It's recently come to my attention that I'm better off building figures, and that said, I want to get the very most out of them. But what are some of the better kits for customizing and kitbashing? I'm not looking for any resin figures just yet, but I'm still trying to figure out which company puts out the best figures to work with.
Master Box is very tempting, but how is there quality? I'm looking at this set:
http://www.scalehobbyist.com/images/products/MBL/MBL00003518/MBL00003518_1_l.jpg

Thanks! Conor

Your thread title is very misleading, and you dont need the blog symbol for a general question. There are reviews with photos all over the web, for lots of manufacturers and scales.

I'm going to outline the best manufacturers, and some to avoid. but beaty is in the eye of the beholder, a Crap Tamiya set to you may be great to someone else.

Good companies. Usually (sometimes not the case though) the newer figures are of better quality.

Masterbox, Very dynamic poses, good in action and at rest sets. Can suffer from very heavy mould seams and some flash. Faces and detail are generally above average though for plastic manufacturers.

Miniart, Usually posed in scenes of rest recuperation or daily goings on, Fantastic faces, and very fine uniform detail, waqtch out for flash and the usual mould seams.

Dragon, Considered by some the best, but i think variety is the spice of life, Generally good deatils, some of the faces are average, the plastic is hard and sometimes difficult to work with , Lots of germans avaliable, watch out for the older sets, some of them are below average.

Zvezda, Not my area of expertise, but are really coming along as a good company, the older sets are ones to avoid, but the newer ones are pretty decent.

Tristar, Good figures, some unique sets, the usual cleanup, very little flash.

Icm, I have only made a 1/48 set. they were fantastic, good folds, great detail, minimal cleanup.


AVIOD
Tamiya, Italeri , not worth it stay well clear.

Thats all I have for now,
Like i said, most sets have reviews somewhere on the Web, The way i search is

DML5098 Review

Masterbox mb3501 Review e.t.c ( but only if i cant find the review here., )

Yeah when I first started typing I planned on actually making this a build log but the more I think of it, it's not really appropriate now. (Any way to change it?) I've been building Dragon for almost a year now, but I haven't touched Masterbox. I've been looking at buying putty to use with them, any good companies for that?
Sorry to be misleading
-Conor

Don't worry about it, i was just confused as to why it was a blog!
Putty is quite subjective, there is a heck of a lot out there.
I use milliput white ( superfine), 2 part, the dry time is 3ish hours, its also good for sculpting, and layering ( new layers, making new uniform sections e.t.c) and can be thinned with water, and cleaned up with water.

Other putties are okay for filling, i find most of them can be cleaned up with non-acetone Nail varnish remover Revell humbrol, squadron. e,t.c

I would take the plunge on a masterbox set, they are inexpensive, and I think worth the money.


here is a photo review of the set your after ( i think)

http://malaysiascalemodelling.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=2

and looking at photo #3 in particular the detail is Fantastic.

Yup, that's the set! I've actually been eyeing it for over a year and it's about time I bought it. I might as well attempt to turn this into a build log if I can too. But thanks for the suggestions, I've been modeling on and off the past few years so my skill isn't amazing yet & any help is appreciated.

-Conor

If Your focusing solely on figures, you may want to share with historicus forma aswell, Hit the browse sites tab at the top, and youll find it, the traffic is a little slower on there, but everything is figure dedicated so its worth using both sites.
have you done a lot of figures in the past?
the way to improvement is practice practice and more practice,
so don't be put down if your set doesn't turn out exactly how you like, I have recently found the reason my figures didnt turn out how I would have liked, is due to rushing the paint job, or construction. You'll find a figure with better details is easier to paint, as there is less left to imagine, the folds are easier to shade e.t.c
It may be worth picking one up to see the difference even though for the price of one evolution figure, I can get a 5 set of MB, or mini-art,
here are some of the evolution germans you can get,
http://www.evolution-miniatures.com/35/images/51.jpg
http://www.evolution-miniatures.com/35/images/7.jpg
http://www.evolution-miniatures.com/35/images/2.jpg
http://www.evolution-miniatures.com/35/images/6.jpg

but there are other brands, e.t.c Alpine, Verlinden(not so good), Wolf, Resicast, Tank, Mig, D-Toys e.t.c

( Sorry if you know this, just covering all bases)

And dont worry about help, there are a shedload of people here to help, and guide, I should know, my first figures were Gash. and i like tho think I picked up a few things from the guys on here and various online tutorials.

James out.

I should post a few photos of my figures, I've been doing mostly figures the past 7 years and they do look better with each kit. I only got 2 resin kits (verlinden KIA's) and they we're noticeably bigger than all my other figures, which made them a waste of $20. But I will look into the other brands, they seem pretty cool. I saw your US Marines figures so I know you know what you're talking about hahaha. They're amazing. Well now it's time to prepare my wallet for the next big spending spree...

Hey Conor- James has dispensed some very good advice here. I would just add that you should look for any Dragon Gen2 figure sets. Why? These sets have much better moulding quality on the figure equipment and each figure is broken down beyond the usual 2 arms, 2 legs, torso and head- for instance some have boots seperate from the legs- the extra parts in this manner are very useful for kitbashing and customising.

I also wouldn't totally rule out Tamiya figures- some are awful but some aren't too bad- check reviews and pictures of the sprues before deciding. I found their British Infantry on Patrol kit figures to be quite good with a healthy amount of decent equipment included.

Zvezda's newer figure kits are also worth a look- they can be hit and miss but of late they have been producing some interesting sets of unique siutations and subjects.

I would also recommend Magic-Sculp which is a very fine two-part putty that lends itself extremely well to sculpting and creating detail.

Good luck with your kitbashing!

Yeah most of what i built the past 6 years have been Tamiya, but now I try to stick to the Gen2 kits, they're the best out there in my opinion. I'll go looking for that putty & I'll see what I can make from it!
Thanks a lot!
Conor