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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 14, 2012 7:45:32 GMT -9
Hi, guys--I've got a few things to announce. First, I'd set up a new business (Genet Models) in November of 2011 with the intention of getting into preprinted paper models and 3D printed models, but it sat on the back burner until late last week, when a 10 pound Chihuahua kicked my ass and put my right hand out of commission. A few days of not being able to do any work on paper models drove me nuts, so I went ahead and completed the Genet Models website just to stay productive. Next, the whole Ebbles Miniatures catalog is back up there. Everything from 2003 through 2011 is back, except for the models that were replaced by newer ones. Additionally, I've moved the models I was doing on Chez Ebbles over there too. To celebrate the grand opening, I'm throwing a 20% off sale from June 12th to June 19th. Details and coupon code are on the front page: www.genetmodels.com
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Post by glennwilliams on Jun 14, 2012 9:28:45 GMT -9
best news in a very long time.
The little drones have been my favorites for a long time. Good to see that inventory available again.
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 14, 2012 10:49:32 GMT -9
Thanks!
I was a bit surprised to see how much stuff I'd actually done over the last 9 years, so there's a nice sense of history to the Ebbles Miniatures section of the catalog. I had a blast a couple days ago just browsing through all the old PDFs and seeing how my mentality as a designer had changed over that time.
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Post by Vermin King on Jun 14, 2012 11:33:12 GMT -9
Wishing you all the success in the world, Mel. Glad the dogbite is healing well.
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Post by kiladecus on Jun 14, 2012 12:35:43 GMT -9
The UD-41 Dropship is my ALL-TIME favorite papercraft model PERIOD!
It is so funny, my wife called "Papercraft" "EBBLES" for the longest time. She would say, "Can you hold-off on doing your EBBLES until we get the kids to bed?"
When your site closed up, I was heart-broken. Since then, I found THIS site, and here you are again!
Now, about that 20%... let's go see if there is anything I don't have... (besides the Pinzgauers, which MAY be the only thing...)
BTW, it was VERY cool to look over your site and see everything. I forgot about the Mingot Base!
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 14, 2012 16:03:33 GMT -9
Thanks, guys! Kiladecus: I got a chuckle out of your wife anecdote. The biggest difference between now and back when Ebbles closed up is that this time around, Genet Models is structured as a self-sustaining part time thing, rather than something we were depending on for a full-time income. It's not really possible to make a living on paper models alone anymore, but it can at least bring in pizza or coffee money. So, long story short, Genet Models is much cheaper to run, isn't my "day job", and I have much lower expectations for its earning power than I did with Ebbles Miniatures. As long as it's making at least $40 a month in sales, it's covering its own hosting and shopping cart costs. Anything above that is pizza and coffee. So, it's gonna be around for a nice long time, I hope.
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Post by hackbarth on Jun 14, 2012 17:51:52 GMT -9
It's nice to have you back on business. Again. Once more. There are many models that I still didn't get, since you didn't put them in WWG Ebbles Labs. I'll see that this situation is taken care off, now. (well, not exactly now, since we are holding our expenses in my home right now as a precautionary measure for a change of city in a year or so...) I feel your pain, or at least I felt something similar Before, since I too had a toy poodle hanging from my arm by the teeth some years ago. Maybe you should enjoy watching the Cesar Millan show in your convalescence! ;D As much as I like having you back, I must ask, why put one more store up? RPGNow/WWG/etc take so much a share of the pie that the work overhead is worth it? I say that because, for me, it's one more store to have an account at, and one more line at the credit card bill to explain (at length) to the wife...
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Post by kiladecus on Jun 14, 2012 17:54:59 GMT -9
He answered this before on his board (back in the day). He said something like "Why pay someone for something you can do yourself." I hope I'm not over-stepping my bounds, I just remember most things that I read.
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 14, 2012 19:09:00 GMT -9
It's nice to have you back on business. Again. Once more. There are many models that I still didn't get, since you didn't put them in WWG Ebbles Labs. I'll see that this situation is taken care off, now. (well, not exactly now, since we are holding our expenses in my home right now as a precautionary measure for a change of city in a year or so...) Heh. Yeah, the problem with putting stuff on the WWG store was one of presentation. All of my photos and promo renders were designed for a light colored website, and WWG's website had a dark scheme. Redoing the promos for the old stuff was tedious and took time away from working on new models, so I ended up only releasing 16 products on the WWG store over the span of one year. All because of something as simple as the website's look and feel. That guy is magic. I wish I knew how he does it. Well, I hate accounts too. My store doesn't even have customer accounts enabled. The forum doesn't even need registration either. I'm old, I'm tired of trying to remember 340,958 different passwords, I don't trust password vault software, and forcing people to register is a turnoff for shoppers anyway. *grin* Even back in 2010 when I was using the same kind of cart on the Ebbles site, accounts were optional and only enabled because I was selling tangibles and people liked the convenience of not having to fill out their shipping address every time they ordered tools or supplies. But as a rule, I hate accounts and don't like to make customers do something I wouldn't want to do myself. As for letting other places sell my stuff...Kiladecus is correct. I don't like paying somebody else to do something I can do better and cheaper myself. The short form is that in my 9+ years of experience, third party storefronts are a waste of money after a certain sales threshold. I started out on RPGNow in 2003, and after a while, I also signed up with 2Checkout and had my own cart. I was paying RPGNow about $650 a year in fees for something that only cost me $250 a year to do myself, and my own store was pulling in 3-4x more money than I was earning on RPGNow. So I pulled my products from RPGNow and focused on my own storefront, which boosted my bottom line further. I also spent a year selling my stuff at WWG recently. My product sales over there weren't very impressive because I only had a small number of products up, and it just wasn't worth my time redoing promotional assets for 9 years worth of products for a little trickle of money that comes in twice a month. Genet Models, on the other hand--it took me just 4 days to relist 80+ products on a light colored website, and I've already made more in the past 2 days than I typically do in 2 weeks at WWG. Bottom line for me, it makes more financial and logistical sense to do it myself, even as a part time job. *grin*
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drewt333
Apprentice
Threadkiller
Posts: 30
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Post by drewt333 on Jun 18, 2012 13:41:19 GMT -9
Thank you for the sale.
I saw the Invader ship and the drone squad and I had to have them.
Also, chihuahuas are nucking futs, hope you feel better.
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 18, 2012 18:45:13 GMT -9
Thanks for the business and the concern! My right hand's back at 100% and I've been steadily catching up on my work backlog. *grin*
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Post by emergencyoverride on Jun 18, 2012 19:35:36 GMT -9
Had to cave and get the only model I didnt have yet. The Pinzgauer will make a nice addition to the collection already residing in my new dedicated game room!! ;D
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 19, 2012 8:26:25 GMT -9
Thanks for the business!
I envy you a bit when it comes to the dedicated game room--I'm currently on a somewhat bloody-minded weekend quest to rebuild one of everything I've done since the beginning, and I'm trying not to think too hard about where I'm going to store/display them all. *grin*
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Post by squirmydad on Jun 19, 2012 17:10:28 GMT -9
Nice to see another old timer getting back into it!
I think the way of the future for publishers is pre-printed. Digital sales can only take you so far.
I've always enjoyed your designs, even if they weren't fantasy enough for me, I likes me some wild stuff.
I'll be working on giving you some good old fashioned competition, as soon as I get get my act together and stay focused, damn nice weather!! JIM
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 19, 2012 18:20:50 GMT -9
I'm glad to see you still around, Jim!
I'm thinking pretty much the same thing about digital vs preprints, and I'd eventually like to be able to offer both. We gotta move into a bigger place first. *grin*
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Post by oldschooldm on Jun 26, 2012 7:09:36 GMT -9
Hey Mel,
Want some cutfile geometry for your models? :-)
Can we have permission to post them here?
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Post by Vermin King on Jun 26, 2012 9:42:06 GMT -9
Are you referring to the old models? His newer content has cut files, and he is going through the older models systematically to re-arrange and do cut files.
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 26, 2012 11:06:39 GMT -9
I already started on that process myself: forum.genetmodels.com/Ebbles-Miniatures-f82.htmlMy somewhat ulterior motive is to rebuild at least one of everything I've done over the years so I can take bigger and better photos, and eventually do a sort of historic showcase. I'm doing this in my off hours, so it's a somewhat slow and steady process. I wouldn't mind some help on the cutfile side of things, but I still have to reformat the PDFs and fork them into handcut (no regmarks), SD, and Cameo flavors myself anyway, so whoever does the cutfiles will still have to wait for the reformatted frames. The reason for that is because I don't want to ever find myself in a position again where one arbitrary decision made by some other company invalidates years' worth of work on my part. That Cameo regmark change screwed everyone pretty hard, and you should have heard the collective cussing and swearing on the WWG dev forum when we realized what that meant for all of the stuff we'd released to date. I'd experimented with developing a machine-agnostic asset workflow that would ensure that even if Quickutz decided next year they wanted to change up the regmarks again, it wouldn't raise my blood pressure. The best way of doing it, I found, is to keep the regmarks in the PDF, so I start with a set of frames that have no regmarks whatsoever on them. From there, I just overstamp the correct set of registration marks and cutfile references, then save them out to a new set of PDFs. So, if Quickutz decides next year that they want 3 smiley faces and a stylized middle finger for regmarks, my workload is reduced to just stamping out a new set of PDFs.
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 26, 2012 11:07:16 GMT -9
Ninja-posted by Vermin King. *grin*
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Post by oldschooldm on Jun 26, 2012 11:37:54 GMT -9
I wouldn't mind some help on the cutfile side of things, but I still have to reformat the PDFs and fork them into handcut (no regmarks), SD, and Cameo flavors myself anyway, so whoever does the cutfiles will still have to wait for the reformatted frames. So - send you the .studio files? Or should we call out the files we have ready so you can send us the new geometry? I'm confused what your plans are for distributing the cutfiles. I really respect that you made the effort to make cutfiles happen at WWG and want to keep within your plans.
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Post by Christopher Roe on Jun 26, 2012 13:01:32 GMT -9
I'm not that far along yet, but the basic plan was to reformat the PDFs and upload the PNG and Studio files for these frames to Dropbox as tracing templates, then I'd share them with whoever wanted to help out with the cutfiles. That would ensure their cutfiles are 100% compatible with the reformatted PDFs. But as I said, I'm not that far along yet. *grin*
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