Aventine Miniatures produce 28mm white metal miniatures for the Struggle for Italy. All the figures have been sculpted by Adam Smith formerly of A&A.

We have been asked several times now Aventine got started.

Keith and Adam have known each other for around 35 years through the local war-gaming and modelling club in Belfast. When Keith was offered an early retirement he decided that he would like to make his hobby into a part-time occupation and contacted Adam to see if he could be tempted. The discussion was very brief and it was agreed, Aventine would be born on the 1st April 2009.

Since then it has turned from part-time into something a lot more and as we continue to add to the ranges it may well see an expansion with more bodies spinning lead.

Aventine Miniatures, where did that name come from…

It’s one of the seven hills of Rome. As both Adam and Keith are Roman fans it seemed appropriate and sounded good. We will be building our ranges to the theme “The struggle for Italy.”

Our first range was the LATE ETRUSCAN range which is available to buy in our shop along with our full range.

We will keep you informed of any new ranges we plan to release which will be listed in our shop once complete.

We have added a number of other ranges now, just hover over the Ranges button to see the full list.

All our figures have been sculpted by Adam who designed A&A’s 3rd Century Romans and Palmyrans. He has created a large number of differing figures to allow the gamer to produce distinctive individual units.

All our figures are made from Lead alloy and contain small parts, they are therefore unsuitable for children under 14.

Founded in 2009, Gorgon Studios is the joint project of a group of like-minded hobbyists, gamers, and amateur historians. Originally conceived as a vehicle for miniatures ranges for niche or lesser known historical period, Gorgon Studios has expanded in scope. From the ancient Italian empire of the Etruscans, to the American Old West, to the shores of Dark Age Britain, to the desperate actions on Crete during the Second World War, Gorgon continues to produce high quality model figures for an ever-growing repertoire of historical, fantasy, and science fiction ranges. As Gorgon expands, the focus remains squarely on offering dynamic, historically accurate, and characterful toy soldiers.

Little Big Men Studios produce thousands of different transfer sheets for you to choose from in 28mm, 20mm, 15mm and 10mm sizes. I cover periods from Ancient to Medieval to Napoleonic covering shields and flags.

The work I do is extremely detailed and combines history and artistry in miniature. The range is expanding all the time with new designs appearing nearly every week. Sometimes I do forget to put transfer images on the website so if you know I make something for a manufacturer but can’t find it please let me know.

My name is Stephen Hales and I own ‘Little Big Men Studios’. The company was started in April of 2004 initially as a painting service. The transfers were created to help me with my painting commissions, but as time went by the transfers took up more and more of my time and became my main business. The painting commission side of LBMS is no more as I simply don’t have the time to paint due to the great success of the transfers.

Before LBMS I was a film and computer animator, but have been interested in History and war-gaming since I was seven years old. Finally becoming disillusioned with others controlling my creativity I decided to start LBMS. This has been the best decision I could have made as it has given me the chance to be my own boss and to be creative within my favourite subject matter, which is history. It gives me great pride to receive messages from satisfied customers who have really enjoyed using the transfers over the years and I must thank a lot of my regular customers for making this a very pleasant job.

The range is so large now I have lost count, but must run into the thousands! in 28mm, 15mm, 10mm and 1/72nd scales. My design time has become less due to the pressures and time constraints of sorting customer and trade orders. So the designs I do are for the more popular periods and ranges rather than the more esoteric.

I work closely with Victrix limited working on the design of the plastic figure ranges. I produce a very large range of transfers for Victrix but they are only sold via the Victrix Website.

Steve

Victrix Limited is owned by Julian Blakeney-Edwards. I (Julian) have been fascinated by toy soldiers since the age of 7. I have fond and vivid memories of playing with Airfix plastic soldiers throughout my childhood. This passion extended into the real world and at the age of 22 I entered Sandhurst. Subsequently commissioned into 3 Royal Anglian (Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex) Regiment. A fascinating 6 year career with my regiment took me to Germany, Canada and Northern Ireland.

I spent many years working in The City before setting up various businesses working in the hobby markets. And also the overseas holiday property business. For nearly 9 years now I have been running Victrix Limited with my business partner Stephen Hales. Steve has recently resigned as a director of the business but continues to work for Victrix on a consultancy basis

Steve and I had been discussing for some time the feasibility of a 28mm hard plastic range. Our first discussions centred around Greeks and Persians. But then we both quickly realised that our true joint interest was in the Napoleonic period. Before you could say "at ready" we had decided to pour our heart and soul (not to mention a very large amount of money) into the launch of a new range of hard plastic 28mm Napoleonics, and so Victrix Limited was born.

We have put great emphasis on producing figures with real character, truly reflecting the look and feel of the Napoleonic period. A great deal of attention has been placed on the sculpting of faces. The look of the uniform and the pose of each figure. As the Duke of Wellington said on the eve of Waterloo;

"I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me".

We want our figures to look like soldiers and to scare the living daylights out of their metal opponents. We want to appeal to military modellers who will appreciate the detail of our figures. And want to use them as performers in their dioramas and vignettes. More than anything we want to recreate the pleasure and excitement of collecting miniature figures and perhaps convince the younger generation there is more to this pastime than Elves and Dwarves.

In recent years Victrix has moved away from traditional engineering methods and now all our plastic products are developed using digital technology. This involves digitally sculpting figures using various software platforms. Once the digital files are complete they go through a number of processes. Before getting uploaded to a CNC milling that then cuts the tool.

The adoption of digital technology has helped reduce development costs which has allowed us to invest more money in new product development. What the future holds is anyone's guess but developing STL files for people to purchase from us to then use on a domestic 3D printer is certainly one future avenue we are exploring.