So when I was considering including minis in our kickstarter, some new colleagues (people that owned game studios like Orthane but with MUCH more experience), looked at me with mild panic in their eyes and just slowly shook their head back and forth. Despite their best efforts to dissuade me, I included them anyway. We raised 11,000USD for the mini project in the kickstarter thanks to our amazing backers and I set out to develop the STLs and get them made. The STLs took a while and I cycled through a lot of 3D artists before landing on Carrie, she is a step of about any 3D modeling talent I have yet to experience.
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STLs in hand, my friend and 3D expert Mitch, head of Masterwork Studio, set out to build a mini mini printing factory in his basement, complete with several top of the line printers, a ventilation system and all the other dooflangers you need to 3D print stuff.
Over the course of the next year we test printed and refined all the models and playtested them at cons all over the country.
What I have learned about 3D printing is that you can have a high level of detail, or flexibility and durability, but not both. Also, over the long run, they are vastly more expensive than steel casting. I am glad that we built the printing factory as we really needed to go through this entire process before I could come to the conclusion that it was worth sending the many tens of thousands of dollars for the steel mould set-up. Welp, I am there now and we are about to print a veritable army of 20 of our models (60,000 pieces). The moulds are so expensive to produce, it didn’t make sense to just make the 8,000 minis I need to take care of the backers. If we sell these over the next few years, we will recoup the mould costs.
I am also looking into doing this for the Tomb Tiles now also. We have all the Tomb Tile sets printed for the backers (no small parts so it worked out pretty good) but moulding is clearly the way to go for the future.
All the minis you see here are “not in stock” because they are being manufactured by Boda Games in China as we speak. We are super excited to have them in the store in 2-4 months (maybe less). You can click any of them to indicate interest or just drop us an email at sendingspell@orthane.com
Thanks you always, for your support of authentic ancient Egyptian TTRPG.
Em Hotep,
Dave