August is my month of birth and I confess I hate it since forever.
When I was a child, in fact, I couldn't have a proper birthday party, cause everyone was all around the world, enjoying their summer vacations.
So I had to celebrate my birthday in September, when everybody was sad because of the end of summer and the beginning of a new year of school.
Nowadays, August means to me that all my collaborators are on vacations, a huge waste of time (a full month of vacations!) in my eyes.
August sucks.
Probably, if I was born in Japan everything would have been better, because school doesn't start in September, there, and they are hard workers. Oh, and they have also Fumika Baba, but this is another story.
However, this post has been made not (only) to complain about August, but to take stock of the situation that, hopefully, seems to grow nicely.
First of all, I've received all the 3d prints of our new miniatures range, the Second Government of Inneath! Before going on, let's see some of the many characters we designed, finally 3d printed:
As I wrote many times before, to see our miniatures in real is for us almost a...surprise! We work on our miniatures for months and usually we have to wait years before seeing them finally on our desk!
It is only when they are printed that we can really see their potentials and true "nature": many things that, for example, don't seem to be good in 3d (where you can zoom 400x the sculpt...), once seen in real size become right and, luckily it doesn't happen frequently, many things that are great in 3d sculpt, once printed are not-so-good (for example, the decorations of the French Bulldog collar are so tiny and small!!).
However, it's always a great emotion to finally see the first, tangible, results of years of tears and sweat.
The first time I fully assembled the Iron Titan, I thought "it was worth it".
Even if its 3d print costed me about 1000€!!!
Our schedule is simple and, even if I still don't want to shout it too loudly (you know, Italians are superstitious people), everything seems to proceed as planned: I wanted to have all the 3d prints before September to start the resin production at the beginning of it, and we are on schedule: hooray!
What could possibly ruin this magic? Actually, only serious issues with the 3d prints, but at the moment that I'm writing, after having checked almost everything I have received, I see no major issues: I only decided to re-print the main body of the Titan (I want the control levers to be separated: it will cost us a bit more, but for sure it would avoid you problem of broken parts, once casted in resin!) and I'm currently investigating if the Grimorian Apprentice's backpack straps are fine to be casted in resin, or if it's better to separate them or directly re-sculpt them in order to avoid "mold issues". I think that those undercuts could be problematic, so I'm investigating because, as we say here: "it's better to blush at the beginning, than to pale at the end."
Obviously, being in August, everything is slowed down, but I'm confident that nothing would decelerate our mighty advance towards the final victory.
So, while I'm here, lovingly checking and optimizing the 3d prints for the resin production (it's an incredibly scary thing, believe me!), I'm planning the future releases of our range. Are you ready for some tasty spoilers?!
Being us a small manufacturer, we can't produce many things in short times: sorry.
However, we won't have to wait other 2 years to see a new project by us: I've decided to split our schedule in 2 parts.
The first release that you will see, approx. at the beginning of 2020, will be a small Zorn Uzul-themed release.
Zorn Uzul, in Durgin Paint Forge language, means basically robot, gunpowder, mecha and engineering things. Oh, of course it also means Dwarves. But everything, here in Durgin Paint Forge, means Dwarves.
After having seen the Iron Titan on my desk, and the Mechanical Familiars, I decided to expand a bit the Human/Dwarves range creating characters that belong to this crazy, smoky, city.
You will see a brand new Iron Titan (Erdrazord!), new Mechanical Familiars (including a new MK I Bodyguard), the first Iron Crow Sentinels of the Southern Chamber (how many capital letters!) and other characters that will surely blow your mind.
The very first character of this new (little) range is currently open in Valerio's zbrush, and I think that I will be able to show her soon!
The Zorn Uzul release, however, will be only an appetizer, designed to entertain you (and to gather funds.....) while the main dish is on the stove.
I've deeply thought about what to do, after the Second Government range.
There were many interesting options on the table, but at the end I've made my final decision: the next main range of us will be focused on Orcs and Elves.
Yes, Elves.
I know that I've already told you many times that in Inneath there are no Elves, and in fact it's true, or better: the existence of Elves, in the eyes of the other inhabitants of this world, is at the center of numerous debates. Let's say that Elves, in Inneath, are like aliens in our world.
It's only up to you to decide whether or not to believe them.
I've also said many times that I've already sculpted many Elves, and it's true: Flonzi belong to the same root of Elves.
However, the time is now ripe to focus ourselves on designing a proper Elf range, and I know that we will have lot of fun with them, mainly because they will have a strong connection with...dinosaurs!
I wanted to design a classic Elf range (you know, woods, magic, strong connection with nature etc etc), but in a different way and for this reason I thought that it would be interesting, instead of the classic deers/hawks/owls/dragons theme that we are used to see with Elves, to connect them with dinosaurs.
No, I won't sculpt T-rex or Velociraptors.
I'm a hipster, after all.
Talking about the other half of the upcoming range, Orcs, I'm quite confident about them because, as anyone knows, Orcs are like Dwarves: they are easy to design because they are spontaneously cool.
I don't want to "invent hot water", as we say here in Italy, so I think that I will design a proper Orc range: simple, funny, badass.
However, being me a hipster, I will add some particular flavors to our Orcs: cats and coffee.
Since the beginning I wanted to create a strong connection between Orcs and Cats, don't ask me why because I still don't know exactly why. Maybe because I want them to be the real opposite of Dwarves and since we sculpted the first dogs as Dwarves companions, I thought that giving cats to our Orcs would have really pissed off our bearded guys.
I think that this apparently unlikely mix could give a lot of funny satisfaction: I love the idea of an enormous Orc that cuddles his favorite cat.
If you are wondering how coffee could be placed in a miniatures range, it is easy to say: Orcs are major foodie and in their society nothing is better than Elves. It's like Kobe meat for us, or caviar, or whatever you want except pinapple pizza.
Orcs hunts Elves (and magical creatures in general), and they discovered long time ago that Elves are attracted by the smell of coffee, for reasons still to be discovered.
For this reason they use to carry coffee beans, and they even discovered a way to make a drink out of it: the Espressorc.
It will be funny to insert this little "fluff" in our upcoming range.
Have you ever seen an Orc with a coffeepot?