The Slithereen have arrived

 

We haven’t done any bloggening for a wee while here at Attica, but that doesn’t mean we’ve been idle – no sir! As well the last of our Plastic Population releases, we’ve been getting together and polishing off our next set of minis – the dreaded Slithereen!

 

Here’s the chat from their entry in the Shiver Bestiary, for some flavour:

 

If the Slithereen are of this earth, then their origins lie far from any region yet explored by man. Their physiology, their very life cycle is so unutterably alien that it represents an appalling threat to our continued existence. For we are not their enemy, not even their prey, no! We are merely reproductive material to be used in the propagation of their vile species, simply biological matter – theirs to exploit in their urge to procreate more of their foetid, cankerous kind.

 

Mother/Father is the first, often the last their victims will remember of the Slithereen as this hulking monstrosity stalks the Board, spitting forth an endless stream of Slider Infectors, the Slithereen’s primary vector of infestation. Protected by Brother, assisted by Sister and the hideous BabyDaySinger, Mother/Father goes about its obscene work: creating Tortured Hosts out of innocent souls. The Hosts, self-loathing, unspeakably violated human egg-vessels of the Infectors growing within them, live out a pitiful half-existence at the beck and call of Brother: ultimately doomed to be consumed by the aptly named Slum-Womb, the final step in the birthing of the Slithereens themselves – as the hideous cycle starts afresh.

And here are the minis:

First Mother/Father, a 70mm(!) tall power house of horror on a 40mm base.  Eating up the scenery, heck the table, this six part mini was by faaar the biggest thing I have attempted to make for sale and easily the finished product I am most proud of.

Next up Brother, the muscle of the outfit, making sure that the Mother/Father, the Infectors and their eventual Tortured Hosts can go about their business unmolested. This fearsome beastie is adapted purely for conflict, growing new weapons, even new limbs, tailored to defeat an enemy.

 

Sister is next – a horrifying temptress from the Medusa school of seduction, ready to use her hypnotic stylings and the sheer horror that is DaySinger to prep any unfortunate victim for major infestation! [Sister’s head got a bit squished in the moulding process, so I am going to have to have her re-cast when the next set of minis goes off for Master Moulding. Still learning the tolerances of green stuff and copper wire under the mega-tonne pressure of the vulcaniser machine!]

The Slider Infectors are god’s joke – nasty, vile, invasive but somehow cute. Next year’s big pet they ain’t though!

 

 

 

Lastly for now, our poor victims, – Basketball, Banker and Blossom. All unwilling flesh-hosts for their own lil’ infectoids!

 

 

 

And SlumbWomb you ask? That particular phantasm is yet to be launched. There’ve been a couple of “could’a bin” a couple of “how about if”, but truth be told (s)he/it is still just a twinkle meantime, as the sculpting moves onward to darker fare yet…

The Slithereen should start to go on sale from late May onward, and will debut at Carronade in Falkirk on Saturday next!

See you again soon.

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PlasPops are Go!

Been out of circulation for a little while, just about back now!

Mid November our latest set of minis – the PlasticPopulation went off the Griffin Miniatures for the production of a master mould and subsequent production mould. Had a wee issue with a ProCreate muscle coming loose on the MisPrint in the Master Mould. Griffin helped tidy things up for the production mould but meantime I mis-communicated what I wanted in it, so we got our usual first rate service, but just not of what I had needed to ask for. Ayit! As we say here in Scotland.

Reflections and tips to self – don’t post panicky blogspots for it will attract the fates. Name nothing “MisPrint” or you deserve all you get! Oh and check carefully what you ask for – always mit der two pairs of eyses.

However, everything in PlasPop Batch One is now painted up in my usual probably inadequate style and ready to go for sale shortly! Sneakster Peekster:

Intervening Xmas and a January to make Hell look like Venice and finally we are back on track. The next and final batch of PlasPops: a female drone, the poor MissHap, Professor Polyphemus scion of evil himself, his trusty Rubber Gollum and his feared Plastic Population Printer are on their way. Sneaksy Peeksy Part 2:

A late addition to the Printer is the Vat Venus, Polyphemus’ Malevolent Midwife, who will probably pop up in one special offer or another.

She is hopefully feminine rather than pneumatic, but with the aim as stature, not nurture. This ain’t Mother Nature, no sir!

 

 

 

Post Script:

This wee broadcast is dedicated to my dad, Hugh, simply the most important person ever to leave my life. Dad, I’m not quite clear how I’m meant to do this life thing without you in it (it turns out you were in fact at the very the centre of it, although I confess I had not until now realised).  Wherever you are, I hope you like what I am up to.

PlasPops are Go!

Its that time! The PlasPops are off to the printers or rather the moulders. Six minis, various tools and spare heads. Expect them for sale as the production stock becomes available during December. To celebrate this newest release (the first since we launched in late Sept) there’ll also be some discounts for groups/teams – some work there for TechnoR!ab.

Always a scary time this. Not because of anything the moulder does I should add. I will be using Griffin Moulds ( http://www.griffinmoulds.com/) who are top drawer and whose service is first rate. The scare is just the sending them off at all. Like evil and twisted children they have lurked around my ‘ouse for months, biding their time and gathering dust and then “whammo” comes the now or never – the time to despatch a meaningful number for pressing and then selling. Separation anxiety isn’t in it – even where the metals come back perfect, the greys or greens will never be the same again. Nothing will go wrong, but ooohhhh soooo much could! Think only positive thoughts, PlasPop on the way a-ok.

Misprinting….

The PlasPop heads are now completed and ready to go off with the rest of the grey treats!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work has continued at a bit of a crawl this week on the Misprints, the first of them is captured in a bit of a creeping lurch and whilst it is a fine pose, it makes a fair amount of detailing around the belly and the inner arms etc slower going. However, overall it seems to be working out. Another week or so and we should be there on her.

 

The production line sees another, this time four legged Misprint and a Rubber Golem coming up soon. Then it’ll be on to the Great Man himself – Prof P, architect of this madness. Likely release time maybe three weeks for the first of these.

In other news, we continue to put some flesh around the tabletop game with some more rule profile/special power writing for our up-coming sculpts and some general ordering of thoughts/Word files helping clarify the process from now to publication (still a ways off, but with a tiny business like ours, then if you don’t plan you can forget it!).

 

The week in Miniature

I am conceited enough to reckon that as well as having some interest in the history-to-date of Attica Games, folks might just be interested in what’s going on with Attica in something approaching real-time. With the business now a little over a month old and Helen and I slowly getting the hang of the whole packing and a-posting and a-writing for the Facebooking and the Blogging, I thought it was about time for a real-time update.

The last six weeks or so have been about the Plastic Population here at Attica, our sci-fi horror artificial life forms. Here is their proposed marketing blurb, which tells you about all you need to know :

“They are the Plastic Population, living invention of the fiendish Professor Polyphemus – Product of the Population Printer, Property of Polyphemus ™.
              

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These poor proto-people begin to degrade within days, sometimes hours of leaving the birthing pod, ending their lives as little more than flesh puppets of their evil master, caring only that they survive long enough to carry out his orders.

These figures would make ideal zombies or space plague victims. The Professor asks only that you recall the criminal intent behind their creation and respect their nefarious natures!

The minis will come dressed in the classic lackey coverall or leather armour and with a range of tools and weapons to allow some tailoring.

There will also be some Misprints – horrific, misshapen nightmares ushered onto the field of battle by the Plastic Population.”

More on the Misprints and some spare PlasPop heads next week. PlasPop – that could catch on!

Interlude: Diagnosis…..terror!

On 1 June 2011 – one day after my first wedding anniversary, I visited my local hospital about a bit of a lump I’d had where there oughtn’t be a lump. No fears however as my GP told me that at 39 I was “too old for what young men get, too young for what old men get”. What he failed to tell me (or I suspect to know) was that I was entirely, totally, precisely the right age to get just what I had – a malignant tumour on my left testicle. I’m not going to be flip about the trauma and upset, the plain fear and angst this caused nor am I going to try to get across a bigger message. I will say simply that I was and am one of the lucky ones but that I have seen those who are not and, simply, trust yourself, check it out and if you are not happy or are just plain unlucky, own that and persevere: it is your life and no one can or should value it like you do.

Anyhow, thankfully, one abdominal surgery later and the traitorous teste was offski. I however was left pretty darn sore, comfy only when sat bolt upright. To fend off boredom during convalescence I resolved to finish a Tyranid monster I had been busily converting from a toy dinosaur.

As you’ll spot he is pretty tumorous himself and I thought completing him would be my catharsis. In matter of fact he never has been finished, being put to one side as, instead, for reasons I will never know I decided that “no”, I needed to have a go at sculpting a Martian Overlord – a six inch tall tripod in the style of HG Wells’ machine and its occupant combined.

And it worked!

Some flower arranging wire, a lump of Milliput, a tonne of greenstuff later and voila I had my Martian!

Between recuperation from the surgery and then laying low after a blast of radioactive platinum came the Martian Warriors, inspired by the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs downloaded en masse to my Kindle whilst I was grumpy, drugged and sore.

Not amazing I admit, but I was happy. In a moment of stroooong pain-killer inspiration I fired some photos of these chaps to PSD, Briogenese and Robert with the very basic question “should I make and sell these?”

No, wait, that’s a lie. I sent them an email in among my then-regular codeine-induced madness which said “I’ve tried sculpting and it’s gone really well – I think I may make them and try to sell them” They came back, properly supportive of their drug-addled chum but as quietly suspicious as they should have been so I didn’t go too nuts and send them off to GW or Wyrd with a demand-with-menaces! Then I sent them photos. And the response I got was hugely supportive (albeit much of the credit went to my new prosthetic testicle rather than me – an assertion I will forever refute). Having spent most of my time off sculpting in my attic, the name of the business felt like an obvious gift from the fates. And so, I guess, Attica was conceived.

Cancerous Interruptus?

Looking back now it would have been dead easy for this all to have been just another scheme or idea (we all have them, in my case at a pretty steady rate of about three per annum: In Brian’s case three an hour). Once it had run its course I could have simply headed back to work, life and DIY (and in many ways I have had to of course – the bills insist) particularly when I overlay the “tail” that my adventure into illness will have of check-ups, scans and all that malarkey. For whatever reason though it did not all go away. I have largely left to one side for now my initial ideas for a game based in the gladiatorial arenas of Mars and the races which would and might yet populate it, but only to replace it with Shiver – a range which has grown out of my love of TV and movies of a certain type. Think Sapphire and Steel, think Dr Who, think The Blob or Quatermass or Lost Boys. Modern horror minus the chainsaws, sci-fi minus the gunships.

That’s the Attica idea: quality, fun figures in the classic sci-fi/horror style, quirky not gimmicky. And before very long (once PSD has been suitably cajoled, bribed and shamed into full-scale production or whatever it is writers do) a tabletop skirmish game to match.

It’ll make a million or it’ll give me an ulcer. I will become a better sculptor as I go, or go blind as I sculpt, but either or any way, Attica is here to stay!

 

 

…yeah, but sculpting?

Like most folks, I have done a wee bit of modelling and sculpting pretty much from the get-go, graduating perhaps a decade ago to greenstuff and truly complex scratch-builds (with individual 28mm figures creeping upwards to 40, 50 and even 60 pieces). For a long time I had liked the idea of converting figures to play characters, teams or armies more than buying the official released figures and increasingly that is just what I did.

And things would probably have toddled along in that vein – real life, work and renovating our fixer-upper home left little time for thinking of minis as any more than a hobby. And then (like in a bad pot-boiler novel) everything change.

In the beginning…

So, here goes:

In the beginning…

…Miniatures

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in miniature figures of one sort or another – whether it was my Play People Knights of the Round Table, my very first Star Wars figures (bizarrely Obi Wan and Princess Leia), 18mm Desert Rats and Vikings – just about anything. It was on holiday to Morecambe about age 11 that I first came across “proper” metal minis – very early Dungeons and Dragons figures and from there, wherever Glasgow’s pretty limited metal figures shopping opportunities and White Dwarf’s sometimes-bizarre mail order options permitted I hoovered up just about everything I came across – metals, plastics and a little resin from just about any scale and genre. God bless Citadel Miniatures, Grenadier, Prince August (and some early attempts at home smeltry) and Ral Partha. I still do to some extent – I am still as likely to pick up a Marvel Heroclick as a Night Elf thief as a Space Marine, although the scale has pretty much settled at 25-35mm.

…Gaming

My gaming life has had three or four big phases. First aged 14-16ish there was the D&D phase (though in fact we played using GW’s Warhammer 1st Edition – a truly lovely mash up of roleplay and wargame). Then, if it can be described as a phase there was the “no gaming at all” phase between 16 and maybe 35, although during that whole time I never truly lost interest, still picking up the odd rule or source book, magazine or scenario. Then came the 40k phase, as PSD and I re-discovered a love for things that went “dakka dakka dakka”.

In time PSD’s chum Briogenese joined us and our gaming interest widened a smidgeon. In particular, Bri awoke in me an interest not in roleplay per se, but certainly in narrative skirmish games: from this, came Throne Agent, my first skirmish game and from there Dr Who The Game, a narrative minis game written for my daughter Molly (who was then nine) and which focusses on story and character over shooting and punching – we still play and I still love writing scenarios (we are now up to about Episode 20, so it has some staying power!).

Finally, Robert (Attica’s TechnoR!ab) joined our wee gaming group and his interest in card and boardgames as well as more rules-driven gaming (a la Malifaux) added probably the final element to our gaming sessions. Robert and PSD have since become ‘Faux-ists extraordinaire. I am yet to see the light.

Attica. Who, what, where, why?

I’m Gary Bogan, lead (currently only) sculptor and proprietor of Attica Games www.atticagames.co.uk . The last year or so has been crammed full of minis-based activity, from learning to sculpt to planning a range, finding a caster to setting up a back-office, from website design to dealing with the tax man all culminating in the launch on 1 September 2012 of Attica Games, a pewter miniatures manufacturer and seller (and soon, I hope, games company too).

Now I’ll confess, I am a far from a comfortable entrant to the blogosphere, but my best chum and best man David McGuire (Pulitzer Super Dave) himself a super-keen gamer, terrain designer, part-time writer for Wyrd Games’ Malifaux and regular blogger www.incunabulum.co.uk/blog suggested that as well as a good way to drum up some interest/recognition for Attica, this stuff might actually be of interest to gamers, modellers or sculptors as a sort of fly-on-the-wall look at the development and launch of a miniatures company.

In addition, I have come to realise that this is about the only way, whether Attica sinks or swims, that I will have a contemporary record of this period – or at least this part – of my life.

I am going to use this blog to report on progress with the launch of Attica and work on our future ranges and also to reflect, on the off-chance it may be any use to anyone, on the experience of creating and launching a miniatures range and a minis business.