Createyourminis - design online your own miniatures

[lehcym]

Update!
We will launch the kickstarter campaign December the 18th at 18:00 GMT.
Now you have a bigger image on thumbnail mouseover
The building of the model is slightly faster
But more importantly, we added Drop Dead Daisy! She took us time but she deserved it, look at how cute she is!

 

[Vicente]

Hi!

so after trying Heroforge (but not buying), I was intrigued by your site, and sadly, you really need to get a better website. As it is right now, I would never use it to buy a mini, it's too slow, too hard to use (having to hover all the time to see things in detail is not friendly at all), and no preview as you build. Sorry if it sounds bad, but the quality of the minis you provide seems really good, so I hope you work on a better website (I would pretty much copy Heroforge, they have solved these issues very well).

Regards!
Vicente

 

[lehcym]

There are reasons why our miniatures are better while their website is nicer. There were choices to make and we went miniatures first, website second while they did the opposite. To give you an idea, I just check on Unity (the 3D technology they are probably using, or at least a close one) how much polygons you can have for smooth real time. It's about 50k, maybe 100k on a good computer. For Drop Dead Daisy we have more than 7 millions polygons. Granted, you rarely need that much but on a printed miniature you still need a lot especially on big ones, you can't “cheat” with lights or textures like you can do on a screen.

It's up to you to see what you prefer but basically you are saying “your Ferrari is fast and nice, but you really should make it sturdy and all-terrain like this Hummer”.

And to be honest, I think it's the first time ever I see someone saying something like “their products are cheaper and better but their website is really not that good so I will never buy from them”. I'm not sure I understand, I can only hope we will manage to change your mind. Maybe once we have our new servers, making the building much faster?

 

[Vicente]

Now think from the point of view of the customer. I want to build a miniature:

- Every time I want to check a part, I need to wait for a mouse over to see it bigger. That's a lot of waiting. The current previews are too small so they are not usable, and this problem is unrelated of the poly count, it's just not good UX.
- Once I build the whole miniature, then I have to wait to see how it looks. If I don't like it, then I have to start the whole process again. A lot of waiting again.

The ending product may be great, but you are putting too much problems for the user to get it.

And honestly I don't understand the problems. You could:

- Build a real time preview like Heroforge with low poly models.
- User bigger images for the different parts showing the high poly part.
- Allow the user to see the model in high poly (waiting here is fine).

You are not sacrifizing anything with that, and you would make the site way more usable for the users, and much easier for them to buy your miniatures.

Hope it helps! Regards!
Vicente

 

[1Mac]

Intriguing! The price point on Heroforge is a big turnoff for me, so a cheaper version of the basic idea is definitely attractive. The current website is a bit clunky, but I think it's basically useable. Some suggestions:

-Heroforge has various ways of easing choice paralysis. "Races", "Archetypes", and "Outfits" are just different collections of presets that you can apply and play around with. So if you know you want an armored fighter, you can load the "knight" outfit as a place to start, then modify it as you see fit. Some options like this would be easy to add, I imagine, and make the site much easier to jump into.

-Some different body types would be great. "Thin" (for elves, aliens, and non-muscly heroes) and "small" (for children, halflings, and other small races) come to mind.

-Similarly, some other scales would be terrific. I see you have larger scales in consideration as stretch goals; I suggest smaller scales as additional options. 20mm (1/72) and 15mm (ca. 1/100) scales have become increasingly popular in both fantasy and scifi (15mm scifi is especially big). I'm a weird partisan for 1/72 fantasy, so perhaps I'm overstating things, but it seems to me that one advantage of 3D-printing manufacturing is that the same model could theoretically be made in any size, so I imagine the technical requirements for more scales are not complicated. I'm not the one organizing a 3D printing Kickstarter, though, so maybe I'm talking nonsense .

-Specific items: Capes (as "back" clothing), books, orbs, wands, other wizardly implements.

 

[lehcym]

We usually don't do update on the servers so quickly after a previous one but since everybody seem to want one, hey! Update \o/

We added 4 bot heads, 2 for male 2 for female.

A flexible backpack for both models

An electro-truncheon/lightsword for both models


+ an “anatomically correct” pelvis for male (no image for that one).

We also added the snipe rifle for the female model, it was forgotten for some reason.


Beside new objects we are also working on new poses, for dual wielded pistols in particular since it was drawn to our attention it was lacking.

We put some more photos of the printed models, painted or not with a better definition. I hope it will reassure everyone on the quality of the printing and on the “paintability” of the material.

We also put the “mechas” strech goal as first stretch goal and the “steampunk” as second, since this is what people request the most. The others (fantasy football, orcs and bases) will come later.

Furthermore, we will close the early birds Monday the 5th January. Originally they should have been fewer with a better discount but we received complaints right before the start of the kickstarter, saying the early birds should not have a such discount but have a larger limit, we listen to those advices and now there are too many of them left (listening to people is not always a good idea after all), so I repeat, we will close the early birds Monday the 5th January.