Weston Beamor, the Birmingham casting-house, 3D printing and bespoke jewellery manufacturing company, has recently been involved in an interesting project for its customer Big Chief Studios – producers of high-quality, limited-edition, collectable figurines.
WB has been 3D printing photo-realistic body parts in resin, specifically heads, hands, and accessories such as guns and gadgets, for Big Chief’s most recent collection of characters from the iconic Bond film – ‘Goldfinger’.
Big Chief has recently taken on the licence to produce action figures from this and several others of the most classic Bond films.
With WB’s assistance, they have now created Bond (Sean Connery – the first actor to play the role) his nemesis, ‘Goldfinger’ (Gert Frobe) and his henchman ‘Odd Job’ (Harold Sakata).
These are the first of what will eventually be a large collection of Bond characters spanning several decades of the movies.
The detailed resins were produced from high resolution CAD models, crafted by Big Chief sculptors using ZBrush software.
The figures will be limited to between 2000 and 5000 pieces worldwide depending on character and will retail at around £200 each.
Tony Leetham, a director and co-founder of Big Chief, commented: “Until we discovered Weston Beamor, we were having our 3D printing done in America, however WB are able to match the very high-quality printing our products need.
We are absolutely delighted with the skin texture and fine detail they can achieve. It’s a bonus having a supplier in the UK and it has been great working with them.”
Glen Day, Business Manager at Weston Beamor said: “We have been thrilled to work with Big Chief on ‘Goldfinger’ and several different projects including their highly popular figures from the new ‘Sherlock’, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
It’s interesting work, different to our everyday jewellery pieces. It pushes the capabilities of our 3D printing machines and there have been moments during the production process when the technical challenges have left us a little shaken – but definitely not stirred! We are looking forward to producing yet more iconic characters for Big Chief in the months to come.”