KAM Soaring Skies Take your keyboard to new heights!
Hi y’all, Hakata here! I’m happy to present to all of you my latest project, KAM Soaring Skies. This set was inspired by the airplane liveries I’d see at the airport when visiting my family in Japan growing up. I still look back very fondly on looking out the window seat and seeing all of the pretty designs, and I wanted to bring that childhood feeling to life!
I also just started an Instagram page for the set and possible future designs!
Design Overview
Profile: Glossy KAM Fonts: Menco Bold (Latin), Yasashisa Gothic Bold V2 (ひらがな) Colors: Pantone Reflex Blue & 305U, K100, Black will be referenced with the alphas from KAT Alpha
These colors were shot under moderate, indirect sunlight.
K100 is a neutral white, used in KAT Alpha (for reference).
Kitting Disclaimer
As a heads up, all of my kitting was done in Illustrator using the 2-D KAM template, as my background and education is in 2-D Design. This comes with some minor issues that I am aware of, most notably that you will see the difference in color between my .ai files and renders, which is a known issue with Adobe software. Adobe isn’t particularly good at showing my Pantone colors accurately, so please refer to the colors above.
Redeye mode was just added to round out the kitting at 21 kits, hopefully this strikes a better balance between simpler kitting options and the customizability KAM is known for.
Kitting (UPDATED 09/12)
More
Base Kit will have the option to remove the stripe if so desired.
DISCLAIMER: JIS Kitting is slated to have a 4.5u spacebar, but Keyreative doesn't offer one. I am hoping that if I and enough designers push for it, we can get this compatibility either now or in the future.
Renders
More
U80 by RAMA Works
Fuji65 by CMM.Studio
KBD8X Mk.ii by KBDFans
Cypher by Cable Car Designs This kitting is a combination of text TKL mods, latin-only alphas, and numpad kits. A stripeless layout is totally doable!
V4n4g0n by Trash Man Blanks will have 40's support out of the box, but may require a spacebars kit for split bar layouts.
Nemui by Bachoo
Ikki68 Aurora by Wuque Studios
GB Date
GB Date is currently October 28th - November 30th!
As of 6/28 the news is that Keyreative has my initial prototypes in the queue, but it will be a little while before I get my hands on them. Will update when I get more news.
Pricing
Questions
Why does this set look like KAT Great Wave? UPDATE: I have spoken with the designers behind the set and they are fine with it. Still, it’s a totally reasonable question, and I must admit that the two look very similar. That said, the emphasis on the stripe is simpler on KAM Soaring Skies and meant to emulate the livery of ANA airlines with colors to more closely align with that. This set was developed independently of KAT Great Wave and I hope that the differences in inspiration, font, colors, and kitting/profile can demonstrate that.
Why is your set not fully rendered? When I started this project, I didn't know how to render things in blender. Now that I've learned how, I've decided to not render this set, since I am more comfortable using Adobe Illustrator to demonstrate kitting. Accounting for that, I've tried to demo a few set variations in renders in order to get people a better idea of my vision of the set. Hopefully that's a sufficient middle ground.
No NorDe support? My focus on the set was Japanese sublegends since I am a hafu, so I was wary of adding other languages to the set. I do have more specific ISO/UK support as a kit option, and there should be basic ISO coverage in the base/TKL mods kit. Apologies for my America-centric mindset, but if there’s enough demand for NorDe, I will reconsider. (EDIT 6/28: not enough demand was made for NorDe, and I will be moving forward without it)
What about Hiragana-only alphas? This set has cultural significance to me, and as far as I'm aware of JIS boards, this wouldn't be accurate to a Japanese board. While I don't mind the addition of new kits, I will most likely not budge on this one.
Why does the base kit not have __? The base kit is meant as a “designer’s intention for the board”, if you will. By default, the base kit will be set up for TKL and the optional stripe, in an effort to reduce the necessary keys and make it a simpler/cheaper purchase for most users. If you would like a 60-75% board to have something else such as icon mods, no sublegends, alt layout support, there is an Alpha + Mods kit combination to suit your needs. Alphas can but do not necessitate a stripe, and you can totally fit your board without one.
EDIT:I have walked this back and have added more base kits, though mostly in a compromise so I could give people more choices without adding bloat. Since the set was initially designed to have sublegends, all base kit configurations are with sublegends. If there isn't a base kit that works for you, there's a combination of alphas and mods to suit your needs.
Vendors:
US - Vala Supply CAN - Ashkeebs UK - Prototypist EU - MyKeyboard CN - zFrontier SEA - Zion Studios JPN - Basekeys AUS - SwitchKeys
- Get samples (PENDING, will take longer as I will get a full 60%-75% set for the samples) - Make GB Post! - Wait for GB!
Special Thanks To...
Keycraft Collective - An amazing group of up and coming designers in the scene, thank you for all the feedback and support! I’d name all of you in specific but there are too many of you to thank <3
Folks in CKC Voice Chat - Whether you're still there or not, y'all have made this project so much more fun than I ever expected it to be
Swishy - Your kitting advice helped me so much, thank you for taking time out of your day all those months ago. 80’s After Dark was a huge inspiration for the kitting, and a wonderful set as well.
Nhils - Your blender gifs really helped me navigate the UI hellscape that is blender, and I am grateful for the time you took to help me out
mini - For proofreading this word salad of an IC and helping with the bbcode, editing is often thankless work but really important too!
acitrin - For being an awesome friend and giving me the help I needed to make this set work, I was pretty sure this set was gonna fizzle out without your help.
kidviddy - Kitting for JIS was pretty hard to find resources for, so your changes were much appreciated. どうもありがとう！
To anyone who’s been there who’s been there throughout the design process and watched this set come along, I really couldn’t have done this without your support, so a special thanks goes out to all of you!
if you would like to support this set, consider adding this URL to your signature! {img width=480 height=120}https://i.imgur.com/Fcp3EY9.png{/img} (replace the curly brackets with square brackets)
