Poses 
Some customers have a detailed list of the poses they require, others will leave it up to me. The first task is to sketch the poses. This can be surprisingly difficult as the number of realistic poses that can be moulded is limited as there must be no undercuts or deep sections

 Reviewers often accuse the sculptor of a lack of imagination but it is often necessary to use similar poses in different sets as manufacturers always want to see action and lots of guns. Because of this it often comes down to the same old basic  poses i.e. standing firing rifle, kneeling firing rifle, charging with bayonet, throwing grenade etc. etc. Once these have been modelled a few more unusual figures can be added to give the set variety.

Research
After the customer has approved the poses there must be careful research into uniforms and weapons There are a lot of people out there all to ready to criticize! The excellent Osprey Books are a good place to start but in my opinion the best source of all must be contemporary photographs.

Weapons

I scratch build my weapons out of brass, plastic, resin or anything at hand. the barrel of the Lewis gun (left) is a ball point pen and the magazine is the cap off a tube of toothpaste!
 

Armature
I sculpt my figures about 160mm in height This size allows a lot of detail to be modelled without the moulds becoming too large. I first make a full size sketch of the figure, this is used as a guide when making the wire armature. Clay is applied to the armature to build up the model and when the figures are finished they are photographed for final approval. Once this is given they are ready for casting.

Pantograph

 The clay models are passed onto the patternmaker who casts a two part female mould of each figure (the original clay is destroyed when this mould is split). After all the clay is cleaned out of the mould it is ready for the last stage. Using a pantograph the Toolmaker achieves the incredibly difficult task of copying and reducing in size the detail from the resin mould into a block of tool steel. the finished injection moulding tool will be assembled from more then one hundred of these blocks.