Kobold Press Bestiary Miniatures: Iconic Races II Catfolk
Created by Effincool Miniatures
Creating a line of 32mm male and female Catfolk miniatures for table top roleplaying games.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
It’s that time again—time for another update!
about 1 month ago
– Thu, Oct 17, 2024 at 11:53:01 AM
First and foremost, I want to again, sincerely thank all of you for sticking with me. I know this journey hasn’t been easy for any of us, and by now, some of you are very frustrated with me. I can only keep apologizing as I trudge through the last of this.
So, let’s get right to the heart of things. First off, the bad....
What is wrong with the machine now?:
One of the main reasons I invested in this plastic injection machine was to be able to produce larger miniatures without the high costs of metal and the limitations of mold size. A key part of this project involves re-scaling previously produced miniatures to make them more suitable for use in 5E.
Here’s the Flab Giant from this project. For reference, the original painted metal model was quite undersized, but I think you’ll all agree that the gray plastic version is much more fitting for a giant!
When I designed the molds for the larger creatures, my goal was to keep the number of parts to a minimum. That’s why this mold was set up to cast the figure as a single piece
It turns out this machine just can't handle casting such a large volume of plastic at this thickness. No matter how I adjust it, it simply won’t inject enough plastic to fully fill the mold.
My only solution is to cut the model in half and make 2 separate molds, which is what I am still in the process of doing for the other models that need it.
As you can see in the next pictures, the difference between the two is like night and day.
Each time I run one of these molds, it has to stay in the machine for 3 minutes before I can swap it out for the next one. Since the miniature is now split between two separate molds, it takes twice as long to produce each one. So, at this rate, I can only make 1 miniature every 3 minutes. So it is slow going, but is working.
Where things sit as of today:
I still have some molds that need to be reworked. Right now, I’m in the process of cutting up those models into smaller parts for new molds. Not exactly fun, but it’s necessary.
The good news is that the restaurant is now fully closed for the season, so I can dedicate all my time to this project. I’ve ordered 40 new mold blanks, which should arrive next week, and I’ll dive into the re-molding process as soon as they get here.
I know I’ve been behind in sharing model updates. There are a number of reasons for that, mainly how tough it is to get good photos of this material on a phone without doing a lot of editing, which can be super time-consuming.
I also want to address the concerns from some backers who’ve lost confidence in my ability to complete this. I’m sorry for anything I’ve done (or not done) that’s contributed to those doubts.
That being said, I’ve taken a bunch of pictures of the single-cast models (since the multi-part ones just look like bags of pieces), and I’m posting them straight from my phone, no photo editing. I hope you enjoy them!
I know it’s a bit much to expect anyone to be excited after two years, but honestly, I’m feeling really excited, and I hope you are too. It’s been a long, crazy two years, but things are finally starting to come together and feel like they’re nearing completion.
I’ll keep you posted with more updates as I get more products cast and ready for shipping.
– John
9-3 Update
2 months ago
– Tue, Sep 03, 2024 at 07:53:49 AM
As many of you know, I run a seasonal restaurant, and as I've mentioned before, it's tough to make significant progress on my project until the last month of the season when we stop serving lunch and the restaurant hours are reduced. That time has finally arrived! While I'm not back to working full-time on the project, I now have about six uninterrupted hours each day before I need to head in for the evening shift, which means I can accomplish a lot in that time.
Machine Status:
After over six weeks of waiting and trying various fixes, I’m happy to report that the machine is finally back up and running as of last Wednesday!
The issue stemmed from a broken injector, which, as is often the case with machinery, was actually a symptom of a larger problem. To keep it brief, the valve that’s supposed to shut off the injector when the back pressure on the plastic reaches a certain threshold had failed, which in turn damaged the injector.
I’m still facing some challenges with a few of the molds, so this week I’ll be focusing on resolving those issues.
Current Backer FAQ:
Can you ship partial orders and then charge shipping for the rest when the pieces are all cast?
Logistically, this would be quite complicated. While I could potentially figure out a way to do it, I’m so close to having everything ready to ship that it might not be worth the effort.
Can I change my address since it’s been nearly two years and I’ve moved twice?
Yes, you can update your address. The easiest way to do this is by messaging me through Kickstarter, and I’ll manually update your address in Backerkit.
When will we receive our toys?
I know I’ve missed every deadline I’ve set, which is why I’m hesitant to set them, but I’m aiming to have everything delivered within the next six weeks. It’s a lot of work, but I think this is a realistic goal.
Can we get some pictures?
I plan to post an update with pictures sometime next week. I’m currently focused on making progress, so I don’t have time to take pictures right now. I also hope to have the War Wyvern and other molds working better by then!
Still grinding,
John
7-9 Update
4 months ago
– Tue, Jul 09, 2024 at 07:44:04 AM
Just making this update to give you more bad news about delays. I am very sorry to have to explain all of this.
On the 22nd of last month before I made the last update, I had noticed that the plastic injection machine was behaving kind of out of character. Most namely it was not filling molds properly using the recipes that were already programmed. Thinking I could just adjust the recipes a bit to correct for it, I kept on trying to get it to work properly with no success and the problem actually started to get worse.
After I made the last update I decided I would take a look inside the machine and make sure everything looked proper. When I did this, I discovered plastic leaking all around the injection nozzle. I removed the injection Nozzle and replaced 2 rubber o-rings on it thinking that might solve my problem, but it did not change the results in the injections.
The injector is leaking plastic because there is a small valve inside of it that is plugged and will not allow the plastic flow to shut off properly, so the machine keeps drizzling out of the nozzle the whole time I am suing it.
Every mold that I run continues to spill out plastic after the injection due to the malfunctioning injector.
I contacted the company that afternoon and finally heard back from them the following Monday. The main problem with working on anything on thismachine is that the components inside get up to 800 degrees, so you have to heat them up to remove the plastic from the machine, and then wait for it to cool down enough to work on, which is about 5 hours start to finish for each test they were having me do and then repeat the process over again.
We tried for several days back and forth testing different settings on the machine they came to the conclusion that I needed to replace the injector and nozzle which is not a time consuming project if I have the part in hand.
This is the $900 Injection unit that is faulty.
I ordered the part on July 1 with a bank transfer to SioCast.
The Injector is still not delivered and I just received an email from DHL shipping that the estimate for delivery of the injector is July 18. This means essentially over a month of not being able to produce miniatures.
This does not stop me from working on the molding though, which I am continuing to work on, but I cannot produce a single plastic miniature until this is repaired successfully.
Im still grinding on this project!
John
6-24-24 update
5 months ago
– Mon, Jun 24, 2024 at 11:39:09 AM
Just a quick note today. I am still shipping the things that I can ship as new models are being molded.
The better part of the last 5 weeks have been spent getting my restaurant open for another season, so I have not made a lot of progress molding more pieces. I am however happy to say that now that we are open and everything seems staffed well enough I have had a few days now of untinterrupted miniature work and have gotten a lot done.
By the end of next week I should have almost everyone who had only small/medium miniatures in their order out the door!
Some of the models that are still presenting fairly serious problems for me are the War Wyvern with the Rider, The Grave Behemoth, The Snow Giant, and the Fey Revenant. Due to the way that they were sculpted, the present some challenges for molding that I am working through.
If you have updated addresses, please make sure that you update them either with me or through Backerkit.
Anyway, back to work and as always thank you for your continued patience and support. We are rounding into home!
John
May 2024 Update
6 months ago
– Tue, May 07, 2024 at 05:21:52 AM
Keeping it short on this one.
Where I am on the project:
Being able to put my eyes fully on this project has caught a few errors that I am fixing. The most glaring of which was just caught over the weekend. In all of the chaos that has ensued over the past 2 years, it completely got missed that the 2 sculpts for the Swordbreaker Skeletons never got completed. The counts sheet that Ed gave to me omitted them and I had not come across an order that had them on as an ala carte option until last weekend!!
I am working on those this week and should have them done in a couple of days.
I have been stalled on molding for the past 2 weeks as I wait for a shipment of more rubber for the SiOCast Machine. Once that arrives, I can begin molding things again.
I have all of the small and medium sized minis, with the exception of the Swordbreaker Skeletons molded. I am starting on the Large creatures as soon as I complete the Swordbreaker Skeletons.
Shipping:
I have had a couple of requests for the number of backers shipped, and TBH, that is not as easy to do as you might think.
I have a pile or order sheets that I am filling orders from. I am concurrently shipping all of the remaining orders from Tome of Beasts III and Wastes of Chaos as they come in, in addition to the daily shop orders that come in from the webstore. Maybe someone has an easier way to do it, but I don know it, so sorting that all out to get an exact count is pretty counter-productive to me getting more work done on the project as it were.
If I have to hazard a guess, I would say roughly 1/3 of the orders have shipped, but having said that, the rest of the orders require either the full set of minis, Swordbreaker Skeletons, or Large and Huge creatures that are still unmolded, so once all of those are done, the shipping will go much faster!
Timeline:
With the pace I am going right now, June/July for the bulk of the orders is still in the realm of possibility, but as you all know by now, I am still just a one man operation so you just have to trust that I am going at the fastest pace that I can!
Pictures:
One of the things that has taken time on this project is that I am correcting things in old models as I go. Initially when Ed and I talked about this project we were jsut going to use the masters that we had from previous versions of these models. The issue is that the bases on all of the old models were not a standard thickness, some of them were paper thin and some were very thick. Thisthin bases just did not work with the plastic injection, so I quickly had to scrap the idea of re-using old masters for new molds. Since they all had to be re-mastered I decided to make everything a standard base thickness.
Because I was already at the point of fixing the bases digitally, I decided to fix other issues before I printed the models as well. As an example, that Female Alseid was in 3 pieces originally....and there was no real reason for it because the model in 3 pieces was hard to assemble and even harder to paint, and with a few small adjustments it can be one piece.
Abominable Beauty, Shadow Fey Enchantress, Empty Cloak, Virtuoso Lich and the Female Alseid
This is a great example of things that had to be re-done. The orginal 2016 version was sculpted by hand and has all of the charm that comes with that. Having said that, the model casts poorly and has a base that is way too thin to do plastic injection with. The new 2024 model casts much easier and is a nice update on the design in my opinion.
2024 Shadow Fey Enchantress vs 2016 Shadow Fey Enchantress
I dont stop to take pictures of models all that often, so I only hav ethe ones that I post on social media. Here are a couple more models that have been done for a while and are already in folks hands!
Cueyatl War Party
Ratfolk
As always questions, comments and concerns can be dealt with publicly or privately if you are more comfortable messaging me directly!
Anyway, that is what I have got for you as of right now. Gonna keep grinding on til we get across the line!
