Tinkerers, Dames and Rocketeers, Oh, My!
over 9 years ago
– Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 02:21:29 PM
Hello all!
Just a couple of quick sketches this time, to give a sense of where I'm going with these female designs. The Tinkerer is somewhere between Agatha Heterodyne and my Dwarven Tinkerer, the Dame is somewhere between an upper crust proper Lady and a proper Steampunk, and the Pilot turned into a Bomber-Rocketeer.
These aren't final designs, since I need to take these into Inkscape, clean them up and make sure the designs read well. I also don't have the Tinkerer and Dame's backs yet, but I've been itching to show something on these.
In the meantime, thank you again for getting us this far! It's great to see the reception to these metal meeples! Please keep spreading the word, and I'll get these lady designs polished up and in a voting setup as soon as I can!
Thanks!
Tesh
Edited to add: The Rocketeer cleans up nicely, and since our meeple proportions are a bit different from the originals, we get a bit more detail in the "torso". This is more like what we'll be showing for final designs. This is the trickiest one in some ways, and I wanted to make sure this worked.
And this is the male one that we sent off to get the molds made, for comparison. You might note that the circles turned into simple dots, so the details won't be quite as precise as we had preferred, but they did a really great job even so.
Distaff Designs
over 9 years ago
– Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 12:37:42 PM
As noted last time, if we got to $4,000, the math tells me that we can make female counterparts to these little gentlemen. The factory tells me we can get a mold made for them fairly soon. The only thing, then, is to get the design finished up.
I'm still working on it. So far, I've settled on three "themes", a Tinkerer (naturally), an Elegant Lady and a Pilot. I don't have anything worth showing at the moment, but I will note that a lot of the great details that show up with bodices, belts and leggings/boots don't have room to shine. That said, I'll get what I can in there and we'll see what happens. I intend to have designs at least sketched out if not properly set in Inkscape format within the next few days. Today and tomorrow are crazy, but I'll do what I can.
So thank you everyone for getting us this far! We'll make the lady meeples, it's just going to be a bit of a journey to get there from here. I'm looking at new pledge tiers, which I've wanted to avoid, but maybe it's going to work for the best. I'll get those sorted out tonight.
Thanks!
Tesh
On Pledges and Ladies
over 9 years ago
– Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 12:36:15 PM
Hello everyone!
Our internet has been dodgy tonight, but I finally got two new pledge tiers in to introduce the lady meeples, at least as far as pledge tiers go. They are the Dual Quintet and Dual Octet tiers. These are the "collector" pledges, so they are hardwired in as far as what you would receive, so there's nothing particularly odd involved.
Barbershop Quintet pledges will be given the choice of all male or all female, and Barbershop Octet pledges will be given the choice of all male, all female or 4 of each, though we're not promising any particular color/gender particulars, for the sake of keeping logistics slightly more manageable.
The other tiers, Duet, Chorus, Choir and Extended Choir can't be changed at this point, but they don't need to be anyway. When it comes time to answer the surveys about what you want in those tiers, you will just have a couple more questions to let us know what you have in mind. You'll be getting the same number of meeples, we will just have the ability to swap in the ladies for the gentlemen here and there.
Duet pledges will be able to select a mix and/or match of genders and/or colors, though as before, we're not promising any particular color(s).
Chorus pledges will still be all of one color, but may be all male, all female or four of each.
If you're in on the Choir or Extended Choir, there may be other considerations, given that from a gameplay perspective, making Antiqued Silver meeples in one gender and Antiqued Nickel in the other will make play easier, instead of just having each color include both genders. Again, this will be settled in the survey questions.
So, as noted earlier, this will mean more time to get the orders straight, and we will be greatly helped along if you will answer your surveys quickly, once we send them out at the end of the project. Including the ladies isn't just a simple matter, but we think it will be worth it. We fully intend to get them to everyone by Christmas if at all possible, and we think it will be.
Thank you!
Tesh
Now, to get back to work on the designs...
Of Ladies and Gearpunk
over 9 years ago
– Sat, Jul 23, 2016 at 01:34:40 PM
Hello everyone!
You are all wonderful people, thank you! We're at more than 5 times our base goal, and going strong. I thought that there might be an audience for these little gentlemen, but wasn't sure quite what to expect. It's great, seeing the interest these are generating.
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There have been some questions about including the Gearpunk Beta D20 dice as Add On items. We only have a limited number on hand, and making more will take time (more than the meeple production run, since they are going to tune up the mold a bit), so I've been reluctant to include them because I'd hate to run out and have to tell people that it will be a long wait to get more made.
I have, however asked the factory about how long it will take to make a new batch. If we can get the timing in a good spot, we may be able to get them done. It's going to be something that we have to fund using any proceeds we make from the St. George game convention, so that's a significant variable, too.
Short story long, then, I'm not adding them in just yet, but with luck, I'll be able to do so in the next week or so. We do have some available on our shop site if you want to get ahead of the wait, though.
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In other news, there have been more questions about adding a female variant of these meeples to the project. Long story short, I'd love to do so. For the rest of the story, though... it's not that simple.
There are logistics questions to deal with, as they would make the project significantly more complex, both in data wrangling and in fulfillment. Getting them paid for seems like something we could do, given the success so far, but it's not simply a matter of saying "we doubled our base goal, we can make a new product". It means making new molds, probably longer production times, definitely longer surveys and BackerKit datasets to deal with, and absolutely longer fulfillment times. None of this means it can't be done, just that it's not a simple request.
Oh, and I need to finish the art. I've done some sketches, but ladies' fashion in the steampunk world is significantly more varied than the fairly iconic male version I've already designed. That's not a Bad Thing, it just introduces more complexity and more time.
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So, these are questions that I'm bringing to you. I've done some number crunching, and if we can get to $4,000, which seems reasonable, we can do a female variant. That comes with considerations, though. Is it worth making the possible delivery dates stretch into December, if we can offer a lady meeple design? That's really the bottom line for you, since the rest is just more that I'd have to deal with. They would be rolled into existing pledge tiers, with you being able to choose "all male, all female or half and half", just to keep things moderately simple.
Making a new mold costs more money out of pocket, but I think that if we can do the Gearpunk Beta dice, we can do a lady meeple. Since it's not done yet, though, you might just have to see the designs I make and decide if you like those instead of seeing shiny physical prototypes.
Getting to a different point, though, there's a significantly bigger question looming. Since the lady meeple doesn't have a final design yet, is the design itself worth bringing to the table for feedback? As in, I can produce three different variants and let you vote on which to use, or I can just make one final design and roll on with it.
This sort of poll-driven campaign can be a lot of fun sometimes, but it can also mean some people walk away unhappy if their choice doesn't get made.
What do you think?
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So please sound off and chime in if you have an interest in either the dice or the female variant of the meeples. We couldn't do these at all without you, so it make sense to me to get you all involved in where we go from here. Introducing a new meeple absolutely makes things more complex and time consuming, but perhaps it's worth it.
Please keep spreading the word! The more the merrier, and maybe we can get the ladies made as well!
Thank you all!
Tesh
We Made Meeples!
over 9 years ago
– Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 08:57:30 PM
Hello everyone!
You've done it! The Tinker Steampunk Metal Meeples prototypes will be joined by a host of their brethren, and we'll get them all sent out to you as soon as we get them in hand and organized. We'll get the funding about two weeks after the close of the project, so early September, and then we'll get the order placed as soon as possible.
It will help immensely if you will answer the surveys during those two weeks so that we can make sure we know exactly what we'll be ordering from the factory. You'll see an email for the survey shortly after the campaign closes.
Thank you very much! We're looking forward to getting these out to all of you! If you've a mind to, please keep spreading the word, too. The more the merrier!
Also, we're talking with the Daft Designs guys to offer some storage ideas once these little guys are in your hands. They do excellent lasercut work in wood and plastic, and we'll sort out some fun options.
Thank you!
Tesh
