Seven days to the launch of the new KS campaign, seven days to polish as much as possible the project, pray to all the gods for success, and take another step (hopefully forward) in my crazy career!
Am I excited? Of course!
Am I scared? You can bet!
Am I spending the last days thinking about the worst scenario possible for half the day, and thinking about a glorious future in the other half?! It seems like you never read one of my KS-related posts.
At this point, as my beloved French friends would say, "les jeux sont faits" so a wise man would just calmly sit and enjoy the journey, being aware that he did all his best and put all his care into this project.
But I'm not a wise man, so let's dive together into this sea of anxiety and torments known as "the week before the campaign's launch".
5 things about this project I'm proud of/ I regret
•1: GRAPHICS
I really worked hard to improve the graphics look of this campaign. Kickstarter's editor is kinda old and boring and there are only essential tools to work with, so I decided to bypass the poor tools I was given by those who take almost 10% of the funds and design the whole campaign page as multiple images. I did all the work on photoshop, I'm not a designer (not at all), I'm just a man who has no budget to give to a proper designer, but wants cool stuff the same.
The final result, in my opinion, is interesting. Just give a look at a sneak peek.
•2: PAINTED MINIS
Once again, I failed to have painted minis ready for the KS launch. This really burns my soul. I'm a painter, I have the enormous luck of designing minis for a living, yet I always struggle to paint them. Moreover, not having painted samples is a huge mistake because nothing sells better and gathers views and social interactions than a well-painted miniature. As always, the reason behind it it's simple: time.
The delay in the Elves' deliveries messed up all my pipeline and the resin caster wasn't available to make pre-release resins for these new kits.
It's time I learn how to cast resin kits.
One day I'll be able to show a painted mini in my KS campaign, but unfortunately: it is not this day.
•3: THE KITS
I'm so proud of what we managed to do, with this first taste of 75mm figures made in DPF.
"Lunchtime" apart, which is my favorite minis of all time and I don't think I will be able to make something better (but that doesn't mean that I won't try to do it for any new release!), it's really difficult to say what kit I like the most.
"Chilling" is something special, "Payday" (the first Orc!) is so colorful (and there's the first DPF cat!!), "Warden" is the Dwarf character I always dreamed to design, "Quicksilver" is the coolest character I ever made...I even managed to make a 75mm scale Pachycephalosaur!!
This range gave me so much satisfaction, as a miniature creator.
•4 PRICES:
I know, I know: this is probably the most controversial and feared part.
I never produced a 75mm range, so when I started I didn't know what to expect for what concerns production costs.
Indeed, when I received the first quotations concerning the resin cast of this range, I almost fainted. I'm not joking.
You know that I've always been transparent with costs and prices, I don't like to fool anyone when it's time to talk about money: I'm a Ligurian, so this is a serious topic top me.
So I won't lie: I spent days, trying to set the best prices for this range and it has been a huge finger in the a** to figure out how to offer interesting bundles, without wasting all my (hopefully...) gains.
Finally, I think I found the best deal both for me and you.
Just take, as an example, the most-awaited kit of this range, "Warden":
This chunky guy should be a Dwarf, but on this scale, it reminds more of a mighty nightstand. It is precisely 90,99mm in height (from base to top), 104,27mm as its maximum width, and 87,82mm in maximum length.
15 pieces compose this ambitious kit and, as you may imagine, I will pay for the resins of this kit a big price, precisely: 25€ per kit.
It will cost you 55€ ( 38,75€, if you buy the Mighty Mega Box).
If you do some math (almost 10% KS fee on any pledge, taxes etc) you will see that this is for real the best price I could do.
Except for Ryuko (70€), which as you can imagine will be the most expensive kit (there's a fricking dinosaur, after all!), and Cardgame, the cheapest and smallest kit (35€) all the other kits will stay on a 45-55€ range of prices. There will be also resized 75mm versions of some of our best-selling kits: not having to invest in 3d sculpting for them, I will put them at 40€ each. If I did well in my research, these are prices that are totally comparable to all the other similar 75mm kits of other brands.
For sure, prices on a 75mm range will be higher than on an average 32mm collection, but I think that what you will get in exchange for your money, will really be worth it.
•5: MARKETING
The Elves' delay hit me also on this crucial side: marketing. Not having finished sending all the previous KS campaign rewards, I thought it would have been bad to promote a new campaign. I don't think that old customers are worth less than future one (especially because, often, old customers are the same ones of the future campaigns -and this is something I'm really proud of!-). As much as I can, I want to focus all my attention on completing a task, before starting a new one.
Unfortunately, the delay on the Elves' campaign messed up all my plans, for more months than I expected. So I didn't have time to properly promote this campaign, so now I'm trying to make up for the lost time in these last 7 days, and this is not what I would like to do in my next projects.
If you want to help me in this task, please share this project all around the web: go forth, Durginians!!
Thank you for sharing this little time of therapy with me, launching a KS campaign is a tough affair but I know that with your help everything shall be fine, as always!
In the next days I'll give you more details about the upcoming campaign, for example, stretch goals: how to handle 75mm freebies without going broke!