroying the hobby.. wow, I'm feeling all unproductive and stuff. They look really good. I noticed on those undead where the original modder didn't recolor the hands on some of the walking dead.

The legs crossing is a tough pose to draw a back for. I had a couple like that. You seem to have done a pretty good job with it.
I'm impressed. Maybe I'll get off my lazy unpaid hiney and make some more minis.

I also have dreams of getting some money from paper figs some day, but here is the thing. I have a friend who has written adventures for D&D and Pathfinder, two of the bigger games out there. He has written some of their most popular adventures. They pay a few cents a word and they set limits of a few hundred words. He gave up his day job and spent a year or so seeing how many contracts he could get and crank out. He was always writing but it always worked out to less than minimum wage. Wizards/Paizo would not up his fee, despite his successes. That is writing for Dragon magazine and Pathfinder Society as well as some other 3rd party rule books (which are not given away free). Seeing that, it is hard to think anyone can make a living drawing paper figs. You might pay for your ink and paper, printer upgrade is another question.
All that said I believe Mel Ebbles makes it work some how.

Heh.. Sorry Jose, I was joking around with that last post. I shoulda put in some smilies. My apologies.

I think I got the gist of the post we're referring to. What I got from it was that you want more minis. You believe that having money involved will get more created faster. Money will also get the hobby taken more seriously. I see your points. I don't disagree with them.

So bottom line, you want more minis made as fast as possible, so you can buy them. You want your GW buddies and the rest of the gaming world to take paper minis more seriously. You are also pretty passionate about it. I respect the passion.

I just happen to know, with my background as a tattooist, it ain't as easy to make a living drawing things as you might think. This is where you're charging $100 a pop instead of like.. $3.95 for a sheet of 20 or whatever. Personally, my minis aren't of a high enough quality to charge for. So I don't. Tattooing has a lot of pressure involved. This is art without the pressure. I like that lack of pressure.

I really respect the work that labrat and a lot of these folks put out. I really hope that everyone buys 50 sets each from them. They deserve it. But, the value of the work is in the eye of the beholder. You could charge $50 each for them if you want, that doesn't make them worth it. The value to the person buying them. If they like paper minis, then the minis have value. Free or not. Tacking on a price ain't gonna make em more valuable. I might be wrong, but that's how I see it.

As far as being a "real industry".. Man, gaming ain't a "real industry". There are a few companies making some money, and a bunch more not making much. As Cowboy points out... part of how they make a profit is by not paying writers much.

I have no problem paying for sets of paper figures that I like. Or buildings or whatever. What I was getting at before was that Jim made his figures free. They were free for a long time. (Maybe still are, I dunno) People made a bunch of mods to what were, at the time, free. Now, Sanity Studios bought them, and wants to begin charging for them. Fine. Gotta figure out what to do about the mods. Nik comes up with a couple of decent solutions. All I was saying was that it could possibly cause some resentment. Maybe not, but I've heard some expressed.

I still support them, and I will also support them in the future with my dollars.

Thats my point....a few people in gaming make a fortune by exploiting those who work hard and in any other industry would have their creativity rewarded. The rest are doing it because they love it.
Why can't we start to change that? There's enough regular posters on here to start up something new.
We are all prepared to pay full price for wargames, rulebooks, minis etc.... but expect our paper minis to be dirt cheap.
How about we start something new? Can we get a group together who are paying for the artwork not the PDF?
It's not going to make anyone a millionaire, but it's gotta be better than making a few dollars on a PDF that you put hours into.
I think what I'm hoping is that one of the established companies will see the potential in paper minis and start commissioning artists. I love fantasy flight games production values and a lot of their products, but I'd far rather play with full colour stand ups than grey plastic figures.

So, what's next? I've been using paper minis for a couple of years now, and to be honest release rates haven't grown. What can we do to fix that?
Seriously, you mentioned having to charge $100 for artwork to make it worthwhile, that's what 25 sets? It's hard to imagine that there aren't 25 people out there who don't want a set of beastmen or orcs or dwarven berserkers.
So how do we find them? How do we get those poor impressionable kids to come over to the dark side with us before they get dragged over to the even darker side

I think we're a bit OT talking about money in this thread, but as we are, I'd just want point out that, if you want 200 plastic miniatures for your army, you gave to pay for each one, while with paper miniatures you just have to pay once.
I hear you all saying "yes, that's one of the strong point of paper minis". Sure. But how could you make a living from stuff that you just sell ONCE per customer? You just have to have so much customers.... and then you need to "feed" them all each month with new releases. Imho, it is impossible. Even with plastic.... otherwise why so much versions and revisions from that big company that sells plastic miniatures? 'cause once the average customer sold a kidney for his army, he will not buy anything else for long times.... and the company struggles.
Paper <whatever> cannot become your fullday job. Not for longtime, anyway.