About this project
$2,457
20
Hi!
My name is Adam Richards and I am the creator and operator of 'Scary Beard Productions'! For the past 8 years I have worked in the video Game industry as a concept artist. While I love my career as a concept artist, due to the nature of the industry very little of my work is ever seen outside the doors of the studios. You can imagine how frustrating it is to work on literally thousands of pieces of art that while I am proud of, I'll never get to share with anyone outside the design teams they were made for.
To offset this, I have spent the past several years discovering hobbies like war gaming and miniature painting as creative outlets that I could share openly with others. I have spent hundreds of hours in my free time painting up armies and designing tables of terrain for war games, and finally this past year I took my first stab at sculpting my own monstrous creature from scratch. As I was sculpting the model and posting my progress on various forums, many people encouraged me to make a mold of the model and to sell casts of him as a kit. I do have some experience in mold making and casting, so I decided I should give it a shot!
Here's the tough part. And the first road block that has brought me here to kickstarter. Moldmaking materials (silicone) and casting materials (resin) is EXPENSIVE! Combine that with a very large sculpture, and I'm looking at a very large investment to even make a prototype cast of this dude. While I do have a prototype mold and cast made, I need to re-mold the entire model in production molds. These mold will cast 5-10 arms at 1 time, instead of just 1 arm that I have in the prototype mold now. There are also some imperfections in my prototype mold that need to be corrected, and the joints to the tentacles need to be cleaned up and made easier to assemble. All of this will cost time and money. The production molds could cost me anywhere between $200-$400 depending on if things go 'right' the first time or not.
The other piece of equipment that I am looking to purchase is a vacuum chamber. These are large domes or boxes that will force air bubbles out of my molds and reduce bubbles in my casts, which will result in fewer mis-casts and waste. Vacuum chambers can const anywhere between $300 - $3,000 or more depending on what kind of model you can afford. I'm hoping to get something small that would work for this size model, as I'm mostly looking to do miniatures and terrain anyway.
Other than those costs I'm also looking to pay some folks I know who have a lot of experience in casting to help me cast these models. Every model is going to be cast by hand and its a time consuming and skill dependent process.
The Model:
Here are some pictures of the finished prototype model of the Demon. There will be some minor improvements made to the final model (explained in the risks section) But this is 99% what you will receive with your order. In addition I also have provided concepts of terrain pieces and a base that remains to be sculpted, but will be included in the tier rewards.
UPDATE: All orders that include a Demon model will also include (X6) mini squid swarm models for free.
UPDATE: Now available at a $20 Tier, defensive walls. These can also be purchased in combination with the daemon model at a discounted price, and will come FREE with every 'Assembled' Tier purchase:
THE TIERS:
Below is a visual reference on what is included in each of the tier rewards. Once we reach our goal, I would really like to explore some stretch goals like more terrain pieces, dice, and a few other goodies I want to throw in as a thank you!
Again the pillars and base have not been sculpted yet, but I have provided concepts of what they will look like, and their scale.
Risks and challenges
New molds need to be made for my model. The prototype mold has some flaws in it, and my original sculpt does not go together as tightly as I would like. You can see some of these imperfections in the unpainted promo image of the model. Especially where the tentacles meet up with the main body. Those large gaps will NOT be in the final model if I can help it. I intend on re-finishing the master before molding it again, and then making production molds.
Casting resin products by hand is also a very risky process and often there are a lot of mis-casts and waste involved. I will be holding myself to very high standards of quality control, but its just the nature of this material that you may get small bubbles or other imperfections in the surface of your model. These imperfections should be easy for the average hobbyist to clean up with a little gap-filler or sanding, but if you feel you have been sent a product that requires more than minimal clean-up please contact me by e-mail and I'll do everything I can to make it right.
Shipping dates could also be a challenge. As I said before each of these models is cast by hand, and it is a time consuming process. If I get more orders than I can handle with the couple of casting crew members I have assembled, I will either need to look for more help outside my team, or we will have to push the delivery dates back a bit while we work to get them all made. We have estimated each model takes an hour and a half to cast and package, and the terrain pieces will add some more time to that, but if we have under 100 demon orders, I'm confident we will ship very comfortably by early February.
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Funding period
- (30 days)