Mini Update - Backerkit is Locking for final production counts
over 3 years ago – Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 11:26:14 PM

 Hey guys,

Backerkit will be locking in a few days, so we can get final production counts and process add-on payments.

If you have moved or would like to update your address, you have until Saturday August 22nd to log in and make those corrections. After the 22nd, if you need to change your address you'll need to reach out to [email protected] directly since the orders will be ported into our shipping system.

We have some other small news in the production department;

1> All of our acrylic is in (bases), all sheets of plastic are in (minis).

2> Ultimate Guard finally gave us a price, and we're waiting on their initial sample -BUT- we're proceeding to buy copies of the plain black Flexxfolio to be delivered ASAP in addition to our custom printed cases. This way if there's delays on the custom cases, we can begin shipping with black cases for those backers who don't want to wait or would prefer black. We don't know if this will make a difference, but it's worth mentioning.

3> Our Texas printer is FINALLY PRODUCING! It's been installed for over 2 years in our warehouse, but had some mechanical problems we were never able to identify. About 3 months ago we found a new technician in Fort Worth, and he's been incredible at finding and solving problems with our press. It's taken a while, but we slowly isolated and solved all the major issues our press was giving us, and have now done several successful test runs. Philip also flew out to Fort Worth this last weekend to train him on the die-cutter. Our Texas warehouse can now (finally) be our primary production site, with Las Vegas being a backup for when repairs are needed.

This should mean we have far fewer production delays and hiccups, reduces our costs shipping between our two facilities, and relieves Philip from most of his production duties to focus on creative stuff (though he does still produce our dies, and will need to produce if our machine needs repairs.)

4> We're in talks with a third party company that specializes in helping small businesses push product through customs to stock amazon.uk, amazon.ca and more (Amazon.AU is brand new, but that will be our 3rd target when the paperwork is ready). We've been filing for VAT and EORI.

Some things look good on paper. Namely, if we can get a streamlined customs process in place and ship a HUGE quantity of product into Amazon.UK, we could increase our sales and reach dramatically and it would be much simpler in the future to release KS products to the EU (for example, we're planning to list the Hardbound Support kit on Amazon / Amazon.UK and stock it, and let international backers buy it from the marketplace.)

This will require us to pay VAT on import, and file taxes with the EU/UK government. As a tiny team, some of this is overwhelmingly complicated, especially when the costs in time and legal help may outweigh the income gained, but it's an important step.

There are some really bad things on paper though. Namely, we have to have a UK-based address on file "for returns" with amazon. Because not only is amazon likely to take a large cut of the sales as the selling platform, but buyers can return the product for any reason. These returns eventually end up back with the seller - but since we're not in the UK, they get trashed instead. It's possible we may be able to find a small business in the UK to partner with, who can be our "address of record" but those types of deals get incredibly complicated and need a huge amount of trust and open communication.

We're still generally on the lookout for EU / CA / AU distributors or online game stores large enough to buy our products in volume, and just let them funnel our product into these markets.

In the past, our production hasn't always been consistent enough to go big, but with the TX printer online that might finally be behind us.

A few finished pieces of art for fun

A quick note on customs

There are still some slots remaining. Some of you may have reached out to [email protected] to claim them, and some of your emails may have fallen through the cracks.

If you have NOT seen any sketch for your custom piece, or you inquired about a custom piece and didn't get a response, now is the ideal time to ping us again at [email protected] and we'll sort it out immediately. Most everything else is in place, and Damian is going to be making a hard push to get all of the OOTBE and HBS1 pieces finished shortly.

State of the Arcknight! Overview of all our projects, including the release of .STL files and digital items.
almost 4 years ago – Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 01:28:58 AM

Hi guys!

It's been nearly 60 days since our last major update, and I'm sure everyone is excited and waiting to hear whether the Hardbound Support project has any delays, or whether it will be shipping soon. Unfortunately, there are delays. With Covid and the extended shutdowns, I'm sure it's not a tremendous surprise that things are not ready to ship. From employees leaving, to materials being unavailable, and even just people re-prioritizing to get through this time, every sector of business has felt the repercussions of this nearly 6-month shutdown of the economy.

State of the Arcknight

Arcknight LLC, as a company, has many things going its way in these rough times, things that some other companies do not. We're in a small private warehouse, we do mostly internet-based sales, and we operate with a minimal crew. We manufacture everything ourselves within the US. We have never closed our doors - because our doors aren't open. And shortly before the pandemic hit we had several large projects fund that gave our coffers a boost. While our regular sales have dropped off tremendously (to as low as 10% normal), we're staying afloat with the funds from these special projects.

We have a tremendous resiliency, and we're mostly art-centric. We're not a high-profit company, and we don't have a parent company we can tap into for funds. But, compared to most everyone out there, I think we're doing okay.

Supply lines are still shot. Acrylic, Polycarbonate, Printing Inks/Oils, take a while to get if they're even available. 3rd party companies that we work alongside, are undoubtedly having their own troubles.

I think the easiest way for us to properly update our fans and audience is just to be clear about the "big picture" as a whole concept. To do that, I'd like to introduce, break down, and discuss each of the project/work concepts on our plate, and go into their issues individually. Doing this, will also allow us an opportunity to show you guys a lot of things you may not be aware of, things we're toying with daily, and that have future potential. As much as 2020 sucks, there's so much good on the horizon that has me very excited. And while some of the things I show you guys may seem to have 'nothing to do with Hardbound Support' - I believe in reality it does. Everything we're doing wraps back around, either directly in this campaign, or because it leads naturally to the progression of Hardbound Support 2 (and beyond) or other projects and aides we will be developing that you would certainly want on your table when running any of your campaigns.

The "Big" Projects

• 1. Pathfinder 2 Spell Effects
• 2. Hardbound Support (LMOP) Starter Set
• 3. Nerdarchy's Out of the Box: Encounters
• 4. Arcknight Digital
• 5. 3d Resin Printing + STL Files
• PS: Patreon.

PF2 Spell Effects

What is it? PF2 Spell Effects are the last lingering item of our previous campaign, Spell Effects 2.0. That campaign created a new generic set of Spell Effects for 5E, and die-cut them. It was a huge success, and continues to be one of our leading items. During that campaign, we promised to create a similar pack out of our existing Pathfinder Spell Effects, and create new dies.

During development of the PF Generic Spell Effects, Pathfinder 2 released. It became clear to us that the spells had completely different rules, but they all shared the same "shapes". We changed direction with the pack, and made a new and improved layout that covered everything in PF1 and PF2, including emanation templates. Many fans suggested that PF1 players are already comfortable with all the spells' descriptions, and really just needed the shapes to save time. So we decided to make the "cheat sheet" text match the PF2 rules, to be more useful for new PF2 players.

Where do things stand now? After many MANY delays, the development is finally done. As of this writing, the art and text are finished, the final files are being exported, and made print-ready.

Why does this matter? The 5E Generic and PF2 Generic Spell Effect sets are directly useful in any tabletop game. They cover EVERY shape and size of top-down transparent spell template you can imagine, in regular shapes (5E) and euclidean shapes (Pathfinder). But more than this, we're proving the point that we can print double-sided art on transparent sheets, and die-cut them. We haven't gotten there just yet - but the next project is obvious to us - an immense collection of top-down objects and doodads that use standard die-shapes for cutting.

This means trees, tables, wagons, pits, logs, dead bodies, boulders, rowboats, you name it (many of which already exist in our current "Object Sheets", but 1> you have to cut them out yourself, and 2> we never went back and made this product line as cool as it could be.

Spell Effects 2.0 proved the concept, but had delays particularly in the die-creation process. The Euclidean die shapes were a nightmare to make into dies, and along the way we developed several new processes to handle even more complex dies. These are lessons not forgotten.

Keep in mind, we're already using Hardbound Support as a second testing ground for this process - since the "Ambush Carts" ARE this concept - we're making a new die just for long rectangular objects (like carts, but also boats, cars, helicopters, etc) and we'll be printing an Ambush Cart for everyone to show off the spoils of this process.

Whats left to do? We still need to print these, die-cut them, and get them to our backers who have been beyond patient. We hope to have these printing on tuesday of next week.

Hardbound Support (LMOP) Starter Set and Nerdarchy's Out of the Box: Encounters.

What is Hardbound Support? This is a simple concept. Take all the various things Arcknight can produce, and put them together into a "kit" that supports an existing DnD Hardbound. Storm King's Thunder is the big mark, and it was gonna have some particular headaches (namely, 500 giants.). So tactically, we set our sights on the 5E Starter Set (LMOP) first. It's smaller, cleaner, and leads directly into SKT once your characters complete it and hit 5th level. If we were going to do an SKT campaign, we'd need to do LMOP anyway, since most players skip the first few chapters of SKT (and for what it's worth, this book has special considerations allowing you to do this in Adventures League, etc).

The Starter Set (with a name like that, go figure!) also serves as a sort of "generic" DM Kit, with a wide range of classic monsters. It was designed to be a varied and elegant module, and it's very well loved. Even if you've already played LMOP, and will never play it again, I guarantee you would use every single miniature and component in this kit. To do a kit like this any justice, we would need to provide Minis, Maps, and all the 'goodies' we can pile on the side.

What is Nerdarchy's Out of the Box: Encounters? Ironically, it's nearly the same concept. Nerdarchy has created a book, with 50 encounters (plus some bonus encounters), and they have tasked us with creating a kit of Maps, Miniatures, and other goodies that can strategically cover -every- encounter in the book. So, the goals for HBS1 and OOTBE are quite similar - and as we develop solutions to one, we naturally find solutions to the other.

Minis for HBS1. Since we're the creators of Flat Plastic Minaitures, we have the ability to produce massive numbers of double-sided colorful pieces on plastic, and then die-cutting them and popping them in bases. In HBS1, we're using this concept to create every miniature that appears in the 5E Starter Set module, including a large mass of goblinoids and undead that can be used in unique mixes to cover encounters that need goblins, orcs hobgoblins, zombies, skeletons, wights, etc. We have a new and streamlined die that was completely re-designed to cut and pop easier, and it drops all the irregular shaped pieces for more of what everyone wants - medium pieces, and large pieces. The new die has 56 pieces, and the LMOP set is using 1.5 full pages with this die, so a total of 84 pieces. Even with our existing library of 1500+ pieces of fantasy artwork, we found that a majority of pieces needed would need to be brand new. Were creating all sorts of key NPCs, villains, Starting PC tropes (and many many custom pieces suggested by our backers). We're fine with this development, because every Hardbound Support is going to have an even more robust library to pluck from, and we estimate that after 2-3 of these large sets, we'll get to the point we can cover almost anything with existing artwork, and the amount of 'new' pieces will decrease with each new Hardbound Support project, and dramatically speed up our development times.

PC Expansion Pack - We had never made a real "PC Pack" before though, and so we went ahead and added a 64-piece "all medium" pack of PC-viable characters as it's own add-on. Almost 30 of them were designed by backers, and the other 30 are being plucked from our existing archives (some of these slots are still available if people want to customize them.)

Out of the Box: Encounters - OOTBE uses the same 56-piece die, but is a much bigger pack. It uses 3 full pages of plastic to provide 168 miniatures. It has a lot of unique and interesting pieces created specifically for this book, alongside many classic tropes. OOTBE also has a number of mounted encounters, and we've designed a special double-slotted large base, so you can slot a large creature and it's rider into the same spot.

For Maps, everything is new. Our first maps campaign created a large catalog of over 80 map tiles back in 2013, so we do have some existing textures and tile-sets. But for the most part, HBS1 and OOTBE both are getting entirely new custom maps created for them. Fortunately, much of this development overlaps, since each new map element we create for either project often lends itself in the other. Simple things like new grass textures, stoves, or developing a new lighting trick that renders faster - all of them help us, since we're going back and revamping an art process that is over half a decade old. Our new maps are among the best we've ever made.

HBS1 maps are designed to give you faithful 4-page and 6-page conversions of the module, while the OOTBE project pushes the limits of modular tiles, where we've created entirely new outdoor forest, swamp, dungeon, and other zones that can be mixed and matched to cover dozens of layouts.

Here's an example of 4 pages tiled together from HBS1 to represent Cragmaw Castle;

Both of these projects boast a 16-page, double sided map pack for 32 "pages" of tiles. In the case of Nerdarchy's OOTBE, some of these tiles are sliced down into sub-pages, something we had never done before, but the results are awesome - airships, river barges, magnificent mansions, interdimensional shops and all sorts of other tiles now exist that didn't require a full page, and by pairing them to be sliced up logically, the OOTBE campaign ends up with far more map pieces for the same paper/laminate costs.

Here's an example of Nerdarchy OOTBE's new outdoor maps,

And by tiling them (and adding doodads) you can create forest clearings, rivers that flood into swamps, destroyed settlements by roadways, gatehouses, cliffside fortresses.

And here's some interior tile samples of the Inn + Tavern, and a Great Hall.

If Nerdarchy's Out of the Box: Encounters project sounds interesting to you, you can check out the Pre-Order for the Nerdarchy book on their website here:  Nerdarchy - Out of the Box Encounters for 5th Edition Hardcover 

And while Nerdarchy does not currently have a pre-order link on their website for the Book + Arcknight kit, we have created a listing for you on Arcknight.com here  Pre-Order Nerdarchy Out of the Box Encounters and the Arcknight OOTBE Kit This listing will include the Arcknight OOTBE Kit, and the Nerdarchy Hardbound Book, and match the original KS price of $115.

The Goodies, part 1. Object Sheets. Object sheets complete the tri-fecta between Minis, Maps, and useful doodads you'd want to have on your table. Essentially, the same way Spell Effects are top-down graphics that are die-cut into useful shapes, "Object Sheets" serve the same purpose - but aren't spells. We've had a collection of 6 pages of "Object Sheets" for sale on the Arcknight Website for many years - but it wasn't a developed produced and they aren't die-cut. They're still great, but you need to get a pair of scissors and hack them up yourself. Ever since the RPG Spell Effects 2.0 campaign first die-cut spell effects, it was clear that this was somewhere we want to go, and soon.

Both of these projects will take a step in this direction, and serve as a sort of prototype / proof of concept. For HBS1, we're making a large page of die-cut rounded rectangles, and creating an updated version of our Carts + Carriages. The plan is to go one step further, and make 1 side a regular cart, and the other side 'destroyed' using some clever art design. We're calling this the "Ambush Cart", but as a concept, this die can be used in the future for Cars, Trucks, Helicopters, Boats, you name it. But this die was intentionally the simplest of things that could be necessary for an Object Sheets campaign (we weren't trying to jump the gun, lets do the prototype as easily as possible, right?).

Nerdarchy's OOTBE being added to the mix upended this immediately. To truly make 50+ encounters out of a limited set of maps, we knew we needed to take many of the most interesting features and map elements, and turn them into doodads. So we set about to create a single die that could be used to cut 2 unique pages, each with double-side artwork, and give a TREMENDOUS amount of variety and life to these maps;

Mushrooms, Suits of Armor, Gelatinous Cubes, Obelisks, Rocks, Traps, Carts, and many many surprises. With over 30 doodads per page, in a huge variety of sizes, this thing is a beast. If we hadn't just tackled the PF2 Euclidean die, we might have wondered if this was going to be out of reach, but now that we've handled that one, this will be easier.

The Goodies, Part 2. Custom Bases. For HBS1, we asked ourselves "What other little things can we make?" And while initially, the idea was to create colored bases to sort your people into groups or sub-factions, once we opened that door we stumbled upon several more options. We had decided early on that every HBS1 kit would need a full Supermix + a panel of "Horse Bases". This is what the basic bases look like:

We also promised 4x strips of 4 colored bases per kit. But once we started toying with these custom shaped horse bases (and of course nobody wanted to decide which was better, they wanted them all), custom shapes lead in turn to colored horse bases!

But we didn't stop at horses, it's got pegasus, dragons, boars, unicorns, pegasus. Lions and Tigers and Bears, but oh my where are they? Well, it turns out right now we cant get the range of colored plastic we're used to, so we don't have print runs (yet) of anything other than white and black, but we've pre-cut and filled tubs of these things for fun. Once we get orange plastic in stock again, we'll make foxes, and when the pink plastic comes in we'll make pigs, etc etc.

We think this might actually be an ideal micro campaign for the future, where people can buy kits of all these special bases, but for our supporters in the HBS1 campaign, were gonna just take a big scoop of random extra creatures and drop them into a bag and toss them into every kit. Hurray!

But the fun didn't quite stop here, since we were out of colors and couldn't get proper prototypes of them, we began to ask ourselves what else we could do - and custom shaped horse bases in turn lead to all sorts of colored/etched/scored specialty bases.

By cutting, etching, scoring, and sometimes even applying an old crayon trick, we came up with all sorts of other neat concepts. Im sure we'll develop this further in the future, but for now it'll just have to wait =P

Goodies Part 3, Carrying Cases from Ultimate Guard (some sad news?) - Another thing we tossed into the HBS1 campaign was a "carrying case". In fact, we'd been on the lookout for one for years, and when we found it, it was a slam dunk beyond our imagination. There's many videos and photos of the carrying case being shown off on our Hardbound Support kickstarter page if you're curious. Ultimate Guard is making us a custom Flexxfolio just for the HBS1 campaign. It's something we hope to do in all future Hardbound Support campaigns as well. But - this did also present a new problem. With Covid (im assuming?) knocking a lot of vendors off their regular game, Ultimate Guard hasn't been able to give us a single .... anything... yet. We don't have a prototype copy, we don't have a production schedule, we don't even have a PRICE per folder yet. It's bonkers, and I'm sure they're dealing with plenty of their own crap, so we haven't pestered them too much about it.

Of course, the standard Black flexfolio exists, and "works perfectly well". We have about 100 in our warehouse right now, hoping that we could announce soon a tandem release of our custom Arcknight flexfolio alongside stocking the black copies as a retailer on our website, something that would let our regular fans get access to them at a great price. But it may become the reality that backers are held up just waiting for these flexfolios, and if that happens we may start offering to ship with black cases instead (for those who don't want to wait for the custom ones).

Every email from them is optimistic, and they're excited to get us a prototype or they're catching up, or something. But, lets just be clear here, this component has not moved 1 inch and we have no timeline or expectations at this moment.

Goodies, Part 4. STL Files. One other item we decided to toss into our HBS1 project was a few .STL files we've been cooking up for some time. Thus far, Arcknight has never gone into the 3d miniature realm, but we all know it's just a matter of time. We began prototyping 3d models for a few classic monsters, and among them is the Owlbear and the Young Green Dragon. These were very iconic encounters right out of the 5E Starter Set. Well, it just so happens after a while, here we are creating the HBS1 campaign OF the 5E Starter Set, so it makes no sense to keep these miniatures under the hood.

Eventually, we have grand designs for our models, but in the meantime, we would love to release these 2 pieces with the HBS1 campaign, and give them to our fans. If you have a 3d printer, we'd love to see your prints, and would be beyond excited if you painted them and shared with our community.

Speaking of community, the Arcknight Discord is available to anyone who'd like to chat, ask questions, check on their custom miniatures, complain, you name it. At the moment it mostly serves as an internal place for us to talk about work, but we'd love to have that change over time as our audience grows.

https://discord.gg/b2gFT8

Shipping Estimates / Whats not finished?

For both HBS1 and Nerdarchy OOTBE, the biggest unfinished piece is the minis artwork. Our lead artist is chugging along, and we've said before we're not going to rush him. He's not an in-house artist, he's a freelancer, and we're not his only client. The artwork is also incredible.

Here's a bunch of new artwork, in NO PARTICULAR ORDER

At the moment, nearly every piece of both campaigns has been sketched, and if push came to shove he could probably start finalizing 2-3 pieces a day. But like I said, we're not going to shove. Damien is having the same sorts of setbacks as everyone else, and some days we get a lot of new art, and other days we don't. I do expect as things get back to normal that the art rate should pick up, but there's other components that aren't ready even if the art we're suddenly finished.

HBS1 has 55 pieces of artwork pending. OOTBE has 28 pieces of artwork pending.

For HBS1's timeline, we're also waiting on Ultimate Guard to get us cases, and we're waiting on colored plastic to do the custom bases. There's nothing we can internally do to rush these processes. Before they're ready, we need to finish about 16 maps, the ambush cart (which includes a new die), and then we create print files and print. We also need to laser-cut a whole lot of bases, but we've already begun this process and we're stocking boxes in our warehouse with bases for when they're needed. We're taking paced steps toward map completion as other components fall in line. Now that the PF2 die is done, we'll have more time to get the maps ready. It's not clear if there will be a delay on polycarbonate (minis) sheets, since we order it irregularly and in large batches. If people want to abandon the Ultimate Guard case, and have their packs ship earlier (this might totally be a thing we do), we'll still need to purchase many more copies of the Black Ultimate Guard Flexxfolio. However, with this in mind, we've slowly been buying these at wholesale and have a stash of about 100 copies atm.

For Nerdarchy's OOTBE timeline, we're waiting on Nerdarchy's finished books. We're also waiting on a new shipment of plastic map cases, and a boatload of 1/8th inch acrylic. Nerdarchy's OOTBE books are scheduled to be delivered to us in August. We're planning to help them out and deliver their books to US-based addresses for them since we have a warehouse and we can stock and ship. Once the book-only shipments are done, we can hypothetically begin shipping OOTBE kits. So we're looking to at least September-ish. We've been making good strides on the OOTBE maps. We will need to make the Objects sheets, and a new die for it as well. It's not clear if there will be a delay on polycarbonate (minis) sheets, since we order it irregularly and in large batches.

To get ahead of the 'crunch time', our next phase is to consider early printing of finished components. For example, if 120/170 pieces of Nerdarchy art are done, we could rearrange the unfinished art to all fall on one page. This would allow Philip and I to begin doing layout work on 2/3 pages, and even print them far in advance. Its a very pragmatic idea, and we'll do it if we ever run out of work to do =P

Arcknight Digital

In the physical world, everything we do is attached so some project or header or category. It's a part of a project, and as we've seen in this update, some of these parts are HBS1 parts, and others are Nerdarchy OOTBE parts - and physically this all makes sense because of production costs and shipment costs.

But in the digital world, everything can finally come together. All of our endeavors, from all of our directions, all boil down into 1 place, one "kit" or one purchase. Or at least, they -could-. We imagine playing some online RPG, and we need assets, and we know these minis, these maps, these objects, these spell effects, they EXIST. But getting them from point A to point Z, when they're in hundreds of subfolders, spread across dozens of products spanning a decade (or more) of real time, can be a nightmare.

Arcknight Digital is a very real, and serious effort to make sure that all these assets from all these locations don't get forgotten. They're bundled, converted, and catalogued. And (when it's working), its AVAILABLE to people who want to buy it.

I never used to think that 'cataloguing' art would be a lot of effort. Oh boy was I wrong. We now have a full-time employee who's job is literally just "convert old file into new file" all day, every day. And she's about 10% done. Its even more fun when we find out our naming convention was wrong (oops, re-rename those 1400 files), or they're in the wrong format (oops, re-reprocess those 1400 files), or hell - the format we're working on that's perfectly good ... could be done "even better" (shit, might as well start over.)

But the light at the end of the tunnel is very bright, and on our patreon we've completely reformatted and re-released over 1000 pieces of VTT art in the last 60 days. Spell Effects are coming very soon, EVERY single 5E Spell, having it's own perfectly named (AND SIZED!) piece of .png artwork. Maps are coming after that. Then we'll extract EVERY conceivable .png object out of every map. Then we'll strip down our existing Object Doodad sheets. The works.

In the mean time, we've got 2 odd conundrums. 1> Many of you are already 'owed' some of this digital art, or at the very least you deserve it for your patience. And 2> Were sitting on DIGITAL assets for physical products that have been delayed. These are both ridiculous.

Well, the easiest way to solve it is quite easy. Give our backers access to "Arcknight Digital". As a concept, we can upload asset packs to DrivethroughRPG, and we can send the vouchers to the email addresses of our fans. Which fans? All of them. And I've talked about this before, but we're taking those strides every day. Once the minis are uploaded in packs to our website and Roll20, we're going to be releasing them to every one of our legacy kickstarter backers, and redundantly to all of our Patreons, and I'll be asking Nerdarchy for the names + email address of all OOTBE purchasers to give it to them too. And of course in line with this, the HBS1 backers and Spell Effect backers and Patreons will all get digital copies of all the Nerdarchy OOTBE assets as well. It's all one family of Arcknight items, and unless something needs to be specifically delayed (lets say for example Nerdarchy does not want digital assets going out before the Books are shipped), I'm of the mind that you should get the assets as soon as they're finished. Especially right now in Covid. You guys should be playing with these wonderful pieces ASAP, and I'll be pushing to get that done.

Essentially, I dont want to further confuse the issue with 'timing' thats not real. If you've supported us over the years, this is one way we're going to pay you back. If you want access to our digital files, as we complete them, all you need to do is become a Patreon, OR back a kickstarter. All of the products we digitize will get released to you.

Eventually, we'll be "caught up" and all of our legacy artwork will have been distributed, and we'll start paying attention. Lets say its 2022, and we make a new file, we'll give the digital versions to anyone who's a current Patreon, OR a KS backer of our most recent project. And things can just flow this way on and on.

I don't think Arcknight Digital will ever truly be a 'service', but I'm considering it somewhat the same thing. Participating in any of our projects at any time is like "subscribing" and we'll give you the corresponding assets.

3d Resin Printing + STL Files

And now, for some news. We have the .STL files we've shown you above, and for a long time we've been planning to do a traditional molded miniatures project. That is probably still happening - but- I didn't realize how far resin printing has come.

I've seen FDM printing for years, and frankly i'm not impressed. But this newest wave of SLA resin printing is FAN. TASTIC. A friend of mine printed us some solid resin prototypes of our minis an I was shocked. All I could think about was "if desktop resin printers are THIS good ... how good are PROFESSIONAL resin printers?11?1one.

Well, follow me...

These prints in "Gray" were printed by an Elegoo Mars desktop printer. They're fantastic, but certainly they have little problems. Some of the supports failed, some of the resin didn't clean off, the handle of the Fire Giant's axe broke off, the owlbear's beak is cut short because the printer has trouble at those tiny details.

I know there's a hobby market for self-printed STL files.

But if "I" were ever going to do something like this - I wouldn't personally want to deal with ANY OF IT. I want to just buy the mini, have it show up - on a base, ready to play. I don't want to clean it, cure it, sprue it, base it, I don't want to paint it, I just want to buy it.

Arcknight has always strived to create the things I attempted to buy, but couldn't. And if it had existed, I never would have had to make it, haha.

We researched, bought a professional 3d Resin printer of our own, and with our first bottle of Smoky Black Resin we did some experiments.

It was immediately clear that our printer was a BEAST. Compare the beaks here, the details on our printer are just a level above. Now, we did have major issues with the supports, and you can see on the Owlbears back all the pock marks from improper procedure.

Apart from supports, and other learning curve issues, the results were just incredible.

I started to research all the best procedures. I began to create the support structures myself manually, I got an ultrasonic cleaning tank, I robbed a bank to get ahold of a case of isopropyl alcohol, and tested how little supports I could get away with since this machine can print at incredibly small layer depths.

VIOLA! No support damage whatsoever!

Keep in mind, these tests were all made on a Smoky Black resin, which is why the insides of the plastic look "black" and all the extremities (where the plastic is thin) look light gray or blue. This is correct for this resin, but not something we were trying to accomplish, it's just what resin we had.

Now that we've got successful prints, we're going to be buying new colors of resin to (hopefully) print the owlbear in some sort of orange or brown, and print our Young Green Dragon in green.

So, whats the plan? Well, if you want to print these yourself, you can buy the .STL files (or get them for free by supporting our projects). Great. But ALSO - we're gonna be printing these ourselves, and if you want a high-end solid resin copy, they're gonna be available.

I don't know how much demand we'll have. I don't know how what the final price will be. I don't know how many will get damaged, or how costly they are to make, that will all work itself out with market forces in the long run.

For now, my -damaged- pieces will be signed in metalic pen for fun, and listed for sale on the menagerie at www.arcknight.com. Our first-EVER owlbear print with the pock-marked back is already up for $30 just for kicks. It's a bit of fun nostalgia, and we'll see how long he survives for sale.

 Arcknight Prototype #1 - Solid Resin Owlbear for Sale 

But in general, all of our HBS1 backers will get first-crack at our solid resin printing service. We're opening up a Pre-order for 1x Owlbear + 1x Young Green Dragon, for $15 total, with free shipping anywhere in the USA. I'll even drop in a cute little card that says thank you. This will ship as soon as it's ready, which will mostly depend on access to the colors of resin I want to find, and how many pre-orders we get. It will NOT wait for your HBS1 order, and you'll get to play with these pieces right away.

 Hardbound Support - Exclusive Set of 2 Solid Resin Prints - Pre-Order 

Also, we are looking for a highly skilled zbrush polypainter to create colored renders for advertising purposes. This is paid work. If interested, please apply to [email protected]

 PS: Patreon

As a final reminder, we have an ongoing Patreon at Arcknight Patreon . It started out as a place to get VTT tokens. Then we added maps. Then doodads and objects. Now with the release of 3d .STL files, who knows what the future will hold. If we start making a great deal of 3d files, it might be seen as another one of those "STL Patreons", but really it's going to have everything.

We're working to make it a single place to get everything in your hobby under one roof. Minis, Maps, Object tokens, .STLs, Papercraft, Dungeon Terrain - whatever were working on, that's what we're going to release to you, with a minimal monthly fee. If you're a fan of ours, and you want to support us, consider joining.

Thank you.

Little update, BIG NEWSSS!! Art, Printing, Laser Fires
almost 4 years ago – Sat, Jun 06, 2020 at 03:47:52 AM

The Quiet Time

Currently this kickstarter is at a stage that I like to call "The Quiet Time", there's plenty happening but it's under the hood, or behind the scenes so to speak. I have little that's tangible to show you, and that's the only reason there hasn't been an update lately.

Specifically, we're waiting on artwork from Damien and he's juggling things at his own pace. It's 2020, and as internet memes will tell us, the world is falling apart. As far as I'm concerned, as long as he's safe and producing, Damien can have all the time he needs.

ART!

The Quiet Time does not mean things are not exciting however, and we've got a bunch of new art, and customs to show off. Normally, I would make sure that those commissioning custom pieces would see their own sketches first - but we're making a small exception here, because everyone is itching for an update and I got a large batch of artwork in all at once. So, full disclosure, some of these people have not seen their own customs yet (although many have).

The plan is to get through all of the custom pieces first (at least for a confirmed sketch / concept) before plowing through the monsters and other artwork needed for this project.

Remaining Customs

I'd also like to make a quick mention, that there are a number of defined slots that were NOT claimed, and these customs are all still available if someone wants them! Would you like to see your face as a miniature, or define the details of one of these key NPCs? Well, now's your chance!

• Starter PC - Human Noble Fighter (Male)
• Starter PC - Human Noble Fighter (Female)
• Starter PC - Human Folk Hero Fighter (Female)
• Starter PC - Halfling Criminal Rogue (Female)
• Halfling Female (Qelline Alderleaf)
• Elf Harper (Sister Garaele)
• Female Paladin (Linene Graywind)
• Silver-Haired Half-Elf Veteran Order of the Gauntlet (Daran Edermath)
• Corrupt Townmaster (Harbin Wester)
• Human Female 'Mother' (Mirna Dendrar)
• Agatha the Banshee
• Vyerith + Vhalak (Male and Female Drow)
• Red Wizard (Hamun Kast)
• 4th Redbrand Ruffian
• 4th Dragon Cultist

Printing in Texas

Arcknight manufacturers our own products, with most of our pieces being printed by Philip in Las Vegas in a shared facility that prints many things. When it's ready we pallet it up and ship to Texas to be assembled and warehoused. This 2-step process isn't the best, but it's where our machinery is. For the least 3 years, we've slowly located and invested in duplicate copies of all of our machines - but everything hinges on our main printer. Without the printer working, all other support machines sit idle in the Texas heat.

Our main printer is a rare and difficult machine. Not only is it hard to find and very expensive, we do trick printing with special materials. There's only a handful of people in the country who can  service or repair these machines - if you can even find a repair agent.

A few years ago, our agent found us a second copy of our main printer and we shipped it to Texas. After moving to our current warehouse, we managed to install, level, and begin repairs, but our agent can only fly out to work on it a few days at a time, once every few months at BEST - and it needed serious work. So it has essentially sat, for almost 2 years now, while we searched high and low for another technician in Texas. We knew they had to be out there... and our long search came to an end very recently.

We have a new repair technician who is wonderfully knowledgable and he's spent almost 2 weeks fixing the machine, and earlier today for the FIRST TIME EVER we have done successful test prints on our own printer, in our own warehouse, under our own roof.

This. Is. HUGE.

Now, before I get too excited we're not 100% of the way there yet, we actually have not done any successful print tests of PLASTIC but it's coming. We printed some test maps today, and they came out great. Our plan is to do an initial print run of an enormous batch of any paper products we need (namely, our maps), but also header cards, cover pages, business cards, anything we can think of. We're going to stock our walls GOOD, and once we've essentially printed all the paper we could need for a while, then we'll start on plastic trials so we can have everything optimized for the real trick printing we have to pull off. So we're not 'there yet' but we can all taste it. We're close.

Having all of our manufacturing under one roof, with properly tuned up machines and a regular production schedule will allow us to produce FAR faster, more consistently, and more cheaply, than we've ever done before.

This could mean that we'll finally be able to stock maps on Amazon, send them to retail stores, and take far larger steps into distirbution. All good things!

Oh, and we have a new Laser

Oh, another thing that happened a few months back right near the tail end of this kickstarter.

Our laser caught on fire, and burned down. Actually, the first day I cut prototype "Horse Bases" to show off during this campaign - the laser burned down immediately after during Test #2.

I didn't mention it on purpose. It may seem strange NOT to mention a massive setback, during a kickstarter campaign, but let me explain - I didn't want to give anyone the impression this was going to be any sort of setback or referendum on this campaign, because it wasn't.

The laser was insured. I knew I'd get a new laser. The new laser would be new, and even better.

It was scary for 5 minutes while we looked at a column of fire in the middle of our warehouse, but nothing outside the laser box caught, there was no smoke or fire damage to the building or anything else. I've run this laser for 6 years, and nothing like this has ever happened before, and when it did happen, everyone did what they were supposed to. We put the fire out, nobody was hurt. Insurance claim went smoothly. And, as I expected, since the old laser was pretty dated, a "comparable" new laser in size and wattage - simply because the new systems and software are so much smoother - effectively was a massive upgrade. Last time, I also bought a laser and imported it from China, but man that was a headache. This time, I researched a few companies and bought one right here in the states that had already been imported + cleaned up. But... there's a catch.

The new laser was shipped to us from Rabbit Laser, and part of their service deal is that they'll fly out PERSONALLY and setup the laser, share their expertise, and optimize your settings for whatever you're cutting. We bought the laser, it was shipped to us, and Covid19 hit. Okay, so we'll set up the laser ourselves, right? Well, of course it being 2020, our laser was shaken dramatically during shipping, and this newly minted and completely pre-optimized laser had a number of screws un-screw themselves during shipping, so that the entire laser bed collapsed at an angle. This caused mis-alignment in multiple places, the bed to be crooked, and a few other things.

I'm decent at laser repair, but this was a multi-level issue and fixing one problem was making another worse. After spending hours with them on the phone doing the alignment and adjustments I could do - the laser just wasn't performing very well. Again, I wanted to tell you guys "we've got a new laser, wweeeeewwwww!" but while I knew it -would be- amazing once set up, I'd be showing off shitty product that was coming off a GOOD laser, because it was not properly set up.

So, I waited more.

A few weeks ago, the owner of RabbitLaser drove out to Texas personally, set the whole thing up, and now it's brilliant and cuts like a champ. FAR superior to our old (and now on fire) laser.

Also, the old laser (imported from China) had a shit chiller that could not handle Texas heat. In the last few years, we basically run the laser non-stop during the cold winter months to get a stockpile of bases come summer, because we knew we can only run the laser 2-3 hours a day at best without it overheating. But the new laser has a FARRRR better chiller, that chills the water so well that the water doesn't even heat up now in the summer, meaning we can run the laser whenever we want. Win-Win all around.

So, we went a few months without being able to produce any bases at all. It was getting mildly close to panic-time, but it all worked out like I knew it would in the end. So we've spent some weeks unceremoniously catching back up on our backlog of plain 8-strips and Supermix panels we need to ship orders, but when I have some downtime...

I slip in some more test prints of Horse Base panels.

But as a teaser for next time....

Colored plastic... horse bases.

Black, Brown, White, Tan horses. Maybe pink piggies? UNICORN MOUNTS!?

Dont worry guys, we'll make em. And if we make them, we're throwing them into your box =P

I'll have prototypes next week!!

Status Update - May 1st. Digital Backers on Backerkit, Custom Miniatures, Progress
about 4 years ago – Mon, May 04, 2020 at 01:08:01 AM

Hey everyone! Nothing major here, but I wanted to give everyone a progress update about what the situation is, and how things are going.

Backerkit / Digital Backers

Backerkit has completed most surveys. Some of the people who did not need to fill out surveys at all were getting reminders to fill out their survey, many of you went ahead and provided basic information to close your surveys, but for those who didn't, we've taken all the $0, $1, and $20 digital pledges, and forced them to show complete fulfillment. Because we didn't need your address to fulfill any of your pieces, it doesn't make sense for Backerkit to track you. Remember, it's just a tool for us to track the shipment of physical items. This does not mean that the digital items have been sent out - we'll do that with a seperate process later.

With that done, there's only about 20 backers missing surveys, and we'll let them trickle in over time.

We have NOT charged credit cards for add-ons at this time. We're not sure when we'll do that, if we wait too long people may have forgotten what the charge is for and file complaints with their backs for strange charges, but if we charge you at the beginning of the production cycle, people expect things to ship when they're charged and we get a lot of emails about when the order will be done. We'll stay in communication and do this at a later date.

Custom Miniatures

Most of the Custom Miniature slots have submitted descriptions, photos, or concepts. I may not have responded to all of them with a thumbs up or "okay" but they're all sitting safely in our in-box. In a nutshell, we read the request, slot where we think that miniature will go best, and put it on a list for Damien to draw a sketch of. We're going to be making a big push to get ALL of the sketches done, and there will be a major update at that time filled with art sketches.

Then, we can make corrections to the sketches and identify any conflicts, and make corrections before anything gets finalized. The big concern with custom artwork / slots is that multiple people might be competing for the same concept, or the same specific slot in the pack.

To make sure this wasn't so much of an issue, we broke apart the commissions into sections, and left ourself a few extra slots to solve conflicts. So far, there really haven't been any conflicts at all, and with the additional Custom slots since the pack has been bumped to 64 pieces, it's been really easy to assign everyone.

We'll have the full list confirming everyones spot / concept idea / and initial sketch soon, and that'll verify if there's any lingering issues, but it's been a very easy process so far.

General Progress / Outline

Here's a general breakdown of the stages that are remaining

• Damien makes sketches of all FPM Artwork
• Arcknight makes updated layouts for all Maps
• Arcknight makes an Objects die for the Ambush Cart
• Arcknight makes Warband die for Warband miniatures
• Damien finishes FPM Artwork
• Arcknight finishes all Map-work
• Arcknight color corrects all art, and processes it to be print-ready
• Arcknight prints Maps, FPM sheets, Ambush Carts in Vegas
• Ultimate Guard prints Miniature Cases in Germany
• Arcknight recieves Miniature Cases in Texas
• Arcknight receives Maps, FPM Sheets, Ambush Carts in Texas
• Arcknight laser-cuts Base Panels, Horse Panels, colored Bases in Texas
• ASSEMBLY - In Texas, we assemble Maps-only batch
• SHIPPING - From Texas, we ship Maps-only
• ASSEMBLY - In Texas, we assemble Minis-only batch
• SHIPPING - From Texas, we ship Minis-only
• ASSEMBLY - In Texas, we assemble Full Boxes batch
• SHIPPING - From Texas, we ship Full Boxes
• Clean-up Round - We Assemble, and directly ship irregular orders or those with semi-unique combinations of add-ons that weren't able to be batch-processed efficiently
• ASSEMBLY - In Texas, we assemble the "Amazon kits"
• SHIPPING - From Texas, we ship Amazon kits to Amazon
• Non-US Notification that Amazon kits are ready to grab. Backers can buy from Amazon, or pay us directly and have us "push" orders from Amazon.

As we finish major elements, we'll have full updates with art and printed pieces.

As a side-note, we've replaced our texas laser with a brand new one. This should be great news in the long run, but it's just not fully cleaned up and optimized yet, and the cuts it's putting out right now are sub-par. So once we get that fixed up and making some great results, we'll be showing off our final horse base panels. I think we've decided to just go overboard and give everyone a strip of regular clear horse bases, AND also toss in some White/Black/Tan horses as well. I just think colored horses will look amazing and you guys are awesome and deserve all the goodies.

Stay tuned!

Backerkit, Digital Stuff, Progress News!
about 4 years ago – Sun, Apr 05, 2020 at 02:49:29 AM

Hello everyone!

Philip is back in the country from Denmark, and we're all settled in for the coronavirus shutdown.

The first phase for this project includes creating more artwork, waiting on prototypes of the case, and backerkit/surveys.

Artwork is trickling in, and will continue for months, and we'll show off all that new artwork every 10-20 pieces or so. We have not heard anything about the custom cases, and this is a growing concern, but I'm aware they're dealing with their own headaches and there's not much for us to do or say on that front. Backerkit surveys are set up, and being reviewed. They're also requiring that we wait for payment to come in from Kickstarter, because many backers' status will change as payments are processed.

This should all be complete in a few days, and we'll launch surveys.

Digital VTT Stuff

Right now, everyone that CAN play dungeons and dragons, is essentially playing at home or online.

This project will be delivering many Digital rewards - a STL dragon, VTT (virtual tabletop) copies of all the artwork, digital maps, etc. So while normally we produce the product, and we work on the digital versions of the files when we can get to them, there's a huge priority to get the digital side of things done FIRST.

- Or - Better yet, to release the digital pieces that ARE done ASAP, and continually update and re-release the digital files as more and more become available.

Patreon

Arcknight has a small but growing Patreon where people can support us for $1 a month, in exchange for VTT files, maps, and bonus items. Eventually, we would like to have a robust Patreon with continuous digital releases, and we plan to kickstart projects on an on-going basis (which will have a demand for those items as continuous digital releases) As far as the digital side of things go, the goals of these 2 platforms completely overlap - we want to put out VTT files for our Patreon, AND we want to release VTT files from our kickstarter(s).

It only makes sense for us to take these 2 separate endeavors and make sure they are NOT two separate pipelines with one inevitably falling behind the other as far as updates and releases go.

One way we can do this - is to consider both our Patreon, and our most recent Kickstarter, one "pool" of support for digital assets. We would like to release packs of VTT files as quickly as we can, and our 'plan' for the foreseeable future, is to give these packs automatically to our Kickstarter backers AND to our Patreon backers.

If you are an ongoing patreon subscriber, or you are an ongoing kickstarter backer, we would like to reward you with our digital releases. And right now, thats absolutely something we can FOCUS on and we can provide for ALL of our fans.

Immediate Releases

Our current priority over the next 30 days is to package up, and release all sorts of Virtual Tabletop Files. Once these files are ready for release, we will be listing them on our website for sale. We will also take these files and upload them to sites like RPGnow (drivethroughrpg) and send vouchers for them to all of our kickstarter backers and Patreons. These releases will NOT be complete - but we want to get them into your hands as soon as possible. It's one small thing we can do to make your lives a little bit better if you're stuck at home and trying to play some DnD online.

And rest assured, as we release more files, we will UPDATE the listings, and re-release them. So while we cannot immediately release all 64 pieces of art for the PC Expansion pack - we can release 20-30 now, and more will continue to be added to that listing over time.