Spacefarers Complete! Both Spacefarers + Cyberpunks in hand, and shipping. General progress update.
about 5 years ago – Wed, Apr 17, 2019 at 12:18:12 AM

First, lets show off some actual photos of Cyberpunks + Spacefarers. They're both beautiful sets which use our brand new 64-piece die.

Spacefarers

Cyberpunks

"Brown Cardboard" might seem like a bad background, but these pieces are SUPER colorful, and it gives good contrast and absorbs a lot of glare so I can take full-panel photos more easily.

New 64-Piece Die

I love this die. It's a really subtle thing that most of the audience will probably never notice, but there's no internal plastic between the 4 panels. We designed this (and some of our other newer dies) to pack/assemble as easily as possible. It takes half as much time to rip the panels apart, it wastes less plastic, it's just an all-around improvement.

In fact, part of the unexpected delays in Cyberpunks + Spacefarers is that after we announced that we had all the art, and the print files were ready, we attempted to make the die and it broke repeatedly. After 5-6 attempts, we had to come up with a new method of creating the die. Ironically, when we came up with a solution, that new die-making process was a far superior technique which will save us time in the future and should make future dies pretty easy by comparison.

Rotating Samples

Custom 80-96p Sets - The Final Item of this KS -

Essentially, the only item left to produce for this kickstarter is the "Customs". We've promised 80-96, and the file names in all of your order forms will say "80-96" but as a reminder, the customs set will now be 2 entire full pages, on the new 64-up die (it has all medium + large pieces, which is ideal), so the customs is actually 128 pieces. At the end of the day, my 'customs' folder is almost 180 pieces...
  So, I've got a bit of work to do to cut it down to a final selection of 128, color correct all the art, start the art files.
  In the meantime, this is NOT the most pressing thing on our plates, and NOBODY wants their shipments to be waiting on this -SO- every single backer is going to ship without customs.

When this pack is done, it will ship in it's own mylar envelope for under a buck for domestic backers and $2-3 (I hope) for international backers. Regardless, it's the cleanest way to do this. No estimate on when you'll get it, certainly update your address if you move, and of course we'll put out updates as we near it.

But we're going to mush on with shipping all the fine people who have been waiting patiently with nothing to show for it.

Updated Shipping Timeline

With Spacefarers + Cyberpunks done and in-hand, and Customs shipping on their own, EVERY order is shippable. We've been putting orders out daily for the last several weeks, and we're hoping to accelerate this over the next 2 weeks. We've had some printing issues (no surprise there) with a troublesome jamming issue, but we found a work-around this last weekend, and then today Philip believes he identified and fixed the jam itself.

So fingers crossed shipping all remaining orders will be smooth sailing and we can finish most of our accounts out. Domestic orders will ship normally, Non-EU international orders will ship normally.

Once all of those are done, we'll be producing all EU orders in a large batch and getting it ready for freight.

Since it's been some time, we'll need to get back in touch with some EU-based re-shippers and confirm plans and costs.

EU Adventurers

We're very close to starting the EU Adventurer batch - which means I need to verify everyone's address and work out VAT charges. Remember that VAT has not been paid for any of this product, and we will be getting charged the VAT for the entire batch up front before we can ship it to the EU. Which is also why the EU Adventurer backers had free shipping, to compensate for as much of this cost as possible, since in theory we WILL save on overall shipping by sending this out as a single batch.

Feel free to suggest EU-based shipping solutions, we'll certainly take a look and ping them. Otherwise we have 1 or 2 we used a few years back.

Cyberpunks are done! Plus other updates.
over 5 years ago – Sat, Jan 12, 2019 at 09:17:53 PM

Cyberpunks

Cyberpunks is finished! I haven't seen a final print yet, and I'll upload photos when I can, but the art corrections, color corrections, and print files are all finished. You may recall, this is using a brand new die as well, with 48 humanoid, 4 large-tall and 4 large-wide slots, so the final piece count and selection has changed.

Here's a final sampler with what's in the pack. Not all pieces are to scale, with the larges at the end.

Whats left for this Kickstarter?

FPM2 has only 3 items left that aren't in full production / stock. Cyberpunks will print sometime next week, and that leaves only 2 items left.
 1> Spacefarers - Has also been converted to the new 56-piece die, and needed some new large art pieces. Here's sketches.

2> Customs - We had originally planned a set of 80-96 pieces for everyone, but after tallying up all the potential unpublished art we have on-hand (customs made specifically during this project, plus various bonus minis and items from other sources that have never made it into any pack) we currently have 161 viable pieces.

They need to be sorted, picked through, color corrected - but the art is DONE.

This also gives us an opportunity to over-deliver in a very nice way, so we'll be upgrading these custom mini sheets to a full 2 pages.

Page 1 will use our 64-up all-humanoid die, and page 2 will use our new 56-up Humanoid + Large die, for a new grand total of 120 minis for everybody.

Remember, it's a HUGE mixed bag, with a whole ton of fantasy, some cthulhu investigators, over 20 pieces of volos races, and I can confirm Fantasy Iron-Man:

Facebook and Giveaways

Our Facebook page is just shy of 10k likes! To help bring us over the line, we'll be setting up some sort of give-away. And since give-aways always brighten people's day, we'll also be giving some free merch the winner of a little 'caption contest' for whoever can come up with our favorite name for our Fantasy Iron Man (ex, our Boba Fett piece is named Confetti Bob). Just pitch your name ideas in the comments.

When will this Kickstarter be 100% Delivered??

With Cyberpunks printing, and Spacefarers largely finished, we think we can have both shipped to all domestic backers by the end of February. We'll give you a Spacefarers update after PAX South (next week, January 18-20th in San Antonio, TX.) Then, we hope the customs can go fast, since all the artwork is ready, and just needs time from Philip.

Then, we have 3x small issues on our plate right now, and a potential solution/idea. I think it's reasonable that we have every sheet needed to completely fulfill every backer in mid-february. Shipping shouldn't be far behind that (except for the EU-Batch).

Then, if it's all off our plate, we should be able to contract, bundle, and ship the EU-batch in March. That's our current goal. Of course, everything could go wrong, but the goal seems reasonable.

Production is going, but little time to make headway
over 5 years ago – Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 11:37:32 PM

Production

The status of November has basically been "things work", but Philip hasn't had the time he needs to make much progress.

The next steps are still to create the new die for Cyberpunks / Spacefarers, and then that art is ready to roll.

Customs are all finished, so that just requires final layouts, color correcting, etc. Final count for random customs / unused pieces we've developed over the last year is WELL over 120 pieces, so we'll have to discuss what our plans will be for that.

Everyone's customs will be 2 full sheets or possibly even more.

It's making me itch that everything is 99% done, and yet we've got a pile of pending orders. Those orders are held up by production, but not art. Which leaves artists sitting around twiddling their thumbs - which we don't want.

Infrastructure Changes for FPM3

Plans are no where near final, but lets open up a can of worms anyway. We want an FPM3, and since the lion's share of any project is artwork, ideally the next project's "art" would move forward while we're finishing up this project's production.

FPM2 was not pretty, structurally speaking. We're aware of and specifically want to eliminate the things that cause a project to go long.

So in an open forum, I want to mention some things I feel we did wrong, and set the foundation for what we're not going to be doing 'next time', as well as a small glimpse into what we WILL be doing.

First, Item #1 holding up Item #2. Of course when a project isn't "finished" its natural for the finished part to wait for the unfinished part. But with a fragmented project like FPM packs, and some packs finishing incredibly early, while others are in development hell ... we have a HUGE issue.

Three obvious solutions:

• A smaller, tighter Kickstarter with less total packs.
• No "bonus item"-style packs like Customs which are added to everyone's order, but who's development comes last. (but I'm not saying no stretch goals.)
• Artists having a clearer understanding of the TOTAL mission, before we even get underway.

Second, the warehouse team that assembles orders doesn't have a pipeline. The more unique every order is, the slower the total assembly time takes. Some things that seemed like "great ideas!" going into FPM2, I'm now backtracking on and considering them terrible ideas. Such as, every order having a number of base panels equal to the size of the order. Again, makes sense, until you go to assemble 300 orders, and you need to look up every single order. Now, we didn't assume this would be too much of a problem, because you're looking at the order, right? Well, not once you split orders... then every order in your hand is only the unshipped PORTION of the order, and there may have been another portion of the order modifying the number of bases in the pack. So... you need to "look up" every order, as you assemble it. NEVER AGAIN.

It also means I can't get an assembler to sit there and put 2 panels of plastic in a bag, for hours on end.

So, what we want to accomplish is closer to FPM1: 90+% of all orders backing a single solid tier, all of which are getting X. From there, +Y add-ons are not much of a problem, because you can start by assembling hundreds of copies of X.

Third, there's a pretty significant benefit in "not assembling" the product for the Kickstarter - but passing that along to the backer. For you, when it arrives you peel the white flim and then pop the minis, and throw the film in the trash. For us, it means doing this thousands of times.

But there's a second problem we've created when we pass along the assembly - I can't just have all of the product assembled... because some of the product needs to be in final retail form, while some of the product remains in raw sheets to be given to kickstarter backers.

This largely solves itself if the KS project was delivering much much faster. Then it would only be a divide for a matter of weeks instead of months. There's also a huge benefit to the EU backers when we ship the product raw, because it's actually cheaper to import. Anything imported into the EU needs a 20% VAT tax on it's CURRENT value. This means if we pay someone to assemble a pack and make it retail ready, it's value is it's retail/wholesale value, which is significantly higher than the value of the "raw sheets" coming off the printer that still need to be processed.

Nobody else can "print" what we're printing, but we COULD get someone in the EU to ASSEMBLE what we're printing.

Rolling right into a 4th problem - the EU / international community being split into 2 shipping brackets. It makes perfect sense on paper what we did, holding up everyone who wants the cheapest possible route to the EU and printing their entire batch at once and shipping them to a re-distributor (still hasn't even HAPPENED yet, because everything needs to be finished first). BUT, this also means that when a project goes long, and a person in the EU emails me and asks me what the status of his order is .... I have no idea, and I don't even know which bracket he's in without looking him up.

And those people who are waiting the longest, still haven't been billed VAT charges. Because of the long delays on this project, I feel for them, they're going to complain. But what choices do we have?

Well, this comes back to #1 frankly - a smaller project finishing and delivering 3 packs will not have NEARLY the confusion and mis-understandings as a 12-pack project that goes long. And when we're done with that 3-pack project, we can just do another one - so there's no long term downside either.

Kickstarter SATISFACTION

Problem #5, the problem that's so big, I wanted it to have it's own bold heading: Satisfaction. Frankly, a project could be a mess if everyone felt satisfied. And what are some of the things that LEAD to a project feeling satisfying? "Its not a mess".

Lets just cut straight to the chase and say *how can we get KS backers to jump into a new, small, fast FPM3 and feel *SATISFIED*.

The structure doesn't have to be ideal, I don't have to solve all of the above problems, but lets make a project feel GOOOOOD. And we can adjust from there.

Here's my blueprint: We get a lead artist to take the reigns, and manage ~2 packs. AWESOME packs, that are in demand, that everyone wants. We throw in some goodies, we set a specific amount of bases, we promise a quick turnaround, and we set a few stretch goals. That artist knows the FULL scope of that project, and commits to it with a timeline. We teach the artist to do the color correction we need for final print files, so it takes that off Philip's plate as well, and we streamline production in ONE BATCH. And we incentivize our lovely backers to back "that thing", by giving it a HELL of a price, and offering 1-2 GOOD stretch goals.

No tiered pricing, no complicated add-ons, nothing that causes more delay that it increases satisfaction.

Short-list of FPM3 pack ideas

"Sins". That lost 6th pack that was supposed to be in the FPM1 core set. 'The sexy side of evil' filled with rogues, assassins, vampires, corrupt nobles, street thugs, suave gamblers.

Support for new DnD settings; Eberron / Ravnica.

"High Arcana". Wizards, Mages, Sorcerers, Warlocks, Students, Golems, Imps, throw in a librarian or two. A full pack of fun magic stuff.

Short-list of FPM3 stretch goal ideas

Here's where we've gotta get clever. How can we generate more "stuff" without cranking development time. Now if the "stuff" is amazing - by all means. But it better be either A> amazing. or B> not particularly time consuming.

"Curated" sets, specifically for DnD full hardbound books. This is potentially A AND B, and I'm very excited by it. By curating all the art one would need to run a full DnD hardbound, we assume 60-80% already exists. So we're creating SOME new custom art, but delivering a whole lot of content. This CAN take a LOT of development time though, custom dies, huge amounts of time spent creating lists of minis needed, etc etc. But - that stuff is just lists, in google docs, going page by page through a book. It's the kind of thing we can PROBABLY tap the audience to help us with.

You guys help us generate lists of everything needed, we compare those lists to the art we've already got, and the "stretch goal" portion is essentially the creation of the new art we need. Smaller stretch goal, we'll get by with less new/custom art. Larger stretch goal, we'll make more of the art custom, or spend more time on it (or not).

And there's other things we can curate too;

"Druid Wild Shapes Pack" - a full curated set of EVERYTHING a druid can transform or polymorph into, in 1 pack. We probably have 60-70% of the art right now. But again, I wouldn't want to miss any, so lets tap the community to get us the BEST LIST, and then create the new/custom art that would most efficiently transform our current animal pieces into a new pack.

"Every Race/Class/Sex combo pack" - Everyone asks for it, we know we'd love to have it. Lets make males and females of every race for every class... and make them a curated set. A BUNCH already exists - and we can curate the set and fill in the blanks as a stretch goal.

"Squads" - Just like above, but smaller 'teams' of enemies. Possibly recolored / reworked to feel like a PROPER squad. 10 thugs that feel like "a thieves guild". We've got various wizards / more from High-arcane? Lets rework a bunch and make a proper squad that could be Red Wizards of Thay. Could be anything, especially if we already have SOME elements of an encounter, but it's missing the rest to make a proper force. Generally these need 6-8 enemies, and we want them to LOOK RIGHT as a team. Don't necessarily want to completely redraw them, but converting them would certainly be do-able.

"Gnolls" - Damnit.... how did we manage to make over 2000 pieces of fantasy art.... and NOT ONE GNOLL. Not one. I think about it sometimes, and I don't know what to say. So lets make some gnolls!

Golden Rule with FPM3

DONT do it all in 1 mega kickstarter, it's not better than 2 smaller kickstarters that are half the size, or 3 smaller kickstarters that are 1/3rd the size. So, everyone isn't going to get everything from the next campaign.... and that's GOOD. If it's fast and clean, we can do another one.

I want to get allllll our development baggage off our backs, and be poised for the first time as a company to be able to jump out and tackle the "new thing" as it happens. We're the right people to do it.

Printing and Production Status Update - Printer "powered" but not yet running.
over 5 years ago – Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 01:56:27 AM

So, last week we found out that power was finished, and installed to the new printer in the Las Vegas facility, so I flew out to visit Philip and we spent monday - thursday together.

Here's the update of what happened, there was progress all around but it sure doesn't feel like it in the big picture.

1> Power was installed to the printer (yay!). But we cant start it because we need to drill holes in the wall, and run the chiller cables.

2> Chiller running! 3 internal cables are mysteriously missing, so we search for them, find 1/3 cables but not the rest. We rip the cables out of the old printer and get them installed.

3> The electrician has put a security lock on the power box for the printer's room... so there goes an evening of progress.

4> Everything has power, except the main computer terminal, which is connected through an uninterrupted power supply. We have 2x, but both of them have been unplugged/drained for a month+ during relocation. Neither will feed power. We believe after waiting 8+ hours to recharge their internal batteries, they should be live. We wait almost 4 hours Thusday night, they still won't come on, so we call it for the week.

Phil isn't available during the weekend, but is back to it Monday and by then I'm back in the warehouse in Texas. BUT, I'm flying BACK to Las Vegas October 1st - 5th.

5> It's Monday, Philip tried to run the machine again, still no power. He believes something is wired wrong, and the electrician is coming out tomorrow (Tuesday) to see if he can figure that out.

So, as we hit a stall each day, how did we make use of our time?

1> we drafted and created the framework for the Spell Minis (a very sought after set!). We've completely laid it out, and philip has about 60% of it's art from existing spell effects, doodads and graphics he's made in the past. He'll make the other 40% and then this pack will have an art showcase. We pitched this idea as "spell minis" in the past, things that are like our Flat Plastic Miniatures - they print and are are die-cut, but instead of being traditional characters they are graphics of effects, doodads, buff placers, and other status conditions that we think might be useful or convenient to be "standing".

Basics like a Holy Weapon or a Wall of Fire are certainly in there, along with spell portals, all sorts of conceptual buff markers, elemental runes, etc. Now you can say you're casting explosive runes or Bigby's Hand, and literally place down a fiery rune marker, or a giant hand marker on the table. Also if you want to "Hold Person" you could use that same hand marker next to an enemy to show that he's paralyzed, etc etc.

2> we laid out the doodad sheet for the "Boats" objects page. Another page in the concept / works for ages we never got to. Basically we're taking the Ship from our maps set, retooling the art down to the size of a smaller ship, alongside a smaller cruiser and a rowboat, and filled the rest of the space with ropes, oars, cannons, gangplank, a shark, and some "blasted holes" you can place on the ships which will overlay a flooding hull.

3> We laid out the "Modern Cars" doodads / objects page. Just a plethora of cars, motorcycles, trucks, busses, and a helicopter. B-sides are car variations, or destroyed versions of the cars.

4> "Room" Objects. Fantasy Furniture Overlays.

This one is interesting. We pitched it as a way to "furnish" rooms instantly with a transparent furniture overlay. We wanted to re-produce a version of our Cobblestone City map set with 3x3 and 4x4 and 3x4 "rooms" and pair that with this sheet - so you could modulate which furnishings the rooms had. However, we also wanted this sheet to stand on it's own, and be able to furnish "other" things too - like the existing map set, or even other sizes of room.

We came up with a system of right-trapezoidal pieces with "half" of a room's furnishings. By using these as-is in a smaller room, it fills a smaller 3x3 or 3x4 room with the basics. By pairing any 2 of these, you fill much larger rooms and areas.

It's coming together quite well, and isn't fully fleshed out, but they're very effective!

All of these object sheets will be available when we're finished with them and ready to print. They were originally discussed / teased / sold in the RPG Spell Effects campaign.

Custom 80-96 Update! TONS of new artwork! (Also new Spacefarers Art)
over 5 years ago – Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 07:27:09 PM

Lets get some of the new mech/spacefarers art out of the way. Philip finished this new Die quite a while ago, but now that printers are down and the warehouse is moved, printing on this pack might still be some time away. We've still got ~2 pieces we're going back and forth on, but hopefully we have it all worked out soon.

Custom 80-96 Pieces, Artwork

These are a long time coming, so lets recap in case you forgot some of the details. As a stretch goal, we promised a large number of "custom" miniatures. Almost all backers would get them, and their art concepts would come from backer suggestions. Unlike previous rounds, we would not have a direct back and forth with backers/suggestions, but just take many suggestions into a dump box, and pick our favorites.

We have a solidified list, but I know a few fell through the cracks here or there. Regardless, many many of your suggestions have come to life, and I'm just going to present them in the easiest way possible.

Drunks and Dragons - we were asked if we could make pieces from the Drunks and Dragons podcast, from https://geeklyinc.com/category/drunks-and-dragons/ and we have. There are 2 versions of Titus and Jaela, with 1 piece sketched but not final yet.