RE: (OT) What I love to hate was Re: [OT] Mini Pictures

On Tue, 13 February 2001, "Bell, Brian K (Contractor)" wrote:

> I understand wanting to present a professional appearance on a web
site. But
> I believe most gamers would be thrilled to have their miniatures
pictured on
> the miniatures company's web site. I believe most would GLADLY allow
their
> pictures to be used for the high price of giving them credit for the
> paint/picture.

Bear in mind how much some companies charge for throughput on a web
site. Mine is pretty good (over at Vex.Net), but some are pretty
expensive. Some small companies won't be able to afford one or two
hundred dollars a month for a little bit of Internet traffic.

Of course, it depends on how much traffic they get. Some companies find
that they actually more than make up for it with Internet orders. There
are also the free sites (Geocities, Xoom, FortuneCity, etc.) but they
aren't really viable for a company to rely on.

That having been said, I suspect the biggest problem is that small
companies really don't understand what they can get from the Web. Let's
face it, even Jon doesn't have a formal, GZG web site with pictures of
the minis. I have gone to the GZG catalogue site, but since the move and
redesign, many of the pictures seem to be missing. This is unfortunate,
because I have bought figures from Jon because the pictures were on that
site!

> I believe that miniature companies would benefit greatly from this,
almost
> free, source of pictures. While some of the pictures and paint are of
> limited skill (speaking of mine, not particularly anyone else's),
displaying
> a miniature with a mediocre paint job is better than making the
potential
> customer guess at what the miniature looks like.

In fact, you don't have to present the figure painted at all! What you
do is a blackwash on the unpainted figure. Just do a black wash on the
bare metal, and all the detail will pop up. Then, photograph. People
will see what appears to be the bare figure, but with all the detailing
shining through. That's all anyone really needs for a web based
catalogue.

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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