The Last Stand
about 2 years ago – Tue, Oct 11, 2022 at 12:43:11 AM

We’ve got quite an update for you tonight, packed with design reveals and our final stretch goal! So let’s charge right in, starting with your first look at the official design for Vrye. If you don’t know who that is, you should skip the next section because it contains key spoilers for the end of Oathbringer!

Agent of Hate

You’ve gotta hand it to Brandon Sanderson. He has created a world where the big bad guy is basically a god of hatred, and a story where compassion for your enemies is a key theme… but he's also really good at making you hate his villains. There’s no one in these stories more hated than Moash, so of course he had to be part of this collection. Here's his art brief -- you can click through for a closer look.

At the end of Oathbringer, Moash accepts Vyre as his Singer name. He also takes up Jezrien’s Honorblade, granting him the powers of a Windrunner. He’s the perfect foil for Kaladin, and Ben McSweeney designed him an outfit that intentionally mocks the Bridge Four uniform.

Where Kaladin has more classic Alethi features, Moash/Vyre has more of a hawk-like nose and hollow cheeks. He wields Jezrien’s sword like an executioner’s blade, and his eyes glow blue-white as he draws upon its power.

More Reveals

Speaking of villains, the Herald of Justice is a formidable adversary who we unlocked as a stretch goal last week. We can now reveal his final design.

Today we’re also sharing the first look at the final character designs for two heroes of Bridge Four: Teft and Rlain. We love how they turned out. 

Stand and Deliver

Over the course of this campaign we’ve unlocked more than a dozen awesome stretch goals, many of them a direct result of backer feedback. This one, though, has been in the works for a while. Ever since we saw Ben McSweeney’s official bridge designs, we’ve wanted to make a physical replica. So for our final stretch goal, we’re giving you Bridge Four Display Stand.

This will be included in the Rhythm of War pledge level and above, so it will ship to everyone who collects all four Bridge Four miniatures (and is also perfect for the Bridge Leader Kaladin miniature in The Way of Kings pack). The stand will be molded in brown plastic, so it’s ready to display. Whether you use this to span the nearest chasm or place it on your desktop, it's the perfect way to show off your miniatures.

Thank You!

This has already been an amazing Kickstarter, and we still have three days to go. To everyone backing this campaign, whether you joined on day one or just came across the Kickstarter today, thank you! Stay tuned for our final updates, which will include more design reveals and helpful information about what happens after the campaign ends.

Five More Days!
about 2 years ago – Mon, Oct 10, 2022 at 06:59:01 PM

Happy Saturday, Radiants! After another strong day, we’ve exceeded 15,000 backers and we’re approaching $3 million in funding. Here’s hoping we can keep up this pace and finish strong on Thursday!

Today we want to announce the winners of the art print vote, celebrate how many stretch goals we’ve unlocked, and share a new reward that will ship with almost every pledge level.

Works of Art

Polls are now closed, and more than 5,800 people voted for the art prints that will ship with the book-themed miniature packs! Every single print received a good share of votes, but the four winners were clear: “Broken Oath” by Antti Hakosaari, “Clashing Storms” by Gal Or, “Oathgate” by Artem Demura, and “Worldsinger” by Ari Ibarra. Great pieces by some of our favorite Stormlight artists!

Thank to everyone who voted! We’re excited to include each print with its corresponding miniatures pack: The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oathbringer, and Rhythm of War.

The Home Stretch

As we head into the last few days of this campaign, we want to sit back for a moment and appreciate just how much we’ve managed to unlock in this campaign. When planning this Kickstarter, our goal was to send an update every 2-3 days, but we expected that about half of those updates would be “design reveals” rather than stretch goals. Instead, in almost every update we’ve unlocked a stretch goal. Here’s a visual summary of stretch goals by pledge level.

That’s a dozen stretch goals unlocked, and we’re not done yet!

Unlock Your Inner Lightweaver

A majority of people backing this campaign have never painted a miniature, but every unpainted mini is still an awesome little collectible. Like a gallery of marble statues, these gorgeous sculpts don’t need paint to make great display pieces. They’ll look great as-is on your bookshelf, as you can see in this quick video by starlightbooktales.

That said, miniature painting is a ton of fun and we love hearing from people who are planning to use these miniatures to get into the hobby. We designed the Official Paint Set with that in mind, featuring everything you need to get started. The set includes 1 bottle of Strong Tone wash and 10 paints: Kholin Blue, Windrunner Blue, Carapace Red, Gloryspren Gold, Shardblade Silver, Bondsmith Yellow, Medium Tan, Dark Brown, Matte White, and Matte Black.

One paint set is all you need to cover all your miniatures with the exception of the Gargantuan Chasmfiend. (In BackerKit, we’ll offer extra black paint and primer as add-ons.)

To help new painters, we’re also working with The Army Painter to provide a Painting Guide to teach you the basics of miniature painting. This will be shipped with every pledge level that includes unpainted miniatures!

The printed booklet will only cover a few characters in detail, but we’ll include a supplementary PDF with color guides for every character. We’ll also share some video content to get you started.

What’s Next?

It’s been a thrilling campaign, and we’re nearly out of surprises. But as a wise man once said, “there’s always another secret.” A final stretch goal remains, and a few more character reveals. Stay tuned, and be sure to keep spreading the word about the campaign this week!

Navani, Leshwi, and Rysn
about 2 years ago – Fri, Oct 07, 2022 at 02:38:26 AM

In today’s update, we’re celebrating some of The Stormlight Archive’s leading ladies. We’ll take a closer look at a previously revealed design, unveil a heavenly new design, and unlock an unexpected stretch goal.

A True Queen

We’ve always loved the brilliant and beautiful Queen Navani, but she became one of our favorite characters after Rhythm of War. Wielding scientific knowledge and keen diplomatic instincts, she pulled off a type of victory that no one else in the series could have achieved.

You’ve already seen Navani’s unpainted miniature design on our campaign page, and a first look at her character model in our trailer video, but here’s a closer look at her character model. Ben McSweeney created a gorgeous reference image that Leander Pokorny adapted into three dimensions.

The resulting model is a really great one to paint. Here’s how she looks at miniature scale with an exquisite paint job by Joshua Wray:

A Heavenly Warrior

Since the first day of the Kickstarter we’ve revealed that a “Heavenly One” miniature would be part of our Oathbringer pack. The shanay-im are the first Fused we see in the story, and we knew we wanted one represented in that set. We’ve previously written about how designing Singer characters was one of our most exciting challenges for this campaign, since this project is the first place to really cement their canonical look. That’s especially true for our Heavenly One miniature:

In assigning this to the Oathbringer pack, we cheated a bit. You can use the unpainted miniature as an archetypal shanay-im Fused, but we based the miniature’s color scheme on Leshwi as she appears in Rhythm of War. Specifically, Leshwi’s spiritual self is femalen, but she is reincarnated in a malen body. The body has some masculine features, but the outfit and the styling of her hair-stalks is intentionally feminine. We sought to make her intimidating but beautiful, alien but relatable, and strong but weightless. It was an ambitious design brief, and this one had more changes between concept and final sculpt than any of our other characters, but we love the final result as sculpted by Iurie Barbaneagra.

A Merchant Remade

We’ve taken a holistic approach to stretch goals with this campaign. Rather than tie them to arbitrary dollar amounts on a daily basis, each week we’ve taken a look at the overall fundraising to determine what we can add and enhance. That has made our stretch goals more opaque, but it has also given us the flexibility to bring in new characters and respond to community feedback.

Rysn is a character who has always struck a chord with us, and we referenced her journey on three Call to Adventure cards. Since then, her prominence in the Cosmere has only increased, but she was never an obvious thematic fit for one of our key book-themed sets. When people started asking for Rysn as a stretch goal, we spent the first weeks replying with statements like, “we’ll try to include her in a Book 5 set someday.”

Then people kept asking, so we talked to Isaac and Brandon about bringing her into this Kickstarter, and we all agreed she’s too important to leave out of this protagonist-themed campaign. So we’re now working on a Rysn miniature!

This miniature is still in the earliest stages; Ben McSweeney is working on all-new concept art of Rysn in her chair with Chiri-Chiri. (The placeholder above is an illustration of her from the Dawnshard novella.) We’ll be hustling to complete her design in November, but for now we’re just excited to announce that she’ll ship (along with Nale) to everyone who backs the Rhythm of War, Figurines & Miniatures, or All-In pledge levels!

A Week to Go

Thank you again for all your support during this campaign. We’re now headed into the final week of this campaign. If you’ve been following along, now’s a great time to jump in! If you know other friends who might be interested, let them know! If you haven't already voted for the art prints you'd like to see added to our unpainted miniature set, go check those out!

This campaign has already exceeded all our expectations, and we’re on track for a really exciting final week. We'll be back on Saturday with another update!

Vote on Art Prints!
about 2 years ago – Thu, Oct 06, 2022 at 11:27:33 PM

Today we have another design reveal, a new stretch goal unlocked, and a poll to determine the fate of that stretch goal. So let’s dive right in!

 Awesomeness in Action

Lift is a truly unique Radiant, so the entire team wanted to make sure her miniature would capture her mischievous, irrepressible energy. We’ve previously worked on illustrations of Lift for Call to Adventure, but for this job we went straight to one of our very favorite artists, Marie “Lamaery” Seeberger.

If you haven’t seem Marie’s work, you have to check it out. If you’ve already read Oathbringer, take a look at her amazing four-part comic book version of the most climactic sequence from the novel: 1 2 3 4.

Brandon and Isaac loved Marie’s take on Lift, and invited her to create the official reference for our character model. Here’s the resulting one-sheet, which also features pose concepts from Ben McSweeney:

We then gave all this reference to sculptor Solveig Horsfeld, who created an awesome version of Lift sliding her way across the battlefield. The Oathbringer miniatures pack is a great one, and we’re really happy that Lift is a part of it!

Art Prints Unlocked!

Over the past few years of working with Dragonsteel, we’ve created a lot of artwork illustrating key characters and scenes. When thinking of ways to make each book-themed miniature pack as delightful as possible, we thought it would be cool to include an art print. So we’re shipping one 6” by 8” print with every set …and we need your help to choose the artwork!

Click that image (or this link) to check out the poll. It includes four pages, each showing a few illustration options. Your choice is just a vote, and there’s no guarantee that your favorites will win. But we’re looking forward to the feedback from this community, and we hope the final four art prints will be something you enjoy!

Thanks for all your support as we enter the third full week of this Kickstarter. We’re blown away by the fact that 14,000 people have backed this campaign, and we still have a few more tricks up our sleeve. We can’t wait to see where things go in the final 9 days!

Herald of Justice
about 2 years ago – Mon, Oct 03, 2022 at 05:43:02 AM

As we move into the second half of this epic campaign, it's a good time to think about just how far we've come. So far, we’ve unlocked:

• Lopen in The Way of Kings pack
• Rock in the Words of Radiance pack
• Rlain in the Oathbringer pack
• Teft in the Rhythm of War pack
• High-quality composite materials for all unpainted minis
• A free Shardbearer mini with every physical pledge
• Two extra infantry minis in every Army Builders pack

We've also added two new painted figurine options, Shallan and Dalinar, and added them to the All-In pledge level. Thanks to the amazing response to this campaign, we've been able to add value to every pledge level!

While the Bridge Four miniatures and composite materials were stretch goals we'd always hoped to unlock, the others have been added in response to community feedback. Originally, we'd planned for more than half of our updates to be focused on design reveals instead of stretch goals, but instead our sculptors have been working on brand-new miniatures!

That includes today's stretch goal, who you probably guessed from our title:

Nale will be added as a bonus unpainted miniature in every Rhythm of War pledge level and above. (Note that this is different from the Bridge Four miniatures, which are actually packed into their book-themed sets.) Like Taln, he’ll also be available as an add-on.

Based on the success of this campaign, it’s likely that we’ll launch an “adversaries, beasts, and NPCs” miniature pack alongside the Stormlight RPG in 2024. Originally, Nale would have been planned for that pack. But he’s one of our favorite characters, and the perfect reference art for him already existed, so we’re excited to pull him into this campaign!

Speaking of art, here’s an image we put together this week, featuring another peek at our Teft miniature. This was posted on Reddit and our Instagram account, but we wanted to make sure no one missed it.

Thanks again for your fantastic support, and here’s to an exciting last two weeks for the campaign!