Anne Bonny, Olga of Kyiv and Mary Read are out there in the world. Any pre-orders have shipped (apart from EU which will be later this week). They are available to buy from our shop and soon from some of the retailers. you can always ask your favourite retailer to stock Bad Squiddo – if they don’t, it’s about time, right?
Anne Bonny and Mary Read fighting back the Bad Squiddo. Background by Jon Hodgson.Olga of Kyiv letting loose the pigeons of war! Backdrop by Jon Hodgson and terrain build by Chicken’s Tabletop Crafting.
Annie has scribbled colours over Martin Whitmore’s drawings to guide the painter.
Thank you to John Morris of Monkey Spirals Painting for bringing these to life and helping to give you a good idea on colour schemes for when you paint yours. Of course it’s up to you how to colour them in, though it’s always nice to have a little reference if you’re stuck.
Another bonus to having artwork by Martin Whitmore is being able to colour them in for the painter! So here are my VERY ROUGH colours for John, which also had a few notes with it. I wanted Mary and Anne to have the same palette to tie them together, to show they’re in sync! What, you’ve never shared clothes with your mates?
Anne and Julie
Two gals being pals – both minis by Bad Squiddo Games
An underrated part of my job is to get various historical characters to meet, even if via the medium of a metal mini. Julie d’Aubigny was used as a reference for Anne’s clothing as they’re similar times and both wearing high-brow gentleman’s gear. They’re both absolute troublemakers and there is a series of short stories ready there! Or gaming scenarios!
What Next?
We’re caught up! Time to vote for number 14, right? Well, we’ve been talking about this “relaunch” – it’s basically changing how minis are nominated and pre-ordered. Before deciding on a new system, I will send out surveys. It’ll be linked from here and sent out via our newsletter.
Happy New Year! As the title says, Mary Read, Anne Bonny and Olga of Kyiv are ALMOST ready to ship. It WILL be January, and hopefully next week. Those in the EU will need to wait a teeny bit longer while we sort adherence to the latest GSPR regulations, but that’s aiming to be in place for January, too.
While I had been updating across social media and our live stream, I had neglected to update this blog, so I apologise for that. The end of 2024 became hectic in general, with various illness jumping in, and before I knew it was 2025. I’m back and better now though, hooray!
This is not to say that nothing was happening – it sure was! SOME elements were late though, which was entirely my fault. I was late getting directions to the painter, and I had a total brain block regarding writing out the collector cards. It’s all done now though and thanks to Print co. we have them and they are beautiful!
Anne Bonny and Mary Read, sculpted by Alan Marsh, painted by John Morris
So what DO we have?
Minis all cast and in hand
Collector Cards printed and in hand
Cards hand numbered
Pre orders part-packed with anything extra from the shop in there
Which is excellent! That’s the majority!
What needs to happen next?
Mini painting finished (2/3 so far!)
Minis Photographed
Graphic design for colour packaging, then ordered
Minis packed with colour insert
Shipping!
John has nearly finished painting Olga, then as soon as I receive them I’ll take some pics, whack em into the packaging file and get that ordered. These are super fast steps as the print place I get those from (different to the cards which are more bespoke) I can get next day delivery.
Packing them, I’ll get my part time worker Lil (aka mum) in to help. So these final steps are pretty straightforward.
You’ll know when to expect them as you will receive a shipping notification email.
Thank you again for supporting this! The relaunch will be put into action once these are fulfilled, but before that I will be putting out a survey where you can tell me what you loved and hated from the project so far, to aid in how we do the relaunch, as I LOVE this project but want it to be even better!
Superb artwork from Martin Whitmore confirmed! Marty is the man behind most of our artwork, so it seemed right for him to be involved in this. What is extra lovely is how the people involved in this project are passionate about the subject matter, so it’s more than just a job to them. It’s a solid team.
Artist Martin Whitmore
These fresh drawings are refined versions of my own preliminary rough sketches that take into account the sculpt and the changes we made during that phase. As well as being just “better,” they also have a consistent style that ties them together well. Marty’s quirky and fun style fits well in a project that could be at risk of seeming too heavy sometimes with the subject matter (When one of the women DOESN’T die horribly at the end, I always cheer – wahey!). We’re keeping to pencil line art for the obvious reason of cost, which would drive the price way up, but also, it adds to the sketchbook feel of it being this community project. Later on, if I fancy it, Marty will colour and ink them for me (in exchange for coin, of course!), so there’s lots of potential for future projects there.
Originally, I was planning to do this part myself as my own art project, but I wisely decided that the pressure of having to add a GOOD drawing to each figure, as well as doing all the managing, research, writing and graphics AND running Bad Squiddo Games full time… might be a bit much. And Marty is way better than me, so there. My sketches do their job of informing you all and the sculptor where things go, but the improved ones look much nicer for display and admiration.
Top row artwork by Annie Norman, bottom row by Martin Whitmore. It’s an easy way of seeing how the pose or details of some changed through the sculpting process for each.
Collectable Cards
In line with wanting these to be a bit special, collectable cards seem a good call; we all like collecting things right; it’s why we’re in this hobby! I’ve decided to limit these to the first 100. It’s an impetus for people to pick them up when they’re first available, which really helps us out. It also means you get something a bit special – as well as a cracking mini!
Design idea for the collectable cards, images by Martin Whitmore, text and design by Annie Norman
An example of our minis’ packaging
If they’re A7 size, they will fit in the blister packaging nicely and neatly, although they will need the corners rounding. This is an unusually expensive addition when ordering from a print supplier, so I’ve been looking at a few semi-industrial corner punchers, with the excuse that I can use it for many different tasks and projects. All the round edges, all of the times.
What do you think of this mock-up? I’ve had that parchment background in my mind for a while for the feel like they’re the lost scrolls or something. While most of what we produce is rather colourful, I appreciate the simplicity here that will tie them all together. I’d like to hear your feedback back though. The Limited Edition number will be written by hand on each one. Is there a pen you recommend for that – I guess just a fine marker pen?
What about the painted image of the mini? There will be that too! The Community Minis will also have their own full-colour packaging in line with the rest of the Bad Squiddo Games range. So you’ll get that AND the special card (if you’re in the first 100)
Hello all, thanks for sticking around! The last few months have been absolutely intense, and with still one Annie as the main staff, I’ve had a chunk of time off ill due to it all. Not the Community Miniatures Project’s fault, but running Bad Squiddo Games day to day is a huge thing. I’ve started working with more freelancers though to take some off my plate, which is working great, and one of the bonuses is we can make some progress with this.
One of the things that set me back and put me in a bit of a block was people seeing my rough concept art! Even though I keep saying that it doesn’t need to be refined, so long as the sculptor knows what is going on, showing just one made me feel super self conscious and stressed, as usually just the sculptor sees them, so it was weird with a big audience.
Artists
I’ve been chatting to several artists to get on board with this and make it a bit… fancier? Our main artist is Martin Whitmore and we love him very much, but he often gets busy on large projects either for us or other people, so it needed to be someone with a faster turnaround.
Derval Chambers
Welcome Derval to the gang! Everyone has to have a bit of a test to see if we can work together on both quality and accuracy, but also communication, especially when working with a concept piece. The test piece I chose was Aethelflaed, a miniature we already have.
I got him to draw her in a different pose to the mini, first as a rough sketch.
The style is perfect! I had him make a couple of changes, which was a good test for our communication as well – to switch the direction of her left hand, and remove the curls on her shoes. He had to fill in some blanks just having that photo to work with so this is all grand and he switched it straight up (you’ll see in the next image).
I’ll mostly be using him for these types of line art, but out of curiosity and for future projects, I asked Derval to colour her in, and the results are…wow!
This makes me very happy! It’s lovely to see minis in different poses, it really brings them to life. Talking of which….
We also got this sketch sheet of different expressions, which gives me SO MANY IDEAS! This was mostly just for fun, and it is so fun! Angry Aethel!
How does this fit in to The Community Miniatures Project?
It means I have someone else to help visualise the character. And something more coherent that you can look at before the mini is sculpted. So you can have an actual idea of what is coming which is much better than my scribbles and rambles.
The sculptor Alan is busy on WW2 Soviets for us at the moment and the next job after that is to tackle all the decided Community Minis so we can get caught up and back to a less manic pace. This means while he is mentally over at the Eastern Front, we can get a good crack on researching these ladies and getting the art together so he has something solid to work with as soon as he’s ready to. I gave Derval the heads up that it’ll probably end up being around one a month after the first load, and he is totally up for this and excited, which is super cool. It gives me a fresh wave of enthusiasm!
Sorry again that it’s taken a while to get this off the ground, but I totally feel it’s worth the wait, and is something that we’ll be doing a long time, once we’ve got the hang of it!
Community Miniatures Project 