Here's some insight into what goes into those short lived, quickly replaced and forgotten pictures that are sometimes taken for granted.
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| Godzilla was one of the earlier images, and still one of my personal favourites. |
While it was not always easy to find good quality images online to work with, sometimes, that was the defining element between a passable cover image and a great one. Over the duration of the group, there have been some awful images, but there have been some I've been hugely proud of and have been personal favourites.
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| The more anticipated or popular the series, the easier it was to find images to work with. |
Early on I was trying to not limit or restrict myself to just one particular blind box/bag company. Trying to be all inclusive became harder and harder as the available images for some companies were far superior to those of others. Quickly it became easier to find good quality images for Funko mystery minis, yet Kid Robot images seemed to be the hardest to come by or just way too small and pixelated.
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| Sometimes images were so bad (Gir), I had to think outside the box or play with perspective. |
My personal preferences and series proclivities started to become more and more prevalent as I drew inspiration from the many small figures overlooking or looking down on me. I would Google trying to find good quality images and the search priorities became: neutral background, and in a largest size possible. Sometimes, the images weren't cooperative and I'd have to go back to the drawing board. But sometimes everything came together better than I could have imagined
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| When the idea exceeds expectation and comes together perfectly. |
Furthermore, I'd have an idea but no matter how long or hard I searched, the images just didn't come together, so I'd sit on the concept and go back to it eventually - retry searching images, and suddenly there were enough to make it work. I'd even go as far as to ensure that when trying to recreate a scene, it was matched to the time in the original source material (yes, I got that carried away sometimes).
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| At this point in the film Winston hadn't joined the team yet, so was deliberately left out. |
Some nights I would have more ideas than I could convert, and at one point I had an abundance of cover images waiting in the wings to upload. Originally the idea was to change the image on a monthly basis, but I started getting bored with the same image staring back at me atop the page. I started changing them weekly, and what was once a stockpile quickly became deficit and panic to amass a buffer of covers again - with or without inspiration to guide me.
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| A random search for Titans, and suddenly I was struck with inspiration. |
Sometimes I found myself putting more of my time into the YouTube unboxing videos, or just easily consumed by finishing them - but rendering changes or outputting the videos provided ample opportunity to make more cover images, as this would otherwise be time spent watching progress bars... they aren't particularly riveting but do force downtime. So while the edit suite was doing what it needed to do, I would change the music and start compiling images for more covers.
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| Sometimes working on an unboxing video would inspire a matching cover image. |
Every so often, an image would come together faster than I could have anticipated - so much so that the original idea gets stripped down when I realise that sometimes, less is more; and as The Loyal Subjects started to pick up speed, and images became easier to source I could share what were fast becoming my favourite brand. The articulation of The Loyal Subjects also came in handy if I could find a mini in the right pose.
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| I have a few minutes, maybe something simplistic will work well? |
This started to quickly become my end of the week routine - I would get home from work and then go straight to work on videos and cover images, sometimes all the way through until 5am the following morning - trying to work harder and faster to achieve more and somehow feel like my weekend had accomplished something. There was one image during this period where I threw everything at it - I had a substantial stockpile again, but this one would be my pride and joy... then fate stepped in and Facebook, without any notice, changed the dimensions of cover images for pages and groups. My stockpile became an exercise in futility, and worse, the cover dimension change was a day into this image being posted, which made it look awful.
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| Hours of effort, for only one day posted - the facebook change almost broke me. |
It took a while to get the new ratios right, as the image size had to exceed the actual display size. After a lot of trial and error, I finally worked out a template with the display ratio mapped out. I knew what would be seen on the page verses what would be seen in viewing the image itself in the gallery. Again I started to find it harder to gather images of substantial quality to work within the new ratio confines. Sadly, this again forced Funko to the fore, being the easiest to acquire images for.
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| The new sizing and ratios were a nightmare to get right. |
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| Visible on page ratio. |
So there you have it - a little insight into the covers on the NZ Blinders Facebook page, as members have asked me all manner of questions over the years, perhaps this answers a few you may have had?
Thanks for reading.
What is NZ Blinders?
The NZ Blinders group on Facebook is a small community of like minded blind box and bag addicts. A place where members can discuss, buy/sell/trade and discover new releases or series they may be on the fence about. We run competitions and try and engage our members through various social media avenues and outlets. Competitions are funded by the administrators or through referral programs. Our main contributions are through the Mighty Ape referral program, so next time you go shopping on Mighty Ape, try clicking our referral link, it costs you nothing and contributes towards us giving back to our community, as the group is not for profit.
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