Kickstarter Funded

What a great response. From January 15th to March 1st the Kickstarter project ran for my Medieval Settlements and Cities. Thanks to 79 backers the project surpassed its goal of $1500, raising nearly $2500 in pledges. I good portion of those backers are thanks to a few of you who passed on the word.

The past week I have been working on refining my casting techniques in preparations for making the 3960 pieces for those the backed the project. The vacuum pump and chamber purchased, as promised, with the money has dramatically improved upon the quality of the pieces. There are still logistics and some other minor cosmetic issues to iron out before the "full-scale" reproduction process can begin.

I have already received some emails from some of you who did not find out about Medieval Settlements and Cities until it was too late. Never-fear, sometime during the production of the 3960 I will be releasing an ordering system (possibly via this blog) so that you too can enjoy these pieces. Stay informed on any further developments into a Nathaniel Custom e-store by following this blog or joining me on facebook.

The Wait Is Over

After some holiday season delays the moment has arrived. I am proud to annouce the launch of Nathaniel Custom's Medieval Settlements and Cities on KickStarter.com.

I won't bore you with pictures of the City model or any of the details behind the project... please take a few minutes to visit my KickStarter project to read up on the project and watch the 2 minute video. If you don't have time now, be sure to bookmark the page, but don't wait too long, the project will only run for 45 days.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ncustom/medieval-settlement-and-city-game-pieces

And Thus Complete The Feeding Frenzy

Thanksgiving has passed, Black Friday has stormed the local stores, Cyber Monday has crashed the internet, and Christmas is nipping at our heels. All this excitement draws the year to a final climactic finish. It is with much eagerness that these Medieval Settlements and Cities will complete this year and begin the next with great advancement.

I am proud to present Version 2 of the Medieval Settlement. This time, the village defining features are more prevalent at a distance than the previous version. In a few weeks I should have everything in order to launch the Kickstarter project associated with these pieces.

There are two goals behind the Kickstarter project. The first is to determine if there is enough interest and support behind this project to make it worth producing on a large scale. The second is to fund the creation of a vacuum chamber and the purchase of a vacuum pump to improve greatly upon the quality of the final product.

While I Wait...

So far, the Medieval Settlement V2 is on track for being delivered by the beginning of next week. In my spare time I've continued to work on casting methods and reminisced over past artistic creations... that have failed.

May I introduce to you a pottery creation that never came to fruition.



Back when I was in high school art class I had a similar design in my head for one of our clay projects. The problem was that I couldn't make proper progress on the design because there was not enough time.
The solution at the time was to keep damp/wet paper towels on the project to keep it somewhat malleable for the next day. By the next morning the piece would have either dried too much and would crumble when working with it or lose its form from being too damp.
Hind sight reveals that if I were more clever I could have made supports by using a combination of clay and Popsicle sticks or made a frame with wire... but I wasn't as resourceful then, and may not have had access to those anyway.

While waiting for the Medieval Settlement V2 to be made I came to the realization that, "Hey! With this 3D stuff I might be able to make that old project".

So, I have dinked around for several hours to get a rough sketch out in the 3D world which you can now see above.

I'm not 100% sure where I am going with this project. Like in high school, I kind of just feel out some of my pieces as they go. I am satisfied that I have now taken a portion of the original thought and "jotted" it down to keep... we'll see if any further progress is made.

To The Printers

Right off the bat the initial impression of the piece was that the details were far too small for players to take any notice of them. Rather, from a distance the piece looked more like a circular lump of wax. It wouldn't do, so redesigning the piece was in good order.

Despite its visual flaws, I still made use of the piece. It gave me an opportunity to refine my casting procedures and experiment with color matching.
By mixing different ratios of white to a color of choice I can create varying shades of a particular color. Pictured below you can see a range of blues that I had worked on.


Above you can see a wooden game piece lying next to the Medieval Settlement is most closely matches. Though there are a number of variables that make getting a perfect match difficult (texture, dirt residue, light reflectivity) there is a visual variable that calls for proper balance. Take a look at the following two blue Medieval Settlements.

Which of these two Medieval Settlements are the details more easily distinguishable in? When a material is too dark, it "absorbs" the shadows cast by the details. The lighter the material, the more readily the shadows appear allowing the viewer to realize the depth and contour of the piece.
A balance between visual detail and color matching needs to be considered when selecting the final shade.

While "playing around" with colors, I spent a portion of my time reworking the layout and scale of the settlement. Version 2 of the Medieval Settlement is taller and contains fewer elements that are scaled more than 2x larger from Version 1. Because the scale was larger I could add some details that might not have been noticeable, otherwise, on the smaller scale Version 1.


Version 2 is currently off at the printers and should arrive around the 11th of November.

You Rang?

Due to a large back-order it has taken a little longer than expected for my model to come... but now, the wait is over.

My initial impressions?
The piece has a good overall size. It feels as though it will sit nicely in the hand, be easy to manipulate (move) on the board, and not be too distracting compared to the other game pieces.

However, I have my concerns over the size of the village elements. To her credit, my wife warned me over the tiny-ness of the buildings and sadly, the perimeter fence didn't print; which would explain the render not including the fence line. More than likely, the fence was taller than it was wider and didn't meet the minimum wall thickness... in short, the fence was discarded in the print process because it was not structurally sound.

That's not to say this isn't it. I first need to cast the model in a couple different colors to determine if the small features of this piece will be overlooked or blend in artistically with the rest of the game. I can then think about trying to add any missing elements by hand (and then making a new mold) or to just edit my 3D model and have it reprinted.

In the mean time enjoy a couple pictures.






























... standby for updates.
Again, if you haven't participated in my vote at boardgamegeek here,
please take a moment to do so.

Eager Expectations

Today is the 29th of September. Does anyone know what that means? Well not much when it comes to history, but as for the development of this project is seems things are moving along slower than expected.

With a projected delivery date of September 30th (click image to enlarge) and the order for my model still in the production stage I anticipate that we'll be waiting another week for the model to arrive.

In the mean time, if you have not yet voted in the poll that I have placed up on boardgamegeek.com (here) I ask that you take a moment to vote.