Production Update 14

SCULPTS

The two new sculpts that went to mold this week along with some leftovers from last time are Wu Ling Shu and Victoriana.

Wu Ling Shu

Victoriana

PROGRESS

Thanks for the proofing on the spreadsheets. It is an odd thing because some of the cells have been changing formulas without being updated by me. So far the counts and weights have been accurate, it has something to do with the percentage formulas.

SHIPPING

We have already sent out some of the backer rewards with Helen, some postcard sets and some t-shirt rewards. Unfortunately we just don't have the personnel power to notify everyone individually with an email to tell you we shipped your stuff. As of now, I believe, the only items that have gone out are a few things from the $1 RACK LEVEL, the $7 PRIMER LEVEL, the $20 CASING LEVEL and the $30 IGNITOR LEVEL. Since a lot of those still have Babes not yet made, we are not done with all those yet.

THIS WEEK

To give you an idea of what has been going on, here is a breakdown for this past Thursday:

5:15am Pack Sculpting kit and supplies, drive to Denton, TX
6:15am Arrive at Reaper factory for moldmaking
6:30am Gather moldmaking supplies and begin cutting pockets
11:45am Mold loaded into vulcanizer
12:00pm Lunch break
1:00pm Demold begins
2:00pm First test spins on the new mold
4:00pm pockets are filling at 100%
5:00pm Begin casting masters
7:00pm Departed factory for return home
7:30pm Arrived home and unpacked

Masters cast - 95% of what was needed to make production molds.

The rest of the days have been filled with sculpting from dark to dark.

PRODUCTION

Vicky and I have been the only one's casting the pieces with additional help at intervals from Martin, Brett and Brian (Inner Geek).

So far we have only been able to cast one day a week since early in January plus a couple of days last week, bringing our total casting production time to approximately six or seven days. With total mold spin of about five to six hours per day, I'm being pretty generous by saying that we've maybe spent around 42 total casting hours at this point. At 40% as it shows on the spreadsheet for that amount of time, with complete amateur casters, it should be pretty good.

We have created another self-imposed deadline to get the rest of stuff sculpted, molded and cast by the second weekend of March. This is padded to take into account many things in the schedule like added client work, tax preparation and mold-making delays.

Kevin got the Thulle sculpt to me this week and it is awesome! I will post pics of it once it has been molded since it has already been cut and keyed for production. The Rocket Bike masters arrived and I've started sculpting the rider which should go on the next mold. That only leaves Delzira, Luta & Shunkaha and the Atomic Punks creature to finish off all the rest of the Kickstarter sculpts.

See you next week!
~Patrick
The Sculptdude

Production Update 13

We have been casting things, packaging things and have shipped a few things out this week.

See you next week!
~Patrick
The Sculptdude

Production Update 12

PayPal Donations

The PayPal Donations period has ended. Thank you for your continued support! Throughout the remainder of fulfilling the Kickstarter and PayPal Donation rewards we are no longer accepting additional funds via PayPal in anticipation of launching our new online web store. All of our backers and supporters will be notified once the online store is functional so that you can get all the new Babes & Sidekicks releases along with our existing stock that was produced through the Kickstarter drive.

The Bad News . . . 

We missed our window for shipping in January, here's why. We were waiting for the first shipment of the resin base inserts from the caster in order to start packaging up some of the smaller backer rewards levels and begin packaging what we have for the Bomb Kits. Since every backer level receives a Helen Babe as a reward, and as a Babe she includes a resin base insert, this was what held up the shipping.

the Good News . . . 

The resin base inserts arrived last night.

 

In the interim we still collated and assembled the other items we had already received and have started packaging the Bomb Kits with the items we now have in stock. Vicky did most of this work by herself while suffering from a nasty winter cold over the last two weeks. She's a trooper!

We will be working all weekend to package up the orders we can now fulfill and start shipping those rewards to backers on Monday.

Sculpts Completed

These pieces have now been delivered for molding.

The Rocket Bike

The 3D prints were picked up from the printer and they are simply amazing. The level of detail and resolution of the prints are superb. According to our print vendor the fuselage alone took over 12 hours to build from the nose up vertically on the build platform. Over the weekend I will be sculpting the rider and the parts will go off to mold on Monday.

It is critical that I return to my client sculpting work in February and get the online store functional as soon as possible to keep operations running smoothly. So, our priority is to get the Kickstarter & PayPal Donate fulfillment completed as soon as possible. Reaper has just received five semi-trailer loads of plastic Bones figures at their factory and will be utilizing most of their staff to sort all these out for the next couple of months. This may affect our casting schedule as they reallocate their labor pool to these tasks. We are looking at alternatives for casting if this becomes an issue.

This week's Progress Report:

• Completed sculpts for Pussy Patrol, Tetsu Ko, Raven Skye, Mira, GhNT Spybot, Shrapnel & Flakk
• 1200 Postcard sets collated and bagged
• Relic casting 89% completed
• HLpR Bot casting completed
• Maelee casting 86% completed
• Sidekicks sculpting completed
• received 15,000 30mm bases from Armada
• received 6,000 30mm, 40mm and 50mm bases from Dice & Games UK
• received 100% of resin Ammo Dumps
• received 50% of resin base inserts
• received 6000 4 mil poly bags
• recieved bike from printer
• downloaded drivers for mail label printer, mailing center now operational
• sent postcards for autographs
• registered and set up online shopping cart

Thanks for hanging in there with us. Hopefully these updates will let you know that we are working diligently on getting your items to you. This has all been a HUGE amount of work for Vicky and I plus our small collection of volunteers and Bomb Squad talent we have been able to recruit. Our number one goal is to get these items to you as soon as we possibly can.

See you next week!
~Patrick
The Sculptdude

Production Update 11

New Sculpts!

Here are the models that went to mold this week!

Painted Models

Brushmistress Jessica Rich sent me these two pics of the Babs she completed! Excellent work. Really looking forward to these in person.

And Also . . .

The Bike is done and ready to go to print. I'll try to post some pics of the printed parts once I get them.

And in other related events:

• Picked up the T-shirts
• The remaining Postcards arrived from the printer
• Cast more Relics, Sidekicks and Babes.
• Met with our CPA to set up our QuickBooks file.
• Received our postal gear - printer, shipping labels and scale
• Ordered 15,000 30mm plastic bases

I need a weekend . . . !
More soon!

~Patrick
The Sculptdude

Production Update 10

They're spinnin'!

It has been BUSY around the Bomb Factory with all manner of things going on! Since last Saturday when we started production casting at the Reaper factory on the Relics, Maelee and Helen, we wrapped  up today with getting ALL of the Helen pieces ready for fulfillment. We chose these particular pieces to start with because we needed more of them than any of the others. The chart below has not been completed with the current production numbers yet.

On Monday we printed out all of the current spreadsheets from the Kickstarter surveys and Vicky compiled them into an Order Book so she can start marking off the packages and track everything as we begin to ship them out. We also received 13 of the 19 final postcards and Vicky has been collating them into sets as we wait for the final six designs to arrive.

Vicky, Martin and I spent all day last Saturday and this Saturday casting as many of the initial pieces as we could. Several of the other pieces are well on their way to being completed. Martin singlehandedly cast a third of all the Maelee's for fulfillment. We appreciate his hard work for sure! Vicky and I were able to finish all of the quantities for Helen and about half of all the Relics are done along with a handful of the Sidekicks. Most of the rest of the casting chores will be finished out by Reaper's regular casting crew.

After a long week of casting, printing, sculpting, sorting, bagging, emailing, photographing, sculpting, and casting here is where we are:

• Helen - completed
• Maelee - 35%
• Relics - 50%
• T-shirts - completed, awaiting pickup
• Postcards - printed 100%, delivered 60%, packaged 50%
• Padded mailers - delivered
• Sculpts - 60%

So we still have quite a bit to go but it is chugging along every day. Paint masters have gone out to Martin, Jessica, Vicky and Meg to start on and I'll be posting their work in a future update.

I'm still sculpting every day to get the rest of the pieces completed. I'll be delivering six more Babes to Reaper this week for our next mold. There will be some better shots of the final pieces in the next update once I can get the base tabs attached.

Progress in ZBrush has continued with my final digital piece for the KS project - the HS38 Rocket Bike.

Here the fuselage has been completed and the primary engines lined up for size. Details for the seat padding, central control panel, assorted vents,  primary Iriduim power plant, and stabilizers will be added next. Hover Shuttle utilizes twin Type IV Illyirian Bust-A-Drives® in their model 38 single seat bike. This provides maximum thrust and maneuverability in atmospheric environments.

The plan is to get this baby off to the printer this week.

More as it happens!

~Patrick
The Sculptdude

Production Update 9

I am pleased to note that the vast bulk of the administrative tasks in getting Bombshell set up are pretty much done. Granted there are still innumerable details in getting the orders ready for fulfillment but all of the parts are in place now for us to begin the final segment of completing the project. Tim, Keri and I are finishing up the final batch of art for the postcards. here are a few progress shots.

The majority of the day Thursday was spent out at Reaper doing a little sculpting, approving and casting. The mold team (Ghent and Melissa) have done a fantastic job molding the Babes and getting them ready for production. I am very proud of their work and am fortunate to have their expertise in bringing the Babes to you.

There is still a LOT of sculpting to complete and I'm sure many of you are wondering when they will be finished. Now that most of this side-line setup work is done I can focus more time on finishing the actual sculpts. Delivery of Batch B for molding is expected to be sometime next week and there will be another update with photos of the sculpts.

Here is what has been set up so far:

• Molding & Casting deposit paid
• Masters for Batch A Babes completed.
• Batch A production molds completed
• Painting Assignments completed
• T-shirts ordered
• Resin base inserts ordered
• Postcard art 50% - Batch A goes to printer Wednesday
• Batch B Armatures complete

RESULTS ARE IN

Vicky has spent several days consolidating the results of the spreadsheets from the surveys. I can't begin to describe how juggling the data from over a thousand responses has been for the two of us. Here is the data she has compiled so far.

Kickstarter surveys: 26 responses outstanding of 1120

Babes:

Maelee - 1016
------------
Meagan & Monkey First Mate - 550
Sally - 562
Sword Maiden - 342
The Girl - 533
Betty & Shrapnel - 646
Dusty - 615
Vivian - 549
Bug Spray - 492
Tetsu Ko - 574
Nowada - 416
Raven Skye - 596
Pussy Patrol - 506
Inquisitor Mira - 597
Victoriana - 410
Wu Ling Shu - 643
Geirahod - 650
Delzira - 518
Cave Girl - 368
Dr. Helen Salinger - 1100

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Reinforcement Sets:

Professor Karrick & Thulie - 307
Luta & Shunkaha - 342
Rocket Biker & Bike - 358
Atomic Punks - 243

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Bombkits & Additional Support

HlPrBot - 852
Relic 1 - 869
Relic 2 - 868
Relic 3 - 876
Relic 4 - 872
Steampunk Sprue - 940
Sci-fi Sprue - 927
Fantasy Sprue - 902
Squidman - 852
Raferu-san - 852
Tazjh - 852
Islug - 852
Belphegor - 852
Ping - 852
Flack - 852
Ghnt Spybot - 911

Sidekick Set 1 Sprue (Blunderbuss Monkey, HlPrBot, Rafaeru-San, Squidman & Tazjh) - 94
Sidekick Set 2 Sprue (Belphagor, Shrapnel, Flack, iSlug, & Ping) - 93

Resin pieces:

Rocket Bike - See Reinforcement sets
Additional Base insert sets - 93
Inserts for all Babes & Maelee - 10,583
Ammo Dumps - 895

------------------

T-shirts:

Small - 17
Medium - 41
Large - 61
XL - 94
XXL 75

NEWS

So by now you know the world did not actually end. This being the case we are full-steam-ahead getting the Babes finished up to get them to you.

We have reserved our spot at GenCon and received confirmation of our application. We will also have a Bombshell presence at Reaper Con in April and should have a new Maelee model available for that show.

Progress is still continuing on the Rocket Bike in ZBrush and I look to have some preliminary renders for the next update. It will need to go to print as soon as possible so I can get it off to mold. We'll be sending out the other half of the postcards to print within the first couple of weeks of January. Turnaround on the printing is pretty quick so this will be fine.  Our t-shirt printer gave me an estimated delivery of January 4th for the shirts so I'll post pics of those as soon as I can get them.

For those who asked, Shas'tan has recovered from his transgender surgery and will be going for a followup next Friday to see if he can have the cone and sutures removed. The surgeon is very confident this will greatly improve his quality of life.

Will keep you all posted with more progress after the holiday! Wishing all the best during the season.

~Patrick
The Sculptdude

Production Update 8

Here is pretty much everything that went to mold yesterday plus the Sideckicks 1 Sprue and the Sci-fi sprue.

These guys I ran a few of while making masters of the weapons.

More pics soon.

Patrick