I saw an interesting posting on the Dropship Horizon Blog a few days ago.  At the time I was too busy with other things to do anything on it so I just bookmarked the page and moved on.  But now, here I am back again.  What is it about you ask?  Well it is about a theory.  Can you get the wargaming public to finance your new miniature designs and through that your new company without those wargamers seeing miniatures upfront or the promise of any end result?

There are a huge number of miniature wargame companies across the world and this is a great thing as it brings diversity and great choice to thousands of customers each day.  Many of these companies I do not know the names of and a large number exist only for a few months or a year and then fold for one reason or another.  But in the last couple of years the way of beginning a company has changed.  While I will not go into the other ways of making the process easier with free e-commerce software, low cost hosting, print on demand books, electronic publishing and so on I do want to look at Indeigogo and Kickstarter for funding miniature design work by using this as an example.

You can see the posting here and read about it but the gist is as follows. A brand new (so new they do not have a website or any presence I would find beyond this and a few other blog postings) and shiny new company called ‘Grinning Skull Miniatures’ wish to release a range called the ‘Oggum’, 15mm scale white metal miniatures of science fiction war pigs.  You can see a screen grab below.

Taken on 5th August 2012

The aim of the Grinning Skull is to raise 2000USD for their range of 15mm miniatures.  They have given themselves until 4th September 2012 to raise the funds.

Will they do it?  I shall check back near the end of the time allotted to find out and will post a second time on this topic then.  But my gut feeling is no, they will not.  Will I be incorrect?

GBS