Most of the comments here are a bum-out. Firstly, I don't think this is as trivial an idea to execute as a number of folks are saying. If you haven't launched something close to this complicated, you should refrain from suggesting this isn't much of an effort. It's clear that a lot of thought and work went into the concept, site, video, and product.
Second, this is rad! Maybe we're getting cynical or a bit lost in history, but the idea that for about what lunch costs lately a kid (chronological or spiritual) can get a website to send them something totally custom is pretty awesome. Think hard about how long this has even been practical to do at all, much less as a tiny upstart.
Oh, and it appears to be a successful Kickstarter project... so it's nice to see evidence of those.
Very nice. But your preview visualization uses what I assume to be close to final art, including all the flaps and all. With web inspector (and some curl) I was able to extract all the layers, combine them together, and get a printable file: http://cl.ly/JprN
I'm sure most of HN visitors would be able to do the same. Not sure if you should patch it, though: your target audience will surely won't do things like that, and visualization is already a complex beast.
Oh wow. We never expected someone to go to those lengths. If you send us an image of your assembled Foldable we'd be happy to send you, free of charge, our version printed on laminated, high stock card, precision cut and pre-creased so there's no gluing or cutting needed. Just want to make sure you have something to compare against ;-)
What a refreshing attitude - someone finds a way around the paywall and your response is - "oh yeah!? well our execution is better! And we'll prove it too!" I would love if it all companies took this approach instead of DRM/litigation. Hats off to you.
Heh, the first foldable prototypes were made by cutting these things out with an exacto knife. If you ever saw someone do that, you'd know why we're confident that the die-cutting is valuable.
The concept doesn't live or die on the everyone coming in contact with it having enough integrity to either pay for it or pass, if nobody paid for it that would be a problem of course but the fact that you, flixic, figured out how to not pay isn't really much more of an issue than someone jumping the gate at the subway, or sneaking into the back of a movie theater.
I know it is not a laser cutter (it uses a miniature blade), but you can take existing artwork or printouts and get really nice cuts with the software and USB. It can also score, for the folding portions.
I've used it for similar projects (kirigami - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirigami) and glass etching (making stencils). Not bad for less than $300.
Anyways, awesome site and a cool idea. I wish you guys much success!
Next step: create a Facebook app that lets you export your foldable.me to a facebook profile picture, maybe with something that lets you do a nice integration of profile picture + timeline cover photo.
foldable.me goes viral as friends see their friends use the site. You end up with tons of people using the site who would never consider paying $12 for a piece of coloured cardboard...
but once they get an emotional attachment to their avatar you can follow up with some lifecycle emails to convert them into a purchasing customer.
You could also have a feature where friends could gift their foldable.me to other friends.
Marketing the pet rock apparently involved custom packaging design and manufacture, and the creation of a 32 page "Care and training" manual. So not that trivial.
You know, I personally wouldn't spend $11.99 on this, but I have no doubt that plenty of people will fork that out with ease. I love how you can create genuine value from virtually nothing. This makes people happy and doesn't waste tons of stuff in the process.
Clever idea. Would be nice to have a digital delivery method that sends a PDF so one can print them immediately. Americans are all about immediate gratification.
Might also consider a family pack. Don't know if these family stickers are popular in the UK, but they are everywhere here in the states. http://www.familystickers.com/
Great work guys. Liked the video(s), the instructions are clear, you also set expectations well for shipping, etc. Plus, building your audience (and funding) through a kickstarter campaign is brilliant. I wouldn't worry about the "photo" style characters yet; scale first, excel at customer service, and then if needed, release a 2.0 foldable.me.
Yep. I agree. Folks seem caught up on "face images", but you may want to consider gaining licensing rights to work with professional and collegiate sports. Dropping a New York Yankees pin-striped-uni on a foldable.me would sell pretty well as an add-on price. (And you wouldn't have to give up quality control) Good luck!
From a wikipedia glance, "kanban" was used here in the sense of a particular process-control method, and although the term "kanban" here is pretty clearly derived from 看板, I suppose now it could be considered a distinct term.
XBOX 360 avatars can be extremely customizable and are stored in a 3D format on MS servers (and likely on the console itself). The recognize many friends online because of their avatar.
I'd pay $$ to have a 3d printout of my XBOX 360 avatar...perhaps even with articulating appendages.
Would it be possible to make two sizes? I could see some mom buying a whole family. Followup could be pets. Maybe make some car decals that follow the same realm as the stickers you see on soccer mom vans
Just ordered one. I'm literally sitting on an L couch with my friend across from me while going through the options. Trying to look intently at her face without her noticing. Thankfully, she is lost in her own laptop.
For all the people saying you could download the files and do it yourself, I say sure. You could do that. But you could also send something nice to someone in the mail at some point in the future as a surprise. People like getting mail. Real mail. Ya you could put it in the mail yourself, but will you? $12 is cheeper than a movie in NYC. Totally worth it.
For the team at foldable.me: Great product. I would work on:
-expanding the selections and options
-adding high heel shoes
-allowing someone to upload a head shot and "cartoonize" it. There are some sites that do this... partner with them?
-add different sizes to your cutouts... s/m/l
-animals like dogs, cats, horses, sheep, cows, etc.
Neat! I am having a lot of trouble making a character that resembles me though. I'll suggest the genetic algorithm used by the Nintendo Wii and also by some police departments to create composite sketches.
This mechanism gives you an array of 9 random faces to choose from, and asks you to pick the closest one. Using that information, it generates 9 more random faces, but guided towards the features that you've selected. After 10 or 15 rounds of this, you have converged on a near-perfect likeness.
It relies on the fact that I can often tell that a face doesn't quite look like me, but I'm not sure along what parameters. However, when presented with a variant with slightly larger eyes and a variant with slightly smaller eyes, I can immediately select the correct one.
I bought two from their Kickstarter for the girlfriend and I. I liked mine, but the girlfriend not so much - something about me telling her this stumpy little box was modelled on her didn't go down so well :)
There's PDF and PSD; load it into Photoshop or Illustrator (or whatever works) and have at it.
I've built lots of papercraft toys, and designed a few. Half the fun is in downloading a file, printing it out, cutting it up, and ending up with something tangible.
BTW there's a copyright on this template, too. It looks identical to the Foldable.me figure.
These sort of things discriminate against those of us who have no idea how to describe appearance! If only I could upload a photo and it would make a "closest match".
On another note, I went to make a pair of them for a friend and her husband's anniversary, but he has very little hair and there is no kind way to not put hair on something like this.
Maybe this could be a crowd sourceable feature. Someone on mechanical turk or crowdflower or 99 designs could take a photo and create your character and send the design back to you which you can print later.
I've seen those mall photo booths that supposedly do something like this - takes a snapshot of you and caricature-izes it. I can't for the life of me think of what they're called or who makes them.. Only other thing I remember is it's adorned with a picture of a girl who wearing a beret who looks like an artist.
In line with the people talking about giving these as gifts: what about the new Facebook gift platform?
I'm not totally sure I'd trust myself to give one of these as a gift, though, as I'd end up either creating a likeness of someone that they didn't like, or a completely narcissistic gift of my own likeness. But, hey, best of luck--I bet there are plenty of people who think otherwise!
I've done one of those before. The biggest pain was cutting all the little lines out. It's probably worth $12 just for a pre-cut version, plus you can customize it!
Being 6'6" tall and built like an NFL lineman, I have never been accused of being cute, light or portable. If I didn't feel buying one for myself would be somewhat narcissistic, I'd totally get one. If anyone wanted to buy me one as a present, I'd display it proudly on my desk though.
Novel and entertaining. Reminds me of creating a Mii on the Wii, only they arrive at your door.
It would be cool if you could get super mini versions that you could hand out as business cards. It's the kind of thing that recipients would definitely show around, and hold on to.
Really cool concept. I'd love to get a couple of these as gifts. Only problem is that I suck at selecting the right features, so facial recognition or Mechanical Turk usage would really help.
This is just out of the box thinking. Beautiful product. Ordering three.
Sales tip: this would make great Christmass Tree ornaments. I imagine a Chrsitmass tree with my whole family represneted as little carboard figures. Lovely.
I had a lot of fun with it, and the only way I could share myy creation was to screenshot.... Personally I look at it as another revenue model. Make a model of Keene Reeves and sell it to his fans etc.
When I first saw the site, I was hoping there would be a way to upload a picture, perhaps do some kind of feature-tagging (similar to the way you point out your pupils on photos on those try-on-glasses apps[1]) and have the site spit back a suggested face based on the features they had that most closely resembled yours.
Of course, this is complete spitballing, I have no idea if it's feasible.
Second, this is rad! Maybe we're getting cynical or a bit lost in history, but the idea that for about what lunch costs lately a kid (chronological or spiritual) can get a website to send them something totally custom is pretty awesome. Think hard about how long this has even been practical to do at all, much less as a tiny upstart.
Oh, and it appears to be a successful Kickstarter project... so it's nice to see evidence of those.