Behind the Scenes #25

What up, mini family?

Pretty exciting week! As some of you may know, I'm in the process of having a miniature made for the purposes of selling/using it in physical and digital miniature painting class as discussed toward the end of this video: https://youtu.be/DS3HS3wUmcs?t=411

I got right to finding a concept artist and a 3D sculptor. I contacted a few of each and got a few replies and picked the ones I liked the most to do work with. I didn't skimp on cost here at all because I want this product to not be amateur. The concept artist I landed on was Tatiana Vetrova. I loved her work on artstation and felt she could capture the character I wanted. You can see her work here: https://www.artstation.com/northernchild . She asked me for a "mood board" aka a collection of images to give her an artistic direction so I whipped one up: https://imgur.com/a/DIgXduq . I wanted to create a Victorian era female vampire. I wanted her to be equally as beautiful as she is evil. Tatiana came back with a few rough sketches:

Oof. What a start! I loved the body of #1 and the head of #2. I felt that if I was going to use this in classes, having a full/uncovered face would be best for demonstrating how to paint faces. The body of #1 had a little too much fabric going on, so I asked her if she could break it up in some way and that lead to rough sketch #2:

I love so many things about this rough sketch. I love the rapier. It fits the character perfectly; equally parts agile and deadly. I love the circlet, I love the hair, I love neck tie, the poofy shoulders, everything! The last piece of feedback I gave to Tatiana was the face. We need to work on something a little more violent or sinister, and that's where we are now! 

The 3D sculptor I landed on for the miniature is Ali Jalali. I'm so excited to work with this guy because he has experience 3D sculpting miniatures for larger companies that I myself buy miniatures from. I was scared I was going to find someone without industry experience, but I'm glad Ali has a lot. Once the concept is done, I'll ship it off to him. 

Next up, what's going on with Kill Your Friends? Well, recently my wife and I went to a furniture consignment store we frequent looking for a dresser. Every now and then I peruse this stuff looking for chairs for KYF. I want something with character that also matches the set decoration that I'll have and I found the perfect chairs.

I found some white and red tulip chairs! I love the 70s chique and the red color. These will be the chairs we use on the set of KYF for myself and my gaming guest. This made me think about all the other items I still need to purchase before actually setting a production date. I need an HDMI switcher so my camera operator can see all the feeds from one location, and I need another 25mm lens for one of my up-close shots and I think that's it...I can buy that now and get rockin' but I have a lot of stuff going on in Q1 of this year so I think it'll wait for Q2. Woot!

Lastly, I'm on a mission to make youtube videos about plastic toy soldiers full time, so what's the status on that? Well, recently my wife and I counted up all our expenses but there was one piece left to figure out and that was taxes. How much am I going to owe in taxes essentially working for my own small business. I got in contact with a Certified Public Accountant or "CPA" to discuss taxes and also what I might be forgetting. It was kind of an upsetting conversation as I'm sure anyone with their own small business might know. In the US, you have a few different taxes. For the tax bracket I'll likely be in, there's a 22% federal income tax + $8,096/year (ya know, because a quarter of my income isn't enough?), and a 7.05% state income tax and a 15% small business income tax that is normally paid for by your employer but since I'd not have an employer, I'd have to incur it. This brings taxation up to ~45% which is....upsetting to say the least, haha. Tack on another 5% for retirement fund contributions and I finally have a bottom line for what I need to be earning as a content creator to not impact the livelihood of my family by transitioning. I am approximately 60% of the way there but could be closer because I'm not considering what kind of tax deductions I might have, so maybe that's closer to 65% or 70% of the way there. We're getting close, but not there yet! I appreciate all the support you guys give me in this endeavor from your literal money to your words of encouragement. Thank you.

PAINT MORE MINIS! 

Scott

EDIT

Tatiana sent me the concepts with some colors!