Mörderin by John Blanche

Personal issues, but getting back on track! Apologies!
11 months ago – Tue, May 20, 2025 at 04:31:51 AM

Halloo dear backers!

Please accept my deepest apologies for the lack of updates. To be completely upfront with you all, there has been a lot going on in my private life and my mental health is not great right now. A combination of issues, including child in hospital, partner with health problems, burnout… without going into the details it has been a lot. I am really sorry but I have just not been able to look at messages or post an update until now, I have just been too tired and mentally shattered. Even writing this has taken a lot of effort.

But some good news! Sculpting is complete and these final files are now with the caster. I am hoping to get an update from the caster next week as to where we are with the schedule. If I am able, I would like to visit the foundry and take photos, but that depends on my physical and mental state on the day! Worst case scenario, I will just get the caster to take photos for me (although his photos won’t be as good as mine) ;)

So, in today’s update:

• Queen Voudoo and Voudoo Bear renders
• New dates for when we will be closing BackerKit (apologies!)

Queen Voudoo

The mysterious Queen Voudoo is on a 32mm base.

Voudoo Bears

These delightful little teddies are on 25mm bases.

New dates for BackerKit closing

Extremely sorry that the BackerKit closing dates are being moved back, but it will now be closing this Friday 23rd May.

1.        23rd May – BackerKit closes (orders ‘Locked with 48 hour final notice’ for backers to make any final changes. You will receive a notification email from BackerKit when this happens).

2.        25th May – Orders locked (you can no longer make any changes to your order after this date).

3.        2nd June – Charge Cards (the card BackerKit has on their system will be charged for shipping and any applicable add-ons).

4.        10th June – Lock Addresses with 48 hours notice (so after 12th June you will no longer be able to change your address on BackerKit).

5.        Later in June – Shipping should begin!

Please note that you will still be able to update your shipping address on BackerKit right up to the point when we lock addresses (12th June). If after this point you need to change your address, please send us a message and we can manually change it for you right up to just before the fulfilment centre ships your order out.

Please remember, if you have any questions just let us know, either in the comments or send us a message. Just please bear with me if you don’t get a reply straight away – please do send a follow up message if you need/want to. Once again, many apologies for the delays. We will get there!

Best,

Thistle

Nasty Piece of Work + BackerKit Closing Soon
12 months ago – Fri, Apr 04, 2025 at 02:41:52 PM

Halloo dear backers!

We trust that you are all well. In today’s update:

• Nasty Piece of Work renders & master prints
• Production timeframe reminder
• Dates for when we will be closing BackerKit

Nasty Piece of Work

Here are the renders for Nasty Piece of Work, along with some photos of the master print, ready to have production moulds made!

Production timeframe

As per the previous update, our fulfilment dates needed to be pushed back a bit, for which we are terribly sorry. As a reminder, these timescales are now as follows:

i.         Finish casting in May

ii.         Pick, sort, bag and ship models to the fulfilment centre in June 

iii.         Fulfilment centre to begin shipping June

Once again we are awfully sorry this has taken longer than we had originally planned. We hope you are okay hanging on a little longer before you get your miniatures.

BackerKit closing soon!

Since we are looking to fulfil in June now, we will have to close BackerKit soon. BackerKit will be closing on Friday 18th April. Here is what happens next:

1.        18th April – BackerKit closes (orders ‘Locked with 48 hour final notice’ for backers to make any final changes. You will receive a notification email from BackerKit when this happens).

2.        20th April – Orders locked (you can no longer make any changes to your order after this date).

3.        1st May – Charge Cards (the card BackerKit has on their system will be charged for shipping and any applicable add-ons).

4.        1st June – Lock Addresses (after this date you will no longer be able to change your address on BackerKit).

5.        Later in June – Shipping begins!

Please note that you will still be able to update your shipping address on BackerKit right up to the point when we lock addresses (1st June). If after this point you need to change your address, please send us a message and we can manually change it for you right up to just before the fulfilment centre ships your order out.

Please remember, if you have any questions just let us know, either in the comments or send us a message.

Best,

Thistle

Boarding Hussar, Production, Fulfilment and Painted Miniatures
about 1 year ago – Sun, Mar 09, 2025 at 11:47:40 AM

Halloo dear backers!

We hope that this missive finds you all well. Looks like Kickstarter have resolved the issue of creators being unable to upload images, which is jolly good news (see update earlier today)! So without further ado, in today’s update we have:

• Boarding Hussar renders
• Production & fulfilment update
• Painted miniatures

Boarding Hussar

Here are the renders for the finished Boarding Hussar.

Production & fulfilment

As mentioned when we launched the campaign, the initial estimate for fulfilling the Kickstarter was March/April 2025. In the Risks & Challenges section of the campaign page, we stated that we did “not foresee any major risks – the only challenge would be if the project massively over-funds, but that would be a happy challenge indeed”. Well, we think you might agree that the project did indeed ‘over-fund’ and resulted in several extra stretch goals being added. Due to these being additional miniatures that required sculpting, this naturally added to the time required to get them ready for production.

James, our sculptor, as some of you are no doubt aware, has been gobbled up by the raging success of Factory Fortress’s Trench Crusade. Since we launched the Morderin Kickstarter before Factory Fortress had any inkling as to how stupendously successful their Kickstarter might be, we all thought there would still be time for James to get all the stretch goal minis done for each of them to be in production by now. Sadly, this has not been the case since, due to the success of Trench Crusade, his time has been largely consumed by Factory Fortress’s success. But please do not fear – he will complete the Morderin KS sculpts ASAP so that the final ones can go into production by the end of this month (March).

What this means, and we are terribly sorry about this, is that our fulfilment dates will need to be pushed back a bit. Please do accept our most humble apologies for this. We have spoken with our caster, Zealot Miniatures, about realistic timescales now and these are as follow:

• Complete prototypes and mould making for the final models by the end of this month (March)
• Finish casting of around 30,000 miniatures (!) in May
• Pick, sort, bag and ship models to the fulfilment centre in June
• Fulfilment centre to begin shipping June

Once again we are terribly sorry this has taken longer than we had originally envisaged and hoped. We appreciate that this is not what anyone wants to hear, but we really hope you are okay hanging on a little longer before you get your miniatures.

Painted miniatures by Harry Kaye

John asked his friend, Harry Kaye [https://www.instagram.com/oldworldpaintedblood/] to paint up a set of the original Mörderin miniatures and he has done a wonderful job of capturing that Blanchitsu vibe. John is especially delighted with them.

Harry himself says: “Initially when asked (by John) I was filled with a mix of equal parts honour and dread. I've never considered myself a painter of his style and felt I couldn't really emulate the art they are based off in a way I thought would do them justice. So, I of course said yes and figured I'd sweat the details at a later date. After a few days of pondering, I decided just to paint them in my own interpretation, in my own style, using colours and themes that I connect with. My justification being in my head that I didn't think Mr Blanche would have got very far in life if he didn't break the chains of expectation and paint things how he wanted to do them, rather than how he perhaps should. So, in that spirit, here's my interpretation of the Mörderin Witch Hunters based upon John Blanche’s artwork.”

So thanks ever so much Harry, everyone here thinks you have done a sterling job!

To sign off, in the next update we hope to have:

• Photos from the Zealot Miniatures foundry
• Dates for when we will be closing BackerKit
• Renders of the Nasty Piece of Work sculpt

Best,

Thistle

Kickstarter issues with uploading photos for creator updates
about 1 year ago – Sun, Mar 09, 2025 at 05:38:22 AM

Hallo everyone! 

Been trying to post an update with lots of nice images (renders of the finished Boarding Hussar and painted miniatures) but Kickstarter is having issues right now. Here is the latest from Kickstarter:

"Investigating - We are investigating reports of creators having issues uploading photos. Thanks for your patience while we look into this!"
Mar 08, 2025 - 20:12 EST

https://status.kickstarter.com/

As soon as Kickstarter resolve this issue, we will post the update - hopefully in the next day or two. Failing a quick fix by Kickstarter, we will post the full update minus images and see if we can do a work around with links instead...

Please bear with us - and Kickstarter as they attempt to fix this! 

Best,

Thistle

Grimhilde
about 1 year ago – Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 03:58:10 PM

Halloo everyone! 

Apologies it has been a little longer than we'd hoped since the last update, there has been rather a lot going on in all our lives. But things are moving along and we have another sculpt to show you today!

We hope to be able to get some photos of the production process soon, so that will be for the next update. We had hoped to get down to the foundry a little earlier but, alas, it has been a bit tricky with various things going on including blasted winter bugs! Hopefully that is behind us now.

So, today we would like to introduce you to Grimhilde, the mysterious and perhaps not entirely trustworthy queen of the woods... 

When comparing the renders of this 32mm miniature with John's artwork, please bear in mind the scale we are dealing with here. Whilst it would have been great to replicate the delicate proportions of John's characters, this is very difficult to do at 32mm - because the miniatures are so small, you have to exaggerate certain proportions in order for them to a) cast properly and b) not be so thin and fragile that they break easily. Fortunately SioCast is an excellent material to cast miniatures, with detail comparable to resin with very good impact resistance and flexural strength. But even so, you can still only cast pieces so thin. One day we may consider doing some 54mm sculpts of John's characters, in which case those proportions could be a lot closer to the artwork... :) 

The final miniatures are being worked on and we should have renders of those soon. These characters are the Boarding Hussar and Nasty Piece of Work:

In the next update we will have a clearer idea of where we are with production, which is ongoing with all currently sculpted miniatures but, of course, we still have a couple left to finish off. We are still hopeful that we can hit April, at least for the majority of backers. Thank you for you patience and see you in the next update!

Best,

Thistle