Welcome!

In the past weeks we have started reviewing kickstarter projects behind a new perspective, the perspective of the creators, the people behind the project who makes his best efforts to bring life to the best ideas.

A lot of people finds interesting this way to see a project and we decided to name this kind of news “Behind the project”

And this week we have one of the projects with more “hype” of the year, the Ultima Thulek kickstarter campaign.

You don´t know anything about the project?

Here is the link.

tinyurl.com/ultimathuleabg

And now Francesco Farabi is going to answer us some questions. If you miss one important question, please put it in the comments section for the next article.

1/ Hi Francesco, first of all, please tell us who are the persons behind this project.

Hi Hugo. This project was born from the collaboration between the staff of Kimera Models and Aradia Miniature, started more than 2 years ago with the The League project, which involved (and still involves) 4 European miniature companies in the realization of a common idea (Kimera, Aradia, Nocturna and Michael Kontraros Collectibles). During this period, a relationship of friendship and brotherhood developed with Aradia, which led to the idea of ​​a joint Kickstarter based on the continuation of an intriguing world created by Aradia years ago: Hyperborea.

Hyperborea is a mythical kingdom located in the north of the world, which is part of those legendary lost places like Atlantis or Mu. In developing an idea that united the two companies, we thought of creating an opponent for the Hyperborean, an idealized pure and just race who defend the beauty of the world.

Kimera, which is part of Pegaso Models, has decided to pay tribute to her own history by playing with a “ucronia” in which a legion got lost during the battle of Teutoburg and finds itself beyond the Rhine, mixing with the local populations of barbarians and giving life to a fantasy horde led by a dark lord who has plans to conquer Hyperborea.

We decided to combine the myth of hyperborea with the one of the ancient Thule, transforming the latter into the capital of the lost kingdom and in fact the campaign takes place during this war for the conquest of the kingdom.

In addition to the staff of Kimera and Pegaso, the list of artists who participated in this project is very long, starting with the artistic directors and CEO of Aradia (Stefano) and Kimera (Luca Marchetti), to the concept artists Stefano Moroni who created most of them, who de facto dictated the visual style of the Kickstarter and Alberto, who in addition to being the main sculptor of the campaign has also created two of the concepts; from the illustrator Gianluca Garofalo who created all the colored panels featured in the kickstarter by painting the concepts with watercolors, using only Kimera Kolors paints, to the project and social media manager Riccardo Agostini; From Francesco Farabi’s Graphic, video and music design, to the entire production chain managed by Pietro Balloni. From the instagram management of Marica Rossi, to the rendering and sculpture of Africa Mir Serrat. And this is only scratching the surface as we didn’t even name all the painters, the casting, the 3d printing and so on… to give life to a project like this we needed around 30 people!

The entire list of people involved will be on the Kickstarter and it is a section to which we have dedicated great care and which we invite everyone to read.

2/ What challenges have faced to create this campaing?

The biggest challenge was certainly to build a project that was at the same time representative of the style of both companies involved, and that could immediately give the idea of ​​something “strong”. In short, we wanted to amaze.

And it was not an easy thing because on the one hand we had the legacy of a beautiful project by Aradia started years ago, on the other hand the need to bring Kimera into the world of kickstarters with a certain resonance. We had to try not to go unnoticed.

3/ How long did it take to bring life to a project like this?

Around 1 year and a half.

4/ What is your favourite figure of the campaign?

Well this is a question that is impossible to answer since probably if you asked each of the people involved they could give a different answer. We can say that we love them all. Rather we will be interested in knowing which will be your favorite!

5/ When you want a boxart, do you give an exact idea or give some artisitic freedom to the painter?

The best answer to this question is: it depends! There are subjects that arise in our mind in a rather precise way and in that case we try to give fairly precise references of what we imagine, while in other cases some characters lend themselves more to being read in different ways. But in both cases, we would like to say it, we are first of all fans of miniatures and all the painters we collaborate with are artists who excite us and we love them all!

For this reason we are not only always open to hearing the painter’s idea, indeed we always ask them to tell us how they imagine him, but sometimes if the artist is convinced of what he is proposing and we like his idea we are also willing to see a version completely opposite to the one we thought at the beginning, the important thing is that it is agreed. An artist works at his best when he can put a part of himself into what he does, we know it since we are all of us first of all model makers and painters.

6/ 3d sculpt or traditional?

The kickstarter is mainly composed of digital sculptures, but two pieces are sculpted by hand by the master Joaquin Palacios.

7/ You have one of the most wanted brand of paints of the market, what are you searching when you have created it?

Is quite hard to answer to this question in a quick way, but we will try. When Pegaso for the first time started to think about doing its brands of paints, the main project was born in collaboration with the idea of ​​Alfonso Giraldes, with his dream of catching the “essence of colors”.

Unfortunately, the time was not yet ripe to carry out this project which remained silent until two decisive meetings took place: the one between Pegaso and Francesco Farabi, who gave life to Kimera Models and the even more vital one between Kimera Models and Alessandro Camerini, Creator of Italian acrylics, owner of a century old paint factory with great, with a great passion for miniatures and an endless knowledge in the field of paints.

The union between the over ten-year experience of painter and international master Francesco Farabi and the incredible technical and chemical knowledge of Alessandro Camerini, gave life to a project that started from that original idea of ​​maintaining “the essence of colors” to create a set based on a very simple concept but which we consider essential:

All the colors we use to paint are made of pigments. The pigments mixed together produce the shades that we buy and use on our miniatures or on our canvases.

But in the vast majority of cases we do not buy “colors”, but shades created specifically by color manufacturers, mixing together different pigments.

Among these in particular, white is almost omnipresent, which serves to equalize and stabilize any color, to make it more opaque, etc.

You would be amazed to know how many of the colors you normally use have white or black inside. But this produces a rather intuitive result if you think about it … if I use colors that have white inside and mix them with colors that have black inside what will I get? What happens if I mix white with black?

Exact! The grey!

The use of this type of paints makes it almost impossible to preserve the saturation in a controlled way, a thing that should be done by the painter and not by the paints you buy.

The basic set of kimera kolors is a scientific selection of 13 pure pigments, one for each bottle, without white and without black mixed inside the pot. One color, one pigment.

These 13 pigments mixed together produce whatever shade of tone you have in mind, and if that shade has to shift towards grey, you can decide to do it on your own.

We have selected the best pigments that can be found on the market for this purpose and we have decided to overload them. In each of the 30ml bottles you will find triple the pigmentation compared to most of the other colors on the market.

Kimera kolors are pure colors in their most powerful, essential and direct form.

Two years after the success of this first set, we presented the second part of this project, the signature project.

This was born as an expansion of the kimera kolors experience by adding a series of colors that are blends, so they go in the opposite direction from the initial idea, but they are blends created by some of the most important names in the world of miniatures. They are sets of 6 colors created by artists by mixing the best pigments to represent their style or a part of it and pass it on to other painters. Each of these sets is accompanied by an explanatory sheet that tells the use of the set with the voice of the artist involved.

If it is true that each of these tones is in theory achievable with our basic set, it is especially true that in these mixtures there is concentrated the personal and artistic history of professionals and artists who have built their style over the years and it is incredible. This is evident by using them.

The market is full of colors, some of which are of incredible quality, what we have been looking for is not only to make ours by aiming at the qualitative excellence of the best products in the world, but above all by following a philosophy that we consider different from that of others, which puts the painter at the center of the creative process of painting, which on the one hand does not facilitate it by slamming purity in his face and the need to become a better painter to manage it, but on the other by providing him with the most powerful and versatile means to express themselves at their best.

We are convinced that the Kimera Kolors are colors that teach us to be better painters and we think the market is telling us that maybe we are right.

8/ I have seen some of the kickstarter figures are big, does the size really matters?

No, the “story” you want to tell matters. Sometimes your story needs to be told by a small chibi, sometimes by an huge diorama with 10 miniatures and 3 dragons.

In this kickstarter we wanted to give every possibility, from the small “easy” figure, to the incredible huge project.

So maybe the best answer is… no, size doesn’t matter, what matters is the way you use it ahahahaha

Thanks for yor time and good luck with the project!

And if you think this is the end… this month we will talk more about this project, stay tuned to our social media to know more!