Hey robot crew,

This past week surveys and pre-orders were locked and Backerkit should have tried to charge the cards you have on file for shipping and any remaining balances! These funds haven't hit my end yet via Stripe, but I can see that this was processed without issue for the vast majority of you. It looks like only 14 cards were declined or errored - if that's you, please be sure to get your card updated or otherwise sorted! I of course need the shipping funds in order to get these little guys into your hands.

8 of you still have not filled out your surveys. You are still able to do so, but please please complete them as soon as possible. Folks with surveys left incomplete by July will have their orders cancelled and your pledge will be considered a donation.

With the spooky timing messages out of the way, onward to the fun stuff: production on your robot friends is in motion!! Bulk orders for both the pins and stickers were placed this past week to the tune of 3050 pins and 2605 stickers. That absolutely bananas total includes everything ordered by you amazing folks, plus some generous extra across designs to make sure I have enough after pin grading, and then to bring to conventions and other events after initial fulfillment is complete!

For those curious about the behind the scenes of it all, here's a peek at how the formatting for the character art sticker sheets works:

I spent a bunch of time this past week bumping elements around gently to ensure that all the text and mini versions of the pin art could also be viable kiss cut stickers. It was important to me that you could slap "KNOWN BUGS: HOARDER" onto something if you so desired (I know I will, because this is an accurate description of me as an entity). The red line closest to the outside is the bleed border, and the rest indicate the boundaries of the stickers themselves!

The red is not printed on, just a cut guideline to communicate with my excellent sticker manufacturer.

For the selective holographic stickers, my time was mostly spent being picky about cleaning up all the little edges. The pin versions have the reality of being made of metal and enamel paint to make them look badass with just the vectored lines. The sticker versions have added raster gradients, airbrushing, and lil hand-adjusted drop shadows to give the metal and backing board the impression of depth. They also have a mask layer that indicates which portion should remain rainbow shiny vs the areas that receive opaque white ink printing.

And now for some statistics, because it's really dang interesting to see. The two items with the highest counts were of course the cross collaboration freebie, Branch, and first 48 hour freebie, Pause. Pause was also a popular add on, resulting in a total of 285 pin orders (209 were freebies to qualifying backers, so 76 additional) and 46 sticker orders. I ultimately ordered 400 Pause pins and 150 Pause stickers.

Outside of the freebies, the top three ordered pin designs were Byte (127), Malware (117), and Circat (97). The underdog pin designs with the least orders were Torrent (28) followed by Jump, Firewall, and DDoS, all tied at 37. (Leaf and Incubate were quite popular elemental designs comparatively, at 84 and 72 pin orders respectively.) The top ordered stickers were all selective holographic, RAID (51), followed by Byte and Circat tied at 48. The least ordered stickers were the Hex sticker sheet (19) and Torrent sticker sheet (20), followed by the Torrent selective holographic (21). It can be hard to predict what's going to be popular! Torrent happens to be one of my personal favorites, and I don't really mind - it's important to make the art you want to see anyway, and sometimes what doesn't perform online mysteriously does sell at in-person events. <3

Of folks who have completed the shipping address on their surveys, 237 backers and pre-order customers are from the United States. 39 are from various countries in the European Union, 25 are from the United Kingdom, 13 from Canada, 6 from Australia, and 1 from Hong Kong. Extremely cool! As an artist living and working in the Netherlands, I'd love to figure out how to reach a broader EU audience, but since my first 34 years of life were spent in the US it makes perfect sense that the majority of my audience is still there. I'm grateful to all of you for making this project a reality!!

Are there any other stats you would be interested in seeing? If so, let me know in the comments! I hope you're all having a wonderful week. ✨

Hey robot enthusiasts,

As promised - I've taken some of the individual photos my manufacturing representative sent me, and edited together an image of everyone!

A catalogue of each unit's name, from left to right, top to bottom - EARTH UNIT LINE: Byte, Circat, Nibble, Leaf, Pause, Branch. FIRE UNIT LINE: Hex, Mozzy, Cloud, RAID, Firewall. WATER UNIT LINE: Torrent, Zip, Array, DDoS. And last but certainly not least, the AIR UNIT LINE: Python, Jump, Malware, and Incubate. A few of these little guys are in perspective, but I tried to keep the images consistent in lighting across unit lines.

General reminder that the pre-order store and backer surveys will lock on Monday, May 5th. This is your final call to update your selections! 12 of you still have not completed your surveys - if you do not get those in by Monday, I cannot guarantee your choice of items and you will not be able to receive a refund.

After orders lock, you will be charged for the remaining balance on your account for any additional add-ons and shipping costs. This should occur within 2-3 days of lock down. Shipping addresses are the one detail that will remain editable up until July when fulfillment begins.

In other news, I have been accepted as a dealer for this year's upcoming Eurofurence in Hamburg, Germany in early September! If you're attending and would like to say hey and pick up some art goodies in person, my table number is slated to be B2/309. If you're a campaign backer who's planning to attend, you don't mind grabbing your pins a little later, and you'd like to save on shipping - you can pick up your Short Circuit items in person! Just email [email protected] with your backer info and I can arrange to waive your shipping costs.

Have a lovely rest of the week, all! I hope your weather is as gorgeous as ours has been here in the Netherlands over the past few days. <3

Hey robot lovers,

Short but exciting update for you tonight: all remaining pin samples are complete!!! 🎉🎉🎉

My rep also sent along individual pictures of each design in a couple different lighting situations, so I'll be using those to assemble an image of all the samples together, including the four I already had on hand before the campaign. I'll have that ready for you all within a day or two!

The individual photos do the results even more justice, so have a sneak peek at a couple:

They turned out so beautifully!

In the mean time, a quick visual reminder of the original set as well:

The count down to locking surveys and the pre-order store has thusly begun! As promised, I'll leave one week of wiggle room for you to make your final selections, so the order lock date will be May 5th. Cards will also be charged for shipping and any post-campaign add-ons at this time.

If you're in the 7% of backers who still need to complete their surveys (with the exception of pay over time customers who haven't received them yet), please make sure to get those in asap. If you don't fill them out by the order lock date, I cannot guarantee that you will receive your preferred selection of items.

One step closer, and still on track time wise for fulfillment to begin in July! I'm definitely excited to get these hoards of lil bot friends rolling.

Hey bot believers,

As the time to lock down surveys sneaks ever closer, I have a whole line up of updates to share with you wonderful folks!

Artwork wise: the Mozzy and Malware robot sticker sheet art is complete! For those who missed their character introductions when the sketches were revealed, I've included them again here as well:

Mozzy's model is programmed to fetch items - but has a tendency to apply a bit of creativity in interpreting user requests. A order of vodka may result in a bag of potatoes, and if the supply depot is fresh out of toilet roll? Well... you wanted something for cleaning up, so Mozzy is liable to decide that a scouring pad should do the trick!

Malware is a model designed to correct other malfunctioning robots. He was intended to infect and commandeer their operating systems, and ultimately force a fresh reinstall.

Malware finds these units to be delightfully unique rather than broken. Instead of hacking into buggy bots to change them, he acts as a sort of guardian, identifying and patching their vulnerabilities so they can secretly carry on as they are. Some systems may indeed wind up prey to Malware's viruses, however - databases tracking buggy bots go offline now and then, and suspicion is growing around whether this model is functioning as intended.

Both of these buddies are available as add-ons via your backer surveys - or if you missed the campaign altogether, can be purchased via the pre-order store.

Sample wise: after quite a bit of back and forth, my manufacturer and I have landed on the final pantones for the Air Unit Line! For those curious about what that process involves, here are my notes from the first couple of passes:

In the very first sample, the clear paint was much too primary yellow rather than the intended antique gold vibe. When I edited it to be a bit darker I also found the purple was a bit cold to match, so requested a slight adjustment of the hard enamel pantone as well.

My manu was kind enough to sample multiple pantones at once to speed things up, and so I started requesting a wider range of possibilities to hone in our intended effect.

After that it got a bit more granular - literally mixing 75% of the one pantone that felt the best and 25% of the other, searching to see what pantone was closest to the result, trying that, then finally asking for more of a clear finish vs the cloudy translucent.

And aaaaaa HERE THEY ARE! The sample I approved in a couple different lighting situations!! I'm thrilled, and looking forward to seeing the rest of Air Line finished.

As a reminder, once I do have photos of all 19 design samples, the count down to survey closure will begin. Survey completion has stalled out at 92%, so if you're in that last 8% don't forget to fill yours out!

Next up, another item I'm preparing for manufacturing: pin backing cards!

Each Unit Line colorway will have its own backing card style. The circuit traces on these cards all vary slightly per Elemental Line to account for all the pins in that set - and I've decided to spring for foil printing on both the circuits and the "Short Circuit" title itself!

Above are photos of my chosen foils from the sample book I purchased from my printer: bronze for Earth, gold for Fire, silver for Water, and rose gold for Air. A lot of shiny to look forward to! 👀

Lastly, on fulfillment: if you backed other campaigns for physical art goods recently, you've likely been inundated with updates about the uncertainty caused by tariffs. As I'm in the EU, this should impact less on my end. I do pay customs fees upon receipt of the pins and stickers, but that hasn't changed outside of expectation and was already padded into the goals of the Short Circuit campaign. 

Backers in the US needing to pay tariffs upon receipt of their items will depend upon whether or not the $800 de minimis threshold remains in place - it was removed, then reinstated, and apparently is set to be removed again in May? When the time comes to ship (still slated for late July) I'd be happy to work with any US backers who would like me to hold their shipments until the status of that is more certain or to find the best window to ship. We'll get through this together!

Thank you all again so, so much for supporting a small art business. Due to the economic turbulence of present times, sales for artists across the world have dropped drastically, and I appreciate your patronage immensely. I'm really looking forward to getting these pretty little friends into your hands!

That's it for now, have a wonderful week all! More sample photos soon. ✨