Tag / update

by badsquiddogames

Wave One has Shipped!

It’s true! It is such a good feeling that these are out in the wild, and already arriving!

Look, proof!

Also, if you’re not in our FACEBOOK GROUP, then where you at?

You can buy the minis here.

The cards were the last part to get sorted, and I am so glad I took a bit longer with them, same as Julie D’Aubigny’s face. I went with Print Co. in the end, my office neighbours! They kindly gave me a tour of all their facilities, and I was very excited by their mega corner punch. I even touched all the different types of paper like a connoisseur until I decided on what I deemed perfection. You’ll notice they are so nice and soft! On collecting, they will make a lovely deck.

REMEMBER the really cool Collector Cards are only included in the first 100 orders. There are still [at the time of writing] some left!

THANK YOU to everybody who has supported this project, primarily through all the slow bits when I’ve been juggling a bunch of other things. Now we have some momentum, I’m hoping it can really ramp up now, and the space between voting the figure and it being in your hands will be smaller.

I’m putting the following rambles in an FAQ form, enjoy!

Which minis have shipped?

The first six. Julie D’Aubigny, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Ching Shih, Black Agnes, Zenobia and Harriet Tubman. All shipped!

What about the next four?

Ada Lovelace, Audrey Hepburn, Joan D’Arc and Mary Fields are considered Wave 2. They were first aimed to be shipped in December, but it’s now looking like late January/February due to sculptor and caster timelines. As well as me, I still need to design the next three – but we have Alan Marsh booked in for December so I will have to have the designs ready by then! Eep!

Why has my Wave One pre-order not shipped?

It’s probably because you have Wave Two minis in it. If you’ve changed your mind and want the first wave before the second, pop me an email and we can sort it, you will need to pay a second load of shipping though (unless you pop a new order in and ask for them to be added into that)

I ordered from both waves at once, I’m happy to wait until Wave Two is shipped, but I am worried about the collector cards for my Wave One, will I still get them?

You will! You have a box in the office with your order number and I have picked your minis and cards.

How do I know when ordering if there are collector cards left?

I’ll make a note in the product description, so far we have cards left for all.

Nooo I missed the cards

It’s ok! The minis are still lovely and the full colour packaging with John Morris and Andrew Taylor’s painting on are also lovely. The cards are an extra bonus to help get the minis out there sooner.

Can I get these from retailers?

Yes! It’ll be a bit longer than other usual releases, and they won’t have the cards, but they will have the Community Minis. It’s taken a while to figure out the best way to do this as I want to support the retailers but not make it EVEN MORE confusing, so them having the “standard” version works best, as the cards won’t be all over the world like a Willy Wonka quest. So the first 100 sold DIRECT will be the only way to get the cards.

When are we voting for minis 11, 12 and 13?

Maybe over Christmas! The designs for 7, 8, 9 and 10 will be ready then, so we can use the Christmas break to think about the next bunch. I’m gonna change the voting AGAIN as well. I haven’t 100% decided yet but one aspect I am considering is limiting each person to ONE nomination.

Can I give you money for future minis?

I can’t stop you, but I am advising against it until the new year, as I want to be caught up so we can “relaunch” the project more streamlined and less confusing… I hope. If you have a subscription and are happy to keep it going, that’s super cool, but it’s also ok if you want to pause it. I hope this makes sense, it may feel counterintuitive but I want it to get back to being vote, then pay, rather than pay, then vote. It makes sense to me! I want us to vote for only one or two minis at a time too. TLDR: Wait and all will be clear!

I want some of these minis but haven’t contributed to any voting or pre-payment or anything, can I…. have some?

You can! They are for everyone! You can buy them through the shop as you would any other mini. I am hoping with the “relaunch” it will be less confusing. This has been very much a project of figuring it out as we go along, hence why I am extra chuffed you’ve been so supportive.

by badsquiddogames

It’s Alive! Plans with New Artist (ooh!)

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!

Thanks so much, and stay tuned!

Annnniiiiie