Colormatching issue with Moomin and Rensuya

Submitted by keyboard_anon t3_11wjoaz in MechanicalKeyboards

For anyone unaware, GMK Moomin came out not looking like the renders. Rensuya, the designer of GMK Moomin (and many other sets like Peaches n Cream and Mizu), was asked about this in his Discord server.

Rensuya’s initial post

In this post, it seems he almost blames the renderer for the issues and misunderstandings of how the colors came out. Many others, including myself, found this to be unapologetic and not caring about the customer.

Then Pwade (designed GMK Taro and Analog Dreams) chimed in to bring this up and Rensuya responded with a completely unacceptable excuse, IMO.

Pwade’s Response

Rensuya’s response to Pwade

It is the designer’s job to provide the content for the vendors and ensure the consumers completely understand what they are buying. This was actually discussed in his server back in May 2021, with the Cannonkeys owner Upas chiming in about the colors and stating they would make sure to provide the photos of the sample keys for GMK Moomin (keep in mind that most GMK group buys do not have color samples in advance, but GMK Moomin did bc it’s a licensed set). But if you wayback machine the listing that we were provided not only did he fail to have the images, but no other vendor did. Even when they began selling extras they never gave an update to GB consumers stating the colors came out differently, only silently changing the images on the extras page. To put salt on the wound Cannonkey is only letting people receive a partial refund if they have not broken the plastic seal.

Ren posting samples in his discord in MAY 2021

Upas response to someone concerned about the colors not matching the renders

Cannonkeys refund

Rensuya has had quite a few run-ins with failed color matching, and in many situations, it seems that the vendors either did not address or were even aware there could be an issue. I bring this up because when reviewing the situation of the original GMK Peaches and Cream GB (the one before PnC Lite ran), PnC Lite is based on the renders of the original GB… crazy yall really let him get away with that).

GMK Pnc and GMK PnC lite comparison all the photos

GMK Bread (not a Rensuya set btw) also had a color matching fiasco that seemed to be completely avoidable. Even though it is the designer's job to pick the colors, vendors must pay attention to the physical color references (Pantone or RAL books) of the sets they run and the renders they use on their websites. Specifically for GMK, the vendors are the ones who have to communicate to GMK for the designer. I do not understand how not a single vendor raised a concern when they saw the colors change from sample one to sample two. (Sample 1 was much closer to the renders, while later samples clearly drifted away.) They either chose to ignore it or didn't even think to check. From conversations I have seen, I know that the designer was looking to try at the colors again, but GMK would not unless they were provided color measurements, but none of the vendors were offering to help achieve this goal.

GMK Hanami Dango is another set that had color matching issues. GMK matched the RALs the designer provided, but the renders used during the group buy didn’t match the RALs at all. But no vendors noticed or cared about this when they ran the set.

Basically I believe to avoid more sets turning out like this, vendors need to step up and take responsibility for the sets they run and look at the renders and the physical references (RAL or Pantone books, or GMK/SP stock colors) to ensure they seem relatively close before they run the set and take customers’ money.

Designers should also help by including Pantone/RAL color codes and physical proof in their ICs (proof that they are using a physical reference that anyone with a Pantone/RAL book can check - even though this won’t apply to most customers, at least it will allow SOME sense of accountability during the IC process long before the group buy starts).

Also for what it’s worth, there have been a lot of amazing sets produced through group buys that never would’ve been able to happen without the group buy process and the community. There are great designers doing good work who care a lot about color accuracy and making sure the customer isn’t misled, and that they get what they paid for. These are just a few bad apples that hurt people’s perceptions of the group buy process and why I wanted to make this post.

References: The entire conversation from Rensuya’s server starting from his initial post

GMK PnC GB page

Rensuya server

GMK PnC Lite cannonkeys page

GMK Moomin post edit cannonkeys page

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=106574.0

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=106574.msg3070191#msg3070191

https://shop.yushakobo.jp/products/gb-gmk-moomin

Unedited GMK Moomin Ilumkb

Unedited GMK Moomin Swagkeys

unedited GMK Moomin prototypist

Wayback of GMK Moomin MKEU

Wayback of GMK Moomin Cannonkeys

GMK Hanami Dango

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Comments

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holicajolica t1_jcz42bx wrote

I'm just sad that this was such an expensive set and apparently no one stepped up to make sure everything was properly matched. Hello the customers aren't tossing money at designers for fun, they're paying for a product. They can make excuses all they want about internal woes, but it's their responsibility to deal with all of that when they run these GBs.

[edit after reading full chat] People defending Ren in the discord are hard coping. When I opened this set irl, it was very clear on first glance something was wrong. 3 of the 4 colors were pretty good but the "lavender" one was no where near accurate so much that it ruined the set for me. This isn't my first GB, I know what's realistic in renders vs irl colours, and this isn't it bro.

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SXLightning t1_jd2rxeb wrote

every designer discord are like that, its like a cult these day, you can only say good things about a designer or get banned

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Apprehensive_Park951 t1_jd0vcr1 wrote

This isn’t Rensuya’s first rodeo with poor color matching, see KAT Explosion.

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Alendare1 t1_jd22i80 wrote

Exactly, and his minions still attacking people to defend on that guy lol

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Equivalent_Price_970 t1_jd8ydb2 wrote

And GMK peaches and cream, pnc lite and red dragon. The best part is that he's planning another gb this year and I'm sure it'll be the same story

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SQunX t1_jd2ks53 wrote

well, I had luck with Atlantis at least with the colours (:

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Apprehensive_Park951 t1_jd3c8q2 wrote

I have them both, crazy how pinpoint accurate he got with Atlantis and then just completely dropped the ball with explosion. 250$ on that GB, I’ve just reconciled with myself that it’s good enough.

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SQunX t1_jd3e26f wrote

with Atlantis he had quite a few samples. maybe bcs of the not announced process change

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SXLightning t1_jcyo2bg wrote

End of the day, some one need to look at the renders and the real photos and try to atleast match them. It seems most designers just pay for a render, then get some prototypes and never bother to get new renders made.

Or they have such terrible monitors that they can't see the difference between pink vs purple. Maybe they should pay to get a colour accurate monitor

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ahauser31 t1_jd2kzmj wrote

Doesn't really help to update the renders post GB when they get samples from the manufacturer. Rather, designers should make sure the renders match the color swatches they have before the GB goes live. And if they don't have swatches they shouldn't be allowed to run the GB anyway.

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raiNcsgo t1_jcz2k1j wrote

something similar also happened with gmk moonlight. the designer even included the colour codes (RAL?) in the geekhack post, but the actual product looks nothing like the renders or the colour code. there isn’t even any way to contact the designer it seems, guy just went silent

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RD-Espresso t1_jczduj7 wrote

Great write up about the situation. This is a part of why I buy in stock these days.

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Previous_Raisin5568 t1_jczck64 wrote

Unreal this would happen when it's not even their first set.

Unfortunately, a lot of pandemic-era GMK sets have had shit color matching. I know because I've been scouting recent extras and a ton of them lately are just absolute garbage from a color match standpoint.

Have had to join a lot of discords this week for 15 or so minutes to find where people are complaining about the colors (Cojiro, Monarch, this one). Extremely annoying that vendors aren't updating the render shots with real photos - basically false advertising at that point.

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Poo_Milkshake t1_jd2sfke wrote

CannonKeys has been the main vendor for most of Rensuya’s keysets and despite having color matching errors over and over again they keep running his stuff. They definitely should be held accountable

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Previous_Raisin5568 t1_jd5d2cq wrote

They also then charge some of the highest prices for their extras.

Moomkin, despite not turning at all out like the renders, is $205 from them. Meanwhile Novelkeys sells some of their extra base sets, most of which do not have color matching issues at all, for like 3/4ths that.

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Gamecube757 t1_jd7urz9 wrote

Not exactly a fair comparison. Moomin was a licensed set, so I’d look at the GMK Star Wars sets that NK has extras of, which are also pretty expensive at $250.

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cerement t1_jcz10fn wrote

I definitely believe designers should be providing a photo of the reference colors taken with a ColorChecker for the buyers as well as for the renderers and vendors …

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RelativeChance t1_jd25qol wrote

Another miss to add to the unfortunately not even close to exhaustive list: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/vrakyg/comment/ievo43n/

I want to add to this another problematic designer: Sxmdesigns. In a now deleted apology thread (comments can be found here) they also got into trouble with their renders and color matching and they have been overcharging for sets and running new gbs like mad while still not having finished a single full gb yet I believe. They ended up deleting the thread and blocking people that pointed out negative things they had done (including me) after they were caught trying to change the narrative with an OBVIOUS ALT ACCOUNT. I have been doing a small investigation into this designer and may make a separate post about it.

I 1000% blame the vendors for not vetting these designers and not taking any disciplinary action when their gbs fail and don't look as advertised. They did nothing to Ren after the absolute disaster of the original PNC and still let them run more sets! Gerg would also be running more gbs with these vendors if he didn't ghost the whole hobby on his own after his failure, changing the colors during color matching. The vendors are also part of the color matching process, they are allowing all this. The vendors are also not putting pressure on gmk to allow color matching before gb so people actually know what they are buying and they can definitely make this demand since we account for about half of gmk's revenue. We need to have color matching before gb, with the samples measured against color chips with a spectrophotometer so everyone knows what they are buying, and certainly no one should be allowed to change the colors after the gb is paid for unless they refund everyone and start the gb over again I can't believe this is even a thing but most of the scuffed gmk sets were scuffed because of this, they can just rug pull the colors without consulting the people financing the gb.

Since the vendors have so far completely failed to hold designers accountable, the moderators of this subreddit and r/mm can take action by banning or forcing disclaimers on posts from these repeat offenders to protect consumers and the reputation of all the good designers out there. This sub and r/mm are responsible for so much of the traffic and news in this hobby, it would have tangible effects to their bottom lines.

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ahauser31 t1_jd2n26h wrote

Please post more of your findings on Sxm. I personally was very put off by them attacking that Google Docs sheet showing the public GMK GB queue (not even showing all those orders placed at GMK that are not GBS) because it basically revealed that vendors and designers such as Sxm have been lying about GMK fulfillment times - it's not an excuse to say they communicated what GMK told them about the timeline when they very well knew at that point (towards end of 2021) that those dates were unrealistic (there were sets running in the latter half of 2021 that promised 2022 fulfillment)

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zhrimb t1_jczpng5 wrote

Oh man I thought DSS Carpinteria was bad, that is just way off. I don't get how designers can look at the renders, compare that to the color samples, and not be aware that the renders (what 99% of people are buying based on) are completely off.

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Mecxs t1_jd2nslk wrote

It's not a mistake, it's greed. GMK gives a certain number of colour matching attempts for free, and after that if the designer still isn't happy then they have to pay for further rounds.

This is happening because rensuya not only has already made all his money from this set, but has learnt from past experience that fucking over his current GB customers won't hurt future sales.

He has done this three or four times already and each time just makes more money. People keep buying the sets though.

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Poo_Milkshake t1_jd0z8tl wrote

You think Moomin is bad you should see how Red Dragon (Another Rensuya Set That Shipped Recently) turned out 🤬

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ahauser31 t1_jd2l43g wrote

I checked that out just now... Hysterically bad, I'd be very pissed if I had joined that

1

MIDI_master_race t1_jd2nunp wrote

Damn, is there something new with Red Dragon? I'm in that GB myself and the only things I can think of is the long color matching phase and one of the colors being changed due to REACH violations.

1

Owend12 t1_jd1t28o wrote

This is really irresponsible on the runner and unacceptable for how much the keycaps cost.

Really expecting top tier quality check and colour matching with how expensive it is.

Gmk GB Runners should have the final sample set before the group buy start to instill confidence that the product is possible and the colors are accurate to the renders.

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needlessmustard t1_jczr3ey wrote

These kinds of stories are why I don’t buy things that don’t exist yet in this hobby.

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PauLogical t1_jd1rjkc wrote

I felt cheated by the GMK Hanami Dango set. I was cool with waiting cause I just purchased and forgot but to see how it just didn’t match the renders or what the vendor promised me made me pretty bitter.

I’m basically only going to buy keycaps that have photos posted of them. Learned my lesson.

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Alendare1 t1_jd22smc wrote

Had the same feeling with GMK Demon Sword last year. From the render you can see the red and blue should be lighter, abit dull and muted, but the result is a bright red and deep navy blue which none of those colors are match to the render or the model of the anime character on IC page.

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SXLightning t1_jd2t4vb wrote

Did Ren just make his discord private?

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pabloscrosati t1_jd3mt1d wrote

ePBT Dreamscape better be perfect given how many “returned to designer for approval” revisions there have been..

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Equivalent_Price_970 t1_jd8z58e wrote

You should join the discord for that if you haven't then, the final colors are approved and they're definitely more saturated than the renders

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pabloscrosati t1_jd90sbf wrote

Gr8 lol at this point, I just want it since I don’t even remember what it looks like and I’ve had the ikki for too long

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EnjoyMyInSec t1_jd1y7ip wrote

Just my 2 cents in case you guys are wondering. GMK only accept to make a set with physical chips of the colors you want(ed). The thing is that most of the time people use HEX colors and not real colors so they’re fucked. This is what happened on many sets of Ren (especially PnC who does not look like at all like the renders).

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andromache97 t1_jd2uuu2 wrote

For what its worth, although I can't speak to the sets Rensuya ran, I do think a lot of designers now do use physical color chips for matching their renders + ship those same chips to GMK before the color sampling stage begins. (My only evidence for this is anecdotal based on the GMK set I ran and the other designers I've talked to - I do think there are a lot of designers doing their due diligence!)

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cerement t1_jcz2ncv wrote

(on the flip side, bad specifications gave us SoWaRe)

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comepinga666 t1_jd0fpfh wrote

Another reason why group buys are trash

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