Post 'Ween Update
over 5 years ago – Fri, Nov 02, 2018 at 11:31:03 PM

Hey folks!

I'm still here! This Bullshit train is still chugging along - its delicious, forbidden cargo getting closer to penetrating the veil of reality every day. I hope you're all performing your daily rituals, sacrificing your albino moles, putting activated charcoal and sage on all your sandwiches, refusing to talk to anyone named Jenna, etc. 

I'm still not quite ready to share all the artwork for the packaging and booklet, but both will be pretty awesome. Myself and my design partner, Joel, have decided to make the package mostly just confusing as opposed to putting actual information on it. Here is a taste of some graphics:

We'll be finalizing stuff this weekend, so I'll have more to share in my next update. 

As for the cards, all the final artwork is now locked in. I did go ahead and add TWO MORE completely new cards, because I really want this deck to be excessive in every way, and I absolutely do not value my own free time. I decided to go back to the altar of Bullshit and channel something completely new, and the results are pretty ridiculous. 

 In the world of other rewards, I've got patches now and they're pretty cool. 

I think that's basically everything. There are still 47 people who haven't completed their backerkit surveys, so message me if you think you're one of them. Also, don't forget that pre-orders are happening. Tell all your friends who were too prudent to invest back when this project was barely anything. Here's the link to the pre-order store:

https://arcane-bullshit.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

That's it! Bullshit be with you.

-EVAN

Most Hallowed of Weens
over 5 years ago – Sat, Oct 27, 2018 at 02:06:01 AM

Greetings chosen followers, 

I said I'd do this every Friday, and now here I am. News is going to start getting pretty thin at this point, so it won't have the same satisfying crunch it did in the beginning. Hopefully it devolves into complete nonsense so slowly that you barely notice. 

One Important Thing

I do have one important thing I should share, which may be slightly disappointing if you weren't all the strong psychic warriors I know you to be. I want to prepare you for the possibility that there *may* be a minor delay in production that will result in the cards shipping slightly later than expected. Officially, I have said that most of you who ordered a deck should have that deck in your hands in the month of January, 2019. There is a chance now that we're looking at February. Just let that possibility take root in your mind-garden. It should not be too disruptive to your established world-view. Accept it, grow, and be filled with accepting growth and nature-y plant analogies that make you feel good. Focus on those good feelings.

To compensate for this delay, I'm going to add a few BRAND NEW cards to the deck. Just like that. I'm fucking doing it. Who fucking cares? I have two drawings that I've already completed, and I may do one or two more this weekend. This is the benefit of putting your faith in a mercurial weirdo. Sometimes I just make sudden choices that turn out to actually be good. Other times you end up with a drawer full of cottage cheese and hellgrammites. 

Here is a preview of the two new cards, which started out as concepts for the box art.. 

SO there's that. Stay tuned for potentially even more new cards. This is not a promise. But maybe.

Other updates

The art and design for the package and booklet are ALMOST done. My hope is to have everything locked by Halloween. Once they're done, I'll share more. For now, here's the art for the front of the box, which I changed a bit since the last time I showed you:

The packaging is going to be super cool. We've designed something for every inch of the box, including the interior, and we're doing some cool stuff with spot UV, which is that thing where you add glossy varnish to only parts of the matte artwork. We'll have some really cool glossy black on matte black effects. 

When I started making these cards, they all came packed in a handmade screen-printed cloth sack. The first generation of these was fucking terrible, but they evolved into something actually somewhat nice. The new packaging is beyond anything I could have ever imagined, mainly because I never had money before.

 Other Rewards

I have now ordered every single reward, except the cards themselves. I got my hands on the pins last week and they are fucking beautiful. 

I should be getting the patches, posters, bags, cloths, and prints soon, so I'll share more photos as they come in. 

Verbal Diarrhea 

Submissions for the random words to be printed in the booklet are now closed. Thanks to everyone who participated. You guys know some really cool words. Here's a sample:

Again, thank you to everyone for all of your trust and patience throughout this big stupid adventure. If you ever feel yourself become less than trusting or patient with me, please don't hesitate to get in touch and I promise I will listen.

That's everything for now! Please 'ween responsibly!

-EVAN

Weekly Shit Pile
over 5 years ago – Sat, Oct 20, 2018 at 12:29:32 AM

Dearest everyone, 

I guess these updates are now happening on a weekly basis. I'll try to write one every Friday from now on. Maybe I'll keep writing updates even after the rewards have shipped, gently pushing the limits of your enthusiasm, until this project has devolved to a grim spectre, haunting your inboxes. Eventually I'll just be writing whatever the typing equivalent of moaning is. Right now I don't have time to figure that out. But I will.

I don't have a ton of new stuff to update you on, but I'm still very excited about every little development, and I'll assume you have infinite patience. So here goes:

Card Art

We are almost completely finished putting together the cards with the new borders, fonts, and backgrounds. The changes are fairly subtle, but I think the new layouts really emphasize the artwork. Here's a first look at one of the updated cards:

 Bonus Card

I've finished the art for the bonus card, and it looks great. Thanks to Ashok Desai, who exposed my secret, which is that I don't know what thumbs are or where they go. I genuinely think the new version is improved, but please do not take us any further down this rabbit hole of anatomical rigidity. 

I've also sourced a printer for the bonus card prints, and those will be going into production shortly. The 10 million copies that I made with the thumbs on the wrong side are being shredded into nesting material for the Northern Crested Pornography Raven, my favourite bird.

 Other Rewards

Both the Logo pin and Goat Worshipper pin have been produced and are currently on a boat. I changed the designs a bit from what I originally shared, and I think they look fucking great. 

I'm hoping to get the deck itself in production at the beginning of November, so I should have more packaging and booklet art to share next week.

I'm also slowly ramping up to start work on the 'King Shit' reward tier's custom prints. Those are going to be pretty great too. If you're one of those fortunate 10 people, I look forward to fulfilling your weird dreams.  

That is everything for now. You are all wonderful and majestic, like the Northern Crested Pornography Raven. (Not slovenly and aggressive, like the Southern Crested Pornography Raven.) 

Business Shit
over 5 years ago – Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 07:44:14 PM

Hey everyone!

Remember how excited I was to post a million things back when the campaign first started? Those sure were fun times. Was I saying anything important? Who knows. I feel like I have aged an entire lifetime since then. Now all I want to write is recommendations for sensible fall socks. Have you guys got fall where you live? It's great. All the bugs die and are replaced with bitter rain and regret. We only eat bland squash, and squirrels get super fat. We put all our cut-off jean shorts into a well, banishing them until Spring. 

Here are some updates:

Backer Surveys

I swear this is the last you'll hear about backer surveys. There are only 68 people now who haven't completed their survey. That's pretty good. Hopefully that data trickles in over the next couple months. Contact me if you haven't received a survey, or are having any kind of difficulty. I can almost promise I won't make things more difficult for you.

Verbal Diarrhea 

You may remember I had a reward tier where backers could add a single cryptic word to the official Arcane Bullshit booklet. Those words will fill up a mysterious page, confounding all who gaze upon them. I didn't get as many submissions as I had hoped for, so I have invited the first 500 backers to contribute to the word pile. If you think you may be one of the first 500 backers, check your email for instructions on how to submit your word. I'm locking down the final list on OCTOBER 23.

Bonus Card

Thanks again to everyone who got involved in the process of creating the bonus card. In case you missed it, that card is called HOLY SHIT, STOP ASKING, and the art is now mostly complete. It's going into the deck, and I'm also sending most of you a 6" x 4" print of this new image. For the print, I decided to leave out the text. I think this makes it more mystically versatile. I'm also playing with adding a colour to the design, in addition to black and white. Check out a near-final version of the print below...

 Art Progress

My designer pal, Joel, and I are still working on finishing up the designs for the card borders, packaging, and booklet. There's really no end to the cool stuff we could add to this deck, but at some point we have to just stop and feel content with the amount of otherworldly coolness we've crammed in. 

I've made some decisions about card materials. They'll *most likely* be printed on 350 gsm paper, with a super soft-feeling matte lamination. I've passed around a sample of these to some tarot-loving friends and they all agree that shuffling these cards feels just like shuffling flattened angels. I'm going to go with the black edging, which I've also got a sample for, and they look fucking evil as fuck. 

 The design for the back of the card is now pretty much complete. Here it is, in all its overwhelmingly mystical glory:

 I'll post more art updates within the next couple week, as we finalize the packaging and booklet. Both are going to be way better than whatever you're imagining. 

General Progress

I'm happy to report that just about everything, apart from the cards themselves, has now been ordered. I'm feeling pretty on-track to meet my January delivery deadline. Weird things can always happen though, so stay tuned here for more updates.

Thanks again everyone! Spending your money on evil stuff has been an absolute honour.

Stay Spooky, 

-EVAN

Shitty Spooktober!
over 5 years ago – Thu, Oct 04, 2018 at 11:46:10 PM

If the calendar is to be trusted, it's been two whole months since the campaign started! I prefer to measure time by the number of dead centipedes I find, so actually it's been three centipedes.

I don't have a ton of new stuff to share this week, but here are some things:

Surveys

My big push to collect survey responses sort of worked! We're down to just 85 (probably otherwise very wonderful) people who haven't completed their surveys. At this point I'm pretty sure those (probably completely well-intentioned and respectable) people aren't reading these updates, but just in case you haven't completed your survey, check your email for anything from 'BackerKit', or follow this link:

https://arcane-bullshit.backerkit.com/

Everyone has until the 9th of October to make changes to their surveys if they wish. If you still haven't completed your survey after the deadline, that's fine. I'll just wait. I am now completely done pestering you about surveys. 

Bonus Card

I've been doing some work on illustrating the bonus card (or the "bone-ass card"as Caitlin Blanchard suggested)... I think HOLY SHIT, STOP ASKING will be a pretty aggressively confusing addition to the deck. Thanks again to everyone who participated in the choosening. I'll share some sketches below, but I'm not really one of those people whose sketches look good. I just scribble down the basic idea so I can fix it with computers. 

 I might replace those floating eyes, which are really only there to balance out the composition, with other random occult-looking items. Any suggestions? 

That's all I've got for now. By the end of this month I should have final box designs to share, and all the card artwork will be locked. Don't hesitate to message me, either through Kickstater or via email ([email protected]) if you've got any questions!

-EVAN