impactminiatures

Darsc Zacal ... from reading your comments directly ... I knew it was misunderstood. Thanks for the followup comments. Inner Geek ... okay I've written two long responses and deleted them. The short version which is probably best is ... yeah the first KS has severe issues ... no excuses ... I understand your comments fully. We have a lot of bad karma to work off from it. I'm doing everything I can to make sure that we fix all the problems of that first KS (both with any backers I hear from directly) and paying to redo the moulds for anyone buying them new. And as well ... learning from those errors and making sure all our new product (like the Asian Chibi KS) are figures that I'm proud to have my company's name attached.

FINAL DAY! And we just unlocked Translucent (Gem) Blue dice for all the dice and sets for Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and Freeblades from DGS Games http://kck.st/K7dNkb

Since we funded .. we've been able to add on White and Purple dice sets to the KickStarter. We also discussed the KickStarter with DGS Games and have added Freeblades sets in 6 colors as well to the list of items you can get. We are less than $200 away from adding free dice (1 to 5 depending on reward level) to all our reward levels with pledges of $40 or more.

Project funded. Thanks everyone. Working on expanding the new dice to have white as a color option now. My next dice KickStarter planned after this one is going to be aimed at making a D26 and D28 so we can offer full color matched dice for all the evens from D4 to D30. My understanding is that certain games using step mechanics could make good use of the set and we'd like to offer it.

No knock taken at all CashWiley We've been selling fantasy football figures from Trollforged for quite a while in our online store. No issues on quality. The Chibi were another story as it was Ed first time working with the 3-D printed masters and I fully admit there was a learning curve to getting the qualtity up to the standards that we've had for our Fantasy Football figures through him for some time. Based on our fantasy football success we had not expected to have any quality issues with the Chibi and we got caught offguard regarding that. I have not tried to hide that at all from anyone. However we are learning. Better mould material has been obtained. Better master preparation methods have been learned. Extra quality control steps on the Chibi figures at both Trollforged and Impact!'s location have been added. In short ... at least as far as the Chibi go ... we are working to make sure we learn from that first KickStarter so the Asian KickStarter comes out well. However ... that is Chibi ... this is Fantasy Football and for us at least ... its been a very different story. We already sell 22 different Trollforged fantasy football teams in our online store ( http://www.impactminiatures.com/index.php?option=elfballteams ) and have sold a couple thousand $ worth at least every month of them (sold $6000 worth in September which for a one man company was a very big happy deal). To date ... I've not had one team returned or had to give a refund on any of them. So we've not had the quality issues with the Fantasy Football line that we've encountered with our first attempt at Chibi with Ed. And CashWiley if you get ANY figures in your team that are not acceptable quality ... we'll replace them. Bottom line ... if its not good enough for you ... we'll fix it. Been my policy on all the KickStarters we've ever done and all the sales from our online store. Talked to Ed today since we funded. The mould should be ready to use by the end of next week ... so we'll have a quantity of the Resin teams on hand to start shipping with as soon as the KickStarter ends it looks like.

I would like to mention ... that I am not currently sick. Yeah I was in the hospital for several months earlier this year ... but I've had a full recovery and have been fine since August. ;) So there are no issues on that front for our next project. Sorry that our previous project had too many bumps for you Inner Geek ... but I do thank you sincerely for the well wishes. Tom

Sorry sumbloke and Qwyksilver we are really trying to get through these as quickly as possible. I had Kim start on the lower value ones and I was supposed to ship the higher value ones and meet in the middle but I've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours just trying to bag up everything so that we didn't run out that Kim kept being the only one shipping. So unfortunately the side effect of this that the high $ pledges are getting shipped last which was never the intention. Lesson learned from this ... we'll have Kim start at the high dollar ones for our next KS and work her way down while I make sure everything is bagged up so she does not run out of stock.

Beagle ... as soon as Gen Con is done (Sunday) ... Kim and I will be working dual shifts on shipping. So we should be working around 12 to 16 hours a day packing up orders to get them out between her and I as I'll be packing between in morning/afternoon and Kim packs in the evening up to 1 am (as you have to get a notice into USPS by 2am to get pick up for that day). So hopefully you'll get the notice soon. Our goal is to really try to get it all out the door by the 1st week of September. Tom

We learned a lot from this project. I like this project's TYPE II ... but when we do the Asian Chibi KickStarter the TYPE II will be big but not as big as this group was.

Waiting for painted images from Elizabeth.

As soon as we have fullfilled the KickStarter. Right now based on Ed telling me he finished the casting for the project on Friday ... I'm hopefully we'll have the KickStarter rewards out and able to put them in the store by mid-August. We made some extra figures outside the KickStarter and they are already in the store. http://www.impactminiatures.net/index.php?option=chibi

When Ed at Troll Forged was first gearing up for larger product which was ours and the Red Box KS, he would make and dye small amounts of his compound at a time. Depending on the amount of dye added you get the different colours of resin. All the same stuff ... just different colours. Now Ed has enough business to buy and dye 55 gallon drums at a time so the colours are getting to be more consistent across the line now.

We did a posting in April to our KickStarter of some of range we had on display at Adepticon. Here are the images as we were selling based on a display of unpainted figures. and there are 6 more if anyone would like to see them. http://www.impactminiatures.com/KickStarter/Adepticon2.jpg http://www.impactminiatures.com/KickStarter/Adepticon5.jpg http://www.impactminiatures.com/KickStarter/Adepticon6.jpg http://www.impactminiatures.com/KickStarter/Adepticon7.jpg http://www.impactminiatures.com/KickStarter/Adepticon8.jpg http://www.impactminiatures.com/KickStarter/Adepticon9.jpg

Customer service is INCREDIBLY important to me. Jubliee's email to me stated that the entire order she received was horrible and unsalvagable. So faced with a customer like Jubliee who I knew was an experienced and respected Reaper painter. I apologized and offered two things: 1) I offered to replace all the figures if she wanted to see another set (however since her email was so strong on her not liking a single figure in her entire order ... I did say I assumed that a new set might not met her expectations either because I assume if someone like her uses the words horrible and unsalvagable that I need to be offering a full refund to be providing the best customer service I can). 2) I offered her a full refund. I really do want to do right by Jubilee as I don't want her or any of our customers/backers to have a negative experience with any of our products This line of miniatures are not a poor product ... I really do stand by that. And the painted versions we are getting from our painters are not showing bad quality either. I care about quality of our line and believe this is a fun line of figures and we are seeing some great stuff come from our painters on them. I have a lot more painted images but I don't want to overload the thread. The final image shown painted is one of the minis shown in Jubliee's pictures as part of her order. I am truely and honestly sorry that we've upset Jubliee so much with the figures she received and am trying to fix it. Tom Anders @ Impact! Miniatures

I can personally tell you ... Ed's due dilgence is really not the issue here and I think Ed will continue to do fine ... because you are not getting the whole story. If all facts were present ... you would not be saying it was unfair that Ed's business would continue to do fine. I wish I could say more ... I really do ... but it is not my place to share the details ... but Ed is really not the bad guy in either RBG or this. It is too bad that Ed is not the type of guy to come in and set the record straight ... because man ... a lot of people should know "the rest of the story".

I just wanted to add to this thread with some items. I know a LOT of details from behind the scenes that I wish I could share ... but I won't because they are not mine to share. All I can say is that we started our KS looking to make 6 figures with Ed. Due to it getting much more backing than we thought it would ... we ended up making 103. We had one of our sculptors suffer a heart attack and that created our one delay so far which was a 3 week delay on the expected date when the sculpting would be finished. We projected a shipping date of April 2013 for those 103 figures and so far ... we expect a good deal of our KickStarter to ship when we said it would (due to the sculpting delay (not Ed)) WHY? Because we trusted Ed to know his job. We showed him the sculpts as they were finished and asked him what cuts he wanted made by the sculptor before we paid the sculptor. If Ed tells us that these 4 items we wanted to put together in a mould should not be put together in a mould ... we say fine and pay to have it be in 2 moulds ... we don't force him to put it into one mould. If Ed tells us that a figure will work better in a 12" mould than a 9" mould ... we tell him ... fine by us. If Ed gets in a figure and says ... "I think this part should be thickened to be stronger when cast" ... we say "Ed please thicken the part and let us know what we owe you for your sculpting work". We have a meeting with Ed once a week to review where we are, what is coming and what the priorities are (and during those weekly meetings we even discuss his KS project and what is needed to be done to make sure we both reach our shipping dates as well as possible). We've communicated our price point goals with him and he hits them or he gives us really good reasons why that is not feasible and our possible solutions. As a result of the above ... we have had NO issues Ed. Outside of the sculptor delay which is not any of Ed's fault we are basically on time for fullfillment for our KickStarter (we should have a lot of the Chibi KS shipped in April). So really truely in my opinion ... there is no issue with Ed and Trollforge at all. I'm not sure why or not at liberty to say why other companies are having issues with Trollforge ... but I can go on record that we have Ed creating individual (not family) moulds for 103 different figurines varying in size from 6mm (Ravens) to 75mm (Hydra) and so far everything is on track and we have no problems to report. I would also like to add: The landlord getting sick and making it so Ed has to delay moving into his new space by a factor of months was also definitely not planned. We've seen Ed's basement ... it is really small and now that the landlord's childern have finally helped get the paperwork finished while Dad is still very ill will be a big help to Ed's ability to produce. This was an unfortunate event that could NOT be anticipated and yes has had some effects on the overall workflow that Ed believed his company would produce but given that Ed didn't do the landlord in ... I cannot see his fault for this one. Tom Anders - President - Impact! Miniatures

As a footnote to the discussion. We talked to our IP lawyer before we started the project on what he felt we could and could not do. We stayed away from items that his research told us were clearly defined as still protected and not open to OGL. We had a ton of backers ask us to do beholders and we said no over and over again becaue it was on the lawyer's list. Similar to the Reaper comments on the T&E KS thread ... we wanted to do parody figures that were dervitive in nature. Something we saw Reaper do with several figures on the Bones KickStarter and other projects were included in our research. Despite doing our homework and paying for legal IP consul ... we got this letter 3 weeks after the KS ended. Our IP lawyer said ... I think you can fight and win ... but in doing so ... you'll spend all the money to make the figures and these 8 are only 15% of the total figures planned to offer as part of the KickStater. So it would be a hollow victory ... we'd stand a good chance to win but then no figures would be produced. So we did the right thing we could for the backers. We came up with alternate figures to replace the 8 mostly based on what was requested in the comments during the project and we honestly offered full or partial refunds to anyone who wanted out which we've granted to the 5 backers that requested them. However ... since then we've added new extra figures offering. Added accessories weapons for free onto existing figures and added a free figure to all our high level backer rewards. Some of these plans are new ... most were already in motion before the letter. So plans continue on and for us it is full steam ahead. We tried to follow all the rules and industry standards from day one ... WotC disagreed ... we decided it was better to agree to their request and move on so we could design the other 85% of the figures and extras we have in the works and make sure all the backers get their rewards fully and on time.