Backerkit Review Underway
almost 4 years ago – Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 10:57:22 AM

Survey Initiation

I have all the covers, I've made mockups of the different products so hopefully you know what you're getting. Like this:

I hope to hear back from Backerkit soon, and they do promise within 2 business days. The only thing that they're pinging me on is shipping for add-ons, but I THINK the "whole order shipping" covers that. We'll see. They treat add-ons and regular pledge items as entirely different things, and I'm not sure how they relate sometimes. Despite this being, what? My eighth or ninth time?

In any case, they'll get back to me. Then I'll send out a "smoke test" to 5-10% of the backers, which will hopefully suss out any challenges. After that, the main surveys will go out.

Survey Closure

I intend to leave the surveys open until August 15. Just as a reminder, this was the original schedule.

Three of the books have been edited and laid out, and art commissioned. It's starting to come in, and I've been posting previews on my Discord channel periodically. 

Once the Backerkit phase has completed and the PDFs go out, there will be a reasonable review period to provide errata feedback before the print orders are placed.

That's where we are. With luck, the smoke test goes out soon, with the expectation being "midweek." 

Three Covers...two to go
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 01:38:35 AM

You've seen two. Let me show you the three finished ones, and two WIPs. These are worth waiting for, and as soon as I get 'em, I'll need a day to process the remaining Backerkit stuff and ensure it's right, then game on.

Backerkit will run for 2-3 weeks.

The next two are WIP. They need the final art, more back-cover text, and some contrast work on the authors' names.

As soon as these last two are done, we'll get this Backerkit started.

No Backerkit Yet...
almost 4 years ago – Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 04:44:20 PM

Things are progressing, but my decision to wait until the covers for all five books are done means that's the rate-limiting step. We had some back-and-forth over the weekend and the third cover - for Roc of Sages - got finished. I need to composite that together today, and we can wrap that up. The final two covers are (ironically) closer to being finished, since while the art is still pending, the cover templates are done.

(What's the issue with Roc of Sages? I want an ostrich-egg texture, which I will tint veridian, as the background, and I'm having trouble finding a good one.)

But it'll likely be a few more days until Backerkit starts. 

Some Art, Some Progress
almost 4 years ago – Wed, Jul 08, 2020 at 08:23:41 AM

Things are moving

I got art and maps coming in for Dragon Hunt and Roc of Sages bit by bit each day. 

I finished the edit and layout pass for Dark Lord's Doom as well, and as soon as I tally up my Q2 Licensing Report for SJG, I'll get art direction for that underway as well. Now that art and maps are being done, I'm not the rate-limiting step (yay) so if, as planned, I get the art direction finished for DLD today, as the art team finished up the already-assigned pieces, they'll have the new ones to choose from!

As soon as the art direction for DLD is finished, I'll start on the editing and layout for Catacombs of Living Death. That's a 16-pager, so it should go reasonably quickly. I hope. The Sunken Library is longer, so will take longer, but even so: good movement.

Sample Spreads and Art

Here are two quick extracts from Dragon Hunt. After that, a few images to show how the art is starting to be extracted into counters/tokens. I'm not forced to use the 1" squares this time, so I'm playing around more. Some of these will be ported into Decks of Destiny style cards in a future project, or colored to make counter sheets like for Five Perilous Journeys...if I can find the right supplier!

That's obviously a quick photoshop hack job (witness the partial erasure of combined hexes) but gives an idea of how the artists and I are trying to help the art do double-duty as both counter and illustration.

Backerkit: Official Start Next Week
almost 4 years ago – Wed, Jul 01, 2020 at 10:28:12 PM

I've spent pretty much all day working on the Backerkit setup. A few things are clear to me. 

I could probably push to get this done this week, set up the items, etc. That would get the surveys going. But I think it would be best if I waited until later next week.

• Ksenia will be doing a lot of cover art early next week, and I think most of the backerkit surveys will look a LOT better with 4 or 5 covers either finished or in serious WIP
• Mistakes at this point are really annoying to undo, and sometimes cost money (for me), or irritate backers (for you). I'd as soon avoid that
• I'm also getting more art coming in on the two books I've got under commission...and I'd love to show that in updates as the surveys roll.

And of course, this is the July 4 holiday weekend coming up, and while I will be working on MPJ (editing and layout), my family is heading off into the north of MN for a much-needed (though still isolated) vacation. So my internet connection will be spotty. I'd much rather be able to deal with any issues or questions.

So: Backerkit surveys go out next week. I think it'll be better that way for everyone.