Wastelander heads and community updates

Whew, what a hectic start to the month!

Things have been busy on the homefront and with the more boring sides of running a business, and I havent even had a chance to post any proper updates yet. SO I´m just going to fit a lot of text in to this post. Hang tight :P

- Releases and polls -

I managed so far this week to sculpt a set of modular wastelander heads, which you can find in the Wanderer folder now. These will be followed up by a set of modular generic wasteland mercenary/ caravan guard type models over the coming weeks. I made these because I wanted to get a little release out early, and also as a way to explore character types and tropes for the figures I will be working on for the next few months.

So yeah, the faction focus the next 3-4 months will be: Merchants, which won by a pretty clear margin, with the Raiders and more mutants coming up behind. I think Merchants is a good call, as its broad enough to explore a bunch of character types within, from filling out the range with more generic wastelander types, various types of merchant groups ( water traders, scrap prospectors, exotic pet sellers etc. Lots of stuff to bite in to here)

On the Witness mini front, the preacher came out as the winner this time round, one vote ahead of the beastmaster, so that character will be taking center stage next week.

- Community - 

I have been thinking a lot about how to build up the community side of things, and how to best connect with everyone and stay in touch. Over on the Discord, things are going well, and I love seeing people comment and interacting.

I do realise that not everyone is on Discord though, so I have gone ahead and started a Facebook community page, as another means of keeping the comversation going in between larger updates and release posts :)

I actually set up the group last year, but then decided against it. I think Facebook is basically dead media at this time, and a bit last season. But short of setting up a php forum, I haven´t come up with a better idea - What do you guys think, would you prefer to join a forum, are you okay with Facebook as a communication channel, or do you have any other good suggestions for what kind of community platforms I could set up?

- Live streams - 

I have started up the streams, which I am trying to fit into my busy schedule. Please do come and say hi, it is super nice to be able to speak directly with you guys, and I tend to get a lot of good suggestions and feedback this way.

You can find the stream I did on Tuesday here, where I talk a bit about the IOL Minis experience and plans, while working on the Wastelander heads:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tHAJBTUdBc 

And I am just about to start todays stream up, once this update is posted. Today I will be blocking out armatures for the models I am working on in May, and trying to establish some of the overall ideas for the next couple of months.

- Fullfilment and Tribes - 

Yes, its come to this - I finally caved and set up a Tribe over on Myminifactory. It seems to be the way the things are moving. I was reluctant to set up a Tribe, as MFF has a tendency to be quite buggy, is more expensive for me as a creator, and doesnt quite have the same features as Patreon. And the way I work and release things hodgepodge doesnt really fit their promotional schemes. But having a blog/ subscription page directly on my webshop is also not an opportunity to be missed, and so far its been quite succesful in reaching a new audience, so hey, thats an option. I will basically be double posting things between here and Tribes, so which one you prefer as a subscriber is really up to you :) They do have the option to create "transfer coupons", where you can move your subscribtion from Patreon to Tribes for free. As soon as I figure out how to set that up,  I will be sharing that for those amongst you who are interested in transfering.

As far as fulfillment goes, Patreons will continue to have access to the Dropbow folder throughout each month, but I am also moving to sharing files directly through MFF as they are done, since I now have to post directly to MFF anyway. They also recently changed their upload system, which means I don´t have to wait days for their staff to approve files before they are shareable.


Any other news I forgot to mention today? Probably, but we´ll round that up in the next update. I´m of to the stream, to work on more toy soldiers - See you in the Discord/ Facebook/ streams, and have fun printing and painting!


Cheers 4 now,

Sonny