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Hi guys!

Hector (Hec) Moran here. I wanted to share with you some art and links for our ongoing indiegogo campaign, Black Betty. Check out the video and campaign page for more details and let me know if you got any questions on the project. All images are still of a Work in Progress sculpt.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/painting-buddha-shares-black-betty/x/2449042#home








And here are some images of the piece in its more updated state after the first monkey companion, Bam, was unlocked:

I like the figure and was looking at backing on the first day but theyve designed the stretch goals rather poorly. Theyre nearly double their funding goal and only 2 stretch goals have been achieved on what, with it being indiegogo and a collectors only/niche product, is never going to get much more than where its at now. Theres been basically no movement in terms of funding in the last week. They should have just stuck to a few simple pledges and clear stretch goals that expand all of the major pledge levels in the same way with the same items. Do we even know how much cash they are asking for between goals? Of course, my opinion wont change anything.


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Not to mention the deal just isnt there. Its nearly $90 canadian / €60 for just Betty with shipping and no stretch goals. Is that a normal price for this kind of product? Its certainly not a discount.

 greywulf wrote:
I like the figure and was looking at backing on the first day but they've designed the stretch goals rather poorly. They're nearly double their funding goal and only 2 stretch goals have been achieved on what, with it being indiegogo and a collectors only/niche product, is never going to get much more than where its at now. Theres been basically no movement in terms of funding in the last week. They should have just stuck to a few simple pledges and clear stretch goals that expand all of the major pledge levels in the same way with the same items. Do we even know how much cash they are asking for between goals? Of course, my opinion wont change anything.

Not to mention the deal just inst there. Its nearly $90 Canadian / €60 for just Betty with shipping and no stretch goals. Is that a normal price for this kind of product? Its certainly not a discount.

I have to unfortunately agree on all the accounts. Originally I was skeptical at backing just because of the way the stretch goals were done. Although the concept of how they did the stretch goals was interesting, the concept has too many gaps. It takes 42 sold pledges, to unlock a level, which range from €63 - €120. It could be around €2646 - €5040. Pledge per pledge value isn't the same making it difficult to unlock in this fashion when the €120 should have counted as double pledges. Double Trouble and above count as 2 pledges essentially but no one has gone for those. We need another 22 backers to unlock Level 2, then another 42 backers from there.

It also would have done better on KS as the biggest issue I have with Indiegogo is that "you will be charged immediately upon completing the checkout process, not at the end of the campaign." Considering it is the holidays and you don't get that extra X amount of days cushion to get the funds, it tends to work against certain campaigns that serve a niche market like this. Given the size of the miniature, the material it is made from the current price for it seems like the retail price.

Given all that though I probably would have backed if it was on KS and it wasn't the holidays though.

Hi guys! I got some surprises for you.

greywulf - You make some good points and your opinion CAN change things. We're new at this crowdfunding deal and we're learning lots. Have a look at our latest update on the gogo and you'll see some of what we recently unlocked and our plans for the remaining goals. We're working toward making our stretchgoals clearer and easier to grasp. Most backers are going for the Everything Betty pledge which is € 105, we've just slashed our leveling up from every 42 backers to 21, which means in money terms about every 2.5K we're unlocking more levels. We aim to give our backers more and more value for their buck and build good faith for further projects up ahead.

Dark Severance - I hear you, hopefully you like our Xmas update in the campaign, now it's every 21. The second monkey is unlocked and we're heading into the alternate arm with different weapons, boot knife is unlocked, and a few other custom and customization parts for Betty. Other unlocks can be seen in the list such as the making of materials and other things we're discussing. We chose Indiegogo over KS because of our business model where we give a percentage to charity, 8% will go to the Bob Marley's One Love, and another 8% goes to the Jim Cronin fund for their ape rescue center. It's a lot of info for people to take in and for us to convey, but we're learning how to optimize it and I'm sure we'll keep improving during this campaign and even more in future projects. Happy Holidays!

If you guys have other questions or ideas for improving the campaign and future projects we're all ears, we do listen and are paying attention. Our main intention is to make cool stuff for you, for the Hobby and community in general. In the mean time we wish you all a great Holiday season with your loved ones!

42 euro is about the normal price for a 75mm, although i do not understand that you go for the 75mm scale so you are targeting pure collectors and not the wargamers? if it was 54mm or 32mm i would have been interested.
Hope there will be a 32mm later.

Hey guys!

Zaphod here, aka Michael, the guy who started Painting Buddha.

Greywulf and Dark Severance - you are both right. And as Hector already mentioned, we have updated our stretch-goals since. We are at level 5 right now and with every 21 backers of ANY level (yes, even the 21€ Art/Digi-Packs), we are confident that we will be able to offer even more cool stuff in the remaining 10 days of the campaign.

As Hector said, we are new to crowd-funding. Kickstarter is not available in Germany as of yet and - even more importantly - does not allow any charity involvement. Thus we went with Indiegogo - which is a great platform in itself, even though it clearly has less reach than Kickstarter (especially with regards to our hobby)

@Jehan-reznor: Betty is a 75mm collector's miniature and as such clearly not intended for gaming, that is true.

But the masterclass miniature painting instruction video that comes with the Digipack or the larger pledges clearly is aimed especially at gamers and painters who want to take their skills to the next level.

Painting Buddha's core objective is to help you 'be a better painter'. And offering painting instructions tutorials that allow you to follow some of the world's best painters paint a miniature every step along the way is how we achieve that.

Learning about important concepts such as the right dilution of paint, wet-blending, layering, glazes, NMM/TMM, weathering.... (the list goes on and on) is what everything we do is all about. And learning these important skills on the same, beautiful miniature that the artists use in their videos is clearly the best way of actually becoming a better painter. In this context, using a larger scale miniature helps a lot to understand and apply techniques better and result in skills that can be transferred to smaller scales easily.

With Black Betty we offer all of that. And with Painting Buddha Shares we offer even more: A fair way of doing business.

With a whole bunch of successful releases already under our belt I can guarantee you that Black Betty will be our best release yet. And to better understand our idea of fairness check out our videos in our free Painting Buddha Community College and our voluntary Painting Buddha Academy

Best regards from Berlin,

Michael

Late response by me but thank you Michael and Hector. I'm a big fan of the work you guys are involved in and I would like to back but i cant with the price point. Best of luck in the last 3 days!