Hello Backerkit,

I'd like to start out this update by saying how truly blessed we are to have you guys for our audience. Last week was not easy, but you all made it more manageable for us with your kind words, patience, and understanding. We still have our rough moments from time to time, but there comes a point where we have to balance our grieving with our responsibilities - I think with the funding period of this campaign coming close to it's end that the time to find that balance is now.

Even though we're back on task, please rest easy knowing that we won't neglect our emotions or energy for the sake of our work. I promise that we'll take good care to monitor ourselves and rest when we need to.

Thank you guys <3

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Now on the topic of wrapping up this campaign, We're hashing out some final details with our manu's, getting ready for post-campaign tasks, and making some new arrangements for the stretchgoals we set for this campaign.

We had intended to put out a few social media advertisements to assist your guys' word of mouth in the march of progress towards our goal of beating our backer record and unlocking those delicious stretchgoals. However, we were not available to do this in a timely and impactful manner. Because we were not able to get this done we wanted to open an alternate avenue for those stretchgoals to be unlocked and have decided to do something similar to how we handled the end of Periodic Pinups;
For any achievements yet to be unlocked by the end of the campaign, we will make them available to unlock on the survey as stretchgoals there as well. That way if we aren't able to reach our goal it will still be possible to get your hands on the exciting items with a little bit of teamwork from the community ;>

I WAS going to say how we don't have any art updates right now, but Tokii worked her art magic and got the Lampong pin colored before I could finish this update 💀

As a final note, we're getting ready for the upcoming Summer Sale, we would absolutely love any specific requests from you guys in regards to what you'd like to see included - We can't offer anything from campaigns that haven't been fulfilled yet, so that leaves the following campaigns;

Let us know your thoughts! :3

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Stay Adventurous,
- Jacob and Tokii

Hello Backerkit, Tokii and I will be taking the rest of this week off from work to allow ourselves time to grieve. Our dog, Rowdy, unexpectedly and suddenly passed away Wednesday morning. We hope to get back with you all on Monday.

We are happy to show off the brand new "Mini-maw Stickersheet" featuring all of the Halimaw from this campaign including the newest winner from the poll prior; the Lampong! This stickersheet takes all of these legends and reimagines them in a chibi design :3

In addition we'd also like to show off our work for the other stretch goals to be unlocked. Down below you'll find the three sketches we made from the Filipino Folklore storyline; Visitor, Birdsong, and Guidance

Visitor: Visitor depicts Imelda's meeting with the medium at the beginning of the story. They sit beside a brazier of burning herbs that spews rolling smoke throughout the room. The Daligmata can be seen through the haze with it's many eyes shining bright as they survey the area. This will be a horizontal 5x7" print.

Birdsong: Birdsong displays the Idarna Bird perched at the tip of a rocky cliff face above a torrential sea. It's song and the current of the water rival each other as they twist to and fro. This will be a vertical 5x7" print.

Guidance: Guidance shows the visage of a wild landscape twisted by the will of the Tikbalang, but coursing through it is the strand of golden guidance from the Anggitay. Imelda walks her path beside the strand, making sense of the chaos. This will be a horizontal 5x7" print.

These three sketches are the very beginnings of our work towards this campaign's final stretchgoal and pin. We feel that all designs depict the Lampong and it's impervious, almost untouchable, nature very well!

As a reminder; The Lampong is a mythical individual from Ilongot folklore standing at about two feet tall with bright yellow eyes and a two-pointed cap. He is often called the Deer Herder or Deer Guardian. As the story goes the lands were once rich with beautiful forests and animals, but when the hunters came with their big guns they began to defile the natural beauty of the land. So the Lampong, displeased by this, used magic to transform into something the hunters could not ignore.
The next time they brought their guns out to hunt they were immediately taken aback by a stunning white deer - this deer scared away all of the other deer and distracted the hunters from all other targets but itself. When the hunters shot at it the bullets were warded away having little effect and even falling off the hide of the beast.
Our pin design will be inspired from the Lampong’s deer form; described as majestic with only one eye and a set of magnificent golden antlers.

Please show us your favorite design by voting in the attached poll, the winning design will be the sketch we move forward with to make the pin ;>

That's all for now!
Stay adventurous
- Tokii and Jacob

Sorry for the additional update everyone 😅

The poll is now rectified!

Stay adventurous!
- Jacob and Tokii

After a while of conceptualizing I think we've made some good progress on cooking up some stretchgoals for you all! I'd like to preface that we've been incredibly blessed by everyone's excitement and enthusiasm for Filipino Folklore - We hadn't seen many projects that really compared to it; Philippine legends and tales are not covered very much in media, so to see the heavy support for something that is a little on the niche side was something we weren't fully expecting and gleefully surprised by :3

For that reason - in addition to popular demand ;> - we've formulated 3 stretchgoals that we plan to make available for unlock! Those categories are as follows;

Our goal is to beat our all time record of 463 backers, a challenging goal but one that I think is within reach! These stretchgoals will be used as an incentive to push forward - unlocking one category for every 25 backers after 400. More specifically; The Special Stickersheet will unlock at 425 backers, the Storyline prints at 450, and finally the community voted Halimaw at 475!

Speaking of that Halimaw... let's take a look at the candidates :3

🦌 Lampong; the Deer Guardian
The Lampong is a mythical individual from Ilongot folklore standing at about two feet tall with bright yellow eyes and a two-pointed cap. He is often called the Deer Herder or Deer Guardian. As the story goes the lands were once rich with beautiful forests and animals, but when the hunters came with their big guns they began to defile the natural beauty of the land. So the Lampong, displeased by this, used magic to transform into something the hunters could not ignore.
The next time they brought their guns out to hunt they were immediately taken aback by a stunning white deer - this deer scared away all of the other deer and distracted the hunters from all other targets but itself. When the hunters shot at it the bullets were warded away having little effect and even falling off the hide of the beast.
Our pin design will be inspired from the Lampong’s deer form; described as majestic with only one eye and a set of magnificent golden antlers.

🐸 Omaka-an: the Frog Tyrant
Omaka-an is the name of a gargantuan man-eating monster from a Mindanao story called Indarapatra and Sulayman. The story is about a king who sends out his warrior brother to defeat four monsters who have been terrorizing his kingdom. Omaka-an is often described as simply giant but in other tales he’s described as draconic or even toad-like. He and his mate are said to be so large that they use the mountain range for beds and that if they were to desire fish they need only roll to the side and scoop some out from the bay with their giant claws.
Omaka-an’s most infamous trick is that if any piece of him is ever severed off, then he multiplies with both the original and the new severed piece becoming duplicates of the monster. However, he and his partner were finally killed by the king who came to avenge his fallen brother, and used one thousand cuts to bleed Omaka-an til death.
Our Omaka-an pin design would take the bestial description of the monster and run with it - depicting him as a monstrous toad-dragon.

🦘 Sigbin: the Speedy Steed
Sigbin, being from Visiyan folklore, is described as the cross between a dog, a goat, and a kangaroo. It possesses a long tail that is so thin at the tip that it has been described as a whip, and the whole beast is a little larger than a goat. Despite having four legs it is described as favoring to move on its hind feet like a kangaroo - but also being so incredibly fast that it’s nearly undetectable with the human eye.
Sigbin are attracted to the smell of dying people, but you can also befriend one by feeding it charcoal and raw meat… if you’re lucky the befriended Sigbin will let you rid it, which is typically done backwards and facing the tail - moving to your destination as fast as lightning!
Our depiction of the Sigbin will be to take inspiration from its unusual hybrid description and try to make it as cute and interesting as possible - potentially even giving it a backward saddle.

🦀 Tambanokano: the Hungry Crab
The Tambanokano is from Mandaya and the Bukidnon folklore and is said to be responsible for the currents and waves of the vast ocean. You see, the creature is a gargantuan arachnid - most often a crab, but sometimes a spider or even a scorpion. It lives in the ocean and scuttles about while waiting for the perfect opportunity to eat the moon! Another side note is that the Bukidnon people have the belief that the Tambanokano caused the Great Deluge by clogging the world’s bellybutton and causing the earth to flood.
Our idea for the Tambanokano is to stick to the more digestible description of a great crab as opposed to a big ol’ spider. They’ll probably have their claws raised to try and snag up at the moon as well ;>

🌴 Taong Tuod: the Evil Tree
In layman’s terms the Taong Tuod is an evil tree or ent-like creature from Tagalog folklore. It is capable of moving its sparsely leafed branches as it wishes, but cannot uproot itself. It is also described as being weird or humanoid shaped with a large hollow in the center. From its disguise as a normal tree it will grapple and strangle anyone who gets too close.
The Taong Tuod would add a good amount of variety in our current collection of Halimaw, being tree-like I’m confident that Tokii can work her magic and make something beautiful yet foreboding for this creature of the forest :>

🦈 Tiburon: the Flying Shark
Tiburon, translating from Spanish to shark, was as one may expect… a shark. However, what you probably didn’t expect was that this specific shark from a Bicolano story called Ibalon, is that they are ginormous… and fly… It is a giant flying shark.
Our pin will probably almost definitely be a giant floating shark.

🐦‍⬛ Tik-Tik: the Aswang's Enemy
The Tik-Tik is widespread throughout the Philippines with the depictions and purposes of this beast being quite varied across the island. It is most often a large black bird, occasionally able to transform between that and a woman - acting similarly to an aswang by seeking out blood to feast on from sleeping people or pregnant women. Overall it’s relationship with aswang is what is most intriguing; sometimes as mentioned before it IS the aswang, in other instances it is merely a helper or servant of the aswang, but interestingly in Tagalog folklore it is an enemy of the aswang! The story goes that a long time ago the aswang ate the Tik-Tik’s eggs, and now the bird is driven by vengeance to thwart the aswang, doing so by going ahead of it during the nights that it hunts and calling out it’s trill as a warning to people nearby that the aswang is near.

Attached to this update are the achievements we're aiming to unlock and a special poll to decide which candidate we want to see as our last Halimaw pin. The poll will be up until the end of the weekend, and we'll try and have a few design sketches ready for y'all to vote on for the winning Halimaw's final design ear;y next week - similarly to how we did the Sunset Psuedodragon from our Dungeon Familiars project ;>

That's all for now...
Stay Adventurous!
- Jacob and Tokii