Is There Life Beyond Kickstarter? The Offcuts will find out!

The Genesis of the Offcuts (And Other Questionable Life Choices)

First of all, allow me a small commercial break.

Are you tired of the usual tall, elegant miniatures with their flowing hair and anatomically suspicious proportions sculpted by the Golden Ratio itself?

Have you grown weary of your wife pointing at the sculpted abs of your figurines and gently suggesting that perhaps you could have skipped that second helping of cacio e pepe yesterday?

Look no further.

The Offcuts are everything you need.

Graceful pointed ears? No, thank you. Here we deal in focaccia-greased beards and hammers capable of producing a hundred kilos of pesto per hour.

Royal lineage, lances at the ready, noble steeds? Who cares about such frills when you could be painting sausages and moustaches worthy of a minor household deity?

For those who appreciate things done properly (that is to say, Dwarves) Durgin Paint Forge proudly presents the coolest band of adventurers since nine overly optimistic fellows decided to take a scenic walk toward Mount Doom.

Buy your bundle today (only 40 remain!) and give your hobby the dopamine spike it so clearly deserves.

Right. Back to business.

Forgive me, but every now and then I must apply a little WD-40 to the rusty gears of my sales department.

As the title suggests, today’s post is not only about celebrating the first true physical release of the post-ArmageddORC era (I knew it: nothing good ever comes from fooling around with Elves and Orcs…), but also about sharing some thoughts on the commercial approach I’ve decided to test in the coming years.

In short:

I’m taking a break from Kickstarter.

And from crowdfunding in general, at least for physical releases.

Yes, this decision was strongly influenced by my personal Caporetto, the Orcs of Inneath campaign, which still drags itself along like an ancient zombie, stubbornly refusing to stay buried six feet under despite my repeated attempts to perform the necessary rites.

But it’s not just that.

I’ve realised that I’m no longer capable of handling the expectation stress that a crowdfunding campaign brings.

It’s true: having a large (or at least moderately respectable) upfront sum and a group of enthusiastic supporters is an emotional boost for a tiny industry ant like me (and by extension, Durgin Paint Forge). But over the years, and the campaigns, the wild, naïve enthusiasm of those early headlong charges has slowly been replaced by something else: paranoid anxiety.

What will go wrong this time? (Spoiler: everything.) Will backers forgive more mistakes? Can I deliver something worthy of my own expectations, and yours?

Yes, "The Orcs of Inneath" gave physical form to every single one of my fears as a creator, but it’s more than that.

I’ve realized I no longer have the appetite for blind leaps into the abyss.

So… This Is How the Offcuts Began.

Let’s rewind one year.

I was in the middle of the storm. GRX had just informed me that they could no longer carry forward any project. The world I had built melted like a canestrello biscuit in hot milk (trust me, it doesn’t take long).

For months, I poured every ounce of mental and physical energy into saving the project. And when in June I thought I had found a temporary solution (spoiler: it wasn’t), I began asking myself:

What happens after The Orcs of Inneath?

I’ll confess: among the many options I considered, there was also the dramatic life-change route.

But call it pride, call it stubbornness, call it a healthy cocktail of both: a part of me refused to exit the stage after a failure.

I’m not saying I needed a glorious triumph, but at least a respectable draw.

I felt Durgin Paint Forge deserved more than a quiet, ignoble fade into obscurity.

So I did some math, I gathered what little I had left, I sold my house and went back to Liguria. And I activated Protocol Théoden.

Do you remember Helm’s Deep? The walls breached. The Uruk-hai were pouring in. The keep was about to fall.

And the son of Thengel, deciding that if this was the end, then it would be a glorious charge fueled by something very close to “FUCK IT. WE BALL!”

That was my mood too.

One last ride: and if we fall, we fall with weapons in hand (or, in my case, with new Dwarves in stock!)

And thus, the Offcuts were born.

A slightly mad, slightly strange, totally beautiful project that began as a swan song and slowly transformed into the herald of a new beginning because, in the end, I love designing miniatures.

A company of Dwarven adventurers, the thing I do best: my spiritual testament.

I won’t claim the Offcuts are the greatest thing I’ve ever made, but they are certainly the first product I’ve created without unknowns hanging over it.

No more weeks of crowdfunding anxiety. No more emotional rollercoasters every time a backer joins (“Honey, put a down payment on that loft in Shibuya: we’re going to be billionaires!”) or leaves (“Honey, I think from now on we’ll be living in a double-corrugated cardboard box. I'm sorry.”)

No more months spent hoping production runs smoothly, that casts are clean, that rewards arrive on time.

No.

The Offcuts are humbler, but they are tangible.

Of course, not everything that glitters is gold.

Without Kickstarter’s built-in visibility and the emotional-economic momentum of a live campaign, the raw sales numbers will likely feel it (yes, unfortunately, one must occasionally think about such sordid material trivialities...)

Margins will probably be smaller in the short term, but right now, that matters less to me than one thing: getting back in the saddle.

As I write this, the first steps of the project are encouraging: more than half of the available bundles have already vanished, which means the sculpting and resin production costs are essentially covered. Good job, my little Dwarves!

So yes: with the Offcuts, a new cycle begins.

Less adrenaline (and fewer unknowns), more substance (and more Dwarves). I think it's not a bad future.

Like Théoden, I ride into a world that doesn’t seem particularly friendly to someone whose profession is “fantasy miniature creator.”

But allow me the naïve hope that, at dawn, from the East, my Gandalf will appear.

Possibly looking like Fumika Baba.

GRAB YOUR BUNDLE!