EPTPoll: How much would you lay down for an Ultralisk cast?
20 $ or less (11)
46%
50 $ (9)
38%
100 $ or more (4)
17%
24 total votes
50 $ (9)
100 $ or more (4)
24 total votes
Your vote: How much would you lay down for an Ultralisk cast?
size: 19 x 13 x 11 cm
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/unApL.jpg)
Hey all.
After all the "I wants it" comments I got from friends and also on my blogs here regarding my stone Ultralisk, I seriously considered making them for selling. Making "originals" from stone is prohibitively time-consuming and would correspondingly be way too expensive for your average nerd (~$2000 range).
Now, it's nothing new that many artists make resin (or other material) casts of their stuff. Basically, you take a rubber mold of the original, pour the resin in, wait some hours, voila. The end product is not stone, obviously, but can be painted and treated to look like any material (marble, metallic, gold, aged bronze...). For example, I have a painted polyurethane (~plastic) Cthulhu pencil holder cup right here on my desk that was created that way. I actually bought two of them (one as a gift) for 15 bucks a shot - never regretted it.
Artist's page/blog
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BVLlO.jpg)
I was thinking along the lines of more "stoney" casts (alabaster gypsum, has about half the weight of stone if I'm not mistaken), so I got a book detailing all aspects of the process and checked what materials and tools I'd need. In summary, the material to create a mold and make about 20-30 casts would cost me around 200€ and probably serious additional time. I don't yet know how much work each additional cast turns out to be (cleaning and treating the mold, filing off seams etc).
Now my question to you, dear gents of the predominantly affluent male gamer demographic, is: Would you actually be interested in getting a cast, and how much would you seriously be ready to lay down for it? I'm trying to gauge the feasibility here, no rip-offs intended. Depending on the general mood here I'll think about actually doing this, and in what form exactly I could produce the casts, e.g. unpainted would be easier than painted (hence cheaper, and frankly, I totally suck at painting).
P.S.: There is of course the topic of intellectual property. I read around on the subject, and it boils down to this:
- Technically, selling fan art is not allowed. Companies can send you a cease and desist letter to protect their intellectual property.
- However, it appears to be mostly tolerated on a small scale. I guess it's a kind of advertisement, and you're not actually going to Hasbro and make a 100k production run to sell in stores. For example, check etsy (artisan craft web store) and search for your favorite video game (SC, Halo, Fallout, Portal, ...) and see how much stuff comes up.
