Hey gang,
You will be seeing some changes coming up with Warriors Gate Productions as we streamline the way we do things to be able offer more heads per year with greater frequency. Right now my partner in WGP and our lead sculptor, Sean Dabbs, is only able to sculpt for us in his free time as this is a second job. (In his day job he sculpts freelance for McFarlane, Big Chief, etc.) This is why when a WGP interest list “converts” and hits 16 interested it takes us a while to start it. We have tried having him go full time before but we still needed to refine our system a bit more to make it viable.
Sean can sculpt approximately three heads a month depending on what outside jobs he is doing. I would love to be able to have Sean complete at least two new heads a month here. This will have us fly on completing our already converted interest lists that have reached 16 and for our future projects. That would be pretty sweet and would help to really us explore the shows, movies, and universes we are already doing and populate them faster. Imagine a schedule where, say you were a “GOLDEN GIRLS ”or “THE NOTEBOOK” fan and we could offer you multiple character heads from it within the year, perhaps as sets (ex- two heads every three months) on a planned schedule, depending on character interest of course.
We realize we’ve had bugs to work out with our past processes. We are always working behind the scenes to make things run smoother. 2012 was very frustrating with the bottle-necking with casters and the failures with trying new ones. Each head we make will still take an approximate three month course from finished sculpt to release. The difference is we want to start at least sending two new heads at the printer every month so we will be ideally releasing two every month once we get to the point they are being cast.
Our biggest question mark with doing this is insuring actual commitment for a character from the forum after we have expressed interest. We can have 70 people express interest but only half follow through. Clearly that number will get better with a faster turn around and being able to show painted protos through our proto painter Salvador Larroca. What we want to do now, if we have for example 31 people interested in a Kurt Russell “MacCready” from the Thing, is to collect a small $10 “interest” deposit per character before we start to have us begin to insure the interest is really there. This is particularly important with interest lists at lower numbers (Ex: just “16”). Insuring interest is there will help us fly ahead and take on these multiple project with more certainty. The rest of the head payment would be due later on any time after the master is printed through release.
Also, from now on new heads will be offered for only a limited time and will no longer be kept available open ended. We will do second runs only as demand warrants it. We are confident in our abilities. If in the end you are not happy with the head the $10 deposit could instead be applied to a different character deposit for or order.
We have a lot of heads and 1:6 prop items planned for this year. “Converted” interest lists we are moving to complete soon are JUSTIFIED, The THING, Kim Bassinger, Tracey Walters, Margot Kidder, Sarah Douglas, DAWN OF THE DEAD, DEADWOOD, and Leeloo from FIFTH ELEMENT, while other universes we plan to focus a lot on this year are ILLEGAL ALIEN, ILLEGAL ALIENS, and THE STALKING DEAD. This is not a full list of everything we are doing. There will be other projects. This is just the quick bullet points.
We will discuss more of our plans for each universe in their own respective threads.
We would also like to start collecting customer E-mails for a monthly WGP newsletter and themed updates, which we plan to offer some exclusive head sculpts and exclusive deluxe sets through off-forum (and because only being able to PM 5 people at a time here in SSF is a killer! - laugh), so please contact us with your E-mail if you’d like to be included on it. Please send your addresses to sean.dabbsAThotmail.com with WGP newsletter in the title. Please replace AT" with "@"!
Peace, guys, make love, not war! ;D
Ski 
