My first sculpts - dragons

There's an artist that makes 'dice dragons' and they're darn cute.  They're very much chibi in style and while that's not my kind of thing the dragons have potential.  They're also a simple style and the artist was kind enough to post a YouTube video on making them.  So I had a step-by-step tutorial on making the basic figure.

I had to get past my "I can't sculpt" mental block.  It took a while and once I started I found that I could do this.  I could sculpt!

This was my first dragon.  I learned a lot from him, mostly in terms of body size.  He's longer than I wanted but hey, it was my first one.

The wings need to be pre-baked before adding the membrane and I didn't want to haul out the toaster oven so I made a second one using the experience from the first one.

As you can see I got the scale better.  I still have work to do on refining things like the spine spikes and all the horns.  I think I need to leech the clay for those so they're not as droopy.  The front legs are also thinner than I want them to be.  I don't know if I want to paint irises on the eyes or not either.

After saying everything that's wrong I still think they're cute.

Insult to Injury

I'm not going to name the company here.  It wouldn't do any good.  But here's my tale.

I was accumulating a 15mm army as a gift.  A large army.  As such it's generally not something you can do at one time.

By the time it was about 2/3 complete there was no longer a reason to have it, since I wasn't going to be giving it as a gift.  I won't get into that either.

The company says I need receipts to return them.  Um, who keeps receipts for extended purchases?  A pack here and a pack there add up over time but I can't see who would keep all the receipts.

I was willing to pay the 20% restocking fee even though I tend to disagree with restocking fees when I know they just put them back in the bins.  It was worth it to me to get back the 80% of the cost I would recover.

I received an insulting reply insinuating that I may not be the rightful owner of the minis, that without receipts they can't prove that I deserve a refund, and that I should try eBay.

I did reply with affront but I think I'll be out the shipping cost and end up with a box full of minis I never wanted to see again much less go through all the headache of trying to sell online.  I'll be lucky if they don't try to charge me return shipping.

I won't be buying from them again.  Ever.  Their customer service has shown me that they don't really care about the customers that aren't known, repeat customers.  This is appalling.

If I were vindictive I would make this far more public and be a lot harsher.  Since I don't plan on patronizing them again I would be burning a bridge I never planned to cross again.  But I know it's useless since their loyal customers won't change and there's no benefit in making a public fuss.  Well, any more of a public fuss than this.