[IC] GMK Houhai 后海 - LIVE AUGUST 1

[yakev724]

Unfortunately tougher sell for me if it's canjie-only, but understand the constraints on the mfg. process. Ideally canjie+english alphas + numpad, icon mods.

Pioneering is never easy--nice work + hope the effort pays off!

[grundlemere]

Unfortunately tougher sell for me if it's canjie-only, but understand the constraints on the mfg. process. Ideally canjie+english alphas + numpad, icon mods.

Pioneering is never easy--nice work + hope the effort pays off!

Appreciate that. More than you know. I think I'll use it as my patented excuse for why I did or didn't do something people wanted.

Sounds like you may be in luck, though. We will offer Cangjie + Latin in the base kit, and an icon mods child kit. It seems at the moment like the numpad kit will probably be in Chinese financial characters only, but hey, it's only ten keys to get used to!

[mustardgreens]

Absolutely tingling with anticipation for this

[Havattack]

I do not like this at all.... sorry.

[StrangPrisoner]

This is the first set in some time that I'm actually excited about. Really really excited about!

[grundlemere]

Absolutely tingling with anticipation for this

You and me both! 

This is the first set in some time that I'm actually excited about. Really really excited about!

Thank you so much, can't wait to get it out there. Re-renders coming in February!

I do not like this at all.... sorry.

Well, ok, thanks for the bump anyway.

[iinko_mk]

I love this set, people should really use chinese sublegends more

[grundlemere]

I love this set, people should really use chinese sublegends more

Exactly what I thought when I started designing it. I really prefer the full Chinese characters of Cangjie to the components in Wubi or Zhuyin, and plus no consideration given to translating mods into Chinese. I'm now understanding why: a lot of people probably thought it was just too hard. I'm really proud of my work on this but I'm also glad to be done with it and to see what others do with my work!

[Shiba1337]

I will be buying this set 100%

[treeleaf64]

It's Houhai I think this is a great concept for a set. Since I'm treeleaf  I may not buy this set because I only am interested in things that are beige color
But I can tell you

Option 3 is the best base kit

[Sicowa]

Option 3 is definitely the way to go. loving the accent kits as well
GLWIC

[grundlemere]

Option 3 is definitely the way to go. loving the accent kits as well
GLWIC

It's Houhai I think this is a great concept for a set. Since I'm treeleaf  I may not buy this set because I only am interested in things that are beige color
But I can tell you

Option 3 is the best base kit

Now that we will almost certainly have all the molds made through the GMK Shanshui GB, I plan to run option 3. I think it's a good call.

[KurageOuji]

congrats and glwgb on shansui! just wondering, will houhai only have chinese simplified mods? i love your work so much that im basically definitely going to join both shansui and houhai, but if houhai is only going to have simplified mods, i would then go for traditional chinese mods on shansui so i could have some variety. thanks!

[grundlemere]

congrats and glwgb on shansui! just wondering, will houhai only have chinese simplified mods? i love your work so much that im basically definitely going to join both shansui and houhai, but if houhai is only going to have simplified mods, i would then go for traditional chinese mods on shansui so i could have some variety. thanks!

That's a good question! I would like to offer trad mods too, could make for a cool HK vibe, but we will need to figure out kitting and costs first. No promises, but I did a lot of work on those 繁體字 legends, so I will want to use them if possible!

[KurageOuji]

congrats and glwgb on shansui! just wondering, will houhai only have chinese simplified mods? i love your work so much that im basically definitely going to join both shansui and houhai, but if houhai is only going to have simplified mods, i would then go for traditional chinese mods on shansui so i could have some variety. thanks!

That's a good question! I would like to offer trad mods too, could make for a cool HK vibe, but we will need to figure out kitting and costs first. No promises, but I did a lot of work on those 繁體字 legends, so I will want to use them if possible!

gotcha thanks! i ended up joined for traditional base and all the other kits besides simplified, a deskmat, and 2 ramas. since houhai's original inspiration was beijing i'll just aim for the simplified kit here later this year. really excited!

[grundlemere]

congrats and glwgb on shansui! just wondering, will houhai only have chinese simplified mods? i love your work so much that im basically definitely going to join both shansui and houhai, but if houhai is only going to have simplified mods, i would then go for traditional chinese mods on shansui so i could have some variety. thanks!

That's a good question! I would like to offer trad mods too, could make for a cool HK vibe, but we will need to figure out kitting and costs first. No promises, but I did a lot of work on those 繁體字 legends, so I will want to use them if possible!

gotcha thanks! i ended up joined for traditional base and all the other kits besides simplified, a deskmat, and 2 ramas. since houhai's original inspiration was beijing i'll just aim for the simplified kit here later this year. really excited!

Awesome! Don't tell the purists, but I think there's a lot of beauty to the Simplified character set too. They are both beautiful, it's just a different vibe.

[TheBlackHammer]

is there a possibility of adding a 40s kit?

[RockZ]

Wow bro, commenting as a Beijing native this set really captures the soul of 后海. I would not have imagined any English speaking person designing such fitting novelties (and kit names!). Looking forward to the GB

[fishbby]

Ahh! Let me preface this by saying, I'm very new to the keycaps/keyboard group buying game. New to the point where I've only started researching/purchasing cheaper mechanical keyboards around 2 months ago. I have seen keycaps of all different colorways on various sites, and have not jumped the gun in pre-ordering/purchasing them. One of the reasons is the price, the other is the long wait time. BUT LET ME JUST SAY, these are the first keycap sets that when I saw, I knew I had to buy. Mainly due to my soft spot for Beijing/Houhai area as well, as it contains so much good memories with my family when I was visiting in China. I remember the young violin girl in the alley playing, and the large amount of bars, and the colors! This set evoked those memories again for me, and those memories were from when I was in high school. Getting to visit those places made me see a whole new China that I had preconceived notions of since I did not grow up there.

I'm not sure how interest checks work, if it means you'll be making this set or not, but I really really really wish you will make this set. This will be my first set of official keycaps, and I'm willing to wait. I already linked this set to a couple of my friends for them to check out. Anyways, lots of support to you. I like option 2 the most, and I loveee the novelties. The colors are bang on especially the reds. For some reason I keep seeing the red lighted bars in houhai when I saw those red novelties.

Looking forward to any artisan keycaps, wrist rest, cables! Bring on everything! Love this!! All the best!

[LordHaveMercy]

Am a bit of an idiot, but will this set be heading for a GB on June 2021? Or has this already run?

[jkteoh]

On Grundlemere's other project, the Shanshui GB, he mentioned that it'll be running 5/31. I'm looking forward to it as well.

[dlwood1001]

I'm in for sure.

[Firebear31]

Hyped! I may try to do my own chinese set of Guangzhou if I find the time since i'm a graphic designer and just love Guangdong, especially Guangzhou.
If I need help regarding the chinese charsets can I kindly ask you?

[grundlemere]

Hey everyone, the set will run starting May 31, 2021. I’m working with NathanAlphaMan on applying the retooled legends to this set, adjusting the colors slightly, and swapping in a few new novelties. Should have all new renders in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

[grundlemere]

Ahh! Let me preface this by saying, I'm very new to the keycaps/keyboard group buying game. New to the point where I've only started researching/purchasing cheaper mechanical keyboards around 2 months ago. I have seen keycaps of all different colorways on various sites, and have not jumped the gun in pre-ordering/purchasing them. One of the reasons is the price, the other is the long wait time. BUT LET ME JUST SAY, these are the first keycap sets that when I saw, I knew I had to buy. Mainly due to my soft spot for Beijing/Houhai area as well, as it contains so much good memories with my family when I was visiting in China. I remember the young violin girl in the alley playing, and the large amount of bars, and the colors! This set evoked those memories again for me, and those memories were from when I was in high school. Getting to visit those places made me see a whole new China that I had preconceived notions of since I did not grow up there.

I'm not sure how interest checks work, if it means you'll be making this set or not, but I really really really wish you will make this set. This will be my first set of official keycaps, and I'm willing to wait. I already linked this set to a couple of my friends for them to check out. Anyways, lots of support to you. I like option 2 the most, and I loveee the novelties. The colors are bang on especially the reds. For some reason I keep seeing the red lighted bars in houhai when I saw those red novelties.

Looking forward to any artisan keycaps, wrist rest, cables! Bring on everything! Love this!! All the best!

Wow bro, commenting as a Beijing native this set really captures the soul of 后海. I would not have imagined any English speaking person designing such fitting novelties (and kit names!). Looking forward to the GB

Thank you both! Aww, this is exactly the kind of thing I love to hear. I love it when people from the places I love can feel my affection for them, too.

[andreiborisov]

Lit. You should render it on a red board.

[Rx003]

I am in for this love the legends, glwic and wish you all the best for this project! 

[grundlemere]

Thanks friends, just a matter of days to new renders! I've adjusted the colors slightly, changed a few novelties, and adjusted all for GMK specs. Looking forward to showing you what we have!

[mase310]

Amazing, beautiful colors and legends.  I love the novelties and spacebars are well-thought out.  Option 1 is my favorite, since I'm English speaking and also love modern icons for modifiers.  Please allow modern icons as modifiers if base set Option 3 is selected.  I really hope this goes to GB. I'm looking forward to it. Really great work!

Edit: Also, I hope I will be able to buy these in the U.S.

[LordHaveMercy]

Hey everyone, the set will run starting May 31, 2021. I’m working with NathanAlphaMan on applying the retooled legends to this set, adjusting the colors slightly, and swapping in a few new novelties. Should have all new renders in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Ya might want to update the title of this IC to say "GB Confirmed" or something... I'm super stoked that this set is coming to life! Will remind me of my time back in Beijing a few years ago... I hope to return someday soon, post-pandemic!

Edit: I'd also *love* to see some custom cables and deskmats for this set... Let's let this be magical!

[TomatoMan]

Love this set!  I would be all in for the Cangjie monolegend alphas + icon mods. Please make this happen! <3 Stunning sets, gj!

[Oddstag]

Since this was first posted it's been for me the most beautiful set in active IC phase. My only desired changes are so minimal as to be almost not worth mentioning in the face of a set I like so much, but would be:

1) I feel like the ISO enter novelty looks a bit strange with the dragon just rotated from the ANSI enter key. I feel like it's a bit of a waste to not use that extra space on the top half of the enter key to have the dragon sort of snake in.

2) A dedicated 40's kit.

Looking forward to GB!

[grundlemere]

Hi everyone! Thanks for your patience, the IC thread has been updated with final kitting, renders, and many more updates. Please let me know what you think!

[grundlemere]

(inb4 the branding font I used kinda looks like the one Nephlock used for Metro)

[1017BirckenThot]

Looks fantastic! Scooped all kits for Shanshui and will have to do the same for this. Patiently awaiting GB day!

[Abel]

Houhai is a good topic you used,
Kits are good
Is there a rama or salvun collab?
A 二锅头 one should be good,
Personally, I really enjoy your novelty.
A full of Beijing vibe,
Really excited.
Terrific idea with the coloring as well.
Oh I will definitely get maybe 2 sets.
For real
Cool work and
Nice job.

[dwang040]

Is it just the renders or did you change the red a bit? It seems a lot brighter in the new renders than I remember compared to the older renders of the kit.

[grundlemere]

Houhai is a good topic you used,
Kits are good
Is there a rama or salvun collab?
A 二锅头 one should be good,
Personally, I really enjoy your novelty.
A full of Beijing vibe,
Really excited.
Terrific idea with the coloring as well.
Oh I will definitely get maybe 2 sets.
For real
Cool work and
Nice job.

It means a lot that you're excited about the kit! I hope Beijing people will get a lot of enjoyment out of this project. Funny you should mention the Baijiu. I'm working on a really novel metal artisan that I would love to do as a tribute to 二锅头. I'll have to see if it's possible but I'm excited to try! At the very least if that does not work out, I have some plans for RAMA artisans and Salvun has proposed that he might be able to complete for Houhai a special type of metal I had requested for GMK Shanshui that he ran out of time to complete.

Is it just the renders or did you change the red a bit? It seems a lot brighter in the new renders than I remember compared to the older renders of the kit.

The red was always supposed to be this color, but my render artist has developed his skills a lot in the past year and we are excited that these renders are much brighter and true to the physical samples.

[LordHaveMercy]

Hey Grundlemere, since there won't be English or Icon mods with this set for this run, could you give us a quick translation of all the modifiers contained in this set from Chinese to English?

I'm trying to Google around for those specific translations, but they seem to be really difficult to find... I'd like to learn them!

Edit: I do want to note that after searching around for about an hour, I haven't had any luck. Additionally, the Modifier keys on every reference for the Cangjie Input Method are literally just Icons only or using the literal English terms for those keys. There is no official Chinese characters for "Shift", "Ctrl", "Alt", "Enter"... I'm super serious. It's a bit strange! Which kind of sucks because you've clearly placed a lot of work into making the whole set shine! What do you think?

Edit 2: The most I could find for Chinese Modifier keys are listed for the Zhuyin Input Method... But even most modern incarnations of Zhuyin keyboards use Icons Only or English + Icons for Modifiers. I've honestly got no clue now.

[grundlemere]

Hey Grundlemere, since there won't be English or Icon mods with this set for this run, could you give us a quick translation of all the modifiers contained in this set from Chinese to English?

I'm trying to Google around for those specific translations, but they seem to be really difficult to find... I'd like to learn them!

Edit: I do want to note that after searching around for about an hour, I haven't had any luck. Additionally, the Modifier keys on every reference for the Cangjie Input Method are literally just Icons only or using the literal English terms for those keys. There is no official Chinese characters for "Shift", "Ctrl", "Alt", "Enter"... I'm super serious. It's a bit strange! Which kind of sucks because you've clearly placed a lot of work into making the whole set shine! What do you think?

Edit 2: The most I could find for Chinese Modifier keys are listed for the Zhuyin Input Method... But even most modern incarnations of Zhuyin keyboards use Icons Only or English + Icons for Modifiers. I've honestly got no clue now.

This was the hardest part of the work in many ways, other than hand adjusting all the mod legends to meet GMK machining specs. You are correct that most Chinese users simply use the English names for the keys, and so I had to do a lot of digging for older Taiwanese keyboards, as well as some more modern "learner" keyboards for children and old people to learn the functions of the keys by Chinese words. And in a couple of cases we just had to come up with translations. I got a lot of help from Chinese friends including Exclusive, A.Jakkkkke Louis from iLumkb and Alex from Zf on finding the few examples that were out there and vetting the translations. There's also a Microsoft style guide for Taiwan and HK that has a few translations for keys into Chinese for those markets. In some cases the translations used for the TC set and SC set are slightly different because of the local differences in computing vocabulary.

I'll give you some examples：

退出 （Esc）：“Drop out“
跳格 （Tab）：”Jump grid“
大写锁定 （Caps）：”Large writing lock"
上当 （Shift）：“Upshift“
回车 （Return): "Return carriage" (as in an old typewriter carriage）
输入 （Enter）：“Carry entry" (as in enter on a calculator)

I can provide a full translation sheet at some point, but it was difficult to hunt these down!

[Dafraz117]

The new kits look amazing. Definitely in for everything.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[dwang040]

The red was always supposed to be this color, but my render artist has developed his skills a lot in the past year and we are excited that these renders are much brighter and true to the physical samples.

Ah nice, that's pretty cool. Just curious (and forgive me if I missed it anywhere in the thread) but did you receive any samples yet? Was curious about some irl shots of the colors. 

[grundlemere]

The red was always supposed to be this color, but my render artist has developed his skills a lot in the past year and we are excited that these renders are much brighter and true to the physical samples.

Ah nice, that's pretty cool. Just curious (and forgive me if I missed it anywhere in the thread) but did you receive any samples yet? Was curious about some irl shots of the colors.

I have RAL and GMK physical color samples which I shared much earlier, but given the incredible speed with which counterfeits tend to show up on the market, I deleted them and have elected not to share the specific chosen colors with anyone other than manufacturers, vendors, and collaboration partners.

[dwang040]

I have RAL and GMK physical color samples which I shared much earlier, but given the incredible speed with which counterfeits tend to show up on the market, I deleted them and have elected not to share the specific chosen colors with anyone other than manufacturers, vendors, and collaboration partners.

Ah, that's fair, completely missed that update then. Oh well, thanks for the info.

[Liub]

This set looks amazing and glad the traditional kit is offered. Day 1 cop.

[ullr]

Man, I think all the kitting changes disappointed me except the novelties. I'm sure I'll be in the minority though.

[kcching]

Nice set here!
However I noticed that the “超级” is the same for both SC and TC set... Is that intentional?

In TC, it should be "超級"
SC “超级”

[grundlemere]

Nice set here!
However I noticed that the “超级” is the same for both SC and TC set... Is that intentional?

In TC, it should be "超級"
SC “超级”

Not intentional, just a fine detail miss on the part of me and my render artist. Thanks for the catch and we’ll get it fixed!

[fishbby]

I was looking at the SC base kit in a little bit more detail. Is there a reason that the numpad isn't in simplified? I just thought if everything was simplified it would look more uniformed. Really looking forward to the set! Is there a plan for Rama collab?

[grundlemere]

I was looking at the SC base kit in a little bit more detail. Is there a reason that the numpad isn't in simplified? I just thought if everything was simplified it would look more uniformed. Really looking forward to the set! Is there a plan for Rama collab?

The numpad is in Simplified: SC versions of the Chinese financial characters. The TC kit includes TC versions of the same characters. There is some overlap. It was a stylistic choice to introduce more interesting and unfamiliar characters and most users seem to think they're neat.

RAMA? Perhaps. There will definitely be metal. I'm pursuing collabs with a couple of different metal artisan makers at the moment, so stay tuned!