April Update - New Sketches for Demon Blood and Pirates, Mankind Horde is finished.
about 7 years ago
– Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 08:57:00 PM
Hello Backers! We've got some new art, and we'd love to share!
To start, here's the first-round sketches from Yadong Wang's Pirates pack.
First-Round sketches are fun, and give us a variety of concepts, but are less refined and have not had any editing or feedback. So we anxiously await round 2!
To compare, here's the first-round sketches from Jason Juta's Demon Blood:
And after feedback and notes, we have second-draft roughs;
I've given him a few more thoughts and adjustments, but as you can see the pack is really coming along. We've got lots of space in the pack yet for smaller demons. If you have any favorites that would fit there feel free to comment!
Next, art for the Mankind Horde pack is completely finished by Damien Mammoliti. This was among the final remaining packs for FPM1 that have had a long and bumpy road, but for all their setbacks and troubles they look amazing and greatly enhance any town with more soldiers, civilians, guards, and more life in general.
Some very minor edits may occur between this and the printed final.
Personal News
Philip was married March 25th and had a lovely wedding! He and his wife subsequently took a much deserved vacation.
My 2nd child was born on April 4th. A happy and healthy son named Maxim Dean Wardrop. So I wouldn't say I've been working overly hard either for the last 2 weeks (except to change diapers).
Taxes are finished! That means we'll be able to begin home and warehouse searching in earnest for the big move to the Fort Worth, Texas area. We know this move will be a delay in and of itself, but there are numerous headaches that will be solved once we have a more permanent warehouse.
Lots of news! Surveys Sent, New Packs, Notes about Backerkit
about 7 years ago
– Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 12:10:12 PM
Okay! Lots of news.
Backerkit
Backerkit has launched. For those of you who have never used kickstarter/backerkit, let me explain 'what' it is briefly. Kickstarter is a marketing page to attract people to your idea, and get them to jump aboard. Backerkit does ALL the work behind the scenes to send surveys, collect addresses, and let me track who needs what, how many of each item to produce, allow you to adjust your pledge, and much more.
Backerkit surveys just went out seconds ago, so you should all have them soon.
The way I set it up (the only way I could think of) is that it asks you a number of questions based on your tier for what free packs you want. "What's your pack 1?" "Whats your pack 2?" etc.
This does make it possible to make mistakes or choose the same pack twice, etc.
If you're in the higher tiers I strongly suggest you get a pen + paper and make a list of the packs you want, so you can go down the list and keep track.
The Add-ons section allows you to browse art samples from each pack and get more information. You CAN answer the initial questions, browse the add-ons, and then GO BACK if you'd like to make changes. You can also add additional packs you didn't originally pledge for inside backerkit itself, and it'll use Stripe.com to process a credit card.
Quick Note - The Last Parsec is finished (finally) and is a 124 piece double pack, and 4 additional horde packs. It does not appear on the free pack list anywhere. If you'd like The Last Parsec as 2 of your free packs we CAN work it out (you can select 'no reward' for 2 of your packs, and email me, and I'll manually add TLP double pack to your list.)
However, this brings me to my 2nd topic:
Bundles
There are 3 'Bundles' in the system, which can only be added as an add-on, and will give you an additional discount.
Bundle - FPM Core Set - Mankind, Wildlands, Underground, Ancient Evils, The Grove is $120 ($30 off when bought as a bundle, this is to match our ongoing website price).
Bundle - The Last Parsec - The Last Parsec 124-piece double-pack and all 4x 32-piece Hordes for $80 ($20 off buying them separately, even at $10 per horde)
Bundle - Printable Heroes 2016 Megapack - All 4x Printable Heroes full packs for $100 ($20 off buying them seperately.)
Which might be news to some of you, so on to my third topic =p
New Packs / Pack Changes
Deadlands
We've had a number of packs from Pinnacle Entertainment Group, and people are always asking us why we don't have the original Deadlands (We have only had Deadlands: Noir, the 1920's pulp spinoff). Well now we do!
When we started making FPMs for PEG, they were in the middle of overhauling Deadlands for the modern world with new, fantastic (not early 80's) artwork. And we knew it was only a matter of time until there was enough 'stuff'. Well now there is, I believe I have almost 80 pieces of fantastic new art from their various new kick starters and .pdfs. So we'll be cutting that down into a 62-piece main set, and then offering a Deadlands HORDE with a 32-piece add-on of all humanoid-shaped bulk critters, like more zombies, outlaws, navaho and more. You can check out art samples inside backerkit in the add-ons section, but here's a few as well;
Printable Heroes
So we had announced Printable Heroes would be supplying art for a pack, but I had no idea JUST HOW MUCH art they had. It's really a lot of wonderful stuff.
All of their art is double sided, so they will have a front and back like all the Arcknight funded packs (most 3rd party packs do not). It was originally 530 pieces of art /2 for fronts and backs, makes 265 pieces. The Printable Heroes guy does a decent number of recolorations / modifications to his base art to create clusters of pieces. Here's examples;
For his original purpose, this is great. In print, everything has an opportunity cost. In the case of goblins we'll probably keep more variations, but we don't want to print 5 different colored aboleths.
So we sorted all these pieces into categorical packs, and came up with 3 regular 62-piece packs, called Heroes, Monsters, and Oddballs & Extras. Then we made a 4th full pack of Legendary/Giant creatures that we will use with our Legendaries die. These are giants, dragons, and a 3-part purple worm which is just awesome.
So from an original 265, we'll make cuts down to 210 pieces used (3x 62, 1x 24 giants)
And I love the art style, the high color contrast and bold outer lines will make ideal FPMs and print very well after we color blast them.
Color Blasting / Completely reworking FPM Print art
This will be a long and ongoing process, but the 'Servants of the Spider Queen' pack was finished and printed last week. It looks fantastic as art files. However, it's dark, very very dark. Drow, illithid, spiders, even when the individual pieces look fantastic, they have dark skin, and generally dark clothing. When they have non-dark/non-black color, it tends to be white. The art is exactly what it's supposed to be, but in print, it's just lackluster. Now you may have held it in your hand and said "this looks great!" but across the table, it just doesn't have the clarity we want.
So, we decided to 'color blast' the entire set, heavily amplifying any colors that exist, removing the gray tones, and all that. It added a few more hours of work, but the final printed product is STUNNING.
For similar reasons, The Last Parsec art was very 'flat' and we did a similar trick by color blasting and adding a lot of contrast by brushing in highlights. It transformed them, and the printed versions are beyond what I thought was possible with the art.
It will take a LONG time for us to apply this process to the thousands of existing pieces that are already in print with finished print files, but we'll certainly continue to do it for all new packs going forward during the file creation process.
Also I strongly suggest you guys add the "Servants of the Spider Queen" packs to your list, it's among the coolest and most impressive stuff we've ever made.
I've probably forgotten some of the things I wanted to mention, but I can't think of anything else right now. I'll follow up with another update / comments when it comes to mind. Have fun in backerkit!
Full Art panels for current Miniatures
about 7 years ago
– Wed, Feb 08, 2017 at 01:06:47 PM
Here's full art panels for all of our Arcknight packs, plus some of the 3rd party packs we produce. A few 3rd party packs are not shown because I do not have the final art that was used on-hand.
These pieces are not to correct scale, and were not color corrected, these are simply sampler panels. Color balance and Contrast are adjusted for final print files and may vary somewhat.
Animals, Familiars and Summons
Ancient Evils
Ancient Evils Horde
Monster Mansion
The Grove
Hero Kids
Legendaries Horde
Mankind
Objects & Scenery
Orcs & Goblins Horde
Skeletons Horde
Supers!
The Underground
The Wildlands
Zombies Horde
Final 48 Hours! Male + Female versions of Monster PCs from Volos, 'Stretch Goals' up to +92 pieces.
about 7 years ago
– Sat, Feb 04, 2017 at 12:45:43 PM
We've blasted through our funding goal with a GREAT final push while we were at PAX South! I talked to so many current and former KS backers, and many new fans who hadn't heard about our project or were confused by it - who then committed to backing once they saw our stuff in person. Thank you all!
We're nearing our final 48 hours, and I'd like to recap a little on what the "Stretch Goals" are, why you're no longer seeing the social media panel in the main page, and what our $100 tier currently looks like.
Stretch Goals
If you were with us from the beginning, you may recall a list of 'Social Media' stretch goals via twitter. These asked people to share their unpainted miniatures, write eulogies, and other fun things that would be interactive - and spread the word about our project through mutual hashtags like #DnD. By achieving certain goals within the Social Media panel, we would promise more and more Custom Miniatures to our backers, all which came from suggestions to our Twitter.
While some of you certainly contributed, and it was really fun interacting in another medium, it had it's problems too. It was structured poorly, many people did not use Twitter, others probably assumed that 'stretch goals' only come after the campaign funds so weren't considering participating until later, etc. Overall, we believe the experiment was a failure.
However, this is no criticism of the huge support we received for the Custom Miniatures IDEA. So we removed the social media tab, and unlocked many rows from the chart automatically. We've also accepted over 30 custom miniature suggestions, and know we need to keep plenty of room for our Archmage backers, who are guaranteed that their suggestion is accepted.
Lastly, at PAX South we were inundated with requests for miniatures for the new monstrous PC options from Volos. These audience members cannot find appropriate miniatures anywhere, and Flat Plastic Miniatures is in a prime position to cater to this niche. So I'd like to announce that we'll be creating a Male and Female of each of the 13 new monstrous pc options: Aasimar, Bugbear, Firbolg, Goblin, Goliath, Hobgoblin, Kenku, Kobold, Lizardfolk, Orc, Tabaxi, Triton, and Snakepeople.
To make sure we have space for all these 26 additional pieces, our "Stretch Goals" are now +80 Custom Miniatures and +12 New Legendary Miniatures!
This means a $100 tier is currently getting any 3x packs of 62 pieces, plus 80 regular miniatures, and a sheet of 12 legendaries, for at total of 278 Minis (4.75 "packs").
Higher tiers have more packs, at a better discount, and all tiers can of course add Horde packs on for just +$10 each.
Stretch goal details, customs selected, final push, PAX South
about 7 years ago
– Fri, Feb 03, 2017 at 04:23:11 AM
PAX South, General Timeline
In preparation for PAX South in San Antonio, TX I leave tomorrow for Orange County, and we pile up and drive there. We'll be "out of the office" during the show from Jan 27-29, and then back in OC on the night of the 30th, which is RIGHT when the "final 48 hours" starts for this campaign.
So, we'll be setting up ads for the final push before we go, only able to check email/progress on our phones for a few days, and then we'll see where things stand.
Stretch Goals / What will the $100 backers receive?
We're close to our goal, and we certainly hope the final push takes us over. We've already promised a number of Custom pieces, and we're well aware that nobody was interested in doing twitter-based social media.
So, at the end of the day, what are we promising?
We're committed to giving all $100 backers the promised 'any 3 packs', plus 32 additional user-suggested custom miniatures, 6 of our own customs, and 12 NEW legendaries. This brings the haul to 236 pieces, 12 of which are giant sized.
List of Custom Suggestions
New Legendaries;
*Note - the existing 12 Legendaries can be bought as a horde add-on for $10*
Looking for a few more non-fantasy suggestions to fill out the list of Customs, and we've got lots of slots remaining for suggestions of giant/legendary pieces (of course, you should look at our existing legendaries before making suggestions - https://arcknight.squarespace.com/shop/fpm-legendaries-horde-12p
New Artwork
Final ads will be created in the next day for Pirates, Cyberpunk, and Demon Blood with new art, so expect another update tomorrow evening.
But we do have some other pieces to show off, namely the Fire Giant Dreadnaught;
Additional Customs
Including this Angel, we have a half dozen or more existing pieces for various pack concepts that have never seen the light of day. Rogues, fantasy gunslingers, genies, a Paladin of fire, etc. They aren't on the list above, but we'll be printing a special batch and throwing them in as well.
