Let's not feed the trolls, readers and famous authors.

Thanks to Cory for yet another wonderful bit of reading. I really enjoyed this one.

Obviously this is awesome.

Just to respond to the comment thread a bit, as I am an avid 40K gamer, caster, and forum participant.

Cost of 40K models--While the costs are high, Games Workshop's model quality has improved constantly through the company's history, both in terms of materials and artistic achievement. This is really undeniable.

GW and IP enforcement--GW has made some strange decisions, but they are in no way a RIAA-type enterprise. Their explanation for the fan film thing is that the German copyright law that would apply does not allow creators to wholly assign their rights and so it might put the company's rights to the 40K universe as a whole in peril. I happen to think that this stance is over-conservative, but I am not a European IP lawyer. They did handle the situation badly, but probably not with malice. They also made a funny deal with the Lord of the Rings rights holders that means that they will not publish pictures of fan made 40K models that use parts from the Lord of the Rings line of models. Still, they are just a normal company in terms of IP law--not the visionaries Boing Boing readers might prefer them to be, but not huge villains either.

On casting and forums--One can use casting to duplicate GW figures, but this is enormously time consuming, and almost certainly not profitable. Nor will the quality be nearly as good. It is more akin to taping the radio with a hand held tape recorder held up to the speakers than it is to "pirating" digital music.

A strange thing about 40K fan sites though is the mixture of people who like the GW games. Some are Boing Boing readers with the BB attitude. Others are almost absurd copyright maximalists. This leads to arguments when it comes to the subject of casting that have raged on nearly every board, with few minds changed. So the "forbidden art" thing is more a way of avoiding the subject than an attempt at censorship of the information, which is widely available.

Two great websites on molding/casting:

http://www.hirstarts.com/index.html

http://www.tapplastics.com/info/video.php