This article was fist published in FPM issue 51.
Recently, on social media there have been several high profile sculptors and painters publish some very passionate posts decrying that their products or paint works have been the subject of recasters; so you would be forgiven for thinking this was a new problem for our industry, but it’s not. It’s been around for a while and guess what? We’re all to blame!
Recasting is seriously damaging the hobby at the moment and its possible future if we don’t take some steps to change it.
The title of this article might sound melodramatic, and to most of you this issue only pops up on your news feed now and again, but to us in the miniature painting industry it’s an everyday occurrence, with conversations going on about a new site coming to our attention or this or that mini has now been added to that site. Recasting is seriously damaging the hobby at the moment and its possible future if we don’t take some steps to change it.
Miniature painting has been around for ages, but its current modern form, can be traced back to the early 70’s and the advent of Dungeons and Dragons. Back in the day, if the model maker couldn’t get something, he or she made it – either scratchbuilding it from raw materials, kitbashing or converting. And these practices are a staple of the hobby today, but they’re also the roots of recasting. From my own experience, I have been in a position where I have needed another weapon or another head for a model and gone down the route of making a press mould and casting it out of Greenstuff. Sculptors do similar everyday, so with that same mentality, it’s a short jump from doing it small scale for personal use to doing it large scale for commercial gain.
This article is also about Intellectual Property (IP) theft, but this is aimed at producers who make models based on another companies IP. Although IP theft is a separate issue, it does cross over with recasting and raises several questions for the companies that produce models based on an-others IP. The main being that if they have another model, or a model based on someone else IP being recast, do they have a legitimate claim against the recaster? This does have serious knock on affects that could become a problem several years down the line.
Last week, I was part of a conversation specifically about IP theft where producers stated that IP theft in the beginning was a good way to give a company a boost. We have seen several large producers do this in the past and so far, they have gotten away with it, but once they have crossed that line what happens if, one day, they manage to bring that recaster to court. As soon as this IP theft is mentioned any further case will be thrown out and that will have consequences for the next company that manages to bring a recaster to court.
IP theft has several other ramifications. I think this is a serious problem that companies need to address and one that seems to keep our hobby small and from being taken seriously as a mainstream art form. Imagine the best sculptor and painter getting together to produce a fantastic bust of Spiderman; It’s still Stan Lee’s and Marvel Comics Spiderman, It’s not official, so there is no provenance and therefore has no collectability outside our small community of hobbyists. The other issue for me is stealing intellectual property is stifling creativity. Imagine what that great team mentioned above could create if they worked on something original? Chances are it would be a great model that we’d never see, because they were too busy making a quick buck off of Marvels IP.
There are several major antagonists who profit from large scale recasting, who over the last couple of years have made life hell for those who are getting their products recast. They’re mainly in Russia and China, but it’s not just countries that have different copyright laws, there are also recasters in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy and the UK – and those are just the ones I know about, I’m sure there are others. Over the last couple of years companies have started communicating to each other and share small amounts of information about buyers who they are not sure about or if they’re making strange orders. Some head-way has been made when companies have worked together they have managed to get several products removed from recasters who are selling on popular market sites and in one instance had a recasters web shop closed down. The problem is they keep popping back up; regardless of the irritation and hassle caused by those pesky legitimate producers, so, it’s obviously worth their while. Which is why I decided to write this article. It stands to reason if the recasters think it’s worth all the hassle then they obviously see a big market. I think if the true damage and future threat recasters cause to our industry and hobby, miniature buyers will think twice about buying recast miniatures; don’t get me wrong, i’m not naive enough to think we can put an end to it, but if enough people stop using those illegitimate sellers, then the next time a producer does manage to get one closed down, it might stay down. Also, if the growth of recasting isn’t halted, then at some point miniature creators will stop producing unpainted kits and move into other markets.
This is the point in the conversation when some ill-informed person either blames it on the producer, for making their product too expensive, or for not being competitive enough. State that the product they want is now out of production, so who it it hurting? Or, another favourite is stating falsely that Games Workshop have done it in the past, so why can’t they. Those three arguments or versions of them are all they fall back on, so i will look at each claim one by one.
Producers kits are too expensive and are not competitive enough. This is a fair point, some kits are more expensive, but you have to look at what you get for that. More expensive kits usually are bigger, have been designed by a well known artist and sculpted by a famous sculptor. They have also been packaged nicely and usually come with extras like art cards, stickers or badges. Sometime we might have to pay a little bit more in postage, but again the producer is using this higher rate so the product gets to us in the best and safest way without damage. If a kit is expensive then chances are it warrants the price. It’s a falsehood to think that all miniature producers are raking money in off the backs of us hardworking hobbyists. If they were, in today’s modern age of social media, and with the accessibility we have to them, we’d know about it and they’d soon be out of business. What is a fact is the most producers work very hard and don’t make a lot of profit on a miniature and a portion of that goes into funding their next release. Like all things in life, You get what you pay for.
This model is out of production (OOP), so who is it hurting? My first response this is, well if you’d have supported the company by buying the miniature while it was in production then maybe it still would be… but none of us are blessed with foresight. By buying a recast of a miniature that is now OOP, you are also affecting its possible future. Recently we have seen some old IP’s resurrected. Over the last couple of years we have seen ranges resurrected like Rackhams Confrontation, but if there is no call for them to be resurrected, why would a company bother. Imagine the Confrontation guys pulling in the talent that made the miniatures popular in the first place, but expanding on that universe. If you love the models, why would you want to jeopardise that?
Companies must also take a little blame for this when they produce a kit as a limited edition. I know the reasons why they do it – the cost of production of a second run and fear of having dead stock lying around, but when a kit becomes popular and only has a limited run you are making a miniature that is prime for the recasters to get hold of it, you might cover the costs of your limited run with the number of copies that you sell, but the recasters, in the long run, will make more and double what you sell. So my advise to companies that do this is to get a better deal on your casting and distribution, so costs are not prohibitive for a second run and the miniature becomes easier to access by a wider audience. To those producers that make limited runs because they think they’re making a collectable, as soon as your model is recast that collectability goes out of the window. And, once paint is on the model, I defy anyone to tell the difference between a legitimate model and a recast.
Games Workshop did it in the past, so why can’t we? This to me is the dumbest of all the arguments that are used to equivocate buying a recast. It not only confuses IP theft with recasting, but from whet I can gather is stems from a false rumour that Games Workshop copyrighted the name Spacemarine. Firstly GW might have borrowed the term Spacemarine from a novel written back in the 70’s but when you register an intellectual property you are registering a concept backed up with images and linking it to a name. So while they own the rights to their space marines, they don’t own any rights to the term space marine in general. Nobody can copyright a phrase, they can trademark ideas around the phrase, but they can’t own it. One thing I will say is that GW have worked hard and produced some stunning artwork and models in the development and evolution of their games over the years and that is one of the reasons they’re the biggest producer of miniatures, but they have earned that status and have every right to protect it from illegal copying of their products.
Now, I’d like to highlight the effect recasters are having on the miniature industry, but to do this we have to gave a basic idea of the cost it takes to bring a miniature to the market place, these prices aren’t exact, but they are close enough. Let’s imagine we want to produce a bust.
Concept art or licensing IP
Ninety five percent of miniature producers are just like you and me, they got into miniature painting the same way we did, it was a hobby. Very few of them are trained or competent artists, so If your idea is an original one you’re going to need a concept artist. This could be the neighbours son or daughter, or that artist you’ve seen many times on social media. If you want to produce some art cards or added extras where the concept art is used it has to be good. Prices depend on the artist but as an average, let’s say £400.
If you’re going to be licensing an IP for your miniature, you have to pay the owner of the IP a percentage of each miniature sold, this is very difficult to quantify and in some cases might mean hiring the services of a lawyer to reach a deal with the holder of the IP.
Sculpting
As said earlier in this article, you get what you pay for, but let’s imagine we want a high profile sculptor who we know produces great work. Let’s say £800.
Optional 3D Printing
Most sculptors produce a physical sculpt, but more and more are turning to digital. This has several pro’s. It can be easily and quickly altered during the creation period if you don’t like something and you can choose to release the sculpt in more than one scale, but for our bust, let’s say £100.
Casting Cost
Again this is a difficult to quantify and depends a lot on the type of miniature, scale and number of parts and our initial run number, so for arguments sake let’s say we want thirty of our bust, this is a new venture and we’re not sure it’ll be as popular as we think it should be. Average casting costs for a bust is around £6 per copy, this is derived from the cost of the resin and the cost of moulding spread over our thirty copies. Let’s say £180.
Marketing
So, we have 30 copies of our bust in our hands, it could be the best one ever produced, but if nobody knows about it, it won’t sell. For our imaginary bust, we’ve already said this is a new venture, so we can’t afford a big marketing campaign, so we opt for a week long Facebook advert at £5 a day. That’s £35.
Packaging
Our advertising is working and people want to buy the bust, so we have to get it to them safely and without damage, so we need to buy some packaging. We can’t buy in bulk since this is our first bust so the packing is going to cost around £1.50 per copy. Let’s say £45.
The Final Cost
So we have a total of £1560, that means each bust has cost us £52 and that was without paying a high end painter for boxart, which could cost us anywhere between £300 to £500. We have to be competitive so we can’t charge a huge amount for it so we put it on sale for £60. Once all 30 have been sold, which can take a year, we make a not so massive £240 profit. That certainly isn’t going to found our holiday home in Monaco. If these prices sound a little steep to you, I will say I managed to pursued three producers to give me their costs and I averaged it out for this example. Producers do find little ways to lower production costs, in house concept, sculpting and casting or boxart painting, but not by a lot and these prices are pretty indicative.
Let’s now see what our bust costs a recasters to produce thirty copies. He buys the bust from us at £60. Next he casts it, but he’s not so bothered about quality, so he does it cheaper: £150. We’ve already advertised it, so he can use our images and description to put it up on his own website or market platform. Packaging, like his casting doesn’t matter too much to him, because if it arrives damaged what are you going to do — complain? So, let’s say he spends £.50 on a Jiffy bag; a total £15. This costs our recaster a grand total of £225. So each bust costs him £7.50. He can sell it for half what we can and still make more profit than we do.
So, apart from the obvious monetary affects recasting has on our industry there are other implications. The main one being that from that small amount of profit legitimate producers have to not only pay any staff that work fo them, they have to start to fund their next release. The recaster doesn’t have to do that, the producer is doing it for him. Also, if a creative is producing a miniature and then has to try and take a recaster to court to get them to take models off their site, that’s more time, money and effort that they are not using to creating new miniatures for the rest of us. So why would they bother eh? Especially when there are other industries where their talents are equally recognised and they could get the same, if not better money, without the all the hassle. That would be a major loss to us who support their legitimate releases and love painting their creations, because if all the best creatives leave this industry for calmer ones where would our hobby be then? From a personal point of view and as the owner and editor of FPM, that survives on the people who produce and paint these models losing them would be devastating. I have already had two conversations with producers who have decided not to release miniatures because of their fear of it being recast. To me, this is a sad state of affairs when fear of products being recast and the dread of the time and effort they would need to spend in removing miniatures that are being recast stops producers from releasing a miniature. If you don’t just want to take my word for it, read the comments by the sculptor, manufactures and resellers dotted around this article.
So, what do we do?
Well, firstly we have to stop buying from recasters. Sometimes their web shops look legitimate because they use the same images and text found on the producers site (of course, they not only steal the product, but it marketing as well), but the big giveaway is the price. If it’s a lot cheaper, then there is a strong chance it’s a recast. Sometimes they won’t use the correct name for the miniature because they falsely think this absolves them from any legal comeback. So, if the miniature of Batman is called ‘Dark Vigilante’, or Yoda is called ‘Green Goblin Knight’ again, there is a strong chance it’s not a legitimate model. In both of these cases a quick email to the IP owner will clear that up and if you’re alerting them to the theft for the first time, then you’re doing them a favour.
Another thing you can do is only buy your models from reputable sites. There are several in the UK and Europe and with this Google is your friend. If you’re still finding difficulty, drop us a line on the FPM facebook page, we’ll gladly point you in the right direction.
When you buy a miniature at a show make sure it comes in the proper packaging, if it doesn’t then ask the seller why and make sure the answer they give you is believable before you walk away with your model. Also take the sellers contact details, because if it later turns out to be false, you’ll be able to get in touch with them. You wouldn’t buy paint where the seller claimed it was Vallejo, but didn’t come in the correct dropper bottle, so why would you do this with a miniature or bust?
If you see a miniature for sale and you suspect it is a recast inform the producer, they’ll thank for it. If it’s on a market site like eBay, report it to them as well. it’s easy to do, every sale page has a link to report the item – choose IP theft. Also if you know of a recaster or someone who buys them call them out on it and be as public as you like, you might have spoken to them a few times at shows or on social media, but these people are really threatening the hobby you love. And remember, for every legitimate miniature you buy and they get cheap, you are subsiding their hobby.
Lastly, if you spot a mini that you suspect is a recast, but don’t know, or can’t get hold of the producer, then tell us, either by email or via our social media pages. We’ll get in touch with the producer and let you know if it’s a legitimate model or a fake.
If you have any questions or you own opinion on this, please leave a comment.
The Painting Ladder 