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[IC] ePBT Creative Studio - [2024-05-14] Now on sale
kapowaz:
Now on sale
Introducing ePBT Creative Studio, a keycap set inspired by and featuring sublegends for your favourite creative tools. The set comprises dark grey alpha keys and two themed modifiers sets: a sky blue and navy PS theme, and an orange and maroon AI theme. ISO-UK is supported in the base alphas kit, and NorDe support provided via an extension kit. An extensive Nomad kit provides support for 40% and ortholinear keyboard layouts when paired with either alphas kit.
Interest Check Form
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Manufacturer: EnjoyPBT
Keycaps: PBT reverse dye-sublimation
Vendors
North America: DivinikeyEurope: KeygemCanada: DeskheroChina: kbdfansSingapore: ktechsOceania: HIBI
Changelog
2024-04-15
The in-stock pre-order for ePBT Creative Studio is now live!
2024-03-19
It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two years since the last substantive update on this project, but I have good news at last: the keycap set has been manufactured and we are just putting the last few pieces in place for an in-stock sale (I’ve updated the list of regional vendors below). All kits have been manufactured. I’ve received the final kits and been able to verify them myself — you can peep a small sample below of the PS theme keys which I mounted on my AKB OGR keyboard, plus take a look at the box art.
I’d like to directly address the fact that the shade of grey we’ve gone with looks lighter than the early renders; this is more an issue with my renders than the finished product, which is still colour accurate for the chosen pantones. For that reason I’ve created new renders with a more accurate shade of grey, and I’ve updated all the kit images below to use these renders instead. There have also been several rounds of revisions to the specific kitting to ensure that compatibility is maximised whilst minimising redundancy when buying multiple kits for a given layout.
It’s fair to say that the custom mechanical keyboard community has undergone some tough times over the last year or so; this is part of the reason why the set is being offered as an in-stock set rather than a group buy. For the same reason I’ve also scaled back some of my other original plans, and so we’ll only be offering a single deskmat (in neutral grey). Shipping deskmats has become incredibly expensive, and rather than risk not hitting MOQ I’ve felt it safer to offer just a single colour. I’ve updated the render below to show the latest design for this (for which I’ve also had a sample made, which you can see in the photo above).
In addition to the keycaps and deskmat, I’ve also been working closely with both Kate from HIBI, as well as maxvoltar & Salvun to create some really cool looking artisan keycaps. Renders for the latter can be found below. Since these will need to be manufactured based on demand, they will ship later than the keycaps themselves. Stay tuned for news on when the in-stock sale will go live!
2022-05-31
MoreIt’s been a long wait, but I’ve finally received the first set of samples from EnjoyPBT. See below for more details!
2021-09-20
MoreApologies to everyone who’s been patiently waiting for updates. Like pretty much everyone working on a project manufactured by EnjoyPBT using their new reverse dyesub process, I’ve been hit by delays as they finished their mould. Unfortunately I didn’t use the downtime as productively as I could (as far as this project goes at least — I did move house!) and so once news came that they were ready to start making samples, I revisited my project and realised there were quite a few things I needed to improve.
The biggest of these is that in order to make kitting changes easier I decided to undertake the substantial work to move from using Illustrator to Figma. This has made it much easier for me to make changes to individual legends or keys, and have the changes filter out across all the kits and layouts that use those keys. Most recently I undertook the (considerable) work of moving from key-specific SVG legends (think: a single graphic per key) to individual components per symbol, or ‘glyph’ (e.g. a specific component for the exclamation mark); this made it easier to ensure that different keys which used the same symbol in the primary, secondary or tertiary location always had the symbol in the same relative position. It also made it easier for me to update all instances of a single glyph whenever I tweaked it (and this has happened a few times).
So, my patient reader, what’s changed? Well, in addition to a number of changes based on feedback from members of this community, I have also revisited the kitting for 40s users (the ‘nomad’ kit), and substantially overhauled international language support. In place of a single NorDe kit including AltGr keys for all colour schemes, AltGr keys have moved into their respectively-themed modifier kits, and the actual language support has been overhauled. NorDe is now NorDe++ and includes support for Danish, Estonian, Faroese, German, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish & Finnish. There are two additional new language kits: French & Belgian-French, and Italian, Spanish & Portuguese, the latter including support for common keys in Latin America, and Brazil-Portuguese.
One major change which required a fair bit of testing was ensuring that international kits had the right icon sublegends for the key in that location’s behaviour when using that language’s layout. Particularly the minus and plus keys on the number row, which are used for the remove/add anchor point tool respectively, as these retain that functionality for whatever key is in that location, rather than following the minus and plus keys to their alternate location.
With a mammoth twenty kits to manage now, I’m eschewing renders of every single kit for the moment, and will instead focus future renders on providing previews of the kits in use on a variety of boards, as well as some renders in neutral lighting for colour matching purposes. Hopefully this approach will communicate everything interested parties need to see about the kitting, and separate renders will do their own respective job.
Finally, I do have other irons in the fire, and a number of collaborations and complementary items that will form part of the group buy. Keep your eyes peeled for a future update with news about artisans and other goodies soon!
2021-04-06
MoreI don't currently have the time to update my renders, but a future update will make a few changes which were proposed by folks on here (most notably, I'll be removing F keys from the neutral modifiers kit, since these are duplicated across the base alpha kits). For those who have been asking when they'll get to see this in group buy: first of all thank you sincerely for your enthusiasm! It's genuinely exciting to see my design get such a reception. As yet EnjoyPBT haven't been in a position to quote for the sets, and since I'm moving house soon this has become something of a lower priority. As soon as I've moved (and have working internet again!) I will be back to focusing on getting this to the group buy stage.
2021-03-16
MoreBy popular demand, I’ve added two new kits: a Neutral Modifiers kit with all-grey modifiers, and a sublegend-less Alphas kit.
2021-03-15
MoreThank you to everyone for the really enthusiastic response, and the many helpful suggestions and observations. I’ve been working hard to make changes to try and address the most common bits of feedback, and have updated the kitting images accordingly:
* Substantially reworked Modifiers and Modern kits; all modifiers are icon-based now, and as a result the Modern kit has shrunk (since a lot of keys would otherwise have been duplicated)
* Removed media key sublegends from the F-row keys in the Modifier kits, and added their equivalents to the Modern kits.
* Added F-row keys to to Alphas kit to permit alternating F-row colours (if you like that)
* Added an extra B key to the Alphas kit to support Alice users (and removed it from Nomad kits)
* Moved some Mac-specific keys from Alphas to Modern kits
* Added tilde and pipe keys to both modifier sets
* Changed Numlock key to be an icon modifier in the Numpad kits
* Merged the two NorDe kits into a single kit with both mod colours; also, replaced AltGr with a new icon legend
* Substantially reworked the Nomad kits to better support 40s users. Too many changes to list, but hopefully you’ll see something more to your liking if you’re a 40% user and want to pick up just the alphas and nomad kits
* Substantially revisited the Novelties kits. A lot of people raised concerns about the Ai and Ps icon novelties, and I’ve taken the decision to remove these to ensure the kit won’t have any legality issues. I’ve also changed many of the 1U novelties in each kit to be more app-specific.
Samples
Final Kits
Base
Base without sublegends
PS Modifiers Kit
AI Modifiers
Neutral Modifiers
PS Numpad
AI Numpad
Neutral Numpad
PS Modern
AI Modern
Neutral Modern
PS Nomad
AI Nomad
Neutral Nomad
Spacebars
PS Novelties
AI Novelties
NorDe++
French/Belgian-French
Italian/Spanish/Portuguese
Deskmat
Neutral
Renders
Since the majority of the existing renders portray the alpha keys as being substantially darker than they really are, I’ve added a couple of new renders which I feel are a more accurate representation. I’ve kept the old renders for the sake of completeness.
Haus by Hand Engineering
OGR by Alchemist Keyboards
Old renders
Pillow65 by KeliumWorks
Bloq by THOK
Even older renders…
U80-A by RAMA WORKS
Dalco 959 Mini by Hand Engineering x Dalesnail
Haus by Hand Engineering
Isometria 75 by ebastler
M6-C by RAMA WORKS
Artisan Collaborations
I’m pleased to announce that I have two separate artisan key collaborations in the works for Creative Studio: firstly a metal artisan key from HIBI (render to come!), and secondly two designs by MVKB, manufactured by Salvun, using dyed polycarbonate with enamel in-fill. Note that the renders below are illustrative and may not 100% accurately reflect the colour of the finished product. Also, since these will be manufactured on-demand, they will ship later than the in-stock kits themselves.
Pen Artisan by MVKB × Salvun
Paint Bucket Artisan by MVKB × Salvun
Many thanks to everybody who provided feedback, tips and assistance, in particular NoPunIn10Did and DrHigsby for much assistance with kitting; ImperfectLink for the magic that is Keyboard Render Kit; maxvoltar for his continual support in getting this across the finish line (plus those artisan designs!); Kate from HIBI for helping design the other amazing artisan; and finally kbdfans who haven’t given up on this project even when at times it looked like it might never happen!
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kapowaz:
Reserved.
hali:
love the font on this. can the norde kits be combined? glwic nonetheless
LittleAad:
Love this, a very very creative set. no pun intended :-X
nagi:
this is so cool. i love it
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