New to forward march studios

HI gjg,

First, thanks for being an FMS customer!
Your figures look really good, and it would be interesting to see what else you come up with. Do post here when you get additional ones and some prints!

I did want to answer some of your questions about the range, and why they're designed the way they are. Basically, the stylistic quality of the range was a purposeful choice based on the realities of 2mm figures, the limitations of printing technology, and my own personal aesthetic and thoughts on art.

The first question was, why 2mm? I had been painting and playing with 3mm a lot over the prior years, and was always intrigued by 2mm. But Irregular hasn't had a presence in the US for years, and besides, they are not really designed for the sort of projects I had in mind. People love them, and they were the only 2mm option for decades, but I wanted to do something completely new in the hobby. I like doing big, unique projects, that change people's minds about what a wargame can be. This is important in the US maybe moreso than Europe and the UK (and Australian, New Zealand, etc) because here the hobby is really at risk of dying off - literally. There are very few young wargamers. A lot of complex reasons for this in the US - but expense and space, and time are part of it. Younger Americans live in apartments instead of houses, they move a lot, they have little disposable income, and they have very little hobby time compared to older generations at the same age. These have really affected the ability to play wargames over here. I wanted to create a new way of creating model soldiers and collecting armies that would react to that.

Three years ago when I started FMS, if anybody had the idea to do a comprehensive set of 3D printable wargames figures that included terrain and soldiers, they weren't acting on it. FMS was unique in its scope - and still is. I wanted to create a figure range where everything looked like it should go together on the table top, and which had enough options for players to use the figures for all kinds of basing systems. For example, that's why there are dozens of infantry models. The worst thing about metal strips is that you have to fight with them to create the project you have in mind. But with FMS, there are enough options that something should fit. To create all of the options I wanted for players, I had to keep the models relatively simple. Plus, at 2mm, highly detailed models are fine, but they are also limiting- they are harder to paint, and take more time to paint.

The original inspiration for FMS was the engineers models at Les Invalides. I wanted to create a range of figures that could be used to re-create entire cities, all in the same scale. At the same time, I'd become frustrated with the physical and economic impossibility of doing 1:1 armies with Oddzial Osmy 3mm (a figure range that I love, BTW). The figures are too widely spaced on the strips- they are more like 2:1 for their height. And, they are too expensive to really collected hundreds of thousands of figures. I saw that 3D printing could, cheaply, allow me to do just that. 2mm figures fall into a sweet spot where you can get some very basic shapes, but the figures are so small that the material costs to print are still very cheap. At 6mm, for instance, you no longer get the economies that make 3D printed 2mm so attractive. Plus layering becomes a bigger issue when you get bigger.

Speaking of the 1:1 look. FMS models were designed with very large units in mind. With 3mm, I found the detail to be a waste of time. To go back to painting, it's best to think of FMS figures as impressionistic. Or in other words, they aren't designed to show off the details of an individual soldiers kit. That can be painted on (and has been by some people). Instead, they're designed so that you can recreate entire formations. So, instead of having individual figures that look like a real soldier, you can have an entire table top that looks like a real battlefield. The FMS figures not only let you create games, but they could be used to create accurate, 1:1 scale museum displays as well. No other figure range lets you do that.

The simplicity also comes from my (very limited) experience as a painter and the displays at Les Invalides. I think that the only wargame modeler who really ever "got" how a city looks was Bruce Weigel. I wanted to do what he did, but on a larger scale - by using smaller buildings. So, by using hundreds (soon to be thousands) of buildings, I believe that I can capture the actual look of a city much better than having a few highly detailed ones. Volume is key to this, because it creates an effect in the viewer similar to looking at a real distant town or city; the eye can only focus on one part of the city, and the gaze must travel across the models. The problem with more detailed buildings is that they slow down the painting process, so that doing this becomes impossible, or a years-long project at best. I wanted that to be possible with work done over a weekend or two. Hence, the relatively simple design of the building models. Once color-printed becomes truly viable (re: cheap) I'll be re-working these all for color printing. That is certainly the way of the future.

As far as the collapsed look of the models in your picture... I had no idea they looked that bad! I'm guess that has to do with the fact that the buildings are hollow. I designed them to be hollow to save material costs. The FMS range was originally designed to be printed in SLS, which has very high costs for volume filling. But the figures are perfectly strong when printed - I've never had one collapse on me. That said, I'm not really an engineer... actually, I'm simply not an engineer.

Your models are very good looking, but the big question for those is, will they print on a cheap, FDM printer, consistently, when you're not there to tell the printer what settings to use? Or will it take a more detailed resin printer, which is more expensive? Part of developing FMS involved spending $$$ to do hundreds of experimental prints through different online printing hubs in order to find out what would print consistently for the customer. So, they are sort of simple, that's true. But they also print up correctly nearly 100% of the time. That's been very important with spreading the idea of 3D printing to wargamers. FMS is a new kind of product, so it's hard to get people to adapt to the idea that they need to buy the models and then print them off. That's a very difficult sell for people who are used to the old paradigm, especially since I rarely get out to conventions. So, I can't have people getting bad prints, and that feedback going out into the internet. The simplicity of the prints is really critical to that.

Anyways, I just wanted to respond to some of your concerns about the figures by explaining why I made the design choices that I did. I look forward to seeing how your figures progress. Definitely consider sharing them in the Lab if you like!

I have a resin printer as it happens, so I would like to have a go at printing these models. If you could make the STLs available, I'll print them and report back on how they came out.

Cheers
Biker500

Hi gjg,

Thanks for offering to share your models- I added you to the Members forum so you'll now have access to the Lab page.

The column shape for the basic FMS models is sort of basic, you are right about that. I tried human-shaped basic shapes early on, in SLS, but I got a lot of bad prints. I do have a sub-range called Forward March Epic that have heads, but they're slightly larger (I think 2.4mm). 6mmfan modified those further and has been creating some incredible brigade-base models over the last few months.

Maybe in the right kind of FDM human shaped 2mm would print better? Some FDM printers are very crisp and could certainly handle that. In SLS it never worked, which is the main reason I abandoned it in favor of more impressionistic techniques. Trying SLS was the biggest rabbit hole I went down during my design process (other than my old Shapeways store). I definitely agree that the look of figures with heads is better. Maybe I should revisit this and try some 2mm stuff with heads.

Your watermill is a great model- I may look into adding one into the Library now. Or just printing up the one you created!

The sheep and the peasants are really great though; really good work, and very original! I'm excited to see what else you come up with!