Progress Update: A Great Deal of Love (and important Rewards updates)

Hello, Helpful Humans, both new and old!

There are... a whole lot more of you here now than last time I shared one of these. It's almost surreal to see this much support pouring out of the larger Tale Foundry community. I've always known the love is deep, but it rocks me to see it so viscerally.

Before I get on with the update, I just want to say thank for the umpteenth time. I can't say it enough, really. The last few days alone feel transformative. Me and my show (and the team I'm building for it) have never been in a position this good before, and y'all need to know how ridiculously safe I feel with your support.

Thank you for everything. Y'all are the bomb.

Now, let's talk a bit about what's happening behind the scenes, shall we?

Where are we now?

In a better place than we've ever been before. 

I mentioned a few times, but we positively smashed through our $1,500 goal. This is a milestone I've been after for several years now. We've had to pay a lot of attention and tip-toe very carefully around our topic choices for the show, because we have to be sure we're tapping into topics with a high search volume, but a low amount of competition. That's the only way we could be sure we'd grow.

For the first time ever, I genuinely believe we have enough security through Patreon to cut those bonds and just do whatever topics you guys are most interested in. Honestly, a lot of those topics are also the ones I'm most excited about as well.

But you likely already knew all of this. It's just... really fun to say. Helps the reality of it sink in a little.

It might be a little more exciting to all of you to know that I've officially started work on the first series of 2019! The Terry Pratchett series is coming, and you can expect to see the first episode, very appropriately, on April 1st. We actually spoke about what visuals will appear in it in the last Forge session and came up with some really great ideas that I can't wait to put into production.

First, I've got to write an outline though...

What's next?

This is where things get interesting.

In addition to the changes brought to the community and our capabilities through all the new Patreon support, I'm also revising a little big about my pipeline in preparation to get Tale Foundry's developing team more involved.

In particular, I'm starting this think of series in a holistic way.

What I mean by that is, instead of writing, producing, and releasing one video after the other, I think I'm going to outline/write/plan the visuals for all of them (except for the short story) side-by-side, then pass off the visuals in one great big package for production to Felipe.

This sounds like it's just a sequencing thing, but it means a lot about the material of the show. The biggest reason is that I'll find things in my research for list videos that I wish I'd known while writing the script for the episode, but by then the episode's already been released. This'll let me play a little more with the progression of each video in the series, which should be a better overall experience.

Also, and this is fun to think about, it should in theory allow us to release each video of a series in closer proximity to each other. It won't make series themselves closer together, but it might be something more like 2-3 weeks between the release of each video in a series as opposed to 4-8. Some of that time will instead get displaced into the gap betwixt series.

Anything else?

Absolutely.

So much has happened over the last few days, I could write a novel about this part of Tale foundry's journey.

I'll save it for a Draw My Life or a biography or something, though. For now, let's talk about Patreon Rewards really quick.

First, the new bookmarks have been a smashing success. They turned out better than I could have ever hoped, and I'm so glad you guys are enjoying them so thoroughly. I need to express a deep thanks to the artist I hired for the job, Christopher Moschler. Between nailing the character designs for talebot and the taleoids, integrating all kinda of loric symbols, and tirelessly refining the minutiae of the design, this was not an easy product to create, but he totally pulled through.

You can see the sheer amount of effort he put into this here, in these process videos he recorded for you guys:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brl5Tsnx6C8&feature=youtu.be 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwwaY1adRgU&feature=youtu.be 

Spectacular.

I'm looking forward to bringing Chris in to create more designs for the show in the future, but for now, this has been an amazing experience and I couldn't be happier with them.

On the topic of the rest of the Patreon Rewards, I have one more final, important note for your guys:

Patreon Rewards Are Delayed

Not for long, though. 

Patreon seems to be having some issues with its payment systems that have caused them to conduct a lot of maintenance on the site. A side effect of this is that we can't presently track the rewards we're giving out through the site.

This should only be a very temporary problem, but it will not effect the bookmarks. Those we'll ship as soon as we can—by March 1st at the absolute latest.

And now (as if this post weren't already rivaling Atlas Shrugged for length), I have one final update for you guys:

I'll be at Vidcon London from the 10th-19th!

I totally expect this trip to be a hoot, a hollar, a laugh, a good, and absolutely a gaff. I'll be posting pictures with other Youtubers and friends I meet there, and I'll be sure to keep you guys updated along the way!

——

So, that's Tale Foundry this week. Things are changing, and fast, and it's all so glorious I can barely handle it.

This is a common saying for content creators, and I always found it a little rote. But I do mean it when I say that Tale Foundry legitimately has the best community I have ever seen. I've seen devotion and love between creators and community, but never on this level.

Y'all are incredible humans beings.

A great deal of love to all of you. <3

—Benji, Foundry Founder