Day 1 of the campaign is over and there are many things I would like to say about it!
As happened with the Elves' campaign, this project started also with a bang and we managed to give a mighty kick to this journey unlocking many stretch goals and gathering a considerable amount of funds: I couldn't wish for more!
I confess that I was a bit worried, before launching the campaign, because this is my first 75mm range and, despite being part of the same hobby, this is the first time that I try to approach this market. When you make 32mm miniatures, your potential customers may have several reasons to back your project: maybe they just want to paint your minis, or they want to use them in their boardgame/wargame.
With big-scale figures, on the other hand, it's just a matter of creating the right magic with the hobbyists out there and inspiring them.
It has been comforting to see that the community reacted so positively since the beginning of this journey!
What I noticed, compared to the previous campaign, is the abundance of backers who pledged for the Digital bundle. In fact, domestic 3d printers are getting more and more powerful nowadays, but still I found it interesting to see how much this side of our hobby grew in the last years.
From a KS campaign perspective, it's true that having more "digital" backers than "physical" ones (ok they are all physical people but you know what I mean!) keeps lower the overall numbers of the project funding, but if I look at it from the manufacturer perspective, sometimes smaller numbers can be better than higher ones. Let me explain.
The Adventurers of Inneath Digital Bundle costs 28€, which is approx 25,7€ after deducting the KS fees. Selection#3 costs 125€ (114,7€ after KS fees).
Depending on the customer's selection (not all the products available cost the same to be produced), I will get approx 47€ of earnings if I sell the product outside the EU, and 20,25€ if I sell the same product inside the EU (because I have to pay for VAT, in that case, which is 22% of the final price).
When I sell a Digital Bundle, I just have to do...nothing. No resin production (and so no need for checking the quality, no months of waiting to get the stock requested etc), no packaging required, no shipping involved (so no parcels lost that have to be replaced at my expense, products arrived damaged at destination etc etc), I just have to grab the money, send the file (usually it is directly managed by Pledge Manager) and pay taxes on it.
Of course, I prefer to sell physical products because there is something magical around seeing in my hands the result of my efforts, and it's so rewarding to receive an enthusiastic mail from the many customers happy with what they received. And, of course, I earn more!
But the lazy Ligurian that lives in me (it's like a grumbling version of the Naruto' 9 tails fox) really appreciates selling digital bundles.
Talking about 3d printing, I would like to share with you a video that my Venetian angel (or better, one of the many Venetian angels, I have many friends from there!) Francesco sent me yesterday.
I was a bit worried because, as always, I arrived at a KS campaign with few "physical" contents in my hands, because the delay on the Elves' campaign messed up all my schedule so I couldn't find a way to have some resin kit to paint or to send to other painters to promote the campaign.
Unexpectedly, Francesco came out from nowhere and informed me that he's got a fantastic Sonic 8k and wanted to try to print some of my new kits!
So I sent to him two files to print: Payday and Quicksilver!
With a bit of luck, I will be able to start painting one of them in the next few days and this will surely help to promote the campaign and keep the interest high.
In the video above you can see Francesco while printing "Payday" and the result seems amazing.
Moreover, I think that this will help you better understand how big this kit is!
This is just the Orc's body, now you understand why all the free companies of Inneath pay big sums to hire an Orc mercenary?!
I can't wait to have these 3d prints in my hands, make a photoset and, above all, paint them!
This last point is particularly important to me: one of my biggest struggles is that I never was able to show painted samples of my products, during any KS campaign of mine.
This is not only unfair to all the efforts that Valerio and I put into our works, but this also was my biggest Achille's heel 'till now.
Thanks to Francesco, I will be able to make pre-production 3d prints that I can use to figure out in advance any critical point of the kit and I will be able to create content to promote the future releases with.
I'm very excited about that!
Thank you so much to all the people out there that supported me in this journey or that supported me in one of the previous campaigns. The campaign has just begun and I can't wait to see how it goes in the next weeks!
So I backed the Digital Package with the Elves and I loved the flexibility of printing at different sizes. Currently I'm cleaning up a Iron Titan at 200%. See how massive it is next to the Bluecoat Admiral from the Second Government Campaign that I'm also working on. (below). It was a lot of trial and error to get everything right. Some of that is because it wasn't supported for that size and some of it was getting everything to fit together well (the pieces never quite fit the keys right with my prints) and there is also a larger amount of prep when 3D printing to get it ready to paint. That's the negative. So the positive (beyond the size flexi…