Alchemy Art
CREATOR
over 1 year ago
Project Update: Update: Pre-Surveys, Poll on Swords, More General Adventuring
Hey everyone! Thanks for your patience while we worked through the next stages of the Purrtagonists campaign! There were a fair few things we had to buckle down and do in the campaign itself over the last two weeks (a lot stemming from the new campaign model we’ve been experimenting with, as we couldn’t do a lot of pre-planning during the campaign itself). We were all a tiny bit swamped by the onrush of shows and the holiday season (both with family events and shopping focused items), so things have been a bit slower than we intended. I'm wading through it as quickly as possible given everything (with Venetia spot checking my work!).
We do have some pretty big notes here today, and while we’re not quite at the survey stage yet, we’re nearly there! We’re anticipating the survey to go out early next week (it will be one of the priorities I’m working on while at the convention this weekend, since I can’t pack any orders during that time away). I will post a formal update once they have been sent!
- Firstly, we’ve already finished/begun the vectoring for a fair number of the pins, and will be continuing to work on the remainder until the end of the year. We all personally do this by hand to ensure that all the pins have very accurate translations in the manufacturing process. It does take longer, but we appreciate the preciseness it generally allows, especially with screenprints.
- Second: The stickers have been ordered for the packs. We ordered extras just in case anyone wanted to add them on, of course, since Black Friday deals allowed us a bit of wiggle room. :D
- Third: At the end of the campaign, we did achieve both the goal for Onicake’s stretch goal bard (any name suggestions for the meow?), as well as the sword from Tim Kaminski! The sword options are pictured below, and a vote is above. What is your favorite? We’ll translate that into a pin, as promised!
- Fourth: One thing we learned from the campaign is that, with this more “interactive” model… characters change a lot! From the beginning of the creation process (almost 8 months ago now, at least for some of these), these characters felt conceptually different. Adding a story to them changed the tone drastically, and eventually they went and did a lot of things I’d originally not pictured. It was a bit of a lesson for us here!
Because of how early most of the Alchemy designs were done, we decided to give some of the earliest some minor adjustments to help fit the overall vibe. We think that these tweaks bring them more in line with the later counterparts (that were more impacted by the campaign, and saw more live tweaking). We did want to apologize a bit for this, but most improvements were adding screenprints and improving character expressions (etc) to better fit the characters they’d become.
These adjustments specifically were geared at: Tuff, Fluff, Floof, Gray, Castor
For Tuff: We improved the armor given how he was… actually a proficient cat in the mini-saga, and also improved the more strictly chibi-esque eye appearance he previously had. Once the full lineup was done, he stuck out a bit for that!
For Fluff/Floof: Arguably the biggest changes came to these two gals. By the end of the story, both largely didn’t fit their original cosmetic (costume) choices. Originally, they also weren’t siblings (way way back like 8 months ago). They were just two options for the same cat… then the community said they wanted both. That said, we did some fussing with them both to bring them back in line, and also to let them visually match since they were twins!
Gray: These weren’t big changes! He mostly just gained a belt and a few small adjusted screenprints.
Castor: The elderly gentleman gained a few plants, as the resident druid friend. We also noticed the perspective of the leaf was a bit wonky, so we fixed that to be more accurate.
We did want to apologize again for these particular changes as this isn’t the norm and we recognize this; this type of experimenting with the story was new for us too, and the visual changes were ultimately to bring things in line with each other – we did our best to retain everything that made them unique and just adjust clothing, etc. If we ever do something like this again, we’ll try to think of a better solution.
- Fifth: Another thing that’s notable is that we worked on getting a sizing grid down for all of the pins between all three makers additions, to make sure that none stood out oddly (so no faces were about 1/100th the size of another if it wasn’t meant to be). With that, we actually realized that some of the later pins needed some size increases to fit. We’d designated all but one pin originally to be standard pins… but some of them just won’t allow for it (or would not translate well at such small scales).
This impacted only later additions: Bones (now 2.65”), Lich (aka cutout crazy demon cat, now 2.8”), Max (now 2.68”), Coda (now 2.68”). Most of these increased about half an inch. There aren’t any decreases in size. For most of these, the increases in sizes were largely logistical. The Lich, for example, wouldn’t be able to successfully cut out so many spaces with as high of a fidelity at a much smaller size, and we focused on making the Grimalkin Hollow gang more logistically lined up with the rest of their Destruction friends from Venetia’s lineup.
To be fair to everyone (since we understand that people did pledge in for specific pins), every third pin choice will have the option of getting any one of these pins at no upcharge, similar to how Basil is also a deluxe upcharge (but that one will be always at an upcharge). We will cover the upcharges on these additions – for example, if you got the 6 pin tier, your third and sixth pin choices will allow you to pick from the full list (with these four adjusted pins) at no additional fee for the four.
- Sixth: Funds have gone through, so once we finish up the vectors, we’ll be sending the pins into production in batches.
Outside of those noted items, we’ll be continuing to work on getting the surveys out, so please expect to see them next week after the shows we have this weekend conclude. We will have an option for people to up their tiers if they wish to obtain the freebie fillers that were obtainable at 6/9/12 and the set tiers. We got a fair few emails concerning missing adjustments.
Please remember that shipping costs will be due with surveys, as noted in each of the pledges and in the confirms with pledging. We will leave shipping addresses open until later to allow any location changes to be done by everyone at a backer level, and will warn when those are going into lockdown. These will be billed with any/all residuals from the campaign.
I think that's all for today, but I appreciate your patience with us as we move into the next phase of this adventure!
- Mel (and the rest of the crew 🐾)
I think that's all for today, but I appreciate your patience with us as we move into the next phase of this adventure!
- Mel (and the rest of the crew 🐾)
120 votes
• Final results
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