Posted in Administrative, art, tagged art, dice, gaming, Gearpunk, gears, metal, steampunk, tabletop on November 8, 2014| 2 Comments »
This is just an addendum to the photo set of the Gearpunk dice. We’ve ordered some in a black nickel finish, and though we don’t have all of them in stock yet thanks to a factory mistake, we have a few. May as well show some beauty photos, right?
D6GearpunkBlackNickel
D8GearpunkBlackNickel
D12GearpunkBlackNickel
D20GearpunkBlackNickel
D20SpinGearpunkBlackNickel
DFudgeGearpunkBlackNickel
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, dice, Gearpunk, ink, Kickstarter, metal, steampunk, Tinker on October 27, 2014| 3 Comments »
If you’ve perused the photo library of the Gearpunk dice, you might have noted that the Zinc-finished dice are rather shiny, especially when compared to the brass and copper variants.
Gearpunk D10 Decader Antiqued Copper
Gearpunk D10 Decader Antiqued Brass/Bronze
Gearpunk D10 Decader Zinc
I’m partial to the antiqued look, both because I like the more rustic aesthetic, and because the antiquing makes the dice easier to read. Since the factory managed to mangle our order’s quantities, we wound up with over 100 extra shiny Zinc D10 “decader” dice. One of them seemed like the perfect test subject, then, to see what sort of simple inking options I might have. I’ll be trying other experiments, but this is the initial test, which I’m pleased with.
I used Speedball “super black” India ink, water and a small hobby paintbrush.
Specifically, this ink:
And a brush a bit like the middle one here:
Though I picked up mine in a set of three at the local hobby store for $2. It doesn’t need to be an expensive brush, just one that will hold a point when wet and is about 1/8″ in diameter or so.
I put eight drops of water and three drops of ink in a plastic cup for this experiment. I diluted the ink to give myself a little time for the ink to dry. When used straight, the ink dries fairly quickly, and I wanted a little wiggle room in case I messed up. This experiment really doesn’t need a lot of ink, either. I would have been fine with 1 drop of ink and 2 drops of water in retrospect, though it’s not a bad thing to have a bit more than necessary… and it’s not like a few drops really put much of a dent in my supply. That’s the nice thing about this ink; it’s great to use, even when diluted.
I used the brush to pick up a bit of the ink, then gently applied it to the background behind the numbers on the die face. The water tension naturally makes the ink settle into the recesses, though I did need to guide it around a little. I added a little with a light touch to the other recesses in the design, and brushed lightly to help spread things around and get some ink in the smaller details around the edges and corners.
Since the ink does run a bit, I did only one face at a time, the one facing up and its edges. Inking the adjacent faces would mean the ink would pool largely on the downhill side of the contours, and while I didn’t want a flat color, neither did I want it heavily lopsided.
Each face, then, took a few minutes to dry. That’s not too bad, and if I were doing a set of dice, one face at a time per die, by the time I finished with the last die’s upright face, the first die could be ready to roll over and do the next face. It’s best if you get each application dry before doing the next, so that timing might not work perfectly, but all in all, it wasn’t too much of a wait.
I’m sorry I didn’t have my camera handy to take photos while I was working, this project had to fit in some of my very constrained time last night and I wasn’t properly prepared.
Here are some photos of the finished die next to one of its unprocessed kin, in a variety of lighting situations (including one that’s just a color correction, taking the yellows out of an indoor photo).
I think it turned out well, much better than I had expected. I’ll be doing more experiments when I can, but this was a good start, I think.
Thank you!
Posted in Administrative, art, tagged art, dice, Gearpunk, Kickstarter, metal, steampunk on October 11, 2014| 5 Comments »
It’s been quiet around here lately. I’m still looking for work, and Unemployment is about exhausted. So, I still don’t have the luxury of spending much time here, and I’m… significantly stressed. Still, this is worth noting. The Gearpunk Dice that we’ve been waiting for since last year are finally here, so we’ll be shipping them out to everyone as soon as we can process them. Thank you for your interest and patience!
It’s worth noting that there are two photos of each single die. This is to show them in different lighting and against different surfaces, in this case, black leather and aged painted concrete.
Posted in Administrative, art, Game Design, tagged art, dice, gaming, metal, Tinker, Tinker Dice on November 5, 2013| 3 Comments »
We now have the Tinker Dice in hand! We’ll be shipping them out to those who ordered only Tinker Dice. The Gearpunk Dice are still in processing (I emailed the company again last night to get a timetable and photos… we’ll pass along what we learn), so we’ll send those out later, along with the Tinker Dice for anyone who ordered some of each.
Thanks for your patience!
Posted in Administrative, art, tagged art, dice, Kickstarter, metal, Tinker Dice on September 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »
This morning we received some more photos of the Tinker Dice. We’re still not quite sure when we’ll have them in hand, but we’ll let you know as soon as possible. We also haven’t heard from the Gearpunk dice production team yet, but those dice are more complex. Again, when we see news, we’ll let you all know. Thanks!
Posted in Administrative, tagged dice, estimation, leather, leather pouches, Tinker Dice on September 19, 2013| 2 Comments »
So that’s what 100 pounds of leather pouches looks like. All 1,000 of them.
Yes, things are starting to come together. These babies will each hold about 20 dice, so I guess I overestimated the need for them by a bit… but I can live with that. Better to have too many and too much room in each pouch than too few and not enough room.
…and yes, sharp eyes might well detect a few oddball colors like pink and purple. We’re still not making promises that we can fill everyone’s color requests, but it looks like we should be able to get close for most people.
Thanks!
Posted in Administrative, art, tagged dice, fudge, gaming, metal dice, Tinker, Tinker Dice on September 18, 2013| 2 Comments »
We received an email this morning from the company producing the Tinker Dice. They sent us a photo of the first Tinker Pentagear Fudge dice, hot off the press, as it were. These are plated in nickel.
The funny thing is, the Tinker Pentagear Fudge dice main production run will be entirely in antiqued bronze. We consciously limited their finish to bronze because they were a promotional design to coincide with the Mechanika campaign, not our standard dice that we wanted to offer in multiple finishes.
So… these are an oddity, a rarity… something that may never really see the light of day for sales. (The Mechanika guys may do another print run someday using these, but for now, if I understand the production company correctly, there are only these four and two others in existence.)
But they are still pretty cool, and I wanted to share the photo to show you what they are doing with the designs. I’m quite happy with their work, and I’m really looking forward to getting all of the dice made and shipped out to everyone. I’ll share more prototype photos as they come in.
Thanks!
Oh, and as a reminder, we’re approaching the main goal on our sister project, the Tinker Deck, and we’re really looking forward to going for the stretch goal of the Rusty Tinker deck. Thanks to all of you who have joined that campaign, too! If you have a minute and the interest, please spread the word about the cards. We’d love to get them out to as many people as we can, too!
Posted in Administrative, Game Design, tagged custom dice, dice, Gearpunk, Gearpunk Dice, PayPal, Project Khopesh, steampunk, Tinker Dice on August 26, 2013| 4 Comments »
The Tinker Metal Dice Kickstarter campaign is over, but there are miles to go before we sleep.
One thing that we need to get cleaned up and sorted is the spreadsheet of who ordered what, and where to ship things to.
To facilitate that, there are the Kickstarter surveys that I sent out, but there are a few oddments here and there, like forgotten shipping for those unfortunately expensive international orders, or people who wanted to add something on but just didn’t get there in time. Kickstarter doesn’t have a mechanism for this sort of last minute, post-project tinkering.
Thankfully, PayPal will suffice. This is hooked up to my Project Khopesh PayPal business account, which is where the campaign funds will be going, so we keep it all together.
So, for a little while, we’ll have this PayPal link to catch these last minute concerns. Also, since it has come up, we’re also going to allow last-minute orders for the next several days, until September 4th. So, please go check out the Kickstarter page for reference, since that’s the pricing and structure that we’re maintaining, including the limit of one “tier” and the add on limits of one of each Add On. I’m sorry, we’re offloading the research to you on this one, since we don’t have a proper storefront set up. This is a quick, short term fix.
We are looking into longer term solutions, including an Etsy shop or something else, but that’s something we’ll do after we get all of this squared away.
If you’re adding on to an existing pledge, please let us know your name over there so we can keep things together. If you’re doing something new, please let us know what dice designs and finishes you’re ordering, and what sort of bags you want and colors if relevant.
Yes, this will mean a bit more work on our end, and we’ll be in touch with everyone who goes through PayPal to make sure we’re all squared away, but we think it’s worth it.
Thank you everyone! This has been a wildly successful project, and we’re very grateful for your support!
Tesh and the Project Khopesh crew
Posted in Administrative, art, Game Design, tagged art, dice, Gearpunk, Gearpunk Dice, steampunk, Tinker, Tinker Dice on August 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »
It’s the last 24 hours of the Tinker Metal Dice project, and we’re rolling out another last minute stretch goal. I know, I know, it’s yet another choice to keep track of, but we think it’s worth it. You all have been surprising, especially in these last few days, so it’s our turn to surprise you a little.
Pretty soon, we’ll most likely be unlocking the Gearpunk D20 Spindown die. It looks something like this:
We’ve also added two new pledge tiers to honor the last 24 hours of the project. Specifically, a tier for 24 Tinker Dice and another for 24 Gearpunk Dice.
It’s been awesome so far, many thanks, everyone!
Posted in Administrative, art, tagged dice, Gearpunk, Gearpunk Dice, metal, poll, steampunk, Tinker Dice on August 20, 2013| 5 Comments »
Many thanks to all of you for your backing on the Tinker Dice project! We’ve crossed through the $14,000 number! It’s all kind of crazy and surreal, humbling and flattering at the same time. I’m really glad that people are liking the designs, and I’m looking forward to getting them out to everyone.
I didn’t have anything planned, but I did, on a whim, go ask some local jewelers if they could make solid or hollow 14 karat gold Gearpunk Dice.
I’m pretty sure they thought I was kidding, since I haven’t heard back. I wasn’t… but then, it’s also highly unlikely that such dice would sell. Just like “plastic isn’t steampunk” (as cheerily noted by Kimberly Babb in the comments over here), gold seems a bit too… rich. Sure, it’s metal, and gold wouldn’t have been unknown to an alternate history steampunk era, but it seems to be that brass, bronze, and steel would have been far more common.
Anyway, I tried. I’m sure someone, somewhere got a laugh out of it.
Speaking of different metals, though, we’re entertaining the idea of a new stretch goal. I didn’t want to commit to one earlier, but the numbers will work out, now that I’ve pestered the production companies a bit more. (I think they are getting tired of me, but since this campaign has been a success, I’ve been able to promise them business, and they are looking forward to making the dice.)
This will mean some more work on our end, come shipping time, just making sure everything is perfect, but if we get to $15,000, we will offer a second choice for a finish for every die design except for the Pentagear Fudge dice. (We’re keeping those in the antiqued bronze to honor the exclusivity of the Mechanika crew and our production collaboration with them.)
The trick is… what now? We’re only going to be offering one different finish. I’m partial to having the second option be the pure zinc dice, which is a nice silverish finish. I’m willing to be convinced that antiqued copper is a better choice. The former allows for a greater difference in look between the two, the latter is more steampunk, and allows for a different set of post-production patina experimentation. (Like the recipes found here… though I’m not at all certain how easy or safe any of those are.)
So, what do you think?
If you’ve a minute and care about such things, please note your opinion below. We’re going to go with mob rule on this one; the finish with the most votes by midnight my time (UTC/GMT-7) Thursday the 22nd will be the one we produce as an alternate, so if you have a strong opinion, lobby for votes! If this seems like throwing you all to the democratic wolves… yes, yes it is. Let’s call it an experiment in rudimentary democracy. That’s steampunky, right?
This alternate finish will be available in any pledge tier, for any dice but the Pentagear Fudge design. You won’t have to do anything special except let us know what finish you’d like on your dice, and we’ll ask that in the end-of-project surveys. As with the designs themselves, you can mix and match. This is even true on the SEEING DOUBLE tier, so you can use that tier as a sort of “super collector” tier if you want one die of each design and each finish (excepting the Pentagear Fudge, of course).
Sample coins from the company making the Gearpunk Dice with relevant finishes… noting that these are coins, not dice… but it should give some idea of what the end result will be.
Thank you again everyone! These are exciting times for the Project Khopesh crew! (To be fair, at this point, it’s just me running the show, but there are others in Project Khopesh that are excited for the project.)
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Tish Tosh Tesh 