Hey, I'm glad everyone is starting to get their Bishops! Awesome!
Alright, about the Newt heads... let's talk about this. Let's consider this an open letter to everyone.
For me, my Aliens 1:6 set isn't complete until it has a Bishop and a Newt. Now (everybody join in as Spiderman recounts his origin yet again!) since March, I've commissioned a ton of heads. Eight so far, the seventh just completed (Bill Murray). Number Nine (Dan Ackroyd from Ghostbusters) is just a few payments away from being able to be sent off.
Ada's turn-around from payment to finished sculpture is just a month.
I do these for my hobby. I do these for me. I do these because yes, (standing up) "my name is Rick and I'm a 1:6 nerd".
I don't make a profit on any of these. Considering how many I've done, many may find that surprising (many more may even find that stupid!). I agree. I should have an army of flying monkeys at my command right now made off of some sort of profits ready to attack Canada even as we speak. I fail. I've failed myself and everybody who's ever wanted to attack Canada with a horde of flying monkeys like myself.
So I started the thread for Bishop, and a few people contacted me asking me if I'd be interested in doing an Ada "Newt" commission as well. She was already high on my list of definite wants, so that was the "go" sign.
Only to be courteous, I didn't really want to interfere with the Soveriegn Studios Newt project which had been going on since January, or have them lose any money to me, since mine was after all, non-profit, so I kept mention of it just to the PM's of commissions I was already doing since May. I didn't want to step on anyone elses toes or hurt their feelings.
I still only had two other people involved, and as time went on, they were getting antsy to get the Newt head made. They had already pre-paid. Soverign Studios still didn't seem any closer to completeing theirs, so I waited hopefully to get more contributors and for the Soveriegn Studios project to end.
Finally, July 4th, I E-mailed PJam and said this:
Hey PJam,
I'm William Shatners Toupee. You may remember me from such memorable Ada group head commissions as the Supernatural Bros from SUPERNATURAL, the TALL MAN from Phantasm, Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, Aliens, and Liberace- his finest Las Vegas moments.
I respect your and Soveriegn Studios hard work on your Newt project, and just wanted to let you know out of courtesy that I wanted to commission a Newt head from Ada for myself for some time now, but I didn't want to be a jerk and hurt your sales or business by having my head pop up at the same time as your efforts on Adas site and accidentally end up "competing" with you, so till now I've held off placing the commission, waiting for your project to progress and get underway, to the point you started collecting money.
As you may know, I don't do my group commissions for profit, I just get people to help finance and get the heads made, but for Adas Newt, I didn't even do that because I didn't want to unintentionally take even one of your sales.
The thing with Ada though, is once she has the first "draft" of a head done awaiting approval, she'll throw it up on her site and in E-mails and everyone will know about it regardless, (which will probably be in a few more weeks yet.)
I just don't want you to feel I did anything underhanded. Once I have a head to show, since people will be seeing it from Ada anyways, I would like to post it here and maybe get some orders to re-coup my commissioning money then, but only if it doesn't ruffle any feathers with you.
I will also be directing people to your commission thread who may need a body and clothes so maybe you can pick up any straggling business you might not have gotten before as well.
I hope you feel I acted politely and appropriately with this. Thank you,
-Rick
Paul wrote back saying they had only just barely started to collect payments, and would appreciate it if I held off untill their Newt project was done.
I suppose I really should have followed up.
I waited another month to give them time to finish collecting their money which I thought was fair time. I know how hard that part is. It's very tough. Once my Bishop heads came in, I finally made a mention of the Ada Newt head plan in a thread, because that's when I had everyone looking at my thread. I had planning her since the biggining, and Soveriegn Studios were 8 months into their project now while still working on other ones as well. I figured I had waited long enough. I still had peoples money I had collected towards Newt, and they felt I had been fair enough, now they wanted their heads. I figured my head would compliment his kit anyways, after all, everyone was still going to need Newts clothes and a body, and they were only selling them as sets.
If anything I figured my heads would boost his sales.
All of which probably would have been fine except I guess hardly anyone has still paid Soveriegn Studios for ther Newt kit yet, and I'm being painted a jerk like I am out to steal business, and for that I am sorry.
Guys, I just want to be cool here. If you committed to buying the Newt kit from Soveriegn Studios, please do so. There's a LOT of hard work put in there. You get the body. You get the outfit. You have a great choice of heads.
I guess I'll let you guys decide what the right thing to do is.
-Rick