Nine Limited Edition Collectors' Dice celebrating the Exploration of the Southern Emisphere, the Solar System, and Fantasy Universes!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Here we go!
about 7 years ago
– Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 04:55:21 PM
There will be a Constellation Dice print & cut set soon!
The tiny campaign has reached its funding goal, and as promised you all will receive a free link to the templates (when they are ready) with no need to pledge.
Those of you who have generously contributed anyway, will receive an exclusive additional template as my special Thank You! What would you like to get?
Who knows, maybe the €200 stretch goal will be reached too, and the set will also include a version of each template in a new style: brown ink on antique paper, to make yourself some neat DaVinci looking Constellation Dice :)
The campaign will end on tuesday and it's just €3 for nine PDF templates, so you can still spread the following link if you want to help hitting the stretch goals: http://bit.ly/ConstellationDicePapercrafts
Let's see what happens!
Progress
about 7 years ago
– Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 12:19:49 AM
This will be a long update! Let's see if I can get your attention.
How many sides there are in a full dice set?
It's easy enough to find out... so I won't tell you :)
This time I will shortly write about how many sides there are to manufacturing and delivering a full dice set from ideation to fulfillment. This will help me to track all I have done during the last month, and what is left to do before you'll be able to get your dice!
Design
As you know, the campaign evolved from the initial 4 dice (Southern Sky d6, Solar System d10 couple, Desired Constellation d6) to a full blown set in a month's time, and I had to finalize the graphics while the campaign was live. While I already had many drafts ready, it took some time to put together a cohesive set from the starting point of several strongly themed individual dice, and I had to do this while running the campaign.
Since I want to offer the absolute best to you all, as soon as I finished to setup the BackerKit platform (which also took about one month) I spent some time handling the prototypes to check if I could polish further their look, also according to your suggestions.
Most of you agreed to keep the current appearance, and I just did the following:
very slightly bigger dots whenever possible, for a better glow-in-the-dark effect (which wasn't originally planned for the full set)
very slightly smaller numbers to keep the star theme up-front while preserving readability
dotted orbits on the Planets d10, and a hint of rays on the Moons d10, to make them more visually different since there will be monochrome couples too (not in the original plans)
a more recognizable design for Gemini on the Zodiac d12
more stars all over the circumference of the Milky Way d20, less on the poles
narrower underlines under 6 and 9 on the d12 and d20
Spot the differences!
Fulfillment
Your surveys have been carefully analyzed in order to calculate the final quantities to be manufactured, including some extra to hit the minimum required volumes, and to split your (over 600, almost all different) custom orders in groups of similar content.
I have now compiled a simplified packing list that will make fulfillment a bit faster and efficient, because instead of picking dice one by one for each of you, about 25 combos will be prepared first, and handled later as single items. An adequate number of plastic bags and shipping envelopes has already been sourced, and will soon be filled with the 1st edition dice that I have by now received. They all fit in half a shoe box!
Your credit cards have been charged, and an advance as been paid to start production of the new versions, to be completed in mid May for the Desired Constellation dice, and mid June for the 8 designs that will be manufactured by Q-Workshop, as anticipated.
Business
In order to handle your funds, and to deal with the factories, I have hired a consultant to get me a business licence for commerce. I will not dive into details, but this turned out much harder (and slower) than expected. I was legally not allowed to place an order to the factories without a licence, so I had to wait until things got sorted.
This basically ate the 1 month cushion that I set for unexpected delays, and I guess most of you will receive the dice in July (still in time for the Voyager Anniversary in August though) as packaging and shipping will take their time, too.
On a positive note, the BackerKit store raised about €6000 between upgrades and pre-orders, and even if most of that will pay for the additional dice to be sent and for taxes, I will still be able to give a little something back to you. More details soon!
Advertising
Kickstarter is currently promoting its "All in 1" initiative for short 1 week campaigns, and on tuesday I will launch a tiny €100 one as a fun experiment, to see if there is any interest in my designs as PDF print & cut papercrafts (as I have been asked to make some as decorations or learning tools for kids) while spreading the word about the BackerKit pre-order store. You do not need to contribute to this one, as if it gets funded you will be able to download all the PDF for free :) but it would be useful if you could share the link on your social accounts:
My latest role is apparently that of a Sheriff, survey department, going after the last nine fugitive backers that couldn't receive (or answer to) my messages. Maybe their rewards are...
Thank you for supporting me in this adventure!
Done.
about 7 years ago
– Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 09:16:31 PM
As promised, last monday your surveys have been locked to let me count the exact number of dice I will have to order. Only 25 backers didn't fill-up their survey, so I was able to obtain an accurate estimate of those that you will get:
Over ten thousands!
To reach the minimum order quantities of 500 dice per type/color, I will need to make even more, and as such there will be an additional (limited and final) amount of sets that will still be available for pre-order from now on, amounting to about:
30 each of the Night Black with Silver paint / glowing Night Black / glowing Sky Blue sets;
15 each of the regular mixed color / inverse mixed color sets, painted white;
100 each of the regular monochrome Night Black / Sky Blue sets, painted white;
250 couples of Northern / Southern Night Black d6 with Silver paint
200 couples of Northern / Southern Morning Sky d6 with glow-in-the-dark paint
200 couples of Northern / Southern Morning Sky d6 painted white
Very few individual dice with glow-in-the-dark paint will remain, of about 1000 left in mixed colors, that are not parts of a complete set.
If you have upgraded your reward or added more dice, your credit card will be charged for that next week, so please verify your available funds to avoid any delay.
If you are one of the 25 missing backers, please check your e-mail for instructions on how to retrieve your survey, and please be sure to complete it as soon as possible.
Have a great weekend!
Almost done!
about 7 years ago
– Wed, Feb 01, 2017 at 12:11:35 PM
Today is the deadline for submitting your survey.
Only 70 backers are still "missing", but many of these have already expressed their preferences, and should simply fill-in their address or payment information.
If that's your case, please remember to press "confirm" at the end of the survey to submit it.
Lockdown!
You will still be able to modify your preferences and add more dice until this weekend.
Since I've received some requests for assistance to get "all the new dice", this is the complete list of what you should include, for a grand total of 42 dice flavours:
1 Polyhedral set of 7 dice (Night Black Regular)
1 Polyhedral set of 7 dice (Night Black Glowing) 1 Polyhedral set of 7 dice (Sky Blue Regular) 1 Polyhedral set of 7 dice (Sky Blue Glowing) 1 Polyhedral set of 8 dice (SILVER Paint) 2 Desired Constellation Dice d6 (1 Night Black, 1 Sky Blue) 2 Constellation Dice d6 (Morning Sky Regular) (Northern Sky + Southern Sky) 2 Constellation Dice d6 (Morning Sky Glowing) (Northern Sky + Southern Sky)
Please note this list doesn't include any of the 4 flavours manufactured for the 1st Edition.
Surveys are out!
over 7 years ago
– Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 10:14:05 PM
I would like to thank you all for being so responsive!
After a couple days since the surveys are out, about 70% of you have already finished to compile them. There is still time for the remaining 30%, but I would like to be sure everyone has received and acknowledged the link.
I have left quick informative notes to some of you; unfortunately I found out they appear only after you have confirmed your answers. You will also notice there is a list at the end titled "Pledge items", where each item is expressed with a code, which you might want to read.
It looks like this:
Please double check if you are getting exactly what you want!
The list is important because it shows what you will receive, and it includes also items for which you could not express any preference, like some Northern Sky d6. Under this list you will also find out what you have added to your reward.
Now... aren't you curious to know what everyone else did order? :)
You can still get everything in any quantity, because the factory order isn't finalized yet.
To put things in perspective, the leftmost column is for 80 couples of Constellation Dice d6, while only 25 Black/Silver sets were ordered. They are going to be quite rare :)
As soon as the surveys are closed I will place an order and lock the available quantities for pre-orders (in total there will be about 50 more Black/Silver sets, and 100 more glowing sets, on top of about 100 regular sets per color). That's it...
