01/11/23
about 3 years ago – Wed, Jan 11, 2023 at 03:20:24 PM

Hey Everyone,

Happy New Year! Hope it's going well early in 2023! 

It's been a great start of the year for us. We jammed throughout the holidays, working mostly on the changes we mentioned in our last update. This past week was the first time I've officially had Vince full-time which is an awesome feeling! We met on Friday to set them tempo for the year, deciding to meet on Mondays and Fridays while implementing quarterly reviews and rocks. 

We're implementing an enterprise operating system. Last year was our first exposure to the concept and we made a go of it, but eventually kind of fell off as we lacked the time to meet. This year our main resolution is to hold to the OS, and to hit our goals set therein. 

So far, off to a good start! 

Final Adjustments

So, December was spent making our final adjustments on Skies of Fire. We made about 120 changes which we tracked here: 

An example of some of the changes:

Endings

And yes, part of the change was revisiting the ending. To clarify, we didn't add any new pages - just adjusted the dialogue / captions as well as adding an interstitial page of black or two strategically. 

At the end of the day I'm not sure how much of a difference the change really makes, but I do know it was important for us personally to revisit these scenes. So, thank you for allowing us the time to do just that. Hope you like what you see (note: the changes aren't on the digital version just yet; we'll update when it does goes up.) 

Timeline

As time wound down last year,  we found ourselves still working out the last adjustments.  That became a question of trying to rush to print before Lunar New Year or ease up the production timeline to account for the holiday. In the end, we made the decision to complete the changes and aim for print as soon as the year restarted after the Lunar New Year, with factories closed from 01/12/23 to around 01/31/23.  

That puts us with an updated timeline: 

•  Lock Printers and Pay Deposit - Completed
•  Digital Reward Distribution - Completed
•  Book Manufacturing -  February-March 23
•  Ocean Freight to Warehouses - March to April 23
•  Backer Fulfillment - April to May '23

Thanks you for being patient with us :)

Comic Scripts

Many of you wrote pointing out that the Skies #2 Comic Script linked to the first issue in the download folder. Thank you for pointing that out - to be honest, we were surprised by how many people were not only interested enough to open those documents but to write to us about the links being broken! 

We've since fixed the link and have added the comic scripts to Issues #4-7 as well. Hope you find them entertaining / educational :) 

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That's all we have for today. Hopefully next time we'll be able to show off some proofs. 

Onward and upwards! 

- Ray and Vince

Oh December...
over 3 years ago – Fri, Dec 09, 2022 at 03:17:22 AM

Hey Everyone,

I know it's been a while. Hope everyone's holiday season is starting off well.  Over here, it's been kind of a mixed bag but what I'm most looking forward to is staying home over the holidays and knuckling down on things I feel like I've been neglecting, including Skies of Fire.

Endings, Perfectionism, and Art

Have you ever had a hard time saying something you made is finished ? Vince and I both have this problem. We're tinkerers, rewriters, and perfectionists, always trying to find the right words, the right story, the perfect frame. We legitimately spent thousands of hours writing and crafting Skies of Fire, and yet even then I think we both were left a little unsatisfied with how things turned out. For Vince, that manifested in about 100 pages of painstakingly crafted notes and adjustments.

For me,  I never felt like we quite nailed the ending in Issue #8   Both of us figured that this Collected Edition would be a chance to revisit those things,  but the truth is the real life constraints and mean that we haven't had the time to implement what we wanted. 

And I know you're thinking, well shoot it's been a couple of months since the campaign, what have you been doing? 

For Vince, the answer is moving. From his home in London of the past 10 years to Italy, closer to be with his parents.  Closing out his full time job, putting furniture up for sale, packing up his life to start the next chapter.  

For me, it's been pushing for this project with printers, managing the team, teaching, conventions, shipping goods, just trying to keep everything going, really.  I think I'm a bit overextended and it hasn't felt like I've been focusing on the right things recently. 

And then compounding everything is that as these things are happening in our lives it's been difficult to meet, to talk, to sort out how to best move forward, to make the hard decisions of what can be changed and what we have to cut out. Without that availability,  one week slips into another, into another, and then here we are, the beginning of December! 

Oh boy.  Where did the time go? 

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Timeline

So where are we? Well, we have the printer locked. We have templates for the covers and the interiors. We have not sat down and said what is in and what is out of the final book.  We have about 38 days to print and assemble before Lunar New Year. 

• Lock Printers and Pay Deposit - Completed
• Digital Reward Distribution - Completed
• Book Manufacturing - Middle October - December - January '23
• Ocean Freight to Warehouses - February '23
• Backer Fulfillment - March '23

The good news is Vince is in Italy and I'm buckling down at home as well. 

This project is our number one priority from here on through. We're sorry it's been slow but we're going to be picking it up, starting with the digital release, which should be in your messages in Kickstarter.

Thank you for your patience everyone.  We're making the thing and hope you love it. 

Ray 

BackerKit Surveys
over 3 years ago – Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 11:05:08 PM

Hey Everyone,

As you may know, we sent out BackerKit Surveys last week in order to get estimates on the unit quantities we need to manufacture. As a side effect of this, BackerKit has asked for payment information even though we are going to be charging for shipping at a later time. There's been some confusion and some of you have rightfully expressed your frustration as to why you are being asked for additional credit card information without an attached shipping fee. 

Mea culpa - this is our fault, and not something we thought would happen with the BackerKit backend, We thought that using their 'ship at a later time' feature would result in the platform not collecting that information at this time, but that isn't the case. We've since talked to BackerKit and asked if there could be some exception on their end, but it's not something they're able to do as the flow of answering survey questions to collecting payment information is embedded deeply into their platform. We're sorry - this is something we should have known, reviewed, and communicated before launching these surveys. 

That being said - 

You do not have to enter your payment information in BackerKit at this time. Even though this will result in BackerKit saying that the survey is incomplete, we will still be able to tally your results for the purposes of manufacturing and coordinating freight shipping. You can simply fill out the rest of your survey information while not putting down a credit card at this time. 

You will have to eventually enter and pay for shipping when we are about to fulfill the campaign. Like we previously mentioned, we are charging shipping at a later time in order to reflect live rates. We don't anticipate rates to increase dramatically from now and January (when we're estimated to fulfill); however, we're doing under an abundance of caution after the tumultuous last few years of shipping.  We will make a full announcement of shipping rates once we're ready and able to, and I promise it will not be an egregious charge. We spent much of the last year building out strong partnerships with our warehousing partners, and are confident that we'll be able to offer reasonable rates across all territories. 

If you purchased just the digital version, you do not have to fill out your survey at all. This will not affect digital distribution as we will be sending out a survey here with your download link. The reason why we sent BackerKit Surveys to our digital backers was because in past campaigns, when we did not, many digital backers mentioned that they had backed at a lower tier at the time of the campaign in the hopes of upgrading once the surveys went out, and had asked to have surveys sent out. That said, the surveys for digital backers is merely a courtesy for those backers who wish to browse the BackerKit as a preorder store. 

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Again, our apologies for any confusion and annoyance this may have caused. Please let us know if you any comments, questions, or concerns in the thread below.

- Ray and Vince

September Update: BackerKit, Manufacturing, Timeline
over 3 years ago – Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 02:03:52 AM

Hey Everyone,

Hope you had a glorious September and falling forward into a brisk autumn (unless you're in the other hemisphere, in which case happy spring!).  Here is where we are at with Skies of Fire:

Manufacturing

We've spent the last few weeks bidding for new printers as we weren't satisfied with the communication and attention to detail from our previous manufacturers. We went very wide with this search, leveraging many new professional contacts we made during convention season. All told, we've queried 18 printers and counting, and have received a good amount of quotes with many more coming in this week.

The good news is that prices have generally come down since last year to about pre COVID levels in 2019. That's an encouraging sign, but alas I suppose that's coupled with signs of a greater recession ala increased daily spend prices in food, gas, etc. 

In any case,  we've allocated ourselves until the end of the month (very soon) to secure bids and source a printer. We're trying to find the intersection between price and quality - both in terms of the book itself, but also in customer service. Over the last year we've (re)learned that it's best to work with people who really care about your project and will spend the extra time and care to see it through. Judging how fast people respond to your queries, the type of questions they ask - those are all great gages of that. 

We're still on schedule for a January 2023 fulfillment, though that may change as we go through the months ahead.  We'll keep you updated. 

BackerKit

BackerKit surveys are going out soon, probably Friday! Please, when you can, fill out these as soon as possible. Doing so helps us get accurate counts in terms of manufacturing and ocean freight. Over the past three years we've transitioned from fulfilling every order ourselves through our offices (re: flats) in the UK and USA to working with Third Party Logistics fulfillment companies in the USA, UK, Germany, and China. 

It's a big change, one that requires a lot more organization on our end. That said, getting the counts early helps us coordinate, so please help us fill out the survey when you can.

Shipping Rates

Once again we're going to be charging shipping rates closer to fulfillment to reflect accurate rates. This is done under an abundance of caution; I don't anticipate the rates to drastically change between now and January, however, you never know what can happen and given our experiences this past year I think it's still better to hedge our bets this way.

That said, if you've been following our other campaigns, you know that we have been able to lower our shipping rates from the peak of 2021 when things were really egregious. We've found good partners to help us fulfill so hopefully the rates won't be too bad come January. 

Timeline

Here's what we're looking at, timeline wise:

• Lock Printers and Pay Deposit - Early October 2022
• Digital Reward Distribution - Middle October 2022
• Book Manufacturing - Middle October - End of November 2022
• Ocean Freight to Warehouses - December 2022
• Backer Fulfillment - January to February 2023

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Thanks everyone for your patience! Let us know if you have questions or comments below.  Otherwise, we'll be sure to keep you abreast of the manufacturing process in the months to come. 

- Ray and Vince 

Gratitude
over 3 years ago – Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 07:21:25 AM

Hi Everyone,

We surpassed the 2,700 backer mark with $167,671 total raised. That is an absolutely staggering amount that has completely eclipsed all of our expectations and previous records. Thank you.  

It has been an incredible month and incredible campaign.  The capstone of our year and careers thus far.  

The Road Ahead

Now, we enter the production cycle. Vince has a catalog of minor adjustments he'd like to make to the interior pages before we go to print and will, in the weeks ahead, be putting everything into making sure that everything is in place. 

Concurrently with that, we'll be sending out BackerKit Surveys so we can finalize counts and regions. This will help us coordinate how many books to make and where to send them after they've been made. Please note that during this phase shipping will not be charged.  We're waiting until closer to fulfillment to charge for shipping, in order to make sure we have the most accurate rates possible. 

Once we have everything compiled, we'll send it over to our printer. The books will take about 3-4 weeks to print, and another 6-8 weeks to make landfall at various ports around them world, chief of which are in the USA, UK, and Germany. From there, the books freights to our factories, we send over the shipping data, and they ship out the books! Sounds simple, right? 

If you're a follower of our other campaigns, you'll know that we've learned quite a bit about global trade routes and logistics over the last year. We're confident that what we've learned will directly benefit this campaign, in the form of relatively cheap and straightforward shipping. That's all boring business stuff, but it's feels like all we've been doing and learning this year so... all's that to say is we're growing. 

Timelines

BackerKit Surveys - Mid September

Lock Revisions: Mid October

Digital Copies: End of October

Print: November - December 2022 

Ocean Freight: December - January 2023

Fulfillment: January 2023 

More Skies of Fire? 

Yes, we plan on making more Skies of Fire. In order to do so, we need to sit down and write more of the danged thing, hopefully next year when some of the craziness has died down. Vince is moving to Italy and we've been going nonstop with new projects and publishing this year, though I think we're going to take it a little slower next year, releasing some long gesticulating projects and focusing on showcasing what we have rather than too much more to our catalog. 

Along with that will hopefully be more time to work on creative stuff, including more Skies of Fire. And yes - the RPG is still in the works - slowly, behind the scenes. We learned a lot from The Wildsea and will hopefully be implementing what we learned into the Skies RPG. 

Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter

Finally, to wrap today's celebration I'd like to throw a shout out to Russel Nohelty and his comic series, Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter. Ichabod Jones is a monster hunting story about a broken man finding his way in the world, coming to terms with everything he's done. 

Russell is a Kickstarter Comics OG and one of the hardest working people I know. He, like us, is wrapping up a long gesticulating project this year in Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter, which launched his career back in 2014.  It's a grand epic tale with over 350 pages of sequentials - check it out if it strikes your fancy! 

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Alright everyone, one more Kickstarter Update to go for CBR+PNK, and then locking down + sending shipping for The Wildsea: RPG. After that, I'm going to take a bit of a break from the internet and disconnect. Nonetheless, if you need to reach us, you can always do so here or via email: [email protected].

Much love for a fantastic campaign. Thank you all, and until we talk again! 

- Ray