Still in the throes of this cold and I have a headache that's been punishing me for being awake for the past couple days now, but I promise I'm still here! And I'd like to take a moment to go over what you can expect now that the funding portion of this campaign has wrapped up.
Funds are currently processing. This usually takes about 14 days and in the meantime I'll be working on having surveys ready to go out ASAP once stripe frees up the funds.
The preorder store will launch just as soon as I can stare at a screen long enough to get it up! THIS IS NOT FOR BACKERS. You'll be charged twice for shipping if you ALSO order through the preorder store, so please please for the sake of your wallet wait for your survey.
If your payment fails, don't panic! Backerkit will retry your selected payment method several times over the next 14 days, so just updating your information usually fixes the problem.
If you're unable to pay within this 14 day window, your pledge won't automatically be canceled but you may need to contact me or backerkit support to have your card charged.
Prototyping is ongoing and we should have a lot to look at in the next 2-3 weeks! Wyvern, hundun, and unicorn are the next few that will be coming down the pipe, and believe it or not there is some method to the madness when I decide what order to sample things in. The unicorn has a shape that can be used as a base for several other creatures, so the goal is to perfect them first and then move on to other, similar beasts.
Similarly, the 20" versions will be sampled before the 10" versions, since the minis are just chibi-fied versions of their larger counterparts and come together fairly quick!
Surveys WILL NOT close until every creature sample is finalized. You won't be locked into a plush you don't love or forced to purchase anything sight unseen.
Refunds are available up until the plushies go into production. At that point all available funds will be tied up in manufacturing so I can no longer offer a refund.
Additionally I hope to have the digital coloring book finished within the next two weeks (I only have 4 pages left, whoo!) so that by the time surveys are issued I can also begin distributing digital rewards!
I believe this covers most of the questions I receive post-campaign! And anything I forgot I'll include in an update as soon as I can next week 💖 The timing of this cold couldn't be worse, but I greatly appreciate everyone's patience as I work on recovering as quickly as possible!
We're in the final stretch, my friends! Not only that, but we've exceeded Cryptid Crush in both number of backers AND initial funding. That's mind blowing!
I'm so thrilled, because more funding means more bedtime beasts for the store later! Your generous contributions makes it possible to purchase higher quantities for the Tiny Teeth shop, and gives me more freedom to develop the next Tiny Teeth series!
I love seeing the bedtime beasts all together too 🥰 Who are you most excited to see in plush form?
Unfortunately I don't have too much to share today thanks to this cold kicking my butt (I literally slept 12+ hours today I HATE IT 😭) however!!!
The wyvern is now officially unlocked! I knew it was only a matter of time 😉 I think we're even on track to exceed My Cryptid Crush in terms of number of backers which is kinda wild!! I always go into these projects with modest goals and the cryptid cuddlers always blow me away.
So thank you for supporting the vision and letting me play! Its an honor to have a job that let's me indulge in all my weird and whimsical ideas, and an honor to have so many folks along for the ride!
I also have a couple more coloring pages ready for the book that I don't think I've shared here! It's been such a treat drawing these lil' guys and getting to know them better. The illustrations have really helped inform the plush designs and vice versa.
Don't forget the project ends TOMORROW NIGHT at 10pm PST! The preorder store will open shortly after (I hope to have it up within a week, body willing) with all the items featured in the campaign MINUS the multi-plush and multi-pin bundles 💖
I try to avoid sharing updates at absurd hours, but who am I kidding-- I'm a vampire and this is the only time of day (night??) I'm firing on all cylinders.
Small diversion first: earlier I received a pic of these two before they were shipped out and the pose is killing me. They look so excited to go on their big journey to the states 😭 They should be here Tuesday!
Okay! Now back to the topic at hand.
We've been having a lot of trouble getting the tatzelwurm just right. Like...so much trouble. I can't even tell you how many revisions its gone through at this point cause I lost count and each day we stray further from god (aka my vision), but I'm no quitter. And Charmsey reminded me that I've had a lot of luck with making 3D models for my suppliers to reference, so that's what I've been working on this week!
Here's my tatzelwurm mockup. Please bask in the derpiness and cross your fingers with me that this finally conveys the shape we're looking for. I'm very optimistic despite the difficulties we've faced so far!
While I was in a modeling mood, I also mocked up a quick unicorn. The goal here is to make something more ungulate-coded with eyes on the sides of their head, and then to use this as a loose base for the peryton (and possibly some kelpie adjustments).
An additional upside to this is I think it will also work well as a starting point for the cockatrice (small snoot, big bulbous forehead) so it should make the process of sampling future bedtime beasts just a bit easier/faster.
While we're on the topic of 3D models, I thought it'd be cool to show another Tiny Teeth plush that benefited from modeling in the past! Choop is a weird guy, but this same supplier absolutely knocked him out of the park (almost on the first try too) thanks to a quick model I mocked up. Fun stuff!
If there's anything else you'd like to know about the sampling pipeline, I'm happy to share what I've learned so far or point you in the right direction! I've always enjoyed demystifying the process, but I don't always know where to start or what folks wanna know 😅
Whew!! I tried to have this ready hours ago, but I think I'm still struggling with the side effects of a cold because I've been SOOO sleepy today 😭 Everything is taking me 10x longer to do and its a pain in the butt.
Nevertheless it's always a joy to look through the submissions here, even if picking only a handful of winners is next to impossible!! Thank you all so much for participating (there's over 150 submissions!!) and making my life hard in the best way imaginable.
That each one of these is a different medium happened by complete accident, and is a great demonstration of the crazy amount of creativity in our lil' plush community!
Runner-ups
As you can see I kinda failed at picking just 3 lol. The color choices and techniques featured in these pieces really caught my eye, and narrowing it down any further was just too hard!
Random Drawing Winners
Everyone who shared a link to their social media post was also entered into a random drawing, and below are the 5 winners! Like the runner-ups, these folks will receive a $15 credit to be applied here or in the store.
Nori
Pokkadotti
Aaron
Rae Starlight
Roxanne Hand
What to do if you won?
Prizes will be applied post-campaign, during the survey period! If you won, it is recommended that you pledge for something small like the add-on or pin pledge level, and add any big-ticket items post-campaign after your credit has been applied. Other than that, you don't need to do anything!
If you would like your credit applied to the Tiny Teeth shop instead, you can email me at [email protected] with the subject line "Contest Winner" and I can apply it to your customer account!
If you have any other questions, feel free to comment or email me as well 💖
To everyone that participated!
ALL participants will be receiving a FREE digital copy of the Bedtime Bestiary coloring book, to be distributed by backerkit's digital reward system post-campaign, and an exclusive sticker! The sticker will be a colored version of one of the coloring book pages, so stay tuned for that reveal in the next few days.
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You made it to the end of this update, hooray! Come celebrate with me because the gargoyle is now officially unlocked!!! It's very common for a campaign to pick up steam in the final 48 hours, so I feel it my bones that we'll unlock the wyvern any time now 😉
I should also have some fun behind the scenes plushie development stuff to share tomorrow if that's the sort of thing that interests you-- see you then, cryptid cuddlers!
