How's it looking out there, Backerfam?

Just a short update for TDMTP below, but first:

Brackish
My guy Norgad has a new module crowdfunding on Backerkit and it looks as good as his previous one, Dead Weight. Put down what you're doing and go and back Brackish immediately.

The Dose Makes The Poison - April

Timeline

As Dr. Hans Zarkoff famously said in Jurassic Park 4: Big Dinosaur in Little China - "Life gets in the way."

I've slipped a little behind this past month, with a few things getting in the way of this project (including, if I’m honest, a week's holiday on a beach - my first in six years). I've got a round of final copy edits on the main book to complete and need to test some mechanics in the add-on pamphlet, Timed Release, too. Boo me.

What does this mean? I'd say we ship in June now instead of May, so not a huge delay, but a bit of a delay. It'll make fantastic summer reading though, promise.

Norg has some layout and other bits to do once I've cut some copy down to fit, but we're close to finishing now - just one last push is needed to get over the line.

You should've received notification today that I'm locking orders in the next 48 hours. After this, you'll only be able to change your address details, not add anything further to your order. This gives me all the numbers I need to work with so I can plan my orders and work out exciting things like...

I'm currently waterboarding myself with thrilling shipping information about delivery to 32 different countries. I'll be working out shipping costs and then charging cards when we're close to shipping - I'd expect this towards the end of May sometime.

All the additional suite of supporting assets - TV ad, music jingle, and voice notes - is close to completion now too. They're sounding pretty darn good, I think, and I've had a lot of fun recording them. I'm going to save sharing some of that for May's update and keep this one mostly about shipping costs, because I know that's what all you peeps really want to hear about. Yassss.

Cheers!
Andrew

Well hello there, Burt Backerkit! What the world needs now is another update on The Dose Makes The Poison!

Sorry you had to go through those opening sentences, I will try and do better in the future.

But aaaaanyway - I figured since the February update landed in March, you good folks are still due a legit update for this month, so here we go.

Zine

We're knee deep in layout and additional illustrations now. We're sitting at a confirmed 24 page zine now, which is cool. The first half of zine is The Dose Makes The Poison module, and 2nd half features a bunch of lore and plot threads about Hope's Pharma, including a cross section of the corporation head office, The Home of Industry. This is where head honcho, Aneurin Hope, resides along with his ever enthusiastic 𝚌̶𝚞̶𝚕̶𝚝̶ workforce, The New Industrial Union, so hopefully there's plenty more retro weirdness here for you to develop into your games once the initial module is completed. 

Additional print bits
We've also got a draft of the A4 poster on the go (included in the Lethal Dose pledge tier or as an add on) as seen above. This takes Inspo from those early 20th century ads that had doctors telling you smoking was good for you and the like, that you would see when sitting in your GP's waiting room.

The bookmark for all physical backers (as a reward for all MM project funding) is also in development, the back of which can be seen above (I love the ratio of 1/3rd instructions for use 2/3rds disclaimer text that Norg create for this, his copy is hilarious too). This leaves the sticker and the additional pamphlet as the two outstanding items to be worked on in April.

Audio & Video Files
I've had a good run at some of the accompanying audio bits over the past month. By way of an example here's a short snippet of a speech from Aneurin Hope, the founder of Hope's Pharma that you should be able to download off my Google Drive. A big thank you to @Squinch from the Mothership Discord for the voice acting work on this - thank you!

The animator is also putting the finishing touches to the Hope's Serum video ad as we speak, it's looking great as you can see from the couple of gifs in this update. Next for that is updating the audio and adding in some sfx.

These audio and video files will be available to all tiers with digital stretch goals and above.

Incomplete Surveys 
There's still 3% (30) of you that have yet to submit your survey. I'll be locking addresses around mid April time and charging cards for shipping around the start of May, so get your survey updated before then. All seems on track to ship in May as planned, although it might be towards the end of May rather than the start.

That's it from me, for now.

Cheers,
Andrew

Yes, I know it's March. You think I don't know it's March? I know it's March, okay?

February, while infinitely better than January, is still a crap month up here in the Highlands. Long dark days, wind blows bits off my house, stuff like that. So I thought I'd skip it altogether and come up smiling when March kicked in.

Updates:

Scriptwriting
February was really mostly about script writing. A lot more than anticipated really. Still, thanks to a couple of solid all-Saturday sessions in Inverness library the past two weekends and the help of editor DG Chapman, I feel like there's light at the end of the script tunnel. It's currently too long, but I'm in the process of another shorter draft at the moment and Mr Chapman is looking at further edits of the newer sections as we speak. I would looooove for all this to be done by next week, I've been holding things up a bit with this, but that also means more content...

Number of Pages and Layout
Last week I fired the draft script over to Norgad along with some rough proposed page headers / order. He shoved into a rough laydown, and the upshot is I think we're now looking at a 20 - 24 page zine now, as opposed to the originally mooted 16 pager, so that's pretty cool. Currently we're at 28 pages but there's a lot to be trimmed, with the goal of 24 pages of cool content that's easy to parse and game.

Norg is working on design now. My dream scenario is still to get the module off to print before the end of the month (would love to expense it all this tax year), but that feels like a big ask. So it might be into April before that happens.

Other bits
Most of the other print assets - poster, sticker, bookmark - have been briefed in, and once I get TDMTP script out of the way my next writing job is to finish the Timed Release pamphlet - just need a few more location for that and a bit of structure.

Early Bird Patches
The sample for the Hope's Serum patch arrived, and it looks really great. The drop design is slightly different from the mock up as you can't do a gradient with an embroidered patch, but it still looks lovely. A good 9cm in size too so easily big enough to cover a bullet hole in your jumpsuit. Here it is:

Hope's Serum TV ad
This has been story boarded and a collection of illustrations from Norg are now with my animator, who started on the job last weekend. Looking forward to seeing this fun lot come to life:

Let's zoom in on those creepazoid smiles for a sec:

Audio bits
I've started working on the additional voice clips to go along with the module, and might even have some to share in the next update if all goes to plan / I can work out how to share audio on a Backerkit update.

Surveys
There's still 5% of you that haven't completed your survey yet. No rush really, this will be open till the end of the month and I'll send around a reminder before they are closed off so you can lock down your order.

Think that's all for now!

Cheers
Andrew

Hello again Backerkit brigade,

I know at some point in the dark and distant past (yesterday) I said surveys would be out on Monday, but the response to the Smoke Test was so swift, smooth and flawless that I thought I'd just bonk out the rest out today.

Check your inboxes. Enjoy ticking those boxes and adding to those carts and have a great weekend when it comes:) 

Hello hello,

Just a quick message to say that Smoke Test surveys have gone out to 5% of backers.

If there's no problems with these surveys, I'll likely be following up with everyone else's surveys on Monday next week (sending out surveys over the weekend is a no-no in the crowdfunding world, appaz).

In the surveys you'll be able to upgrade your pledge and add on a few things to your order should you wish. I'll be looking to get all orders locked in by sometime in March, printing and digital fulfilment in April, shipping May.

We'll be charging shipping and taxes separately, nearer the time that we post out the goods. Fingers crossed for my US pals that there's not some sci-fi zine hell-tariff in place by then.

Cheers
Andrew