UPDATED Just heard some big news from Andy Gore at QMx about upcoming developments from our favorite replica company. First, the fan club edition of the Alliance Money Pack will be closing officially as of Jan. 31. Remember, this version (with the Miranda map and the possibility of getting the “Golden Ticket”) was a limited offer an that limit is approaching, so if you’ve been holding out now’s your chance to get rid of some of that Christmas money. The regular packs will go back on sale, minus the extras, sometime around March. As he said,
The Browncoat community has been incredibly supportive of QMx and our first product, so we want to make sure all the Browncoats who came out in such huge numbers to support us have something truly remarkable and unique.
(You can also enter our trivia contest for this week to win a money pack)
Second, and this is huge:
QMx has commissioned Geoffrey Mandel (Serenity graphics designer) and Tim Earls (Serenity and Firefly designer) to create, for the first time ever, the definitive set of blueprints of our favorite ship, Serenity. These blueprints will be distilled from literally hundreds of set photos, detailed architectural drawings, cgi files, and pages and pages of background material from the movie and series. They will be *the* definitive resource on Serenity’s design, layout and systems. The blueprint pack will be extensive, printed on large format, high-quality stock, and will include the ship (plus variations!), the shuttles and the mule.
And, as a special bonus, we will also include an exact replica of the Serenity builder plaque on metal foil, printed directly from the original digital file.
No prices detemined yet, but they will be very limited edition of 500 copies, signed by Mr. Mandel and Earls, and they expect to start shipping Serenity Blueprints next month. The set will include 10 18” by 24” sheets (rolled), plus the CoA/autograph/background page and the builder’s plaque, with a price of probably $135 ish.
Whoo! Now we’re talking cool replicas. Cashy money, a Mal gun, a Serenity model, blueprints, and they haven’t been open six months yet. I’m liking what I’m hearing… More details as they become available.
It’d be nice if they would update their actual website to reflect these changes though, instead of just the blog. The money still shows up as being pre-order only (as does the gun). Plus, I’ve been holding out on making any purchases because the website says that they’ll have more pictures and more details about the stuff out soon, but I’ve been waiting a few months for it now.
It’s difficult to spend 250 bucks on a Mal pistol when you only see a couple pictures of what it’ll look like, and god knows if those are pictures of the actual replica or the prop itself, or a prototype replica or whatever.
That said, all four Serenity products that I’ve heard about now sound extremely cool, and if I can get the money for them, I plan to buy them all.
Any word on when the pistol actually comes out?
Hiya Tyshalle,
Read your criticism of the the main site updates, and all I can say is, “Guilty as charged!” I’m responsible for QMx’s web stuff and my only excuse is that everyone at QMx (myself included) has been so busy trying to get as much cool Serenity stuff into the pipeline as quick as possible, that things like the main site updates have lagged behind reality much more than they should. But, our first priority is to build good (wait, no, the word I’m looking for here is “amazing”) quality products and get them to customers as fast as possible.
Now, having said all that, I will tell you now that our first four Serenity products are well underway (and the first one’s a rip-roaring success), so we’ll be focusing much more on our electronic communications. The Blog is just one piece of that. We should also be getting a new update of the site completed in the next 48 hours, and then there should be a newsletter (which you get automatically if you register with us) coming out right after that.
And we’ll have *another* main site update in just a few weeks with some exciting new stuff, including (I hope) images from the blueprint pack and up-to-date Mal pistol photos.
But, I do want to note that the blog is the *best* place to go for the most current QMx news. We built the blog specifically so we can give you, our customers, the most up-to-date info as quickly as possible, plus give you peeks behind-the-scenes at the prop development process.
So, thanks for your patience. If you ever have a question about the site or anything going on at QMx, please feel free to write me personally: andy@quantummechanix.com.
Blueprints? Hold on a second (long pause as I throw all the crap on my walls into the garbage to make space)…..
Ok, ready!
Heh. Thanks, Whitefall! The fact that you would throw all your beautiful work in the trash for *our* little project is absolutely the highest complement we could ask for!
Speaking of which, drop me a note sometime. In our line of work, we’re always interested in hearing from great illustrators like yourself (see e-mail address above.)
BTW, I need to come clean about something. I lied when I said the site would be updated in the next 48 hours – the updated site is actually live NOW 😉
Also, for those who care, we’ve made our first Battlestar Galactica replica available for pre-order as of today.
QMX Andy: Is the updated site at quantummechanix.com? I’m not seeing the new BSG item.
Hey there. Yep, it is indeed at http://www.quantummechanix.com. Just click on Battlestar Galactica on the menubar or the BSG icon in the lower left, and that should take you to the BSG homepage. You’ll see the link to the new prop in the lower left.
There’s a chance you might need to empty your cache first if you’ve been to the site recently (before the update.)
Alright, now it’s working. Very shiny indeed! Keep up the great work and you’ll keep getting my cashy money.
Wow, that’s really cool, I like the blueprints and I’m hoping they turn out great. I’m wondering if the Serenity model will have electronics as we thought earlier?
Hmm. “And variants” sounds either not definitive at all, or “a definitive look at all the various differences since the ship wasn’t the same from series to movie”. Does this mean the blueprints won’t necessarily help solve the riddle of the big circular feature at the back of the cargo bay in the movie that wasn’t in the series? Heh.
Sorry, “plus variations” not “and variants”. No coffee. Must go find the coffee.
Yes, I’m curious too — assuming the schematics will cover the Serenity as seen in the film, will there be any chance that there’ll be information included that points out the differences between the series and film versions of the ship? I, for one, hated the “dining/living area” being higher than the corridors on the movie Serenity, and much prefer the series version when it was actually lower. Will changes such as this be addressed, or is there a contractual restriction of some sort that would forbid it?
Hey all, good questions – let me take a crack at them:
First, the Blueprints will be based on the movie version of Serenity. There are several reasons for this, but the biggest is Tim Earls, who designed both ships’ deck plans (Firefly & Serenity) and is doing the actual blueprint part of our blueprints, advised us that the design for the series version wasn’t realistic (aka, the insides couldn’t fit in the outsides.) For the movie they went back and tweaked all the design elements (right down to the hydraulic lifts on the cargo ramp) so that everything would actually fit and work on a real ship. The first Serenity was kind of a fantasy; unless you think it had TaRiS like capabilities 😉
As for the variations – As mentioned in the RPG (and documented more extensively in the reference materials we have from both the series and movie), Serenity was modified over the course of time from the original “stock” FCT design. Originally, you were going to see many more variations on the Firefly Class Transport in some of the background shots of the movie, but that was nixed in the end because there was concern that it might confuse the viewer seeing all those Fireflies (sp?) flying around. Remember, the FCT is one of the most common designs in the ‘Verse; makes sense you might occassionally see others floating about.
Anyway, Geoff suggested me might add some material in sidebars from some of those variations that were designed but never used. I”ve encouraged him to add that stuff, but we’ll have to wait and see if it makes the final cut.
Hi Andy,
Just curious – are you planning to post your regular merch on the eBay store site, or are you planning to accept paypal in all its take-a-cut glory at QMx proper? I know that it’d be easier for some (Ok, me) to buy lots o’ QMx goodies if paypal were an option.
(I’m warming up my paypal account now, just in case).
so let me get this right.
The blueprints will be so completly true to life that theoratically I could buy them and actually go and build Serenity, both inside AND out…..
so, when are they gonna be released?