Progress Update: Fear the Mystery Video...

Greetings, helpful human legion~

I bring you tidings! News of great progress and good fortune. Basically, this week was pretty solid for us. Not a whole lot actually happened, but the things that did have us stoked.

So, let's hop to it, shall we?

Where are we now?

Well, let's start with our video production cycle...

We've been floating around in a kind of limbo between videos for the past couple of days while we waited for the World Anvil competition to wrap up. Today, we got our finalists. Now we're just whittling the list down to a few favorites before making our decision. Once we do that, we reach out to our champion worldsmith, and begin work on the new short story. Sneak such shall then resume as normal.

I'd like to take a moment here just to comment on how envy-inducingly good some of these worlds are. I'd never have baked some of these up in a million years. I'm in awe, and eagerly anticipating the writing process.

But that's not all! I've used a lot of the free time we've had since the list video came out a little while back to get cracking on our merch store! 

We're in the final stages of designing our "Beautiful Machines" bookmark, so expect that very, very soon. This thing has turned out better than I could have possibly imagined. We got really lucky with our artist selection, I think.

Just look at this concept proof:

Imagine that foil stamped. We're not sure whether we'll offer multiple colors or not, but one thing's for sure: I'm buying whatever we end up putting on offer. Just... let me toot my own horn, here. I'm in love with this thing. It couldn't have turned out better.

And this is just the concept proof! Imagine the complete, touched-up, vectorized version. I'm fairly salivating writing about it... 

I'm in a public place. Perhaps I should move on before something indecent happens.

Beside the first piece of merch, those who've been privy to our sneak peeks may have already seen the second bookmark we're planning. Well, let me spoil it to all y'all here and now:

I'm very, very proud of this concept as well, but we still need to pass it over to a real artist to see what they can make of it. I think this has the potential to be something really sweet and special, depending on how it turns out and what text we choose to put in the text box at the bottom. 

We already got a nice suggestion or two from our sneak peek viewers, but we're still working on it! Any ideas? Leave a comment!

So there. Lots of merchandise plans and commissions flying all over the place. I'm enjoying it, but I do have a hankering to get back into actual video creation.

Glad the wait won't be much longer.

What's next?

Look. I don't know if I should be telling you this, so I'mma trust you guys to keep it under wraps. You can do that for me, yeah?

Good.

When we finish this worldbuilding series, we have something really special and really important planned for the show. It could potentially change everything depending on how it goes over. No, before you ask, nothing about the videos themselves will change as a result. This'll only impact our ability to make them. 

I may have said too much. 

Just keep your glossy human eyes peeled. If you've been following our posts and engaging in our think tanks, you may already know where this is going.

Anything else?

Yes, actually! We've said this to you guys like... five-thousand-million times, but Talebot's finally going to be sending out his hand-written letters to our patrons!

Look forward to hearing from that old gearbox personally in the near future. I know he has a lot of stuff he'd like to tell all of you, and he doesn't get the opportunity often.

Alright. That's that. Lots of merchandise, mysterious products, Talebot doing more letter-writing, and our impending return to the production cycle. It's been an eventful little period here. 

Thank you all for being a part of it. <3

—Benji