Kickstarter: Street Humans by Shartimus Prime
 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...tpage-footer-1


Just wanted to post this here for those of you that are into action figure photography and or have always wanted to own street level thugs to throw down with your street level heroes such as Spidey, DD, Punisher, MK, Ironfist. I've jumped in to support it & put in for a quad package of all 4. Hasbro has declined to give us street thug army builders so he is filling a much needed niche in the 6' scale action figure world.

Interesting.

If it were anyone but him.

He's cool in my book.

At least it isn't ANthony's Customs. Each toy would probably come with an pre-recorded 20 minute diatribe of how it sucks.

I'm shocked at just how poor that KS is. There are no produced prototypes, he offers no information on production, and there's barely any information on each of the figures he's offering beyond that video with the irritating voice over quickly scrolling through some renders even I could knock up in a few days. It's very poorly laid out. I get he's going for some 90s nostalgia with the V/O, but he's also asking people to give him a lot of money based on a few renders, it has to look somewhat professional. He isn't even responding to questions from people who have actually given him money in the comments section.

That's not to mention sticking with his YT name and putting it in the title of the KS. Sure, that kind of thing is fine in context and knowing how long he has been using it, but when you're trying to get a business off the ground, that isn't the kind of name you go with. Oh, and he decided to go with a somewhat offensive joke in one of his recent videos. It's all just tremendously unprofessional, and I wouldn't trust those figures to get produced at all.

Edit: "somewhat offensive" joke is about s--ual orientation, but I can't use any of the words I need to as filters block them.

You are correct. I'll change my statement.

If it were anyone but him, or the other obnoxious youtube d-bag, Anthony's Customs.

I'm not shocked at all. For some reason, he feels he is a celebrity and his name alone will sell it.

That post of mine was a bit of a mess and probably came across as overly aggressive, I ended up having to retype the entire thing three times to get it through spam filters - and it got deleted because I hit a login prompt too.

Anyway, I do think he's fine as a reviewer, I've been watching him for a long time. However, as this kickstarter is presented, it seems like a child's ideas for a future toy line, it doesn't exactly inspire much hope in seeing all of the money people have given him going towards any production. Hopefully he has actually done the research and has potential factories lined up to produce the line should it come to fruition. He said he's been working on it for a long time, he must have done that research and it should all be included in the kickstarter. But then I read through the information he offers and I wonder what he has done himself, other than bring some people together. One guy designed his logo, another designed his figures, and David Vonner seems to have gotten roped in and attempted to palm him off to another designer.

I don't want to dunk on it too much (although, when money is being asked for, I suppose it's deserved), but it needs a hell of a lot more work, from top to bottom. I wouldn't encourage anyone to go out and invest money expecting to get anything out of it based on the information he has presented. Hopefully he gets there in the future, for the people who want this kind of thing.

Happy to be proven wrong, too. I'd love to see a huge update to the kickstarter providing real, worthwhile information. At the very least he needs to start talking to the people who have so far given him $34k.

By contrast, look at how active the creator of the Beasts of the Mesozoic kickstarter is, and he's a veteran in the industry, and has run multiple successful kickstarters in the past.

Lotta hate for the guy. Some super sensitive people on these forums. Don't wanna invest in the KS, just say so. Lotta judgmental people here. If it doesn't fund, you don't lose any $$ as they can't charge you if it doesn't reach it's goal. And he says the figs don't come out till Dec of next yr. That's more than enough time for him , Vonner & whomever else he has working on this project to crank out prototypes.

I don't hate the guy, I just look at that Kickstarter and alarm bells trigger in my head. Would you trust anything about that page if it wasn't a YTer you had been watching review figures for years?

By contrast, look at David Silva's first Kickstarter with the Raptor Series (still can't post links), click the risks link and he mentions all of the connections he has from previous work, that he has personally produced and sold products before, etc.

Now it's entirely possible Shartimus has prototypes in the works and almost ready to go, but if he is close to that point, why not wait until he has them prior to launching it? He's not making any money off the Kickstarter until it ends anyway. Hell, I've even seen AnthonysCustoms showing off prototypes of toys he has designed on his channel before, and that must have been at least a year ago at this point.


I really just think it's irresponsible to be asking people for money with the project at it current state, especially when his target audience is (whether or not he wants it to be), fairly young.

I actually like Anthonyscustoms prototype figs a heckuvalot! Interested in all of them as they could go great as Reaver Cyborgs or a group of renegade Cyborg Ninjas. Shartimus having David Vonner helping him out & Vonner bringing in a well known sculpter to do the figs gives me hope that this KS might be successful. If not, oh well, hopefully Hasbro gets hold of this & finally gives us an army builder wave of generic street thugs as I can really do without the Alien heads. I just want these for street level battles with street level heroes.

Yeah, I kind of rudely dismissed that Vonner link simply because I checked his social media and didn't find a single mention of Street Humans, but I might have missed it. I sort of imagined Shartimus reaching out and Vonner being polite in response, rather than wanting his name plastered over the project, but I could be (and hopefully am) wrong.

I do think Hasbro is getting better with parts to build civilians at least. You get all of those Power Rangers heads, Marvel Legends has a few decent bodies you could use for civilians now, and that Shield Army Builder pack comes with three generic ass dude heads for you to use. Maybe if the Power Rangers line survives long enough we'll start seeing civilian versions of the cast from that too. Skin tone matching is always a frustration though, and that's a problem a line like Street Humans could potentially solve.

I also appreciate Hasbro's slightly off actor likenesses, that helps me look at them more as generic people.

I agree. I've actually gone on a civilian suited figure buying spree these past 30 days via Ebay, Mercari & now have 13 civilian suited figs that I've popped various heads on to be the Kingpins bodyguards & hitmen. I was pissed that I missed out on the SHIELD Army builder set exactly for those 3 generic civilian head sculpts. I hope they relist them & the Skrull grunts again. Think it's BS that they are sold out by the time non Pulse members can get a chance at buying them.

But that's just it, he has been a YouTuber for years and has held a presence. He's built a name and a brand for himself. I don't see why I shouldn't trust him any less than say Super 7. Hell, people went ahead and supported that Valeverse dude without hesistation.

Sometimes you just have to realize that if you want to see something you'd like to see done, you have to do it yourself. That's what got me started on YouTube. No one was doing Godzilla reviews in a style I wanted to see and that was that.

You have to start somewhere though. Like I have no idea who this David Silva is. What did he do beforehand?

It's not like he is forcing people to support him. That's like when someone got mad at me for talking about my Patreon. He acted like I was putting a gun to my audiences' head to support me.

Maybe he first needs to see if there is enough interested to warrant paying for physical prototypes.

Super7 was apparently founded 20 years ago, seems like a fairly good reason to trust they'll get you what you pay for, and will take responsibility if they don't. That's a company that doesn't seem like it'll vanish overnight.

I looked up that Valaverse Kickstarter and he didn't really get that many backers, only 689 backers in total, but he asked for a lower amount. That guy also had full prototypes shipped out to reviewers on YT ready for his kickstarter launch. Having said that, he still hasn't shipped any product, so that just goes to show how hard it is. He also engaged with people on his kickstarter, and had a better setup to begin with.

I had no idea who he was either, I included his name so you could look up the Kickstarter as I'm not allowed to link it. However, he fills people in on his full background and why you can have some faith in the project on his Kickstarter.

Patreon for me is a little different (I can't stand those people whining about YTers setting them up) as you already know exactly what you're going to get, and if they disappoint you it's easy enough to cancel. This is a much bigger investment. I must admit, I have no idea who you are though, so I haven't seen the anger you dealt with.

He's asking for a quarter of a million, I'd hope he has done the research and is aware there's enough interest. Asking people to fund everything up front and basically accepting zero financial responsibility is a bit of a joke, if that is his plan. If it isn't and he has prototypes on the way then he should have waited a few weeks to launch.

Other than find him annoying as hell, good luck to him. I have no interest. I like the regular humans from ML. As far as David Silva, his communication throughout the process is fantastic. Lots of updates from paint masters to pre-production to test samples of each piece and photos of production from the factory. He should write a book on the creation of figures. Very excited for my shipment later this year. I am passing on the T-Rex as I have the large Jurassic Park 1 from Mattel. If you don't have people on the ground in HK or China that you trust, you can get taken for a ride by the factory owner stealing the money, closing up shop and moving to Australia.

Except one person saying they dont like him and another questioning the validity of his campaign is not showing "a lot of hate for him and being sensitive". This isnt the fwoosh forums lol

Deleted some posts. Keep the thread on topic, and quit it with the personal insults.

There's a guy called JediJones who is just going on his kickstarter page & doing nothing but hurling insults at Russ in the comments section. If someone has no intentions of supporting his KS, that's fine, but no need to go on it to just insult his attempt at getting this funded.

Well Shartimus Prime's KS failed to fund so he cancelled it till further notice. I think he made a mistake in not having finished prototypes to show for comparison scale pics with ML figures & other 6' scale figures from other lines. I also think he should scrap the alien monster head sculpts & monster hamds & just focus on the human street thug aspect of the line, it would save him $$ on not doing the alien heads/hands. Hopefully he'll come back with this sometime in the new yr as there is a market for 6' scale human figures.

I think it failed because there isn't a wide enough market for something like this. It's pretty specialized.

Gonna have to agree to disagree. Had he already had painted prototypes ready to display & pose with ML figures for scale reference, I believe the KS would've succeeded. The lack of physical product is what doomed this KS IMO.

I'd say this needs at least another six months (more, honestly) in the oven. He couldn't even get a prototype from the factory, so clearly whoever he was working with isn't even remotely reliable, and he needs to spend months in communication with people to figure out where to go next and ensure he isn't going to end up with a bulk load of dud figures - if anything at all - after dumping money from his supporters on a place willing to produce these.