masterminis.net - where we learn to be a better painter!

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Important Season 1.2/1.3 DVD Update: Introducing Matt & The Sleepmaker


Good News, Everyone! 

Season 1.2 & 1.3 - NEWSFLASH - Part 1


The Season 1.2/1.3 Newsflash is here!
Sometimes I wished you could watch us live and see for yourself, how much fun we have developing our upcoming DVD sets for you. 

There are so many more things that I would like to show you about how and why we do what we do, but we are literally working day and night to make our Season 1.2 and Season 1.3 DVD sets the best miniature painting instruction sets in existence.

And I am happy to inform you that we are in the home stretch! And there really are 'Good News, Everyone!' 

So it's time to start some frequent updates as we close in on the release of the next two seasons - and it is time to show, what your support enables us to do for you!

Please SHARE & ENJOY this with your friends - it would help us and the community tremendously. 

Good News: More for you!

One of the two banners
painted in Season 1.2
Let's bring on the best news first - as this will explain the context of this post better: In December, we announced that Season 1.2 and 1.3 would consist of 2 DVDs each. While that still is true for Season 1.2 - Freehands and banners with Stephan "Derwish" Rath, we had so much awesome material for our Season 1.3 - Base Alchemy Volume 1: Earth with Ben Komets and Matt Cexwish - that we decided to fill up not two, but three DVDs with base building buddhaliciousness! 

For us this means 50% more work on Season 1.3, and considering that editing 1 minute of filmed video takes about 15-20 minutes of post-production (!) that is quite a big impact. 

After reviewing the material that we filmed last year, I was already planning for this eventuality as not reacting to this would have meant that we also need 50% more time making the DVDs - and that would have brought us into May or even June for our release. Unacceptable.

In previous posts and in the web-shop we stated that the DVD development was scheduled to be done end of February and the release would be in March. 

Right now, it seems like we are pretty much on track, even though it looks like the release will be around end of March instead of the middle of March. Let's hope Murphy is not on to us as only disease and disaster can stop us now - been there, done that :D

Early Beard Heroes make it happen

We have so many new friends and followers (heading towards 4200 likes on Facebook - that's going to be a party, I can tell you!) that many of you may not know who we are, what we do and why we do it

In short - we are not too concerned with making profits for ourselves. Everything we do will be re-invested one way or the other into what we love - our beautiful hobby:

42% of profits will be reinvested in our company, 42% of profits will be invested to grow the community and 16% of profits will be donated to charity.

The full scale of what we have planned will become clearer this year. I called it 'Painting Revolution' for a reason ;) 

Many of you have put their trust in us and supported our cause by pre-ordering the Season 1.2 and 1.3 'Early Beard Special'. When I came back from a short break after the holidays and saw the amount of Early Beard specials you guys ordered, I was literally moved to tears by the enormous amount of trust and support you guys place in us. 

So we decided to put your money where our heart is. Payback time ;) 

Introducing: The Sleepmaker

Since starting Masterminis and Painting Buddha, it is fair to say that I have never worked this hard in my entire life. And in case you did not know this: my salary is 0€. I think that this is a small price to pay for having a shot at living your dream.

Unfortunately, there are physical limits to how much three guys with a passion can do. Adding a third DVD for the price time of two was one of these things. And that was mainly due to two reasons:
  • First, although we already had some pretty awesome editing PCs, rendering time of videos caused a big problem. Rendering some of our material literally took days. 
  • We were just three passionate guys who suffered from a severe case of 'There are only 24 hour in a day' syndrome. 
Heart of The Sleepmaker
In short: We needed more peoplepower (oh, we are so politically correct!) and much more horsepower (wait what?). 

'The Sleepmaker' was exactly the kind of 42% reinvestment in our company that we needed. A dedicated video rendering machine that is so fast that it makes a grown nerd cry. Just the cooler fan alone will send shivers up and down a true nerd's spine. :D

Where rendering one chapter of our Season 1.1 DVD often time took the whole night (and damn you if you found a mistake and you needed to render it again...), The Sleepmaker renders the same chapters in minutes. 

And, for once, it allows me to finally catch some much needed sleep. I named it thusly. :D

Introducing: Matt, the temporarily temporary '4 of 9 of the Grey Council'

Hah, such a fun title for a chapter! I love Startrek & Babylon 5 - so much that our work contracts specify that Ben & Mati are members of 'The Grey Council' - our 'Management Board'... LOL 

Professionals at work settling an argument.
Thanks to Bruddha Gus for the balloon art!
We have a lot of fun titles for us. Of course, I am the Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox (aka Agent Blue, aka '1 of 9'), Mati is 'Agent White' ('2 of 9') and Ben is 'Agent Orange' '3 of 9'. So there's still room for 6 of 9 left - we have plans for the future. Big ones ;) Oh, and of course all of this information represents teasers for things to come. Long time strategy FTW. 

So there we were, 3 guys and 4 PCs. We needed someone who is equally talented and crazy to operate this insane machine. So we called Agent Purple - Slayer Sword winner Matt Cexwish - to help us out. 

Raising The Sword in triumph!
A day later he was cutting videos like a mad man and I was finally able to start working on implementing some initial ideas for the miniature painting and gaming community. The next few weeks and months are going to be exciting.

This was exactly, what we needed - and the support of you, the Early Beard Heroes, made it all possible. Words are not enough to tell you how thankful I am for placing your trust in us!


Matt also gives Workshops!
I want YOU to get MOAR. 

A lot of people ask us why we don't do a fund-raiser like a Kickstarter or something. While we might run one of these in the future, I think we are really doing a community based fund-raiser already. 

We just try to do it by ourselves first - and with your help we are already thaaaaaaat close to the next big step!  ;) 

Right now, Matt works for us as a freelancer. He has just finished his University degree as an Architect and has experience in the film industry and all kinds of other areas that I have big plans for in the future. He is one of the most creative and positively crazy people I know. 

I really want him on board. I think he is crazy enough to even consider joining us. All I need is to be able to make him an offer that he can't refuse. And for that I need your help :) 

Still available at the Early BEARD special pre-order price of 27€. 1.2/1.3 Bundle at 53€!
How to support us

I promised full transparency a year ago. Y we do it? 42!
Of course, the best deal for you is to support us by purchasing our products such as  DVD sets or T-Shirts in our web-shop

Since Season 1.1 is almost sold out, now is the time to secure your copy.

If we succeed at what we are doing (and I think we will), this DVD set will be part of miniature history some day. 

Collectible Nerd-Alert! 

Bubblebrox Mini-Me says:
"Sharing is Caring"

A totally free way of supporting us would be to SHARE & ENJOY what we do with your friends. 

Telling your friends about what we do, inviting them to follow us on Facebook is just a click away. Sharing our posts on Facebook and Google+ also helps us to grow our community. 

If you have other ideas on how you could support us, shoot me a message on Facebook or send me an email! Let's talk!

1.2 & 1.3 NEWSFLASH Roadmap

There will be very frequent updates on the development of Season 1.2 and 1.3 in the next days and weeks. The next chance to ask us live questions would be during the next Episode of the Chilling Wargamers Hangout (tomorrow night at 8pm CET) as well as on BEEBLE・BABBLE #2 this Friday at 7:42pm CET. Read all about our new online shows here.


If you have questions you would like us to answer, please leave them in the comments below!

And if you would like to decide with us and work with us on the fine tuning of our next DVDs, you should look forward to our next Newsflash update!

Oh, did I mention our super-secret-stretchgoals for all of our Early BEARD supporters? No? This is a story for another time, then.... Oops, spoiler alert:

The early beard catches the stretch!

SHARE & ENJOY

Still available at the Early BEARD special pre-order price of 27€. 1.2/1.3 Bundle at 53€

10 comments:

  1. Ben & Mati are members of 'The Grey Council' - our 'Management Board'

    -> And all I read was "Management Beard". :D

    Soooo looking forward to the new DVD's! <3

    ReplyDelete
  2. I ordered the awesome 11dvd set at the weekend. Does that count as 'early beard'?

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, everyone who orders before the release will receive stretch goals. There will be a special stretch goal for everyone who orders BEFORE we tell you what the actual stretch goals are :D

      Delete
  3. Congrats to Matt.. and more so to the "Sleepmaker", which from your facebook shots before was more like the "Widowmaker" with regards to getting it up and running.. but seeing the cooler... daMmmnn.. If it can render video in minutes, just imagine what it can do to a game of Angry Birds!!! :)

    Looking forward to updates on 1.2/1.3 and you having more time to build it up!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Even the Angry Birds are peaceful on The Sleepmaker ^^

      But yeah, setting it up was a nightmare. First ever defective Hard-Drive since I bought a 8" 5MB (!) RLL Drive back in the days :D

      Delete
  4. Replies
    1. I would gladly give up my #1 spot for you, Bruddha :)

      This year is going to be exciting! My Crystal Balls tell me that it's going to be a great year.

      Delete
  5. I always visit your blog.it's really informative for us..Thank you.
    capitalstars

    ReplyDelete

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