That horrible feeling when you suddenly realise you have been royally RIPPED .....

[toolsntat]

I'm glad for them that I was too far away to remonstrate.
Needed a bit of plasticine to make an impression of something so popped in to "THE WORKS" up town.

 

[toolsntat]

 

[Cozzer]

ermmm....
Is it me?
I don't see the problem, sorry!

 

[SammyQ]

"Twenty pack" contains...16?

 

[SammyQ]

Or, 14?

 

[toolsntat]

I'm glad for them that I was too far away to remonstrate.
Needed a bit of plasticine to make an impression of something so popped in to "THE WORKS" up town.

View attachment 197762

ermmm....
Is it me?
I don't see the problem, sorry!

Padded out with cardboard the equal thickness of the product content.
Cheers Andy

 

[mwinfrance]

But if you count them, there are indeed 20, there are 10 either side of the carton in the middle..No Rip off there .
The carton is there to separate them as some colours "bleed" very easily, and will contaminate others, especially under pressure of many packs in a box. Unless each colour is wrapped separately in plastic / cellophane.

I used to be an importer here, of many hundreds of kilos of the pro stuff ( much better quality than you purchased ) from the people who made plasticine ( Newclay ) for Ardman studios , the Wallace and Grommit " movies people. they made many other extremely good products too.Unfortunately they did not find a buyer for their business when they retired.They were selling their manufacturing machinery for a while, later their IP ( recipes ) and list of suppliers. Suppliers were all in the UK, I'm not, , profit margin as a manufacturer was not high enough to interest me, and I know how to make almost all of what they made. The products I do not know how to make , did not interest me.

Plasticine, like many other craft products, is sold by weight, not by volume.

The stuff you have will dye your hands and get colour on your clothes, wear vinyl gloves and be careful , the colour can be impossible to get out of some fibres in some clothing.

My son does ( amongst other animation ) , stop motion animation, and we use it for modelling too.

Heating ( double bath, it is inflammable when really warm and pourable ) it will make it softer, you can heat to to be pourable . If it goes hard you can "bring it back" by adding a few drops of vaseline oil ( or lily white oil or light cycle oil or sewing machine oil ) and mixing it in by hand. to keep it soft and "workable" put it in a foil dish and rig an incandescent light bulb of about 40w just above it. The heat from the bulb will keep it soft-ish

 

[Cabinetman]

But if you count them, there are indeed 20, there are 10 either side of the carton in the middle..No Rip off there .
The carton is there to separate them as some colours "bleed" very easily, and will contaminate others, especially under pressure of many packs in a box. Unless each colour is wrapped separately in plastic / cellophane.

I used to be an importer here, of many hundreds of kilos of the pro stuff ( much better quality than you purchased ) from the people who made plasticine ( Newclay ) for Ardman studios , the Wallace and Grommit " movies people. they made many other extremely good products too.Unfortunately they did not find a buyer for their business when they retired.They were selling their manufacturing machinery for a while, later their IP ( recipes ) and list of suppliers. Suppliers were all in the UK, I'm not, , profit margin as a manufacturer was not high enough to interest me, and I know how to make almost all of what they made. The products I do not know how to make , did not interest me.

Plasticine, like many other craft products, is sold by weight, not by volume.

The stuff you have will dye your hands and get colour on your clothes, wear vinyl gloves and be careful , the colour can be impossible to get out of some fibres in some clothing.

My son does ( amongst other animation ) , stop motion animation, and we use it for modelling too.

Heating ( double bath, it is inflammable when really warm and pourable ) it will make it softer, you can heat to to be pourable . If it goes hard you can "bring it back" by adding a few drops of vaseline oil ( or lily white oil or light cycle oil or sewing machine oil ) and mixing it in by hand. to keep it soft and "workable" put it in a foil dish and rig an incandescent light bulb of about 40w just above it. The heat from the bulb will keep it soft-ish

wow. It never ceases to amaze me the knowledge and talent to be found here.

 

[flying haggis]

I only see 16

 

[RobinBHM]

The Works is dirt cheap, so I doubt you were ripped off in price

 

[Doris]

I used to be an importer here, of many hundreds of kilos of the pro stuff ( much better quality than you purchased ) from the people who made plasticine ( Newclay ) for Ardman studios , the Wallace and Grommit " movies people. they made many other extremely good products too.Unfortunately they did not find a buyer for their business when they retired.They were selling their manufacturing machinery for a while, later their IP ( recipes ) and list of suppliers. Suppliers were all in the UK, I'm not, , profit margin as a manufacturer was not high enough to interest me, and I know how to make almost all of what they made. The products I do not know how to make , did not interest me.

I read somewhere that Ardman brought up everything that was left of Newclay's remaining stock. About 400kg's worth.

It's annoying really as someone like little old me me was waiting ages for a bit of flesh coloured plasticine to get back in stock for my own stop motion work on Animation Supplies.
I decided not to use Plasticine in the end and used wire to the limbs so was probably meant to be.

 

[toolsntat]

The numbers were correct, the price didn't matter it was the illusion of a pack which turned out to be only half product that irked me.
The two strips of product were wrapped in cellophane and you are right about the colouring it gets everywhere.
Cheers, Andy

 

[Sofa]

I'm glad for them that I was too far away to remonstrate.
Needed a bit of plasticine to make an impression of something so popped in to "THE WORKS" up town.

View attachment 197762

Isn’t it like a £1 in there?

 

[Cozzer]

Isn’t it like a £1 in there?

Isn't what like a £1 in there?

 

[JSW]

The pack of plasticine

 

[mwinfrance]

@Doris I read something similar too,.I was surprised that Ardman only bought 400kg ( maybe it was a missprint ) because although you can and do reuse much of it.That is about my level of stock of the stuff.It's very dense, doesn't take up much room, 500 gm "bar" is about as big as two average sized mobile phones ( 21st century measurement ) or about the same volume as a 3.5 inch hard drive ( 20th century measurement, cue thoughts about bandwidth and ford Transits on the M1 ), it isn't fussy about how it's stored, ours is in the unheated atelier outside 6° C today. If we'd been UK based I'd have put in a bid for the business, just to secure supplies for stop motion. I'm highly surprised that Ardman didn't , maybe they intend shifting to all CG or AI generated in the future. Or maybe someone bought the IP and will begin making it again, and they knew that was the case. As what is used to make plasticene and the other Newclay products is fairly bulky and heavy, a list of UK suppliers to someone outside the UK such as we are, is of no use. Shipping raw materials makes it a non starter even before Brexit. The "trick" to making any of the type of things that Newclay made is to get them homogeneous. usually requires quite hefty machines, similar to "pug mixing" clay for sculpture or pottery. Producing "slip" is easier.

If you look ,closely at any of Ardman's ( and others ) stop motion work in plasticine, you'll notice many parts that do not change.These don't need to be made with plasticine. They can be made from other materials , many of the parts on the figures ( clothes etc , and even some body parts ) are made from milliput. Props can be made from anything. For example, it is easier to collect empty egg boxes and egg trays, then soak* them with some added glue ( and maybe plaster or toupret ) to get usable "mulch" for papier maché , than it is to make your own from torn up paper.

* Don't over do the water, most people use far too much water, it then takes forever to dry.

 

[mwinfrance]

I like a pound. I prefer a euro ( worth less) easier for me to spend here though.

 

[mwinfrance]

@Doris ..it looks like animationsupplies still have stock of Newclay's "multicultural" plasticene , you can make any skin tone or colour with it by varying the proportions of those "mixed bars", hence the name .Animation supplies are spendy though, they must be using a large mark-up there, I used to buy mine direct from Newclay at the same price as them, at less than 30% ( ex VAT ) of what they show as their retail. For anything like that , I suggest for the UK users, that you look at ecfibreglasssupplies ( I have no connection with them, but knowing trade prices as I do, I think they are reasonable as retail rates for prop building stuff ) .They sell scola ( who are part of Daler Rowney ), similar ( although I prefer the Newclay products "as were " ) to some of the Newclay range.

Things like aluminium wires of various thicknesses ( to make simple bendable armatures that don't need to last for ever ) and wrap around them.Will be cheaper from a supplier of decorative wire for Florists and flower arrangers..It is all the same stuff and they have a better range of colours. You can make ball joints for articulated armatures ( if you can weld or braze precisely ) with ball bearings , thin steel rod and use steel strips with pre-drilled holes ( sold as brackets for furniture assembly ) with tiny nuts and grub screws with sunken hex heads..That is really all the expensive armatures are made from . Drilled, threaded ball bearings with threaded rods and custom made joint blocks ( from brass usually ) are nice , but you can improvise your own as the ready made ones, and the parts are very spendy.

The reason for the sunken head hex screws ( allen screws ) is that you can release, adjust, and re-tighten the joints by piercing the plasticine with the tiny allen keys , into the head of the grub screws.Just plug the hole that you made to do it in the plasticine with a tiny bit of the same colour, and carefully smooth away the trace. T bar allen keys or star keys are the best to use .

 

[Doris]

@mwinfrance That's quite an insightful reply!

I think plasticine is a non starter now with my figures for my film. My figures are approximately less than an inch in height. Having moving arms and legs at that scale in plasticine seemed to fiddly.

 

[mwinfrance]

You could make them somewhat moveable in Milliput over wire for the limbs though, with joints through / on the bodies. Personally at that scale I'd be looking at 3D printing them to get movable joints. There is a lady at janelaverick.com who makes porcelain jointed pose-able dolls for dolls for dolls, I think you'd like her site if you don't already know it. She is a regular at miniatura.

If you ever get a chance to see the movie Micmacs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micmacs_(film)
I don't know if there are any english versions of it, nor if you speak french.
But even if it isn't and you don't, I'd recommend watching it for the sequences with automata, it is also very funny.

If ever you are in Brittany, you must visit this
https://www.tourismebretagne.com/offres/univers-du-poete-ferrailleur-lizio-fr-2108133/
It is run by the sculptor and his daughters, it is an absolutely magical place, I think you would love it.
It is one of my favourite places in the entire world.
I have traveled a fair bit..but not as much as @paulrbarnard and many others here.
The website is
https://www.poeteferrailleur.com/

The "towers" ( in the photos of the sculptors place at Lizio ) at the tourism website ( at top left of the "banner" on the tourism website ) are each over 10 metres high, some of the automata are so big that they fill the large rooms that they "live in" in some of the other buildings, some are very small..There are very many. On a technical level it is fascinating, on an artistic level it is a very emotional experience.

Some of the automata / sculptures, one in particular , which there are no pictures of, was like getting a slow motion punch in the gut emotionally. t can still feel it now, the head turns to look at you and ...