Important Paintingbuddha DVD update (english)

Important paintingbuddha DVD Update

It has been very quiet on masterminis in the last two weeks and people start to worry about what's going on...

In the interest of full transparency, below you will find a very detailed description of the current status of our Paintingbuddha Season 1 project.

REVOLUTION

Our first 'mockup'  product design from our shop

We began working on our 'REVOLUTION' in November of last year. On December 23^rd we revealed our first revolutionary project – a painting DVD set including 2 DVDs, two miniatures (plus base) and all of that in a nice box.
Our goal was to offer you something truly revolutionary – a top-quality product at an incredibly low price.. 

Many of you have trusted us 'blindly' and have pre-ordered this set without really having seen exactly what you would get.

We are truly grateful for your trust and your support!

So you will be glad to hear that our product has 'grown' and it has become even cooler and 'hoopier' than even we had originally planned. And we wanted to surprise you with the 'added' content on April 1st - no joke ;)

But, as so often in life, the good news sometimes comes with some bad news...

The upgraded DVD set - Part I

So let us look at the good news first, the 'upgraded' set:

Inside the collectors box, we protect the miniatures
from damage during transport in this metal jewlery box

• Instead of the advertized 2 DVDs you will receive 6 DVDs full of painting instructions.
• Instead of some standard plastic DVD-boxes you will receive a high-quality 6-page-foldout DVD-Collectors box.
• We upgraded the wooden box to a stylish, hand-made collectors box with magnetized locking mechanism.
• The miniatures will additionally be packed in a fancy cushioned metall jewelry box in order to protect them from being damaged.
• All the other 'goodies' such as collector buttons, raffle tickets and so on will of course still be included (among other things, we are giving away stuff such as 42 painting armatures by Stephan Rath, free workshops, Season 2 DVD sets etc.). 
• All of that still at a low price of 42€ for the budget box (includes minis and DVD box) or 84€ for the supporter's box (includes everything)

Since we could not keep the March 1^st release date, we quite literally worked day and night, fought Murphy and his hard drive crashes - but everything was still lined up to be delivered in the first week of April - all of the component's delivery dates (collector's box, metal box, shipping box, DVD-Box, DVDs) are confirmed (and on their way as we speak).

All material has been edited, cut, enriched with cool graphics, menus and informative overlays.  All manufacturing tasks were running on time. Basically, we were ready to go, ready to surprise you with an awesome, bigger and better product in the first week of April.

So far, so good.

Murphy's final act

Example of DVD Menu, color picker and artist cam overlays

Then Murphy tossed us a final curveball in the last step of the production process and after consulting all involved artists (Ben, Stephan and Mati) – I stopped this last step - the production of the DVDs – quite literally in the last second.

Everything turned out so much cooler than we could imagine back in November. The quality of all the components exceeds everything we originally envisioned.

Everything – except for the DVDs.

What happened?

When we received the 'release DVDs' in the final approval process about two weeks ago, we had some rather mixed feelings. Most of the chapters looked awesome. But some rather important chapters (detailed shots of the face, NMM details etc.) looked 'average' at best. The conversion of the HD material to DVD of these detailed sections did not look good at all. 

Example of our color wheel picker from the DVD

So with our suppliers we feverishly started analyzing the problem (which is why it has been so quite here in the last two weeks).

In short, it turned out that some of the early material we shot back in November and December caused some problems in the conversion process.

Unfortunately, there was no easy fix in sight.

Quality is everything

Ultimately, I am responsible for what we ship to you, our supporters, and basically, I had two choices: 

1. Ship the product 'as is' in the first week of April or 
2. 'fix it'

'send as is': (the easy way out)

• We send you the product beginning of April and hope that you don't mind the quality issues of a few of the DVD chapters. After all, everything else looks great - it's still an awesome deal, even though these DVD parts are not perfect.

'fix it': (the hard way)

• The miniatures and the training video are our core product. Having a great packaging does not change issues with some of the videos.
  We would need to retake some videos, scrap a few hundred hours of editing work and deliver a product that truly deserves the title 'revolutionary'. This would cost us time and money – but it would get you a product that we think you deserve.

As far as our DVD products are concerned, we believe that quality is everything and must not be sacrificed no matter what. We want you to have an awesome value for your money.

Having said that, I decided that we 'fix it'.

The revised release schedule

In the last two weeks we rescheduled and shifted some of our next tasks around and came up with a 'fix it' plan:

- Re-filming is scheduled and will be completed in the 2^nd week of April. 

- Production will be finished 6-8 weeks after filming (only DVD box and DVDs are left 'to do').

- The product will be shipped out right away.

Our biggest challenge in planning the reshooting of the material was that Stephan Rath will not be available for filming until the end of August due to his work schedule. 

So we decided that he will 'swap places' with none other but Rafa Garcia Marin aka 'Volomir' for our first DVD set. Most of you know Volomir not only as one of the top Spanish painters, but also as one of the world's best painters - and as an awesome guy! (CMON, Volomirs blog).

Volomir was already scheduled to be here for filming of the Season 2 content beginning of April and will now be Ben's partner for Season 1.
Stephan will be back for a later Season with filming in August of this year.

Volomir's finely detailed painting style is definitely on par with Stephan's style, but where Stephan only uses brushes, some of you may be particularly intrigued that Volomir uses an airbrush on some parts of the miniature. I know that I can't wait to see it myself ;)

We are sorry - so let us make it up to you!

We know that some people will be disappointed about the additional delay. We are 100% committed to the best quality product we can make – especially since this is our first DVD set.

And we are truly sorry for the additional delay.

So as our apology to you, please accept the following additional items of our final product:

1. EVERYONE who already has or will order the DVD set will receive a stylish limited 'Season 1 Paintingbuddha' T-Shirt for free. (supporters box only)
   If you have already ordered the DVD set, we will send you an email asking for your shirt size in the next two weeks.
2. 

   FREE Season 1 DVD
   in Q4 2013 for all
   existing Pre-Orders.

   Everyone who has already PRE-ORDERED the DVD prior to March 31st will receive a FREE DVD with Stephan Rath's painting of the Season 1 diorama as soon as we can refilm it (expect shipping in Q4 2013). For you, Season 1 will therefore include three top painters: Rafa Garcia „Volomir“ Marin, Ben „White Rabbit“ Komets and Stephan „Derwish“ Rath. (all boxes)
   
   
   And finally, as our apology to you, everyone who has already pre-ordered the DVD set will receive a personal letter in about two weeks with a little 'gift' that we are currently producing for you. We are grateful for your support and hope you accept our sincere apology. (all boxes)

We know that extra 'goodies' cannot undo the disappointed some of you must certainly feel.

 

But we hope that it shows our absolute committment to a great product, high quality and all of that for an incredibly low price.

Let us know what you think

So this is it for the moment – I know it has been a long text, but I wanted to explain the situation to you as detailed as possible. If you have any questions, queries or would just like to blow off some steam, please send me an email to paintingbuddha < at > gmail < dot> com.

Sincerely,

Michael Bartels
aka Zaphod Beeblebrox