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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:

January 13th update
about 1 year ago – Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 06:19:33 AM

Hello Backers!

I’ll keep this update short since I know I can get a bit long-winded at times.

First order of business: With the orders I’m taking to the post office today, I’m officially 52% delivered! That might not sound like much, but to me, it feels like a huge weight is slowly being lifted. Thank you all for your patience and understanding as I work through this process.

About your minis: They’re still coming as fast as I can produce them! However, the larger pieces do take a lot more time. To answer a question a few of you have asked: yes, all the pieces are fully in production!

There was a small hiccup I wanted to share with you. It turns out there was a stand-alone version of Baba Yaga that hadn’t been sculpted yet! After two years, you’d think I’d have caught that by this point—but better late than never. I’m thrilled to introduce her to you at last!

A note about the Mithril Dragon: To say that it’s slow to cast is an understatement. Each casting session takes 12–14 minutes to produce just two complete models, as the material needs to cool down fully in the mold to avoid cracking. (Think of it like one of those molten lava brownie desserts—if you rush it, it falls apart!) With 280 of these sold through the campaign, it has become a bit of a bottleneck in the production schedule, but I’m steadily working through them.

The Grave Behemoth, Snow Giant and Devil Bough have the same issues with having to cool in the mold, but much fewer of each of those have been sold.

Shipping Challenges Update

I’ve hit a few new challenges with shipping that I wanted to share with you.

First, box efficiency: Right now, I’m shipping full orders using smaller boxes taped together. These mailers cost $0.75 each, and with full orders requiring six boxes, that’s about $5.00 per order just in packaging costs! To address this, I’m ordering larger boxes today, which should make the process more efficient and cost-effective moving forward.

EU shipping delay: A new mandate called GSPR went into effect in December for imported manufactured items, which means I cannot ship to the EU until I sort that out. I’m actively working on a solution, but for now, EU orders are on hold. Thank you for your patience while I resolve this.

Canada update: Shipping to Canada was briefly paused due to a postal strike. Thankfully, the system seems to be back up and running, so I’ve resumed shipping to Canada without concerns about items being stuck in warehouses or getting lost.

Plastic supply: I’m running low on plastic and placed a restock order with my supplier. Unfortunately, they were on holiday through mid-December and only resumed taking orders last week. That said, I still have enough material on hand to continue production this week and don’t anticipate any disruptions in the immediate future.

Thank you all for sticking with me through these hurdles—I’m doing my best to keep everything moving as smoothly as possible!

Looking Ahead

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for sticking with me. This next part is something I know might raise concerns, but I want to be upfront about where things stand.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been funding this business largely out of my own pocket. While the payouts I received from Kobold Press for producing miniatures for Tome of Beasts III and Wastes of Chaos have been a lifeline, they were underbid based on my initial understanding of SiOCast at the time. Unfortunately, the profit margins weren’t as strong as I had hoped, and the financial strain has been mounting.

To keep this business running and ensure I can meet my commitments to you, I need to launch a new project to generate revenue in 2025. I’ve been approved by Kobold Press to run another Kickstarter focused on the 43 miniatures sculpted and molded for Tome of Beasts III and Wastes of Chaos. These miniatures are already fully sculpted and molded, so they’ll only require casting time to produce. This allows me to move forward efficiently without adding significant new development work.

My goal is to launch this Kickstarter by the end of the month, with delivery planned for July 2025. By the time the new campaign goes live, this current project should be 80–90% complete, meaning the new Kickstarter will not interfere with ongoing fulfillment.

I appreciate your understanding and continued support. My ultimate goal is to deliver on all my promises and ensure the long-term sustainability of this business.

Finally, and most importantly:

The grace and patience you’ve shown me over the past few years have truly been my lifeline. On days when I feel like a complete failuret, I post an update and am met with your encouragement, support, and affirmations of belief in me. As corny as it may sound, your kindness and understanding have been what keeps me going, and I will forever be grateful for each and every one of you.

Thank you again from the bottom of my heart.

—John

12-7-24 UPDATE! Need addresses!
about 1 year ago – Sat, Dec 07, 2024 at 06:50:12 AM

I am ready to start shipping a lot of the bigger orders. Still having problems with Grave Behemoth, Snow Giant and Mithral Dragon, but I will have them sorted out this week for sure!  

As I am continuing the slide into home base on this I need to make sure that I have corrected addresses from everyone. I have asked a couple of times for these, and a few people have given them either as comments on the update or in various methods. I need it to be a bit more organized for my own sanity as it were.

To that end I am sending every backer a personal message through Kickstarter in addition to this update. I am asking that you do not put your address update as a comment on this update, but rather please make the change of address as an answer to the message you will recieve through your profile!

I have more pictures, but I will save them for a separate update early this week.

It’s that time again—time for another update!
over 1 year 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
over 1 year 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
over 1 year 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