Impact Project Needs Your Feedback: Kaos and Pollution

[mrinprophet]

When the Apocalyptic Quartet (Death, Pestilence, Famine, War) were being designed we also have Melvin draw up Kaos and Pollution. We thought that if the AQ sold well we would have these sculpted and put into production. However, the AQ have sold poorly so we've kept these on our shelves for over a year. The cost to put them into production will be around $1,200 so we're soliciting feedback from the community. What we'd like to do is run a Kickstarter to see if we could raise $800 to make them a reality. What we'd ask for is honest feedback on the sketches and your willingness to bid on a kickstarter project.

BE HONEST. If have a preference of scale, sculptor, producing just one of them, or what they'd be sold with on a Kickstarter, we'd like to hear it.

[Darkson]

Not sure if it's intentional, but Pollution looks a bit "Nurgle space marine".

Personally, part of the issue with the AQ was that they looked a little "small" - I had always envisioned them as CW replacements (for myself), and they seemed undersized. So sizewise I think bigger than a regular human would be good.

[Lunchab1es]

I'm not in the market for models such as these, but I do really like the sketch of the fella with the chainsaw, FWIW.

[Corvidius]

The Chainsaw guy looks too space mariney for me and the other model looks too busy. Not ones i'd be interested in, sorry.

[inkpwn]

If I'm brutally honest I'm just not intrested. Theres a lot of cool chainsaw players on the market from people like neomics and willy and even more bits conversion.
Save your money and use it for the road less travelled, there's still a lot of blood bowl unrepresented or with very little variety.
The other chaos guy looks cool, but again, not intrested, sorry guys but it may be for the better if your existing horsless men arn't selling well at the minute.

[McDeth]

Personally, although i love the idea of the 4 horsemen, the sculpts just never pulled it off for me, and the looks of these dont grab me either.

Saving up now and waiting for a quality Amazon team

[axiom]

I like Pollution very much and could make use of him. Kaos is a bit too old school chaos and doesn't really appeal for me in the FF setting.

[mrinprophet]

This is excellent feedback and we greatly appreciate the honesty. This helps us focus on what our development budget on what is more likely to be successful. At this point, it's getting harder and harder to come up with fertile ideas. Thanks again.

[robsoma]

hmmm i tend to agree with everyone else these aren't really grabbing me, Kaos is probably the better of the 2.

Would it maybe be a better idea to put a FF conversion sprues up on kickstart? I know GW Plastic teams are popular so would it not be an idea to do a few different conversions sprues maybe an undead, Orc, Elf, Dwarf to begin with with a variety of hand options and maybe a couple of positional heads (slayer head, Wight, throw ra, ect)

Personally i'd be more interested in buying a few of these than a one off sculpt that you'd be hard pressed to incorporate into a team.

[mrinprophet]

We did conversion Sprues because we were told it was a great idea but they also sell poorly. Our conversion sprues

[Lunchab1es]

I've used the specialist arms conversion sprue, and I can vouch that it's a great asset for "thrower conversion for dummies", for those of us who can't sculpt our way out of a wet paper bag.

I don't know if you care to/can comment on this publicly (or by PM), but what sort of projects get a company such as Impact! the biggest profit return? My guess would be sale of in-house miniature sculpts? I've always wondered if you guys actually profit from a consumer purchasing another company (e.g. Willy) through your site (possibly at a reduced margin) or if its mostly a convenience thing, which then generates more sales of your other products as Impact! becomes a one-stop-shop which includes your own sculpts. I wonder about the profitability of other odd bits and bobs (accessories, dice, tokens, etc) too.

I think Inkpwn brings up a salient point which has resurfaced on several threads, which is that there seem to be some stars and teams which are very poorly represented by independent companies, whereas other get constant makeovers. While I understand that some teams and stars are understandably more popular, surely there are some which people would love to have made?

I'm kind of blathering at this point... but I do find the business of miniature manufacturers and their relationship with the community to be very interesting, as it often has unpredictable outcomes (poorly selling conversion sprues, backlash against miniatures which might infringe upon IP, etc being some examples).

Edit: to add to Inkpwn's point about some aspects being overrepresented, Impact! itself has no less than 7 chainsaw miniatures available under its "Pro player" category. I admit that I myself find most chainsaw players to look very cool, they are some of my favorites, but I only need to own so many.

[robsoma]

I think the problem with the existing conversions sprues is they are maybe not a great fit with GW Plastics (most common source of plastic teams) from what I see the middle kingdom catchers mit/fist sprue would be the only one i'd personally use (not that i've converted a team that uses catchers yet..) the specialist arms sprue look quite small as they were designed for the multi part humans.

The mutations sprues may sell better if they had more desired mutations on them such as Claws, tentacles, extra arms. as it stands the only mutation i'd use would be the two heads and even then i'd prefer a goblin or ratman option.

[Thadrin]

Um...they're....OK. Not keen on the csaw and agreed he does look like a CSM.
The other guy is way, way too busy.
I love the AQ and at some stage will finish the team that they're painted for.

[bound for glory]

We did conversion Sprues because we were told it was a great idea but they also sell poorly. Our conversion sprues

not really true. at least in reguard to the "not slann" frog parts. when tom was still in love with granny, he did'nt want to offend her by making a slann team, so he compromised and made these parts for kroot coversions. when GOBLIN FORGE and GASPEZ ARTS said fu to granny and made frog teams, well, it most likely took away sales from impact!.
and i'm not putting impact(or tom) down, here. in fact, as i have all the availible frog teams, i just last week ordered the impact! calasian parts for the kroot box i've had for some time.
and tbh, with the seriously retarded prices of teams these days, the calasian parts sets are expensive(especialy when the kroot set is factored in). i order bb/ff figures every month(much to my wifes bother), and i put off buying these parts for quite awhile because everytime i tried to figure out what parts sets i needed to make the team, i would see some other things i could buy instead.

[GalakStarscraper]

not really true. at least in reguard to the "not slann" frog parts. when tom was still in love with granny, he did'nt want to offend her by making a slann team, so he compromised and made these parts for kroot coversions.

Totally inaccurate.

I made the Kroot conversion sprues because at the time GW bunkers said that as long as more then 50% of the figure was GW material that the figures could be used at a bunker. So I made the conversion sprue so that folks could play Slann at GW locations. Had nothing whatsoever to do with being in love with granny or not wanting to offend her. I made these as an assist to players who have to deal with the rules GW hands down to the folks wanting to play their games in their stores ... never had anything at all to do with the company that made said game.

Hells bells man ... since when have I EVER been in love with granny or even said one nice thing in my entire history about the company as a whole. If you can find any quote from me praising GW (even during the Vault process), I'll be amazed. It is WELL KNOWN by anyone who was involved that I worked on the Vault rules to protect the players and the game from what was trying to be done to the game ... not because I wanted to help GW.

That said ... Chris (mrinprophet) linked to the wrong page ... he meant to link to http://www.impactminiatures.net/index.php?option=sprues and he is correct we've not see a whole lot of sales on conversion sprue products.

Tom