After looking at the budget I realized something important. I had been continuing to count mold fees in to the alternate pin color costs! Only the piebald hyena will need anything like that. What's more, I was counting the mold fees for their matching meats as well! Mold fees are one of the costliest parts of adding new designs. That means I have a little wiggle room to add some extra designs, if anyone would like them at least. It will be a lot of work but I'd love to see these represented and just could not justify the budget initially. Went and tricked myself, whoops.

If all 17 pin alt goals are reached I could do up to 5 new designs! So I started sketching. Some weren't wise to slip in unplanned. Animals I considered like that were a spotted big cat (like jaguar, cheetah, leopard,) african wild dog, chameleon, komodo dragon, and of course a cockatrice. They were all either too costly on the screen printing side, lacking in an appropriate meat pairing, or had a meat pairing that would not look good with pretty much any design other than themselves. After pruning those and some still fun but perhaps too niche/joke-y ideas (RIP hognose + frog leg, axolotl + food chunk that only attaches at the wrong spot, betta + cherry shrimp, and blind snake + ant larvae) I came up with the following:

Not glorious or even easy to parse, I know! I'm a messy sketcher who refines and refines and refines by redrawing several times, and the first go is usually just me chucking lines on the paper and seeing how they splat. Sorry about that.

There is a poll attached to this update, and I encourage you to vote for your favorite. They will be unlocked in the order voted upon, and that would also determine which pins don't make the cut if necessary. Anyway! Early Bird has ended, but we're really close to the Golden Raptor!

I'll see you when there's next something big to announce!