Monday, 24 March 2014

Hasslefree Miniatures Newsletter

Some naked chicks...amongst other things...

All joking aside the 'nude' models make excellent armatures and I use them as zombie chicks quite a lot after a bit of additional clothing has been added...okay...I don't always add clothing...


Aaaaarrrrggghhhhh!!!
Sorry, that's just generally what's going on in most of us retailer's heads for the few weeks before Salute :)
The tiniest little problem suddenly becomes world-ending and you have no idea how the company is going to survive now that you're out of stock of 2 of your 800 miniatures or your flyers showed up 5mm smaller than they should do :D
So, despite knowing it's daft and we'll probably be fine *touches every piece of wood in the postal code* we still freak out and you may need a little patience with us with regards to answering emails or FB posts and the like, it's probably because we're incredibly busy spending 4 hours fixing the fact that two of our hookstands are 1mm uneven which will 'of course' lead to the sudden and overnight decline of our entire company and me having to get a real job..
We have no more metal releases before the show, any new metal coming in will be launched 'at' Salute. If it comes in early enough we'll add it to he website as a pre-order for both the show and to be sent out the week after the show. The release schedule does go on though and as such Kev is still feverishly adding to the line and so we have some new reisn masters for ya...

Misha, Eastern Promise
Misha is one of the two newest members of our fantasy harem. Kev's taken a bit of stick from me about women's hair and shoes lately (Which is another one of those weird things you don't think you'll ever need to type) so he's been showing off with hairstyles like this and the boots on Lenore.
I'm pretty certain this means I should give him stick on other stuff I'd like added to minis too *beam*
She may show up as a clothed variant of some kind in the future too but these two were specifically made as actual minis (unlike concubine (c), Lena, who was made as a dolly).

Layla, the Dark Night
(Nope, no relation to the other guy)
Layla is the second of our new harem members. A slightly more tradional Hasslefree look but defintiely none the worse for it (or much better for it depnding on your tastes :) ).
Again you might see a clothed variant at some point, one of the win-win benefits of Kev making naked women, you guys get to expand the harems and Kev gets a load of new dollies to make new minis.

Wolf, Barbarian Nomad
The wandering barbarian, Wolf. Rumoured to have Ogre blood in his lineage, which attributes to both his size and temperament, he has become known to adventurers across the realms. Standing here bare chested and proud with his trusty broadsword.
Wolf is our quintissential HF barbarian. Big muscles, big sword, usually bald :)  You'll notice he's no longer Wolf (b), we renamed the Wolf minis to be more in line with what you get...
Wolf, the base model, available in white metal and as a resin master.

Wolf the King, a production resin-only variant with a couple of nubile female admirers and hair.
Young Wolf, representing the early years of our wandering barbarian, availabel only in white metal.
and...


Limited Edition Wolf in Cloak
... this guy.
A resin-only Limited Edition version of Wolf in a full-length Wolfskin cloak.
What isn't made so obvious by us, because we only rarely do LE figures, is that this guy is Limited to 100 copies and we're down to our last handful. With Salute around the corner, where we always sell a few, I thought this would be a good time to remind people about it in case he suddenly disappears.
Once he's gone he's gone (other than some resin masters in Sal's retirement box), in fact the geen was recently taken apart to remake the Wolf resin master above.

New Etched Brass
With our first restock of the Etched Brass section we got in 3 new designs.
2-Bar Treadplate, for your modern or sci-fi needs.
Larger versions of both the Roman Numerals and Latin Characters, just over twice the size for anyone wanting to make larger signage etc.

Salute 2014 Draws Closer
Both a reminder of our Salute collection code and an expanded description of how to use it.
The code is entered on the very last page before payment (on the confirm page) and is entered in a box at the top of the page. We get a lot of people putting codes in the comments box which does nothing other than allow us to read some odd comments :)
Also the code requires pre-payment, hence the choice of free gifts, as it allows us to pick and pack your order before the show and helps us out.
Finally you do 'not' need to select the FREESHIP as your free gift, that's only there for people who for some reason or another don't want any of the available free gifts (as the code requires you select 'something' before it activates), all orders using the code switch to collection which zeroes out the postage cost automatically.
For those who have asked if they can use the code outside of coming to Salute, well no :) The main reason is that the free gift is a reward for saving us time and effort on a very busy day and the other reason being that it completely removes any address from the order meaning we wouldn't know where to send it anyway.
The code will be active until around the Thursday before Salute, we'll let you know when it's being turned off closer to the time.

The Painters of Hasslefree - Andy 'Belly' Wedmore
The first of what we hope to be a recurring newsletter piece, showcasing our many artist friends who have taken the time to paint a number of Hasslefree miniatures and done it damn well.
Our initial painter is Andy 'Belly' Wedmore (previously known as The Paintacle and Hairysticks). Recently back into the world of painting, but clearly having lost none of his skill, he's ploughed straight in to post up some beautiful paintjobs on some of our upcoming releases.
Andy won the very first Artemis Black's painting contest with a Steve Buddle sculpted Shae so I've been aware of his work for many years. He also wrote up one of the old HF painting guides that we hope to bring back to light later this year :)
Welcome Back Andy!
FB Portfolio - Belly Miniatures
New CMON Page -  Belly on CMON
Feel free to go share the love with likes and high scores ;)


And FInally...
I didn't get a chance to get together a graphic for Kev's US roadtrip so that'll be next week. Basically he's running some classes at Adepticon and then some more classes, (that are currently full), in Colorado, then heading to Reapercon to meet up with Sal and the kids.
I'll put some more details about what I'm doing with Artemis Black's in next week's newsletter too. Currently the website is a bit of a mess as it's being run down for the 'big merge' :) I'm pretty positive that I'm going to have to go in and take a shovel to the overactive spam filter between now and next newsletter as when you leave them alone like that they get 'crazy'.
Woody and Alien, the two newest Modern troopers are finished. There'll be pics of those on FB this coming week. There was a 'slight' communications fubar with them that has led to only one of them using Body 4 so Kev and I have come up with a quick plan to make another Body 4 mini that should please a fair few of you who have asked for somethign similar, more on that next week.
We passed 5000 FB likes this past week! A big Thanks to everyone who helped that happen, roll on 7500! :D
As always with Salute, we'll be taking the opportunity to invest in and try out new things, we've added the etched brass above and there'll be more additions to our accessories rang etc. over the next couple of weeks so,
'til next time,
Arty.

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