Did it read as a complaint? That's not how I meant it. As I said, charge whatever you feel your time and effort is worth (or charge more than or less than you think it's worth - whatever you feel like doing). I wasn't trying to present mine as competition. I'm not particularly interested in competing with anyone: as I said, I would happily abandon mine and buy one off you or someone else if I felt the price and my desire for the piece were a good match.

Oh and thanks for the underhanded implication that mine won't be worth as much as yours. I'm not a prop designer so maybe you're right. I'm just a hobbyist artist who is pretty handy with a 3d printer, sandpaper, and paint and who has a pretty good eye for color matching but who is crippled by bouts of creative... I dunno, I just lose all enthusiasm sometimes, so we'll see how far that takes me.

It wasn't a threat. I was just saying that, if his looked good (it does) and was available for a price I'm willing to pay (it's not), then I would stop working on mine and just buy his. The only reason I'm working on one in the first place is because there just isn't an option out there that I want to buy - as I stated, I would never do the work if I could just buy one (it's not that I don't enjoy it, it's just that it's difficult to maintain enthusiasm so I try not to get caught up in any projects that I don't "need" to).

As for my comment on price - it seems I was being a brat. I apologize for that and once again, it was not my intention. I meant it as constructive criticism: a relatively minor upgrade for half the price of the original figure is, imho, a big ask. I don't know what's going into producing each one, but, as I said, if he feels it's worth the asking price, then that's fine. I just give it as my opinion that it's not worth that much to me. I probably should've kept that opinion separate from any mention of my own wip - that seems to have severely muddled my statement.

Now, all that aside, @NothingHead here's a comment that might be a little mean: I think it's silly to increase the price for future customers based on the behavior of previous customers. Again, it's your ball so you're free to play with it as you wish or to just take it and go home or whatever else you like. I just think your logic is off, especially since, as Legate points out, it means that anyone who has no interest in becoming a customer has the power to ruin it for those who do. But, like I said, do as you will. I don't mean to be insulting and if you find my opinion to be so, I apologize again, but that's my take on it.

 

ah okay, I see. Noted. I was trying to appraoch this as best as I could because I like to keep the peace. We all know how easily things can get misconstrued sometimes.  

Okay, So if you are open to this, I have some honest suggestions though for you with your heads as well if your down for it.

Be very very careful not to get yourself in the same situation that Maiden Japan did with his Garage kits.

I was just reminded about how he got in way over his head and wasn't able to produce more then the orders he took due to cost of materials etc.

Factoring all of that in. keep in mind all the errors you may end up printing out and all the materials you will burn through printing your heads. You know as well as I do. people are going to eat your heads up like they are fruity pebbles. Do NOT let what happened to Maiden Japan happen to you. above all, stay humble. stay approachable and don't ever let Ego get too inflated. In this particular business it's super easy to do.

and with EX-01 Plus Mocha coming. You'll have to make twice as many kits because people will want both for both. that being said. you may want to reconfigure your pricing. Also you may want to consider just how many orders you'll actually be able to fulfill when all is said and done. Always start super small. see how it goes. Because believe me. you can easily get flooded very quickly. You don't want to be that guy that cuts his loses and runs.  

 

Hmm I remain undecided on Mocha. Like she looks great and the additions are cool but I'm not 100% sold on all the racing deco details... like don't get me wrong I get the look they're going for and they work for that for sure, just for me personally I think I'd find them a bit irritating. I tend to like clean altmodes and I'm not a huge fan of having lots of logos all over. Also of course there's the fact it's quite a lot of money to put down for a redeco of a fig I already own and love, especially with EX-02 coming along sometime.

On the other hand, the colourscheme does look pretty cool and the changes in her deco do make her look somewhat distinct from Nicee... hmm tricky.

Funnily enough, some of the preview renders kind of make me think of Bayonetta  

BTW does Mocha have her own thread or is this the thread for her as a varient of Nicee?

 

@Xaran Alamas
BIG FIREBIRD BUILD - EX-01 Plus Mocha

 

Thanks  

 

I'm currently working on a new head and chest for Mocha. The head inspired by Nightracer (with some of the knight-vibes from the figure incorporated) but I'm still fiddling around with the chest idea. Toss up between grilled/plated armor and a more motorcycle-esk chesthood.

 

hmmm This should look rather interesting. Consider me intrigued.  

Especially, the head itself.

 

J****s! Nobody should have to go through that just for helping the community. Here's a double-thankyou for supplying this head in such circumstances.

I think NothingHead's experience proves the opposite, that this really isn't a normal transforming figure simply to be bought or not bought. There's clearly something about it (or two things   ) that fires people up.

Unfortunately, this is the reality of making custom peices for people. I've had a few people ask for Elita heads, but I daren't do it because of the costs involved (POTP Elita $40 + paints $36 + postage to US $25 = $101, excluding labour). In this context, both your head and NothingHead's ones are bargains.

 

I highly doubt only one-track-minded males bought this toy for only THAT reason.

This figure in every way hits the buttons it's supposed to hit, from her design, her alt mode, her build, durability, superior materials, paint job, the way she displays, and i can truly go on and on. Her sales alone have proven her superiority above most other female transforming robots and in some ways she's even more popular than Arcee herself. and think about it like this, This is Big firebird Toy's first high grade product they ever released to the mainstream market. everything else they release will always be compared to her success and quality.

sure don't get me wrong, 27% bought her for the purpose of drooling all over it and taking stupid photos of her doing ridiculous things, but the majority bought her up because they realized this was a really special piece. and truthfully a pretty historic kind of release in many ways and they hype surrounding her is still pretty huge even now a year after her release and is no longer being made. A single wave of this figure did that. that's pretty powerful statement for a new company to say the least.

not only merely transformers fans bought her. in fact most transformers fans avoided her like the plague and wanted nothing to do with her. A good chunk of buyers were female and people in the LGBT community even. To be honest, again, that's pretty impressive. '

Anyway, apologies if i got off track a bit. I'm just truly proud how wonderful this figure did even despite all the hate and controversy behind her.

The custom heads being made for her only Add to her allure and desire to be owned. on the subject of @NothingHead top notch quality materials used in his head production. his heads are worth every penny.

 

Spoken like a true marketing man   Sure, I'm not contesting the quality of the figure. I'm saying you can't deny or dismiss the controversy around it, however much you might like it to go away. In many ways the arguments about Nicee echo the ones about Page 3 girls here in Britain, wherein trashy newspapers successfully boost sales by including some porn. In this sense, I think the controversy is indeed mostly around Nicee's breasts: whether its empowering; whether its degrading; whether it's just business; whether business is moral; whether it's just a representation not to be confused with a real woman; whether such representations place expectations upon women; whether these expectations are fair or unfair etc. I say the controversy is "mostly" around Nicee's breasts because I think it's also around something else: the pornification of a specific character, and whether or not that's appropriate.

 

*Waves hand* That's me! On both points of that last line! 

One of the things I really love about her is how cleanly she incorporates vehicle kibble in robot mode. Even though she has a backpack it's not as bulky or poorly incorporated as many Hasbro attempts, and the multiple use of the headlight/car front pieces either as 'wings', or forming a bow, or my favourite, side-skirts, works wonderfully and is a far better use of optional partsforming than Hasbro's most recent Arcee effort with her 'hoverboard' - they could easily have added a 5mm handle to let her use it as a shield ><.
As you say she is also just a fantastically engineered figure. Like sure, can't deny sex sells was a FACTOR, particularly because of how she was marketed, but if that was all she was I feel like there wouldn't have been so much fantastic engineering put in to make her a fantastic transformer right?

 

I agree that the engineering's good (although the Thrilling Thirty Arcee upon which it seems to have been based has less kibble and no parts forming), but I wonder how many people originally bought it for that reason, especially when they kept changing the design, right up the last minute. I mean, just look at the box! It was marketed as a pair of t****ts, and sex sold!

 

Well as I say, I didn't say it wasn't marketed as such or that sex sells wasn't a factor   but if that was the ONLY thing they cared about, they could easily have made a figure which had scout class level engineering for example.
Might just be my preference but I think I actually prefer how neatly the car rear folds away on Nicee. I have the T30 Arcee a few times over and the car rear folds up on her butt bugs me a little, though not massively so   I do think Nicee edges it out for me. Granted when I made the above post I forgot that part of Nicee's car rear becomes the shield which I seldom use though   though of course it can still be left on as a bit of a back skirt I guess?
I also like though how some car kibble becomes aesthetically pleasing things, like the parts of the rear of the car mode which become like trailing ribbons or somesuch  

 Lol

 

Fair enough. I like both toys. I like the way some of Nicee's kibble becomes angel / bird wings. But if there were a fire and I could only save one, I'd probably opt for the thrilling thirty. For me it has better engineering, in the sense that it turns a slender humanoid into a cool car in fewer and more ingenius steps. Plus, I like the character of Arcee, and the Takara TT is, in my opinion, a great representation and fun to play with. At the moment I've got her posed with the Wreckers like Tank Girl

 

Is that the WeiJiang version of Arcee?

 

My wife just said, “DAMN!”. Haha.

 

This is up for pre-order. I have no idea what it was. Got an email from BBTS, so I did a search and found this thread.
EX01 Plus Mocha

 

That's Mocha, the recolor of the original pink version, the Nice of this topic, is getting hard to find now.

I have mine currently posed on my Power Baser's shoulder.

Would be a a cute picture, but you know

 

I'm sure I remember somebody suggesting an angry teeth gritted expression as one of my alt faces but I can't find the post. Whoever you were, here's a preview of the WIP. Still need to reshape the eyes to fit the new eyeholes but I think I'm happy with the expression.



Also I'm dumb. I thought there was nothing holding the face in so I added some pegs but it turns out it holds just fine without them, so that'll make it easier to swap faces - just pop out the forehead piece and the face will come off.