For those of you who have bought ships from this store, how is the quality? Is there a noticeable difference between the different options/qualities of plastic offered? How do they compare to the actual Armada miniatures. I have been thinking about ordering some of his stuff but I wanted to gather opinions first. Thanks in advance.
Kenn
I've only purchased the highest quality plastic, so I can't speak to the more affordable options (I've also only purchased small ships for this very reason; a Resurgent -class Star Destroyer in the highest quality plastic is north of $800, but a Hammerhead or Paladin corvette can be had for less than $40, by comparison), but the ships I've purchased look very, very good. I've used mine for debris fields, but they are easily comparable to the official FFG models and look good on the table. Though your mileage may vary depending on how well you can paint.
56 minutes ago, kenngp said:For those of you who have bought ships from this store, how is the quality? Is there a noticeable difference between the different options/qualities of plastic offered? How do they compare to the actual Armada miniatures. I have been thinking about ordering some of his stuff but I wanted to gather opinions first. Thanks in advance.
Kenn
I bought some ships on the cheapest plastic and altough thet look great, the quality is clearly different from the official ones. But I've seen photos of ships on the high quality plastic and bought some squadrons on that quality and they are really awesome, nothing to envy from the FFG models.
EDIT: here are some pictures of the ships and squadrons I bought, after painting them, altough I recognize that Yuuzhan Vong ships and squadrons are not the better ones to compare.
Edited by Lemmiwinks86
How do they look unpainted? I paint like a 3-year old and I have less patience than one.
The designs are excellent, but Shapeways has gotten more and more expensive. I do not recommend getting anything below the high quality. The lower quality stuff is typically quite grainy. The high quality is on part with FFG Armada detail, if not a little better because Mel does such good work.
1 hour ago, flatpackhamster said:How do they look unpainted? I paint like a 3-year old and I have less patience than one.
They are either matte white or matte black depending on the plastic you choose.
1 hour ago, kenngp said:They are either matte white or matte black depending on the plastic you choose.
Or transparent. All of the ships I've purchased (in smooth fine detail plastic) are clear.
Here are some painted high quality detail
I've had quite a few, collected various photos in this Twitter moment:
https://twitter.com/i/events/982209992672489472
For the second bundle of models I picked up I risked the lower quality, I'd say they're fine, but a very long way beneath the higher quality materials. If you can afford the better material do it, you won't regret it. If you can't then the lower quality will shape up ok, but you'll lose a lot of detail.
Here's the higher quality stuff unpainted:
Same ones getting painted:
And here's a few shots with both versions (higher for the Harrowers, lower for the Terminus) and you can see that from a distance with some paint on them both are perfectly passable:
Thanks a lot for the info everyone. I think I will pick up a few and stick to the higher detail plastic. Appreciate it.
If you change your mind and decide to try something in the cheaper material, I have had some success using several coats of either gloss white, or gloss clear coat, then priming.
The detail is not bad, it is the grainy texture, and it's resulting absorbance that are the problem. The gloss coats do a nice job correcting both.