Kickstarter Terror at the Belmont Hills Mall 28 mm STL two story shopping mall

[archangeldesignParticipant 118xp 3]

Hi everyone,

If this is not the right place for self-posting a Kickstarter campaign, please let me know and I will remove this post immediately. I don’t want to break any of the rules of this forum, and was honestly just trying to reach out to my fellow wargamers and designers who share my passion for this hobby.  I am new to Kickstarter, and never have done a crowdfunding campaign before so I’ve never showcased any of my art work publicly in this fashion. I’ve been designing 3D models and 3D-printed terrain for quite some time over the past five years, but mostly for my own tabletop, and working professionally with some of the same tools. For my latest tabletop project, I decided to do something of such a larger scale, that there was no way for me to complete the project without help, so I am really hoping that folks like it! My overall goal is to finish everything in its entirety, and make it exactly how I dreamed it all up when I started.  I’m really so deeply grateful for the generous support that I have received over the past several days since launching the crowdfunding campaign, and with the kindhearted and encouraging responses I have gotten from my backers, and other great folks on Kickstarter. Here is a link to the campaign. Thank you for taking the time to read my post; please let me know if this is not the place for such things, and it will promptly be deleted!

[limburger 21706xp 1]

This is the kind of project that makes me wish I had a 3D printer … 🙂

Did you think about potential copyright/IP issues given that you’re using brand names for those stores and refer to a design from a movie ?
Of course these being 3D print files there’s nothing stopping you from replacing the art with more generic variants to please whatever companies feel the need to protect their IP and marketing material.

[archangeldesignParticipant 118xp 0]

Hi and thank you very much for taking a look!

Yes absolutely. That would be an easy change if needed! I am no lawyer, and have only  a limited experience in understanding these things when it comes to creating these types of artistic renderings, both 3D art or in more traditional mediums, but I believe everything I have created for this project falls under nominative and fair use for artistic and educational purposes. I was trying to go for a setting, and created a fictional story for my mall that took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the early design stages. This was why I used so many of the historical photographs I found when building everything.  I was hoping that the backing from Kickstarter supporters would act as a sponsorship so that I could continue this artistic pursuit, and finish the project the way I had envisioned it. And for their generous support, they would have exclusive access to the files and this piece of art, because they helped bring the project to life.   It has become much larger than I ever thought, and has really taken a good bit of effort every night and weekend for a long time now. I live very close to the Monroeville Mall, the filming location for Dawn of the Dead, and as a huge fan of fellow Pittsburgh native George Romero’s films, I really wanted to capture that aspect of my childhood and my love of that particular film. So all of this has really been a personal drive, out of my own interests and passions, and the love the region I live in, which is very much full of zombie pop culture and surrounds us here because of Romero’s movies. The actual real life mall is pretty great and has a zombie museum, and does zombie walks where people dress up and raise money for different organizations. Since these are real life places, I was trying to go for as much of that realism as possible, and I hope people enjoy it all. It has been exciting to see how things are coming together.  Another Pittsburgh artist who has used corporate signage is Andy Warhol with his famous Campbell’s  Tomato Soup. So when approaching the design and really doing the art itself, I was more focused on realism than anything else. However, with all that said, should any of the signage holders reach out to me, or ask me to change that aspect of the design, I could easily change the name and make it a parody rather than use the actual historic signage of that retailer.

[limburger 21706xp 1]

I’m no lawer myself either, but I wouldn’t risk waiting for them to reach out to you. They tend to be in a bad mood when they do.
OTOH … asking for permission might backfire as well.

Try to get advice from someone with a background in this sort of stuff.

Maybe contact the mall that this set is based on ?
They must know how to deal with this sort of thing as a result of them being the source material for those movies.

Kickstarter will disable your page if they get any complaints. I’ve seen this happen to one kickstarter since I’ve started backing projects.
Even if it is resolved you will lose a lot of momentum.
It also could end up delaying the project further down the road.

[archangeldesignParticipant 118xp 0]

Thank you very much for your advice. I will def start looking into it, I would really hate to it get removed or anything like that as I really poured everything I had into these completed models, and am working every single night on new additions, it has been a real labor of love since the first day.  Since I live so close to that mall, it wouldn’t be hard to get in touch with some folks down there, so I will look into it, and maybe the zombie museum might even be open toward a donation of my project or something like that to put on display. I do appreciate your insight as I hadn’t given it too much thought, and just wanted to make some really cool art,  and also I am totally new to Kickstarter entirely so I didn’t know where this would fall in terms of commercial sales and what not, since the funds are really there just to help me get the materials and cover the time needed to finish it all. Thanks again; really appreciate the insight 🙂

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