So I spent the night trying to figure out the best solution moving forward. The only way I can think to bring yall into the process is to make a new channel in my discord where I can poll yall and get ideas/suggestions when I’m designing plushies. This way yall can help be apart of the process before the campaign launches and so I can have the prototype in hand during the main campaign.
This way anyone who wants to participate can and everyone can see the prototype before pledging. Just make sure you add the Plushie Design Polls Announcement rolls.
I know not everyone uses discord or likes having 10000 servers. I’ll also try to post polls to my instagram stories but I know those are easier to miss and only limit me to 4 options. So I can’t use them for larger polls and I’ll be combining the results with the discord polls
Good news, all the pin orders have been fulfilled by the deadline 😮💨 some 500+ orders got out this month. Exception being 10 orders in which I can’t find one of the items for. I moved and things have vanished into the aether. Most of the items I placed an order for restock halfway through July, the rest I ordered 3 days ago. I imagine they’ll be here sometime in August and my sister will get them out ASAP along with a free sticker for the delay. (Some of the items include the white/red Kitsune and all the leafeons except autumn, I weirdly enough have that one)
Regarding plushies I mailed back the original sample for them to look at. My biggest issue is that their faces look so squished or bloated lol. Once this is fixed they’ll go into production. I can’t imagine this’ll be a hard fix but it’s been hard trying to explain what the issue is. So I just mailed them back the original sample (which was perfect) ^^ I think it’s just an over-stuffing issue.
I changed the material of the crown so it wasn’t the flimsy felt, but they put it behind the ears so I had to get it moved back up in front like the old one.
I can’t imagine these won’t be in production by the end of August. I’m determined to get them to everyone before Christmas. I’ll include freebies for everyone with a plush to make up for it!
If you don’t like plushies skip this update! For those of you who do, I wanted to figure out what yall prefer. Looking through all the other pintopia projects, it seems I grossly underestimated how long plushies take lol as pretty much none of the plushie campaigns are done prototyping let alone fulfilling. So I guess this is normal.
So I wanted to give yall a choice, either 1) I keep doing a backer voted plushie but it may delay fulfillment of all plushies by up to 6-8 months (most likely 3-4 months)
or
2) I only fund plushies I have prototypes for and I do not have a backer voted plushie even option. But this way plushies should ship faster
Either way is fine with me but I understand both arguments and want to figure out where y’all lay!
Quick fulfillment update. We are almost halfway through the adventure buddies enamel pin orders! I’m hoping to clear them all by the end of the month but some orders may bleed into early August ^^
Regarding plushies: Still nitpicking samples. But they’re very close to being finalized. I apologize for the heavy delay on the plush orders. Moving forward I will not be funding any plushies I don’t already have a sample for! (Which is sad because I love designing things with yall but I feel real bad when the prototyping phase takes so long! I don’t want anyone stuck waiting and it takes weeks to a month sometimes to get edits back).
If you ordered Forgotten Forest + a plushie, I tried to fit as many of your pins into the forgotten forest order as I can so you can get them sooner!
However the totally generic fire dog is looking much better with the new sew pads ^^ there’s a few issues with the face shape on the Royal but once those have been hashed they’ll all be in production. That takes about a month or two and then it takes a month to get to me so I (hopefully) estimate I can start sending them out October or November and I’ll be cursed if I don’t get them to everyone in time for Christmas 💕
All the plushies have also been paid for (not counting tariffs lol 😭 ) ^^ so it’s good to start moving as soon as I approve the samples
For Pintopia 2 I’ll be doing Media Monsters and I’m going to try to get an Okami plush and maybe a Cerberus plush in the works so I have a prototype in hand in time!
I just wanted to let you know I’ll probably be locking addresses soon for non-plushie orders! The 3 remaining plushies are still under prototyping (I just got the recent samples so I’m sending back edits!) this process is taking far longer than I had anticipated due to the manu change but they are so soft and good and I want to make sure yall get the best boys.
To help with fulfillment im bringing on two other local artists, KatzeKreations and RexusIllustrations to help me get through the 533 orders I have this month! If yall get the time go give them love because I came to the realization I need help lol. It’s our goal to finish Forgotten Forest this month and tackle some if not all of the pin only orders for adventure buddies! Moving forward they will be apart of the fulfillment team for the time being and part time help! Thank you all so so much for helping me get to this point. It’s a little wild looking how far we’ve come in only a year and a half!
Finally! Media Monsters is live and fully funded!! This will be my last campaign until Forgotten Forest: Endangered Species so I have time to handle fulfillment and conventions and design creation!
Currently requests for the final backer voted pin are up and tomorrow I’ll run a poll to decide who gets made!
