Production Update 9 has been posted. Check the link for the full update.

I am pleased to note that the vast bulk of the administrative tasks in getting Bombshell set up are pretty much done. Granted there are still innumerable details in getting the orders ready for fulfillment but all of the parts are in place now for us to begin the final segment of completing the project. Tim, Keri and I are finishing up the final batch of art for the postcards. here are a few progress shots.

Great update, best KS I've chipped in to date that's not only on schedule, but also has great updates.

Alright, I didn't want to be the guy to say it, but why do they all have the same tush?

It wouldn't be so noticeable if it wasn't the tush of a 50-year-old, but there it is...

These are coming up nicely. I look forward to them.

I have to say that I wish I had the spare cash to put in for this one having seen the finished models. They look fantastic.

Production Update 10 (click for full update)

They're spinnin'!

It has been BUSY around the Bomb Factory with all manner of things going on! Since last Saturday when we started production casting at the Reaper factory on the Relics, Maelee and Helen, we wrapped up today with getting ALL of the Helen pieces ready for fulfillment. We chose these particular pieces to start with because we needed more of them than any of the others. The chart below has not been completed with the current production numbers yet.


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I'm still sculpting every day to get the rest of the pieces completed. I'll be delivering six more Babes to Reaper this week for our next mold. There will be some better shots of the final pieces in the next update once I can get the base tabs attached.

Lovely! Lovely! Lovely!

Update 11 is up - click the link for more pictures.

Not sure I like how Betty turned out. Face looks really weird. :(

Looking good!

Really liking what I'm seeing there - looks like I'll be buying some more of the babes when they're on general release

Friday Update day

As always - bigger pictures are posted at Bombshell Miniatures.

PayPal Donations

The PayPal Donations period has ended. Thank you for your continued support! Throughout the remainder of fulfilling the Kickstarter and PayPal Donation rewards we are no longer accepting additional funds via PayPal in anticipation of launching our new online web store. All of our backers and supporters will be notified once the online store is functional so that you can get all the new Babes & Sidekicks releases along with our existing stock that was produced through the Kickstarter drive.

The Bad News . . .

We missed our window for shipping in January, here's why. We were waiting for the first shipment of the resin base inserts from the caster in order to start packaging up some of the smaller backer rewards levels and begin packaging what we have for the Bomb Kits. Since every backer level receives a Helen Babe as a reward, and as a Babe she includes a resin base insert, this was what held up the shipping.

the Good News . . .

The resin base inserts arrived last night.




In the interim we still collated and assembled the other items we had already received and have started packaging the Bomb Kits with the items we now have in stock. Vicky did most of this work by herself while suffering from a nasty winter cold over the last two weeks. She's a trooper!



We will be working all weekend to package up the orders we can now fulfill and start shipping those rewards to backers on Monday.

Sculpts Completed

These pieces have now been delivered for molding.








The Rocket Bike



The 3D prints were picked up from the printer and they are simply amazing. The level of detail and resolution of the prints are superb. According to our print vendor the fuselage alone took over 12 hours to build from the nose up vertically on the build platform. Over the weekend I will be sculpting the rider and the parts will go off to mold on Monday.

It is critical that I return to my client sculpting work in February and get the online store functional as soon as possible to keep operations running smoothly. So, our priority is to get the Kickstarter & PayPal Donate fulfillment completed as soon as possible. Reaper has just received five semi-trailer loads of plastic Bones figures at their factory and will be utilizing most of their staff to sort all these out for the next couple of months. This may affect our casting schedule as they reallocate their labor pool to these tasks. We are looking at alternatives for casting if this becomes an issue.

This week's Progress Report:

• Completed sculpts for Pussy Patrol, Tetsu Ko, Raven Skye, Mira, GhNT Spybot, Shrapnel & Flakk
• 1200 Postcard sets collated and bagged
• Relic casting 89% completed
• HLpR Bot casting completed
• Maelee casting 86% completed
• Sidekicks sculpting completed
• received 15,000 30mm bases from Armada
• received 6,000 30mm, 40mm and 50mm bases from Dice & Games UK
• received 100% of resin Ammo Dumps
• received 50% of resin base inserts
• received 6000 4 mil poly bags
• recieved bike from printer
• downloaded drivers for mail label printer, mailing center now operational
• sent postcards for autographs
• registered and set up online shopping cart



Thanks for hanging in there with us. Hopefully these updates will let you know that we are working diligently on getting your items to you. This has all been a HUGE amount of work for Vicky and I plus our small collection of volunteers and Bomb Squad talent we have been able to recruit. Our number one goal is to get these items to you as soon as we possibly can.

See you next week!
~Patrick
The Sculptdude

Looking good--though not sure about Miria's rock, I hope it's detachable. The samurai girl looks nice too, I've got her earmarked as a Ten Thunders "Sister" proxy for Malifaux.

The mechanic and 'samurai' sculpts look really awesome, I'm intrigued by the other Eastern themed artwork too, overall though everything is very nice indeed!

Just stumbled onto this thread. Immediately when I saw Maelee, I thought "Techpriest Enginseer!" Not that I've even read enough to know whether they'd even be in a remotely compatible scale. Not that it even matters in the sense that she's "come and gone" in the sense that she appears to be KS exclusive. Ah well. Regardless, nicely sculpted minis all around!

There will be a new sculpt of Maelee turning up on the Bombshell Babes shop (along with all the other minis) soon after the KS stuff ships

so you may find your Techpriest Engineer yet

Bombshell Babes wrote:Progress

Thanks for the proofing on the spreadsheets. It is an odd thing because some of the cells have been changing formulas without being updated by me. So far the counts and weights have been accurate, it has something to do with the percentage formulas.

We have already sent out some of the backer rewards with Helen and some postcard sets. Vicky will be shipping some t-shirt rewards later this week.

Vicky and I have been the only one's casting the pieces with additional help at intervals from Martin, Brett and Brian (Inner Geek).

So far we have only been able to cast one day a week since early in January plus a couple of days last week, bringing our total casting production time to approximately six or seven days. With total mold spin of about five to six hours per day, I'm being pretty generous by saying that we've maybe spent around 42 total casting hours at this point. At 40% as it shows on the spreadsheet for that amount of time, with complete amateur casters, it should be pretty good.

This Week

I will be camped out at Reaper this week to get lots of things done. I'm taking a couple of the other Babes to finish up on sculpting and will be molding and casting as well. This is all in addition to the client work I will be doing for them.

The plan is to get caught up on getting everything cast we currently have molds for. We will have another round of casting on Saturday. Then once we get the rest of the molds made in a couple of weeks, we plan to have a Cast-a-thon to finish up the rest of it.



See you next week (sometime)!
~Patrick
The Sculptdude

Update #44

Bombshell Babes wrote:SCULPTS
The two new sculpts that went to mold this week along with some leftovers from last time are Wu Ling Shu and Victoriana.




PROGRESS
Thanks for the proofing on the spreadsheets. It is an odd thing because some of the cells have been changing formulas without being updated by me. So far the counts and weights have been accurate, it has something to do with the percentage formulas.



SHIPPING
We have already sent out some of the backer rewards with Helen, some postcard sets and some t-shirt rewards. Unfortunately we just don't have the personnel power to notify everyone individually with an email to tell you we shipped your stuff. As of now, I believe, the only items that have gone out are a few things from the $1 RACK LEVEL, the $7 PRIMER LEVEL, the $20 CASING LEVEL and the $30 IGNITOR LEVEL. Since a lot of those still have Babes not yet made, we are not done with all those yet.

THIS WEEK



To give you an idea of what has been going on, here is a breakdown for this past Thursday:

5:15am Pack Sculpting kit and supplies, drive to Denton, TX
6:15am Arrive at Reaper factory for moldmaking
6:30am Gather moldmaking supplies and begin cutting pockets
11:45am Mold loaded into vulcanizer
12:00pm Lunch break
1:00pm Demold begins
2:00pm First test spins on the new mold
4:00pm pockets are filling at 100%
5:00pm Begin casting masters
7:00pm Departed factory for return home
7:30pm Arrived home and unpacked

Masters cast - 95% of what was needed to make production molds.

The rest of the days have been filled with sculpting from dark to dark.

PRODUCTION
Vicky and I have been the only one's casting the pieces with additional help at intervals from Martin, Brett and Brian (Inner Geek).

So far we have only been able to cast one day a week since early in January plus a couple of days last week, bringing our total casting production time to approximately six or seven days. With total mold spin of about five to six hours per day, I'm being pretty generous by saying that we've maybe spent around 42 total casting hours at this point. At 40% as it shows on the spreadsheet for that amount of time, with complete amateur casters, it should be pretty good.

We have created another self-imposed deadline to get the rest of stuff sculpted, molded and cast by the second weekend of March. This is padded to take into account many things in the schedule like added client work, tax preparation and mold-making delays.

Kevin got the Thulle sculpt to me this week and it is awesome! I will post pics of it once it has been molded since it has already been cut and keyed for production. The Rocket Bike masters arrived and I've started sculpting the rider which should go on the next mold. That only leaves Delzira, Luta & Shunkaha and the Atomic Punks creature to finish off all the rest of the Kickstarter sculpts.

See you next week!
~Patrick
The Sculptdude

I look forward to when these hit retail.

Has Patrick discussed how they will be distributing them at retail yet? Will they be going to FLGS/web retailers or just online through the BSB website? - Or even distributed through Reaper?

I am going to be after the Vivian Gale model when it's available. It looks like parts "Vivian A" and "Vivian B" are produced already from the spreadsheet, but "Vivian C _____" isn't yet (I can't make out what the third word is).

Can anyone else read that?

Damn, I did not choose those two sculpts... but they would be very cool to own.

Wu Ling Shu could be a nice proxy for Malifaux models like the Ten Thunders.

Anyone know of a good steampunk RPG (aside from Through the Breach)?

 RiTides wrote:
I am going to be after the Vivian Gale model when it's available. It looks like parts "Vivian A" and "Vivian B" are produced already from the spreadsheet, but "Vivian C _____" isn't yet (I can't make out what the third word is).

Can anyone else read that?

Link to big picture of spreadsheet.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Anyone know of a good steampunk RPG (aside from Through the Breach)?

I'm fairly happy with Airship Pirates ( http://www.cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/airship-pirates/ ).

 Azazelx wrote:
Has Patrick discussed how they will be distributing them at retail yet? Will they be going to FLGS/web retailers or just online through the BSB website? - Or even distributed through Reaper?

He'll be selling via the Bombshell Babes webstore,

No word on distribution of any sort

A bit of a cross post here, but it seems that this news may well be of interest to followers of this

Apparently more Patrick Keith 'babe' may be incoming for the following KS

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/97182592/spinespur-the-survival-horror-miniatures-game

the project creator posted the forllowing in the comments

"@DerHerrNarr: there's a good possibility I will have pictures of the nightingales before this campaign is over. I was just talking with Patrick Keith (the Bombshell Babes owner/sculptor) and he will be sculpting the nightingales and the female shattered for this campaign. He is a top-notch sculptor of desirable women, so to me he is the perfect choice."

New weekly update

PROGRESS

Today we are on our way out the door to do some more casting after missing last weekend. Next weekend we will be recruiting local friends and family to come out and have a big Cast-a-thon to finish up as many of the remaining pieces as we have molds for.



Many of you have seen some of my new client work pop up here and there. Some of these pieces were commissioned before we launched the Bombshell Kickstarter and the clients have been patiently (and not so patiently) waiting to get them.

Our current push to complete the project is dependent on many behind-the-scenes factors. The things I can share, I do. Most of the work I'm doing I cannot disclose until it is posted by my clients, so since it affects my production schedule it appears as if the Babes™ are the only thing in the works. However, there is currently a juggling act going on here at the studio to get a little bit done on everything.

None of the work is being rushed. To be clear, I've been doing this for a few years now, and I know how long it takes me to sculpt a piece. Typically I can glance at a piece of art and breakdown the necessary steps of what it would take to make a model in a manner of seconds. Getting to these steps, when there are sixteen armatures in various stages of completion can be daunting. But, as many of you know who have done a bit of modeling or conversion work, there is a curing time to the sculpting putty that requires work to occur in cycles. That is why I have many many figures in progress at the same time. Even though I can cure the material faster by placing it under my heating lamp, it still all occurs at a constant pace. Also, we have to work with Reaper's availability to help us with moldmaking. Their Bones project and the looming Reaper Con threat are all factors that compress our working time. All of this scheduling is due to coordinating the various aspects of our project with other folks who are helping to make the Babes™ possible.

Our main production delay comes from the fact that we launched the project in the fall and lost lots of time due to holiday obligations and the unexpected emergency with Shas'tan's surgery. But, everything seems to be back on track and we have a new strategy to complete the project over the next few weeks.

Now here is a cool shot of Betty and Shrapnel painted by the awesome brushmistress Jessica Rich. One set to keep and one set to share.



See you next week!

~Patrick

The Sculptdude

That's a great paintjob to have as their studio set.

THE PROGRESS

The Cast-a-Thon was a huge success this weekend. We jumped from a 43% completion mark to just over 80%!!! We had a great turnout with Reaper crew Melissa Grady, Martin Jones, Bryan & Shannon Stiltz pitching in to help Vicky, Brett and I.

Spreadsheet



We cast a full day on Saturday with Vicky and filling a couple of hours on Sunday to finish off some remaining runs.










After casting, the pieces went through a bit of QC and inventory to make sure we had what we needed.





This will give us ALL the remaining parts to complete the rest of the Bomb Kits and a big jump on fulfilling the Babes™ choices. Here is what you will get in your Bomb Kit.



This shows the Bomb Kit pack with a shirt and three of some of the many Babes™ choices you could select.



THE NEWS

So far I gotten autographs for the card sets from Keri Ruediger (shown), Tim Collier, Wayne Reynolds, and Patrick McEvoy for the rewards levels that offered them. I need to sit down and scribble on my cards to finish out the sets.



Paint work continues to roll in from Jessica Rich. Here are her pieces for Victoriana, Raven Skye, and some new shots of Betty & Shrapnel.





THE PLAN

The remainder of the week will see us packaging the rest of the Bomb Kits and getting them ready to ship out while I complete the sculpting on the final batch of Babes™ and Reinforcements Sets to get them ready for molding.

See you next week!
~Patrick
The Sculptdude

Those paint jobs are quite nice, and turn the models into something I was passingly interested in into something I'm definitely interested in!

Man, this stuff is all looking awesome!

Wish I had been able to get in on the Kickstarter.

~Eric

Hopefully not long now!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bombshellminis/bombshell-babes/posts/441817

Got mine in the mail today. Snapped a quick shot of Maelee and the doc with my phone.



Weapons!

I received my Bomb Kit pledge earlier today, everything looks fine other than a small amount of flash on 1 or 2 of the models.

The only thing i don't really like is the size of the head on the 'pussy patrol' model. The original artwork makes her look like a badass, while the actual model looks more like a 13 year old girl cosplaying in power armor.

I forgot to add postage to my pledge, and emailed them a couple of times asking them to send me a paypal invoice to cover it. They never got back to me, nor have I heard anything from them as their last update said they were contacting everyone without postage added to get them sorted out.

I'll see what happens in the next couple of weeks.

I missed their pledge manager time to add more to my order until I saw the message saying they'd just closed the window. Shame, since I'd have added some more figures and the postage. I doubt I'll be buying extras from their retail website, since there's so much else to buy out there.

Got mine as well.

Only 2 gripes, one minor and a more important one. The important one is Pussy Patrol... holy head size, batman. But Bug spray is amazing, so I might just end up swapping them.

Minor proportion gripe is with Mira. He torso (not talking about boobs) looks like it is lacking in ribs.

I just ransomed my Babes from the post office (customs charges, sigh), and they are magnificent indeed

Patrick also included a neat and unexpected extra for me



which is excellent

and the postcards are very neat too (note that babes based on the licenced Mat Dixon art don't have cards, you'd have to buy them direct from Mat Dixon if you wanted them)






Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seeing the minis in the hand always gives you a different feel for them than just photos and based on this my three current favourites are

Dusty Paige (My top pick from the art, and the mini is even better)


Wu Ling Shu (Not so keen on the art, but the mini herself is spectacular, so she's now in my top 3)


Victoriana (I've always had a fondness for this period in art, games and books)


As well as almost all the babes I also picked up all four reinforcements which all came out very neat too

Professor Karrick & Thule (I'm glad the Professor is here, otherwise she'd be competing for a top 3 slot too)


Shunkaha & Luta (I got an extra top hat, Patrick obviously remembered me raving about it in the KS comments, Yay!)


Atomic Punks (the extra top hat fits the 'monster', but I may save it for something else)


HS38 Rocket Bike & Rider


the resin casting on the bike is really good, the panel lines are nice and sharp and no distortion of the shape at all

Status Update (It's marked backers only, but there's nothing remotely sensitive in it so I'll chancing cross posting)

"Hey all!

We are working our way through just under a hundred remaining packages that are being sorted out. Sunday morning will see us casting supplemental pieces for things that are currently in low supply and some padding for stocking the web store.

We will need to run about 100 more of each Babe and a few Sidekicks.

We are also completely out of resin base inserts. I have placed one order for about half of them and will be placing another order on Monday along with additional Rocket Bike parts.

So - if we are working through an issue with your package and it has been resolved, your packages will go out as soon as we have the resin base inserts to drop in them.

The web store is almost done. Just adding a few more items and pictures and it should be up and working by Monday. It's not pretty yet but at least it will be functional.

Thanks for your patience.

Patrick"

so it looks like the webstore is due to go live this Monday if you fancy any of the minis and missed the KS

The Bombshell Babes webstore is now officially up and running

http://bombshell-miniatures.highwire.com/products/

so if you liked the look of anything you've seen you know where to go!