Some Concrete Progress on the Retro Dungeon.

At long last it seems that my modern take on the original Torchlight Fantasy Products dungeon scenery could be be made commercially available. I had a brief conversation yesterday with the chap who has been producing the silicon rubber moulds for me & it turns out he is interested in producing a line of fantasy scenery, including rather fortuitously some classic dungeon terrain. Long story short, instead of starting from scratch or going down the Hirst Arts route he would prefer to produce the items from the masters I have already produced.
This from my point of view is brilliant news, having got the project to a stage where I could have started casting items & selling them I had hit the proverbial brick wall. The main problem for me was lack of time, due to already having a very full work load running my own company & to a lesser extent lacking the I.T. skills to have the confidence to set up an internet shop front to sell the product.
So it seems in one chance conversation things could be full steam ahead in bringing the Retro Dungeon project to a satisfactory conclusion.
We have yet to hammer out the final details but its more than likely that we will crowdfund the project, which should go smoothly given that the masters, moulds, casting & retail infrastructure are already in place. Its just a case of settling the financial situation to both parties satisfaction and then its just the litmus test of the buying publics interest to pass!

Just as a reminder of what the project looks like here are a few shots of an adventuring party taking on a recently produced mega-dungeon represented with my stuff & some original Torchlight product.

The first section of Barrowmaze, the parties Cleric attempts to turn a Ghoul.

Close-up of the above.

Skeletons await discovery behind a concealed door.

Cthonians. Modern & Classic.

Carrying on my recent theme of painting RAFM Call of Cthulhu monsters I give you the Cthonian.

I still need to finesse the highlighting a bit & put it on a base, but its almost there.

As a contrast here is Grenadier Models rendering of the same theme from 1983:

The two together:

I'm hard pressed to say which of the two sculpts I prefer; the animation of the modern version is very good, but its a bit too Hollywood whereas the flaccid pose of the earlier sculpt somehow more sinister. I've stuck to the colour scheme shown in Chaosiums 'Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters' rather than going with the current fashion for flesh coloured or purple tentacles popularised by Fantasy Flight Games, this is after all a 'Retro' dungeon.