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Post by printableheroes on Feb 21, 2017 14:58:44 GMT -9
Oh man I just got caught up on the "Papercraft is dead" digression portion of this thread.
In my opinion, it's still an untapped market. As the current generation of paper crafters continues to take advantage of the spike in popularity of D&D and the resurgence of board games in popular culture we're eventually going to get on the radar of some truly amazing artists from the comic book and video game industries who are looking to breakaway from the industry by adapting to the ease and flexibility of crowd sourcing (patreon, kickstarter, etc) and they will take paper crafting to a whole new level.
No matter how cool physical 3d minis are, until they can resolve the cost/time/effort involved with producing, buying, painting, etc paper craft will always have the edge in accessibility. Not to mention we're no where near the level of dynamic-awesomeness we can get to with paper minis; that bar is just gotta get set higher and higher.
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Post by Christopher Roe on Feb 23, 2017 14:25:36 GMT -9
In my opinion, it's still an untapped market. As the current generation of paper crafters continues to take advantage of the spike in popularity of D&D and the resurgence of board games in popular culture we're eventually going to get on the radar of some truly amazing artists from the comic book and video game industries who are looking to breakaway from the industry by adapting to the ease and flexibility of crowd sourcing (patreon, kickstarter, etc) and they will take paper crafting to a whole new level. I...don't know about that last bit. I came from an amateur video game development background, went into papercraft and ran one of the top 3 gaming papercraft businesses for almost a decade, then got back into video game development as a professional a few years ago. I was also a freelance graphic designer, and I've got some experience helping out with a Kickstarter. In addition to that, I've talked to professional artists in other industries about getting into papercraft over the years, so I can speak a little to that as well. The problem is, there's just not a lot of money in papercraft compared to video game development or being a concept artist, or even being a graphics designer. When the professional artists I've talked to got some sense of the numbers behind papercraft items, it just wasn't worth their time compared to doing straight concept art. Like, we're talking peanuts. It's a super niche, tiny market. As a graphic designer, using many of the same skills I used for papercraft, I made a lot more money off B2B commissions for things like brochures, flyers, business cards, and whatnot, to the point where if I had to choose between a new model and a new graphic design client, the business client almost always won out because it was a larger chunk of change. As a 3D modeler/animator, I use a lot of the same skills that I use to develop 3D papercraft models. Doing it for videogames pays a lot more AND a giant bonus is the fact that I don't have to do a bunch of extra layout, instruction, or marketing graphic design work on top of all that either. I just build the model, sometimes rig and animate it, and hand it off to somebody else. As a senior programmer at a video game studio, I make even more money than any of the other jobs above can offer, and if I left my job to go back to papercraft full-time, my wife and cats would probably divorce me or get me committed to a mental health facility. Sorry for the novel, but I needed to lay down some background for the actual point I'm about to make. Papercraft isn't something I feel that anybody would want to "break away from" a much more lucrative industry for, at least not on a full-time basis. Kickstarter is a pain in the ass for many reasons. Patreon doesn't look all that good either, and I've been told that it's a lot of work just to get enough people to follow you to make it worth your while to do it for money, and that's even before you sit down to actually do whatever it was you set up a Patreon account to do. It's much more likely that anyone in those industries would get into papercraft simply as a hobby, whether paid or not. It's still a hobby for me, and I lost interest in getting paid for it a long time ago when I saw how much more joy people were getting out of my models after I made them free to download.
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Post by printableheroes on Feb 23, 2017 17:03:51 GMT -9
In my opinion, it's still an untapped market. As the current generation of paper crafters continues to take advantage of the spike in popularity of D&D and the resurgence of board games in popular culture we're eventually going to get on the radar of some truly amazing artists from the comic book and video game industries who are looking to breakaway from the industry by adapting to the ease and flexibility of crowd sourcing (patreon, kickstarter, etc) and they will take paper crafting to a whole new level. I...don't know about that last bit. I came from an amateur video game development background, went into papercraft and ran one of the top 3 gaming papercraft businesses for almost a decade, then got back into video game development as a professional a few years ago. I was also a freelance graphic designer, and I've got some experience helping out with a Kickstarter. In addition to that, I've talked to professional artists in other industries about getting into papercraft over the years, so I can speak a little to that as well. The problem is, there's just not a lot of money in papercraft compared to video game development or being a concept artist, or even being a graphics designer. When the professional artists I've talked to got some sense of the numbers behind papercraft items, it just wasn't worth their time compared to doing straight concept art. Like, we're talking peanuts. It's a super niche, tiny market. As a graphic designer, using many of the same skills I used for papercraft, I made a lot more money off B2B commissions for things like brochures, flyers, business cards, and whatnot, to the point where if I had to choose between a new model and a new graphic design client, the business client almost always won out because it was a larger chunk of change. As a 3D modeler/animator, I use a lot of the same skills that I use to develop 3D papercraft models. Doing it for videogames pays a lot more AND a giant bonus is the fact that I don't have to do a bunch of extra layout, instruction, or marketing graphic design work on top of all that either. I just build the model, sometimes rig and animate it, and hand it off to somebody else. As a senior programmer at a video game studio, I make even more money than any of the other jobs above can offer, and if I left my job to go back to papercraft full-time, my wife and cats would probably divorce me or get me committed to a mental health facility. Sorry for the novel, but I needed to lay down some background for the actual point I'm about to make. Papercraft isn't something I feel that anybody would want to "break away from" a much more lucrative industry for, at least not on a full-time basis. Kickstarter is a pain in the ass for many reasons. Patreon doesn't look all that good either, and I've been told that it's a lot of work just to get enough people to follow you to make it worth your while to do it for money, and that's even before you sit down to actually do whatever it was you set up a Patreon account to do. It's much more likely that anyone in those industries would get into papercraft simply as a hobby, whether paid or not. It's still a hobby for me, and I lost interest in getting paid for it a long time ago when I saw how much more joy people were getting out of my models after I made them free to download. Great reply and I really appreciate the perspective. I realize I'm coming from a place of pure unbridled optimism and it's good to get a more tempered viewpoint. What makes me hopeful is the plethora of viable ways to crowd source and survive as an independent content creator. It's easier then ever before for people to find your work and people are consuming content at just an insane rate. I think anyone who has an desk job with unrestricted access to the internet can attest to how readily they consume and then seek out new content to consume - whether it's news, twitch streams, articles, forums, podcasts, latest releases of what-have-yous, etc. There are so many resources for creators looking to build and engage with a community and I truly believe we're going to be seeing more and more talented people realize they can walk away from building someone else's sandcastle and start building their own - this goes not just for papercraft but for all sorts of products. We've seen an explosion of content created since the advent of Kickstarter and sites like Patreon - yes a lot of it falls flat, but there have been numerous successes and people are learning how to use them more efficiency every day. I also feel there's just so much that hasn't been explored with paper minis yet - maybe it has and I've just missed it, but I'm looking forward to seeing paper minis that are this dynamic and polished (central figure, other two are still pretty stiff) In any case I'm just excited to talk about this kinda stuff and I'm looking forward to seeing what people keep coming up with
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