Been pretty busy as usual. Made a lot of widgets and been working on some people. I painted a few up-
A lot of problems are sorted- mainly the "heroic" scale and getting the parts to fit. My painting has always been of the style to get the whole army done and usable, so someday will have to find someone to paint stuff better.
I have looked over these guys quite a bit, and will drop some in the store. While not exactly Gundham kits, they are quite serviceable as stand in troops. The sprue has variant heads and a couple gun variations. I like them and once again learned a lot in the process. The next release is going to really rock.
Making people was the goal from the very start. It is amazing how quickly the time goes by while making stuff like knife handles and other odds and ends. People are challenging and perhaps I have been a bit timid in tackling them. This is only my 4th organic mold attempt. The troll had problems getting his stomach in to his legs, the female conscripts were too accurately scaled and therefore looked puny, and the other female regulars had a couple issues also with scale and fitments.
With any luck something else will be coming along soon. Sort of depends on the widget market. The female regulars are something I am anxious to have another go at and with the demise of the gremlin army the CNC machine is now more usable.
In other boring news, I managed to set up UPS shipping on the store. You may have noticed some 404 errors. Yes that was me making mistakes once again. It should be working OK. But now UPS shipping is enabled. This does not affect US customers much, (USPS is most likely cheaper) but for overseas customers I am hoping it gives a better option and saves money. The deal I got working gives you a 50% saving over retail shipping rates. It is kind of complicated, but they seem to think I ship as much as Amazon so gave me the same discount. I have no idea if this is going to make a difference overall, but it is the best I figured out so far. I cringe when I see the shipping charges leveled against European customers. And judging from the volume of abandoned shopping carts I am not the only one. Any feedback from Europe is welcome, as I have no way of seeing if it saves much or not.
Also, I decided from the very start to only use pay-pal. With all the security breaches going on it is best to let some pros handle things. I would be very distraught if someone had a card hacked on my web store. I plan to never accept credit cards directly and all payments are handled by pay-pal. If you absolutely hate pay-pal you can always shop on Amazon, where I have been slowly been adding items for sale. They have some pretty strict policies and an upload interface worse than the tax code, but people do like to shop there. (I am guilty of this on occasion)
I have been playing some ASL and a few card games. (the 40K card game from FFG is pretty awesome) Tried Malifaux and some other bits. Not any real proper minis game for a while. (a skirmish game is not a proper wargame to me) so will be going to Fall-In to get in a few games. This is the first time in years I got to a convention, since before I started spending weekends with disabled people. Going to cons is always inspiring. I think having the transmission fall out of my almost new truck last time was merely a fluke. Maybe a gremlin stowed away and sabotaged it.
Overall it has been a slow process, but I am actually looking at some of my own hard plastic minis in the display cabinet.
The first ones, but not the last. :)
Have a great weekend everyone.
