Well, I think that this pic speaks for itself!
Today I received half (yes: half!) of the Second Government stock and Kazhuk Izril re-stock!
As you can see, comparing the number of resins to my fat-ass cat (ironically, her name is "Piuma" -feather-, not totally appropriated for an almost 7kg creature...), or just that 4mt long wall behind, there is already a lot of stuff to properly check, organize and prepare for the hottest February ever, when all the Kickstarter rewards and Late Pledge will be shipped!
I'm not a Kickstarter veteran (I have fulfilled only 2 campaigns before this one) but I can't notice that things happen always following the same steps, like a classic thriller/horror book, that I like to describe as "the 6 chapters of a creative Odyssey":
CHAPTER I - EVERYTHING IS FINE -
You have set your Kickstarter campaign, everything seems incredibly organized, planned, scheduled. Nothing can stop you, you are a creature of Light and Order. You look at your campaign preview, you are proud of yourself. You start to imagine how would spend all the tons of funds that you surely are about to gain.
You push the button "launch the campaign".
CHAPTER II - THE WORLD IS COLLAPSING AND THERE'S NO MERCY FOR HUMANITY -
Nothing works, everything sucks. Look at your campaign: how could you think you were prepared for all of this? A new backer joins the show. Thanks, man, you are my new best friend and I will love you forever, we are brothers, now. The same backer, lately, cancel his pledge. Humanity hates me, nothing matters anymore, I was betrayed by my dearest friend, I won't survive this campaign.
You take a breath, you look outside the window: how people can just live their lives normally like I'm not here, facing the apocalypse?!
Days and days are passing, you basically are living in front of the computer, looking at the campaign's page. Pushed by a perverse, self-destructive, pleasure you keep on refreshing the page, to control if a new backer has joined the project or somebody left.
It's like Russian roulette, but it lasts 30 days.
In one way or another, you manage to survive your campaign: the result isn't what you expected, but you did it, son of an Elf!
CHAPTER III - THE EMPTINESS INSIDE -
The nightmare is over, you congratulate with yourself for having maintained control: literally every single person around start to laugh, hysterically.
You are drained of energy, it's like you've run a marathon but you gained weight because the only thing that was good for your mental health, during the campaign, was pizza.
You spend the first post-campaign month wandering all-around your house, like a ghost composed of 75% pizza.
CHAPTER IV - A HERO REFORGED -
After a considerable, shameful, amount of time, you expel all the wastes from your body: you are ready to re-start your life!
While the resin production is going on by itself, you start to design the next project: you are full of energy, everything around you is nice and motivating!
CHAPTER V - HISTORY BECOMES LEGEND, LEGEND BECOMES MYTH -
You are living your daily life, submerged by your thoughts and projects and dreams and hopes and fears (I realized I'm like a 13 years old girl, emotionally speaking), and even if you are somewhat aware of a past project of yours, it seems to you like an old story narrated in a tavern by a bard.
This is the limbo of any Kickstarter project: that period of quiet between the month after the end of a Kickstarter campaign and the month before the delivery of Kickstarter rewards.
The idea of checking thousands of resins, carefully divide them between hundreds of customers and shipping hundreds and hundreds of boxes is so painful that your brain just avoids thinking about, until it's too late.
There is a kind of Talking Cricket that keeps whispering you the truth, but you just focus on your future projects, for the next KS campaign, and answer to it: not today!
CHAPTER VI - REALITY STRIKES BACK! -
And then, here we are. One day, a very kind DHL courier (who happened to be a scale modeller, also!) knocks at your door.
"Hello Mighty Matteo, here are your 12 kg of miniatures. This is the first half, enjoy!"
So you suddenly have the whole office covered by (incredibly good, indeed!) resins and immediately the hands of your inner clock go back to 9 months ago!
The past becomes your present and you realize that, in a month or two, you should fulfil all the Kickstarter rewards.
Your heart is pounding so loud again: it's the life of a Kickstarter creator, indeed!
....So, as you imagine, from now to the second half of February, Durgin Paint Forge Society (me and my girlfriend ) will be busy to carefully check all the resins one by one, packing them and fulfil all the KS rewards (that will be shipped approx for the end of February).
At first sight, the quality of these new resins is amazing, possibly better than our Dwarves. Moreover, looking quickly at the various bags with resin, they all seem "ok": of course, only an accurate quality control would tell how many fail casts we'll find (hopefully, very few), but for example, with our previous range I immediately realized that something went wrong and whole stocks of resin were troubled, but this new range seems really good indeed: I'm quite happy.
All the resins have almost the same colour (the last time I confess I went mad with those white/black/grey resins...), they look pretty cool and professional.
I can't wait to receive the luxury boxes I've designed for the Mighty Mega Box: I've made some economic sacrifice, to find some extra budget to give you the same tough, magnetic boxes that you liked in our previous campaign!
Unfortunately, this time the budget was a bit lower, so I had to design a more simple packaging for bundles rewards, but considering how much the Elves are welcomed by you, I'm positive concerning the packaging of the next campaign!
Tomorrow, after my traditional breakfast of champions (pain au chocolat and tangerine juice, if you are interested) I will start to check the resins and I will take some pics of this new range, that probably is a bit underrated (starting with me!), but the more I look at the miniatures, the more I realize how much potential they are.
Probably I could have designed some better characters, but guys, you would totally fall in love with them, once you'll see them on your desk!
UNITED WE PREVAIL!
PS: bonus track. One of the new artworks made for the Second Government booklet. Isn't it just awesome?! I regret not having sculpted a war memorial like that, for our Stretch Goal line!
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