Behind the Kickstarter – BMOG Toys

Most of you hadn’t heard of BMOG Toys until their Kickstarter went live last week.  If you still are unaware, BMOG Toys is a new project headed by Trent Troop, Alex Androski, and Greg Sepelak, and the goal is to provide 5mm peg compatible accessories for a variety of toylines.  These accessories are animals that are made entirely out of individual weapons, meaning you get weapons for your existing toys as well as a new animal toy.  It’s awesome.  You should back it.

As I said, most of you hadn’t heard of BMOG until recently.  So let’s step behind the Kickstarter to talk with the three primary team members – Trent Troop, . (Disclaimer: I put together the website for BMOGToys.com but am not receiving any compensation from the Kickstarter program.)

ASM: So, Trent, where did the initial idea of BMOG come from?  How long has it been percolating in your brain?

Trent Troop:  The idea for BMOG grew out of multiple sources. I’ve always liked ‘partner’ figures. Things like the Targetmasters, Action Master partners, minicons, etc from Transformers, certainly, but also things like the animal partners that would come with some GI-Joes, the one-piece mini-figures that would come with TMNT, or the ghosts from the old Real Ghostbusters line.

I’d been using Shapeways to make accessories based on my own designs while seeing the kind of indie-toy innovations being put out by groups like Gylos and Weaponeers of Monkaa and such, and eventually the idea of using a combining set of weapons to accessorize a figure while still having a character at the center clicked into place.

The roots of BMOG started a bit over a year ago. I’ve been working up designs and exploring production methods ever since.

ASM: How long have you wanted to design your own toys?

Trent:  Since I was eight, more or less.

ASM: Alex and Greg, when were you brought on board Team BMOG?  What skills do you bring to the BMOG table?

Alex Androski: October of last year. We’d been working together on a 3D printed accessory pack prior to that.   The skills I bring are typical Industrial Design skills like design visualization, CAD, Design For Manufacture, knowledge of manufacturing processes and how to document items for manufacture, experience with and knowledge of rapid prototyping systems, as well as a love of toys and giant robots.

Greg Sepelak: Trent and I have been creative partners for over a decade, so the words “foregone conclusion” kinda come to mind. I was seeing the earliest stuff long ago, tossed out ideas. It was only semi-recently that the project had coalesced enough and I had the time to really devote to it, but I’ve known about this a long time.

As for skills, lots of lineart. Lots and lots of lineart. Concept art, logo design, detail work, character bio art, etc etc etc. Also character-bio stuff, making these bots be more than just pieces.

ASM: Trent, what made you choose Alex and Greg?  Like Greg says, his inclusion seems pretty obvious.

Trent: Greg can approach illustration from a lot of different styles. When you’re doing something like this, with a heavy retro flair, that’s invaluable. And Alex had helped me with some technical issues with some of my earliest Shapeways endeavors. Our skill sets and work patterns meshed well and his CAD experience was a perfect fit, so I invited him in as our industrial designer and he said yes.

ASM: Alex and Greg, what made you say “Yes” to Trent’s proposal?

Alex: It’s a great idea, and Trent’s passion is infectious. It was never a matter of saying “yes” as it was a matter of asking “What do you need me to do to make this happen?”

Greg: Again, pretty much “foregone conclusion”. Trent and I have been co-working on independent, self-owned projects a while now on top of the licensed work, and we’re both keen on making that into a career rather than a hobby.

ASM: Trent and Greg, both of you have done work with the Transformers Club and the GI Joe Club, being part of submitting toy ideas as well as working on fiction (prose and comics) for both clubs.  How has that experience helped you with BMOG, whether designing toys or fleshing out fiction and designs?

Trent: My experience has helped to a degree.  My work with them hasn’t been in that area, but I have picked up some things from that process in regard to good color balance and character-identity through deco elements.

As for fleshing out fiction and designs, it’s the same skill-set. You’re developing a character that can be communicated in a paragraph and still engage the audience. Character bios are tricky to write but done well you can take that short blurb and create a universe of possibilities for the reader. I’ve also learned that it is usually best to start over the top and ratchet down when it comes to characterization.

Greg: Honestly, the two experiences are entirely different with toy design. With the TF Club we have to work specifically within what Hasbro/Takara’s already made, because those molds have all been cost-analyzed and safety-tested to hell and back. With BMOG we’re starting from scratch and we don’t have so many rules to play by. But I suppose what I’ve learned about how Hasbro/Takara make toys has really helped me appreciate how not easy it is.

As far as fiction goes? Well, it’s mainly reinforced a personal belief… people like a bit of eccentricity to a character. “This character is just super-powerful and stuff and heroic” tends to bore. A character who may or may not be powerful, but has a quirk to their character… that leaves a lasting impression.”

ASM: Alex, as a former Hasbro employee, how has your experience there helped with BMOG design?  What similarities do you find in the design process, if you can answer without giving away trade secrets?

Alex: None of it’s really a matter of trade secrets–just a matter of practice and experience. Prototyping early and often is vital, and 3D printers have made that much, much easier. It also taught me what kind of timeframes to expect on these projects–a new effort can take upwards of a year to get into place, and even the most fluid process can take upward of 6 months to go from solid concept to execution. Over time, you start to get a feel for what types of parts will and won’t work, what changes you can use to beat stuff into shape, what design elements have a bigger or smaller payoff, and just how important feel can be–and just how many steps in the process can influence feel.

Hasbro had a lot of people who knew exactly what they were doing for each step of the design and manufacturing process, and often specializing in a handful of specific steps. It’s been a blast replicating each of those steps, but also kinda daunting. As much as I saw at Hasbro and as many parts of the process as I got to touch, there’s no learning experience quite like jumping in head-first, sink or swim.

ASM: Where would each of you like BMOG Toys to be in one year, five years?

Trent: Ideally, in a year I’d like to be working on getting a larger-scale figure, about twice as complex as Ursenal, to market, with several other releases in the meantime. In five years I’d like the whole team to be making an independent living off of BMOG and other toy projects and break into the traditional retail distribution chains.

Alex: In a year or in 5 years, my answer is the same: I’d like to be doing more of this, with more skill from experience, at a larger and faster scale and–with a little luck–the financial security to be doing it as my main focus, rather than in my spare time.

Greg: Making us enough money to sustain at least a good chunk of living wage, haha. Honestly, this is a pretty open-ended design/play concept, it can run quite a while. We’ve got early-development stuff that’s already pushing the boundaries, so with support, we hope to have an extensive and long-running line… and hopefully may dedicated builders making amazing stuff with it.

ASM: Ten years ago, fan accessories were few and far between and were extremely expensive.  How much have you been following the accessories world and seeing economies of scale make this more practical?

Trent:  I didn’t really start exploring the project until late 2011, so I can’t say exactly when that turn happened, but it was recent. 3d printing allows us to produce functional testing prototypes relatively inexpensively. It also allows for a lot of tweaking and more test revisions without producing a lot of extra costs because you’re not dealing with a temporary mold made off of a hand-made sculpt. The move to making the injection molds with a CAD system has also dropped the cost of mold-plates.

Greg: I’ve had a casual eye on the indie-toy thing, but haven’t really dipped in financially because of, well, finances. I admit straight up I’m jealous of how the 3 3/4 Joe fandom has a MASSIVE fan-made accessories market… while admitting that it’s a little harder to translate to TFs.

Alex: I don’t think the economies of scale have changed much at all for actually producing accessories–it’s just gotten a lot more affordable and accessible to do the R&D and prototyping process. What used to require a master sculptor and either your own million-dollar machine or thousand-plus-dollar order to a rapid prototyping shop now costs a few thousand dollars for the machine and under a hundred dollars for making a prototype.

BMOG’s biggest advantage, though, is that it’s taking advantage of economies of scale in a way past fan accessories haven’t. Past accessories have had a small audience, either by being very specific to one toy or too generic to draw a large audience. BMOG is anything but generic–I dare you to find a bear made of weapons anywhere else–and has appeal to collectors of dozens of different toylines. Plus, it takes advantage of one of the biggest economies of scale of all–as far as tooling costs go, the giant slabs of steel and initial setup work to make them fit into and work with an injection molding machine are a much higher percentage than the cost of Electrical Discharge Machining one more action figure-sized part into them. More accessories for your buck–that’s the BMOG way.

ASM: Trent, what was the timeframe from initial “Yeah, we can do this” to the Kickstarter launch?

Trent: About two months.

To clarify, we knew we could make BMOG work as a 3d printing project moments after the idea hit. Mass production at a low cost was something else entirely. We spent a lot of time investigating alternative low-run processes. For a time we were considering spin-casting, which is used by a lot of miniatures companies, but the peg-and-port system required a level of precision that spin-casting and hand-casting in resin couldn’t accomplish. Eventually we started searching for affordable traditional injection molding setups that would take on small clients.

Once we got that settled, we moved forward with the Kickstarter campaign.

ASM: What do you feel was the biggest challenge that you’ve had to overcome for BMOG Toys?

Greg: Wrapping my head around how mold-lines affect what the parts will be shaped like. It especially affects where you can put holes, which can seriously make you re-think a build when there’s no way you can put a post-hole where you really wanna.

Trent: It has been a learning process from the very start. The greatest challenge was securing manufacturing facilities

ASM: Finally, what were your reactions when the Kickstarter finally went live, when the first backer signed up, and when it passed 25% funded?

Trent: A) Relief. The weeks leading up to the Kickstarter had us working almost nonstop getting things ready and I was glad for the opportunity to get a solid 8 hours of sleep. Then I was too excited to get it.

B) The first few backers hit very rapidly. So I went from telling the team that we’d gotten our first backer to telling them we had our first batch in a very short order. The whole thing still felt a bit unreal at that time.

C) Hitting 25% within 48 hours was a welcome surprise. I went straight from celebrating the news to pushing to get the second batch of designs finished early because suddenly stretch goals became a real possibility.

Alex: By the time I saw the Kickstarter had gone live, backers had already shown up. I’m still terrified that it’s all going to suddenly vanish, like some giant hidden-camera practical joke.

Greg: “Finally!”, “Woot!”, “Oh if we can keep up even half this pace…”

ASM: Thanks for all your time!  As someone who’s seen some of the lead-up to the Kickstarter, I must say I’m extremely excited for this project, and it might be a little self-serving, but I do hope BMOG Toys reaches it’s goal and then some!

Keep watching BMOGToys.com, the Kickstarter and ASM for future BMOG updates!