It’s been a busy couple months. I know I said that in my last blog, but it’s more true than usual.
As proof, here’s a picture of my calendar, slightly redacted:
(Red days I spent traveling)
While I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off, my team has been busily working on the Name of the Wind Art Deck. Art has been finalized, orders have been placed, and physical proofs have arrived in our grubby little hands.
So… yeah. The good news is that things are coming along well. The decks are shaping up beautifully, and there have been no major catastrophes.
The bad news is that it looks like the decks will be shipping out about 6 weeks behind schedule.
We’d intended to begin shipping at the end of this month, but we won’t actually be able to begin shipping until June. It’s not a huge delay, but it IS a delay, so I wanted to give you guys a heads up, and be as honest and transparent as possible.
First off. I just want to say I’m sorry. I really would have liked this to ship on time.
Secondarily, given how kickstarters frequently go, you know this is really good, right? Especially as is the first kickstarter Elodin Enterprises has run on our own. And it ended up way bigger than we expected. I don’t feel *too* bad about six weeks.
Also, not to be a dick or anything, but y’all know who I am, right? I mean seriously. Six weeks late? You should be dancing a fucking jig at the news that something I’m making is *only* six weeks late.
That said, I really am sorry. I wish we could have hit our mark. If only to prove I’m not always late.
Why is it late? Simple. We took an extra month and a half to work on the art. When we got to the end of our budgeted art development time, there were a couple cards I wasn’t in love with. I know art is subjective and all that. But I wanted every card to be as close to perfect as possible. So I made the call and we took the extra time.
And honestly? I’m glad we did. Because we got this:
Anyway, that’s the status of the cards. Just thought y’all would like to know….
Pat’s away on family business, so he’s left it to me to share with you the coolness of the last two days of the Kickstarter. There’s a chance he’ll poke in here to mock me later on, but for the time being I’ll be your tour guide. Please keep your hands and arms inside the blog at all times.
For those of you who perhaps weren’t aware, we here at Elodin Enterprises are running a Kickstarter for The Name of the Wind Art Deck, playing cards that feature the characters from NOTW, beautifully illustrated by Echo Chernik.
(Click to embiggen and check out Devi, Master Lorren, and Mola)
The campaign has been going amazingly, and we hit $500,000 this week, a huge milestone for us considering this is our first-ever in-house Kickstarter. We’ve been blowing so much out of the water and we’ve been thrilled to add more art, more tiers, and more coolness for everyone as it goes on.
We’ve had lots of Echo’s original art go up for grabs, as well as a bunch of cameos in special prints Echo is producing for the campaign, which she’s lovingly entitled The Levity Collection. There are three prints in the series, each featuring different joyful moments in Kvothe’s life: playing Jackass, Jackass for Wil and Sim, playing cards at The Eolian, and a night from his childhood.
The big news is that our final round of cameos are going up Today (September 14th) at 4pm Central Time. And these cameo slots are for members of the Edema Ruh troupe relaxing by the fire after a day on the road.
(This is a super rough draft, but so cool…)
There are going to be a bunch of spots available, including a parent/child combo, and a couple combo. Since this is the print that the McElroy Brothers are going to be in, you could even be one of the people Travis the Strong Man is lifting, or someone listening to Griffin tell stories, or watching Justin to sweet yo-yo tricks.
Oh, and we just found out (and I mean JUST) that our most beloved Lin-Manuel Miranda is going to be in this print as well. He’s gonna have a lute, so hopefully he’s gotten over his initial intimidation from the day they announced he’d be helping develop Pat’s books into movies and tv….
I’m not going to lie to you, these cameo tiers are tempting to me, too. If you’ve ever wanted to be immortalized in the same place as the McElroys AND Lin-Manuel Miranda then don’t miss your chance at 4pm Central Time, because something tells me there will be some serious competition for them. And I don’t just mean me.
That said, there’s still lots of stuff other than these cameos that you can grab in the campaign. We’ve also added multiple options for you to get your hands on the beautiful, handmade wooden poker chips sets from Wyrmwood Gaming.
There’s a total of six different tiers for you to choose from for the poker chips, ranging from 100 chips in a linen bag to a full 500 chip box set complete with space for 6 decks of cards.
The wood is sustainably sourced, and the chips are all made of beautiful woods like Rock Maple, Black Walnut, African Blackwood, Pink Ivory, and Purpleheart, to name a few.
Each of the poker chip tiers come with all four decks (the Selas, Selas Alternate, Chandrian, and Chandrian Alternate), and the DELUXE versions of them come with the beautiful Gilded Sets of Chandrian Decks, which have platinum-gilded edges and their very own box with a blue foil emblem of flame on the top.
Pat and Echo are both going to sign these boxes in UV ink, because Pat is way too excited about the idea of a secret signature.
And if you’re torn between the poker sets and the cameos that are going up, rest assured that we’re going to figure out a way to make the poker sets available in BackerKit after the campaign ends, so you’ll be able to add them onto your cameo tier no problem.
The fact of the matter is, a lot of cool stuff is going on over there. We’ve shown off new art, upgraded the decks, and given away lots of prizes to folks who are spreading the word on social media. We’re getting down to the wire on the campaign, to the point that Kickstarter has started the countdown in terms of hours rather than days.
If you want to join us, the campaign ends on Friday, September 15th at 11:59m Central Time. A lot of things in the campaign are Kickstarter-Exclusive, so if you’re particularly excited about anything (those Gilded Chandrian Decks for example) you should swing in and get it before it’s too late…
And if you have any questions, leave them here or in the comments on the campaign. We’ll make sure to help you out.
I’m typing this as I sit in a hotel room in Seattle. Tomorrow I fly home to see my babies. But for the last week, I’ve spent my days doing secrety things with cool people.
I can’t really share any details right now. But suffice to say that I had a good time, and you’ll see the fruits of this labor… soonish. Eventually. Before the heat death of the universe at any rate. Probably.
* * *
If you’re more interested in things that you can put your sweaty little hands on right now. Allow me to talk about the kickstarter a little bit.
If you missed the last blog, or have simply have been distracted by the many woes of the world, you might have missed the fact that we recently launched a kickstarter to make something like this:
(Oh Bast. If I were you, I wouldn’t ever wear a shirt either….)
This is really nice for us, as it’s the first kickstarter we’ve done completely on our own, and we weren’t sure how it would go. So far, it’s been a wild ride. We even got selected by Kickstarter as one of the Project We Love, which was hugely flattering.
We’ve torn through a bunch of our stretch goals. Unlocking many, many new cards. And we’re showing off new stuff as quickly as we can make it available.
For example, here’s some of the new pieces: Devi, Lorren, and Mola.
(Click to Embiggen)
To make things even cooler, we’ve been slowly releasing hand-painted pieces of original card art from Echo.
She does a lot of her work digitally, so it’s rare for her to have original oil paintings available. Some of these will be different from the final card, either because she started working on them before the card was finalized, or simply because they had to be digitally aligned to make them symmetrical, like a card needs to be.
We included some of these when the kickstarter first launched. But they were all sold out by the second day. Now we’re preparing to launch 7 more of them. But since there’s only one of each and they sell fast, we wanted to make sure that everyone who might be interested was notified in advance before we put them up. So, on Tuesday, August 29th at 12pm Central Time we’ll be posting up the following original art pieces:
Master Lorren, Alternate King of Spades
Denna, Queen of Spades
Devi, Alternate Queen of Hearts
Cinder, Chandrian Joker
Fae Bast, Alternate Jack of Clubs
Kilvin, King of Clubs
Ambrose, Jack of Clubs
They range in price from $1500 to $1800, which is a steal for hand-painted art from someone like Echo. Each of them will come with all four unique decks of cards, free US shipping, and a set of the special, gilt-edged Chandrian decks.
We’ll be releasing more of the original art in another week or so, but I can’t make all of those announcements here. So if you’re hoping to get your hands on one be sure to back the campaign (even if it’s just at the $5 tier) so you get updates in your email as soon as they go out. You’re always able to change your pledge to another tier until the campaign ends.
* * *
We’ve also hit our final print stretch goal: and as a result, Echo will be producing another piece of art showing Kvothe’s Troupe entertaining themselves after camping for the night.
This poster is going to be extra cool though, because we’re having some cameos in it. Three of our Edema Ruh troupers are going to be the McElroy Brothers.
(Awww, brothers….)
These good good boys are going to be appearing in the print. Which fills me with delight, as I’m a huge fan of their work. (In fact, just a couple hours ago I had a real solid cry listening to the final episode of The Adventure Zone.)
What’s more, you’ll get your chance to be included in that print as well, as we’ll be putting some cameos up for grabs in the near future. If that’s something that interests you, be sure to sign up for updates on the campaign, and keep an eye on the e-mails, as that’s where we’ll be announcing when those cameo spots go live, too.
So. If you haven’t already, go and check out the kickstarter and look at the cool art. And if you’re interested in getting some of Echo’s originals, set an alarm, and we’ll see you at 12pm central time on Tuesday.
So. Here’s the deal. Today we have a bit of an announcement. And by we, I mean me and my team here at Elodin Enterprises. (Yes. That’s really our name.)
But before I tell you what’s happening now, I hope you’ll understand if I mention some of the events that led up to this happening. I’m guessing this format isn’t going to be hugely surprising for any of you. Because that’s how I do.
* * *
Once, years ago and miles away, I heard about an artist by the name of Echo Chernik. In little dribs and drabs, I kept hearing about her, and running into her art in various places.
And to put it plainly, I thought it was amazing.
Years went by, and kept brushing up against each other professionally. The first time she was part of the Pairs kickstarter I did with James Earnest back in 2014. A year or so later, I saw some of her art in a show at a convention and was wowed.
Later, I found out she was doing a Tarot Deck for Shadowrun.
(Queen of Swords, if you hadn’t guessed.)
Later still, James invited her into the Tak Kickstarter, where she designed the board that many of you have seen….
Which might not seem like a bit deal, until you realize that she had to design the Selas Flower before she made that board:
(Before she did this, the flower only existed in my head….)
It was during the Tak kickstarter that we first got to talk and work together a bit. (See selas flower above.) And after the ice was broken, I felt brave enough to actually approach her at a convention, introduce myself, and ask if she wanted to hang out and chat a little bit. This might surprise some of you, but the truth is, I’m kinda bashful. Especially around creative people I admire.
While we were chatting over coffee, I learned something surprising. While Echo loves going to conventions, working with game companies, and making geeky art…. that’s not really what she does for a living. Her day job is doing corporate ad design working for people like Dos Equis, Celestial Seasonings, companies like that.
“Do you like that stuff better?” I asked.
“I love illustrating for advertising and packaging. But being a geek at heart, the opportunity to combine my passion for art and geekdom is a dream,” she explained. “Unfortunately, games don’t pay well enough for that dream to be full-time.”
Hearing this, I was honestly irritated. Echo is a world-class talent, and the fact that she was forced to do corporate ad design to make ends meet… well… it kinda pissed me off.
“Would you want to maybe do a project together sometime?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager. “Maybe a kickstarter or something? My people love beautiful art, and they’re enthusiastic. I’d love to see how you’d paint my characters. If it goes well, maybe we could make enough money so you could just draw what you love for a while, and not worry so much about making ends meet….”
She didn’t laugh at me, which is always a good sign. And then we talked more and more seriously about it until… well… now.
And here we are.
I hereby present to you: The Name of the Wind Art Deck. We’ve been working on getting this ready for the better part of a year, and I’m incredibly proud of how it’s turning out so far.
On the surface, we’re making a deck of playing cards that feature art and characters from The Name of the Wind.
But fairly early in the process, Echo and I realized we had a problem. A deck of cards only has 12 face cards, but we had more than twelve characters we wanted to feature. Wouldn’t it be nice to see *more* than just the main cast of characters?
We tossed around a couple ideas until we hit a solution that I’m really proud of. We’re doing multiple decks with different pieces of art. That means we can show you more characters, and even do a couple variants with our favorites. (A Fae bast, and a mortal bast, for example.)
But (and here’s the clever bit) the backs of the cards will be the same…
That means– Well. You know what. We took great pains to explain all this in our campaign video. Plus there’s a bunch of cool animations in there to help explain what I mean.
Does that make sense? How you’ll be able to make your own decks?
This is a bit of an experiment for us here at Elodin. We’ve never run our very own Kickstarter before. But we do have experience producing goods and shipping them out because of the Indiegogos we’ve been doing for the last three years with Worldbuilders.
Luckily, the team has been doing all the logistical work. My job has been easier. Since I suck at organization, the main thing I’ve been doing is been developing the art with Echo. And it’s been turning out so, so good..
Check out young Kvothe.
And Auri…
Also, did I mention that since package design is what Echo does for a living, she’s *Super* good at it?
Look at this gorgeousness:
The red decks are the Selas Decks, and the Black ones are the Chandrian Decks. They both have alternate cards and unique jokers and…
Y’know? You should really just go over and check out the kickstarter itself. You can see all the art and the stretch goals and details there.
Also, I feel I should mention that we have a couple tiers that are limited in quantity. Partly to encourage people to jump in early, and partly because we can only produce so many of certain items
If you’d head over and check it out, I’d appreciate it. Both my team and Echo’s family have invested a lot of time and effort into this, and the first couple days of a kickstarter are *really* important. (So both jumping in early and helping to spread the word are hugely appreciated.)
(Red days I spent traveling)
(Actual footage of the proofing process.)
