Sprue Cutters’ Union – Is The Hobby Dying?

I’ve decided to jump on board with the Sprue Cutters’ Union, a blog carnival, to help keep me focused and share a bit too. There is more information about SCU at the bottom of this post if you’re interested.

 Who Care’s!

Well I do in so far as I have friends that make their lively hood from this hobby. Other than that absolutely not. Why? Why such a hard nosed attitude?

I’m not hard nosed. I just have lots of other things to worry about other than where my next plastic fix is coming from. Granted I see this from the same perch that I browse my 100+ kit stash from so I’m a bit shielded  from any mass shortage of plastic. Add the fact that I have almost everything that I actually want to build and there is not a whole lot of concern at my bench.

That’s not to say that I don’t have concerns about the hobby or what it is morphing into. Perhaps it’s not morphing. Splitting may be a better verb. In my eyes 3D printing is the big enemy to traditional modeling. Why? because it uses an entirely different skill set to get the basics done. Is that a problem? only in a competitive sense, at least at this point in time.  To me it’s exactly the same issue that has plagued the photography world the last few years. The culprit in photography is called HDR, High Dynamic Range. It’s a technique where the photograph is manipulated via software to the point that the colors and saturation do not represent the actual scene at the time the image was captured. You really can’t compare a”standard” image with an “HDR” image because they are two totally different things. One is highly stylized and the other isn’t. How does that relate to modelling? Well, how would you like to put your 500 piece kit up against a model that was printed in one piece and then painted. No seams to fill, no pin marks to remove, no sink marks. Just a paint job(Not that that is easy). And for those who think I’m making this up it’s happened. I saw it with my own eyes. I don’t have an issue with HDR images or single piece 3D printed models. I do however have an issue when they are compared to traditional media. That’s just wrong in my book.

So there it is. We are involved in a hobby that is changing. One that will one day allow average modelers to sit down at their PC and print the kit they want. Any kit in any scale. Compete with paint and markings and weatheriong! How do you think the manufacturers and the judges will deal with that? What about the LHS owners that are still out there? What will they have for sale if a large portion of “modelers” no longer need supplies of any kind from them?

So, if the hobby does implode I don’t care. I don’t care because I’ll just sit in my workshop and build the kits I’ve accumulated over the years with the supplies and tools I have accumulated over the years. Change is inevitable, it’s not just a political slogan. It’s the nature of the beast we call capitalism. The law of supply and demand rules all. My advice to anyone out there? Get over it!

All that said, I don’t think it’s going to happen. There are too many companies putting too much money into this market for me to believe that it is dying any time soon. If you think they are pumping out these kits without doing market studies think again. They know what we want and what we will pay for it.

Model on.

Other Members Posts…

The Combat Workshop
Kermit’s Bench
Mattblackgods World