So for New Years, I promised myself that I’d get back into the groove of posting more often. 2014 was pretty great and we basically sold through more than 3/4 of the stock we bought from the successful Kickstarter in late ’13. Thanks again for all those who contributed and purchased ModiBots in the past year. Its been amazing.

So, people keep asking me ‘what’s next?’ and there are a couple of exciting things brewing on the horizon. In early December, I placed an order to replenish my stock on all the original 8 colors and included an order for 5 additional figure colors! Nearly everyone has been clamoring for black since the Kickstarter engine, so that was at the top of the list, followed by army green, tan, pink (more of a fuschia, actually), and a translucent frost blue. I’ve also restocked on the black venture accessory set and ordered two new colors in that, as well- army green and gray.

Production has started, so all the items should begin the journey from China on January 20th. I’m hoping to get some photo samples to post before the 20th, but, hopefully, fingers crossed, I’ll have them all  in-hand and ready to order by the end of January.

The past year has also shifted my focus a bit to start doing more parts that are built for FDM/desktop 3d printing. I still have a lot of custom parts available at the Shapeways shop, but with the price of home printers dipping near the $1000 mark, its time to start balancing pre-printed parts with model sets that you can print at home. Its not too surprising that my free modiBot v.1 model set is the #1 ‘seller’ on the site, but I think it shows that there are a lot people getting into 3d printing and looking for fun things to print.

Early prototypes for home-printable models that let you ‘flesh-out’ Mo in style.

What’s gotten me so excited is that it allows me to start producing the slide-over, ‘skins’ body parts that the Mo figure frame was built for. (You didn’t think he was so skinny for no reason, did you?) I had a bit of time over the holiday break to dust off some of my parts that I started during the Kickstarter (I can’t believe it been a year and a half). As you can somewhat see from the picture, these parts slide over top of the various body parts providing more mass and musculature to flesh out the character, but allow the articulation to function as expected. Its exciting to see  it coming together, even if its very early in the design cycle. I’m considering starting a product beta group to help me test the models for assembly and printability and get early feedback on the designs. If you have access to or experience with a 3d printer and a bit of extra time on your hands, just ping me using the contact form attached below.

Cheers!