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Hi Everyone,

Back where we started it all over a year ago now and we've come an awful long way this year with new lines, new products and some truly amazing miniatures that have been painted with our unique paint.

And we're not stopping going into 2019!

We have two new products launching next year which we think the whole community will like after all the extensive feedback we've had.

The first of our new launches will be the INSTAR Alpha range, this is designed to be much like the highly regarded Foundation line with a small improvement in Viscosity, this paint will still have all the major value that the Foundation paints did in terms of coverage and detail picking, but isn't nearly as thick so it will be much more user friendly to those who have never used it before, in a way it's like the Citadel Base paint made just a bit thicker.

Also these will be in our very own colour scheme, most of the colours will be closely related to some of the Original Foundation colours, but we have a separate product for that in our Vintage line (Links to the store areas in our signature)

The second of our new products will replace the Bundle Packs in our store and will become one (possibly two....) Discovery boxes.

This all came about from sustained feedback on Social Media as well as direct communication with us that while it seems an awful lot of people are interested in our product and our claims of the 98-99% colour match we have to a large section of the Citadel line, they are slightly reluctant to want to try the paint on their own miniatures, which we completely understand which got us thinking, if we have a large proportion of people wanting to try the paint, what's the best way to do it?

And that's where the discovery box came in (Working title so far ), in the box we have in mind for the moment will be 6-7 5ml bottles, an extremely easy to understand and follow colour wheel (you might have seen us working on this on our Instagram page if you follow us there), a size one high quality water colour brush, a simple mixing pallete (To work alongside the colour wheel) and 1-2 miniatures to paint on. All of this in one box with enough colours to mix up to 44,000 different shades....if anyone manages to do that let us know

The Second box will contain pretty much the above except it will be 6-7 paints dedicated to the model, much like an Airfix kit.

It's still very much work in progress but we are really excited by these new products next year and we hope that you will be there with us as we head into a new year and new horizons for us here at INSTAR.

We'll update this with images as we go up until the launch.

Looking forward to the Alpha range

I'd suggest just doing the second box, or possibly even a variety of them. E.g. a couple of WW2 minis and appropriate paints for them, a couple of fantasy minis and corresponding paints, etc... Not sure I'm seeing the point of the first box, if the second box is basically the same but with an appropriate mini to use the paints on...


Edit: Oooh. Or... Depending on how much work you want to make for yourself - you could offer a 'build your own' discovery box. Have drop-down options for choosing the bundled model(s) you want and which half a dozen paints are included. No idea how many orders you receive, what your setup is like for packaging and distribution and so on, as to whether this is viable though.

We've received the first set of models and brushes for testing in the boxes that we plan to release in Summer 2019.

At the moment it's a big test of Orks, Dwarves, Marines, Mechs and a few others. Currently we're working with a wide range of manufacturers to find the right product for the box(es).

This is the Marine, we're going to do this in Ultramarine colours (Just because we can )



As for the brushes, we've found a company that claims to have better brushes than the Citadel line, it's going to take a lot more testing but so far the brushes have been excellent and continually retaining their points (And they're not W&N or Rosemary&Co)




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Crispy78 wrote:
I'd suggest just doing the second box, or possibly even a variety of them. E.g. a couple of WW2 minis and appropriate paints for them, a couple of fantasy minis and corresponding paints, etc... Not sure I'm seeing the point of the first box, if the second box is basically the same but with an appropriate mini to use the paints on...


Edit: Oooh. Or... Depending on how much work you want to make for yourself - you could offer a 'build your own' discovery box. Have drop-down options for choosing the bundled model(s) you want and which half a dozen paints are included. No idea how many orders you receive, what your setup is like for packaging and distribution and so on, as to whether this is viable though.

Hi there,

For the build your own, we're going to move away from it. It was an idea we had, but if we wanted to go towards retailers with it this wouldn't really work but great minds think alike

As for the first box, it's designed to show how well our paints mix together to create fantastic blends and colours which if we were to produce them, we'd end up with a paint line of around 40,000 different colours. A good example of this mixing and blending is this Space Wolf painted by one of our customers using just two of our colours after doing a basecoat with Tamiya Paint.



We'll probably still do the second boxes as we feel these are going to be better sellers, but for those who wish to create the ultimate blends, the first box with just 6-7 colours will be all that's needed

sounds like a great idea! I was very impressed with your paints and I'm just going to pick up my second order from you from the post office today.

if people want a "build your own" bundle then your 2mm sample sizes would work great for that. I'd love to see collections and bundles for ease of ordering (like a discounted pack of all your flip paints, or washes, or metallics)

Alpha range sounds great, I look forward to seeing what you come up with in the future!