Shave your tiny gnome

I've shaved a little off the corners of the mouth to improve his face. I think it looks slightly better. I think I need more practice making faces, still. I also made progress on the planetFaller with adding pants, knee pads, and face. I'll shave the knee pads and give them a slightly more defined edge after they cure.

SQUISH GOAL UNLOCKED!

What's a "squish goal" you ask? Well, it's the opposite of a stretch goal*.

*may only apply inside my head.

The indieGoGo campaign has come to a stall and yet I've completed the war-punk gnome. I had a good look at the numbers and decided to add not only the Gnome but also an undead familiar!

The "Founding Contributor" level will get both and the other two can select one or the other to add to their perk. That means that contributor will get two instead of one and four instead of two!!!! That's 100% more miniatures per person.

I'm doing this because, well, I really really want this thing to work out. I know that I'm only a novice sculptor and my work has a lot of room to grow; I think that as it is the sculpts are at an acceptable level and I want to dedicate more time and effort to making miniatures, replicating and selling them. if you think that it's an endeavor that's worthwhile please consider contributing. If you like it but don't wish to commit funds you can always advertise the existence of the campaign to whomever might be interested. Thank you for your support. 

CLICK FOR THE CAMPAIGN 

Choosing the Familiar:

This part is up to you. Let me know what types of animals you think should be added to the list. You can post a comment here, email me, tweet about it, tumblr about it or whatever(I need to be informed though, in some way). You can also mention what type of undeath you want the familiar to be since it is a necromancers familiar.

Here's the list I've got so far:
Duck
Penguin
Cat
Dog
Lizard
Sloth
Platypus
Weasel

Undeaths:
Wight
Ghost
Ghoul
Lich
Animated skeleton

Add your own. I'll accept suggestions until the 12th of march 2013 and set up a poll to choose the most favoritest one afterwards.

Gnome in Progress

Some asked to see the Gnome in Progress with a to-scale figure by its side and the concept art so here it is. Both are 1:52. As you can see I textured the staff, added a hand and a small pouch.

Do you think he should get a sword?

Wizard's hat.

It's a bit late and I've had a busy day but I wanted to take a moment and update this here blog with some pictures of how the Gnome is coming along.

I'm looking for suggestions as to what gear or types of satchels/pouches/bags I should add if any. Pip pip.

Gnome Necromancer/ exFor ideas

Progressed a bit on the gnome with the face and shirt. Make note that most of the shirt will be behind straps for all the bags he has to carry with spells, scrolls and magic items. Any ideas what might make an awesome familiar? A ghoulish platypus?

I also took some time to make the boots on the planetFaller. As you can see I had an idea about the knee pads which seemed a little off with the larger 1:35 prototype.

Some ideas that are floating around for the planetFallers exFor. 

An interesting note is that as we make more inhabitants for the universe a story or a setting becomes more and more crystallized. Do you suppose the "fluff" should be part and parcel of a miniatures setting or should it be left up to the player? How about a system for the creation of unique narratives that fit each faction. I think that sounds pretty cool. Some kind of limited campaign system based on an emergent narrative.

• An early FTL human fleet returns from being lost in space. Their consciousness has been taken over by a fungal hive mind; a hyper intelligent space mushroom.
• Crystalline entities or silicone based life forms. They might drive robotic bodies or form into humanoid and other shapes.
• A gigantic self engineering biological entity- a species or coalition of species that is actually only one organism. 
• Bugs. Naturally. Always with the bugs.
• Extremely small or extremely large aliens.
• Abstract entities jutting into our dimension by the power of unfathomable technologies.
• Space junkers - just doing their job, these aliens attack human colonies and ships to gather scrap and other materials. Human brains being a known delicacy. 
• Almost forgot: other humans. Opposing nation planets for example.

Suggestions and comments are welcome!

Why I want money.

For those of you just joining- I'm currently working on two 1:52 characters. They are a planetFaller - a type of space soldier in the future and a Gnome War Necromancer who is in a theme that I call War-Punk. War Punk = fantasy + early mid 20th century military.

If you haven't heard about it I am also running an IndieGoGo campaign to raise funds so I can work more intensely as I improve my skills and actually manufacture miniatures and sell them to the public. I've had a great response so far with raising almost 500$ which is a lot of money. Unfortunately it seems to have somewhat stalled but I'm not giving up just yet.

So, if you're a supporter or just curious here are some thoughts about the campaign. A question that came up on some forums is:

Why do you need money?

Alternatively it's why so much money. First of all, the main point I'd like to make is that I don't want hand outs. The core concept of the campaign is to sell the two miniatures that I'm offering and to be damn sure that I have the resources to manufacture and ship every contributor his pieces. The other benefit that I want from it is to be able to devote more time to working and making more miniatures.

As it stands, I've dedicated quite a bit of time already. I enjoy it. But I've always done it with my eye on a goal which is to become professional and create miniatures to cast and sell. More than that I'd like to create games that feature said minis. I will continue working on it but it's coming to a point where I have to engage in gainful employment (to be frank it's WAY past that point). Again, I'm not going to stop but without some inflow of cash I will have to slow down considerably.

As a show of my seriousness I've set the goal to be FIXED. That means that unless the entire amount is raised I will not get anything and the contributions will be refunded. The reason for that is one - I need to be able to deliver on my promise. I set the amount so I can be certain to be able to fulfill the trust my contributors put in me.

I've always thought of money as being a way for the collective society to decide what are worthwhile uses of our productive efforts. Time is money, in a sense. It is my belief that games are the highest form of art because they are not merely appreciated but they are engaged and given a life of their own. The miniatures and accouterments are only something that enables that; being such they are more beautiful in my eyes than a sculpture in a museum. To think that the player also has a part in the creative process(in painting and assembly/conversion) makes it all the more beautiful. If you agree that it's something that's worthwhile I will appreciate if you consider contributing to the fund raising campaign on indieGoGo. 



That's enough for now. You can as always, write comments and send your questions if you have any. I've had some people converse with me about what other factions might inhabit the planetFaller universe and I think that's for our next installment.

Let's rock! Gnome and tab.

Made a bit of good progress with a couple of starts and a tab.

I started on the Gnome Necromancer and a planetFaller. Both in 1:52. I added a tab to the cyberpunk character. You can see the difference in height between the Gnome and the Decker- they're both in the same scale! Also, here is a sketch with some basic poses for the core planetFaller units.

The indieGoGo campaign seems to have hit a bit of a lull. I hope that seeing some cool work might convince folks to jump on board! Go and check it out if you haven't already.