Things are rolling!
9 months ago – Mon, Mar 04, 2024 at 02:09:11 PM

Hi everyone!

We've been rockin' and rolling on the FRONTIER extras while the books continue their way through the printing process. Guillaume finished up the original artwork pieces for those who backed at that tier, and they are AWESOME -- 

We covered up the recipient names so they'll still be surprised when they arrive.

The factory has also been working on the statuettes, and they look pretty sweet too! Here's a brief video showing their LOW-REZ test prints just to confirm sizing and support so we can measure out the box sizes for design. The final pieces will be much cleaner and sharper than what is shown here. We hope to have full-resolution images from them soon.

We also have the metal "ticket" bookmarks in production now, and they're promising to come out really cool too -- 

We're still waiting on physical proofs of the books and slipcase from the printer to confirm the designs are accurate -- they've been a bit behind since coming back from Chinese New Year, and we all want to be sure these books turn out great and not rushed. To that end, it's possible that fulfillment could slip into June, but we'll have a much better idea once they can update us on their progress. 

Thanks, everyone!  We hope to have more to show in the coming weeks! 

Locking orders this weekend! And FRONTIER wins in Angouleme!
10 months ago – Sat, Feb 03, 2024 at 09:29:39 AM

Hi everyone!

Yow, I'm embarrassed to realize the last update was LAST YEAR... HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

Between the holidays and our recent travel to the FIBD (festival international de la bande dessinée -- France's version of Comic-Con) in Angouleme, France, we have been running around spinning plates like crazy people getting stuff done... It sounds chaotic, but it has all been productive and exciting, albeit at the expense of keeping up on updates here...! HUGE apologies!

We mentioned it in the last update but wanted to remind everyone that we are locking orders this weekend!

We are initiating the "Lock Order" command on Backerkit this afternoon, at which point they will initiate a 48-hour countdown for you to make any final changes to your orders: add-on selections, address changes, payment methods, etc. (And if you haven't filled out your survey at all yet, now is the time to do so! If you can't find your email with the unique invitation link, try logging into this link with your Kickstarter-associated email address:

If you still have trouble getting in, send us a message here and we'll be happy to help you out.

When the 48-hour window expires, your order will be locked and we will process any charges due on Monday.

You will still have an opportunity to update your shipping address before we send out packages (estimated to start in late April). We will send more information about that final address-lock deadline closer to that date.

For those international backers who requested bundling with your MIDNIGHT ORDER and/or CASSEGRAIN COLLECTION pledges, you will find the calculated savings applied to one or more of those pledges as Backerkit Credit.

If you have any questions, let us know.

We had a great time in Angouleme, and spent quite a bit of time with Guillaume and the other guys from label 619. Guillaume signed all of the bookplates while we talked and he'll start working on the original drawings right away. He is, understandably, enjoying the success of FRONTIER, especially after winning this year's RAJA Eco-Fauve award at the show!

https://majorspoilers.com/2024/02/02/award-frontier-wins-eco-fauve-raja-award/

This is one of 11 major awards given at the festival, which celebrated its 51st year, awarded to titles promoting outstanding comics with environmental themes.

Here's a clip of Guillaume accepting the award (for those of you who speak French... sorry I can't figure out how to add subtitles...)

I took depressingly few photos during the show, but here's a pic of me talking with Guillaume and Mathieu Bablet about... plans. Lots of plans. And their next project (which they're creating TOGETHER)... 

We had a lot of great conversations with all of the folks at label 619 (and their parent publisher Rue de Sevres). Hopefully those talks are the beginning of something big for all parties involved................... Stay tuned for news as it solidifies!

The books have all been approved for printing, and we hope to have some proofs in the next couple of weeks. Chinese New Year has now officially closed the plant for about 2 weeks, so we probably won't see anything before they're back, but we'll be sure to share stuff as soon as we have it!

Thanks, everyone!

Some survey follow up FAQs
12 months ago – Tue, Dec 19, 2023 at 11:19:10 AM

Hey everyone!

Hopefully you've all gotten your surveys and have been able to navigate the Backerkit process. If you still haven't gotten your link by email, please message us here on Kickstarter and we'll help you out.

We've gotten a few Frequently Asked Questions so far, so we thought we'd cover them here.

Where's my pre-registration credit?

If you pre-registered for the campaign, you should now see that reward credit in your Backerkit cart. We had to apply that manually, so it may not have been visible right away. You should see it now.

If you would like to be eligible for reward credits and bonuses for upcoming campaigns, be sure to watch and respond to our email announcements! As a current Backer, you're now signed up to get those notifications in your inbox (you can unsubscribe if you so choose). Just keep an eye out for those to take advantage of those pre-reg benefits!

Where's my Day-1 bookmark?

If you backed in the first 24 hours, those should now be in your cart as well. Those also needed to be manually awarded. Please note that they were only applied to physical tier carts -- if you pledged at a digital or no-reward level, they were not added so as not to add any unexpected required shipping fees. If you qualify and upgrade your pledge to a shipping level, or would like your free bookmark anyway and are willing to pay the shipping, let us know and we'll add it back to your cart.

Are the statuettes really sold out?

Not really -- there was an error in the number of copies available in Backerkit, which is fixed now. If you tried to add a statuette but it appeared as Sold Out, please try again. 😊

Now, here's the big question that's been flooding the comments section:

 Why is shipping so expensive??!!?!?~!11? 

The short answer: we wish we knew.

The longer answer: we wish we had more control over those rates. 

Shipping is the number one challenge we face, and we have been chasing solutions for years now. What worked for us in year one -- my wife and I packing boxes by hand on our kitchen table and hand-labeling each before driving them to the local post office -- no longer works now that we're facing 1500-3000 orders per campaign, and multiple campaigns per year. With our warehouse in a separate state, we have to rely on their fulfillment services to get things done, and that means things like packing material and warehouse staff labor have to be accounted for. We do our best to negotiate those rates as best as we can, but the courier costs and postage rates are hard (well, impossible) to haggle. And they have gone up exponentially since the Pandemic irreversibly changed the way the world works. They may stabilize occasionally, but rarely if ever go down. And with the world now trained to rely so heavily on home delivery, those couriers and services can set their prices to suit the skyrocketing demand. That's just the new commercial hierarchy.

We are at that awkward size where we're too big to hand-pack every package ourselves, but too small to have the infrastructure of Amazon or other larger publishers who can absorb those rising costs. We are growing! But that growth takes time... hopefully, in 2024 we'll find some more efficiencies and can "level up" for everyone's benefit. 😊

In the meantime, we are always trying to offer suggestions to help make shipping costs more efficient. Here are a few that have proven helpful in many cases:

1) Add-ons. Yes, we recognize that sounds pretty brazen -- "buy more stuff!" -- but having more things in a package does help amortize the shipping cost across more items. The base/starting shipping cost in most regional tiers covers 0-48oz (up to 3lbs). That means shipping one softcover book would cost the same as shipping two. And if it bumps up to 4lbs, the difference is usually only $1 or two. Maybe there's a gift-giving occasion coming up...? Someone you know who might want to join in on an order? Something to think about...

2) Campaign bundling. When the timing works out, we can often combine pledges to help reduce the cost of one or the other. Much like the Add-ons strategy, combining orders can help offset that base 3lb minimum. This is particularly helpful with International orders. So to that end, we'd like to extend this bundling offer to International backers who also pledged to either MIDNIGHT ORDERor the recent CASSEGRAIN COLLECTION Backerkit campaign. If you are an international backer who also pledged to either of those recent campaigns, we can calculate what the savings would be by bundling those into a single package and then crediting one of those campaigns accordingly. 

Please note this is a manual process, so you will have to request this via Kickstarter message, to be sure we don't miss your request. We may not get to it immediately (we're getting ready to travel for the holiday), but we promise to do what we can for you. Since none of those campaign orders lock until February 2nd, we have time to calculate and make that adjustment for you before any credit cards are actually charged on February 4th. 😊

If you didn't back either of those two other campaigns, you still have time to pre-order via their Backerkit pages! We can combine late-pre-orders just the same as campaign pledge orders; Backerkit treats them the same way. Simply click those campaign hotlinks above to check them out!

3) US Postal Forwarding services. If you often order things from the US and are facing rising shipping costs from those other vendors as well, you may want to consider using a US Postal Forwarding Service such as USA2Me.com or iPostal1.com. (Note: we have no experience with either of those randomly Googled examples, so don't take this as an endorsement of either.) There are many such services that provide you with a temporary USA address -- they collect items sent to you there, and then forward those to you in your home country in a single shipment when you're ready to receive them. Domestic US shipping rates are MUCH less expensive than some Int'l FedEx Zones, so the amount you save per order could more than justify the cost of the collected shipment to your home country later. (Plus, I think many of them handle the customs and duty forms, too...)

4) Credit toward future purchases. The Ambassador Points awarded in each of our campaigns can be saved and exchanged for Gift Cards to our webstore. These points can add up very quickly if you are a regular backer! We just updated someone's account this morning adding points from 6 previous campaign pledges at once... that came to well over 10k points, good for $100 worth of Gift Cards! And the beauty of Gift Cards is that they apply to the bottom line of a webstore order, not just the price of the items, but the shipping and taxes as well! If you aren't an active member of the Ambassadors Club program, you should really give it a try. 😎 

Thanks, everyone! If you have any questions or suggestions, let us know!

Surveys sent!
12 months ago – Sun, Dec 17, 2023 at 11:47:17 AM

Hey everyone!

Happy Sunday - just a quick update to say that all surveys have now been sent. The smoke test went well (and it was useful to catch a bug in one of the survey questions... the whole purpose for the smoke test). 😛

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to message us directly through the contact link in our profile :(https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/neurobellum/frontier-by-guillaume-singelin/messages/new?message%5Bto%5D=neurobellum)

Whew - what a week! Christmas can't come fast enough...!

Thanks, everyone!

Smoke tests sent! Cassini renders! And sketchbook news!
12 months ago – Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 03:32:14 PM

Hey everyone!

Today's a big day -- the FRONTIER Backerkit is ready to go and the smoke tests have been sent! For those of you who aren't sure what that means: the "Smoke Test" process is a small batch of surveys (about 5% of the total) that are randomly selected and sent in advance of the rest to catch any unexpected technical issues or questions that may come up. If you are one of those randomly selected 5%, you may have already received your notification and link from Backerkit by email. The rest of you will likely get yours later this weekend. Backerkit suggests we wait at least 24 hours or until 75% of those Smoke Test surveys are complete before sending out the rest, just to make sure everything is running smoothly. So, assuming everything is working as expected, we'll send the rest of the surveys out before the weekend is over. 😊

Note: If you use a @privaterelay.appleid.com email address (ie. you registered for Kickstarter using your iPhone or other iOS device), then you will need to contact us with an alternate email address that we can use to manually update your Backerkit account. Backerkit has trouble sending messages to privaterelay email accounts, so that is something you will need to help us fix. Otherwise you won't get any notifications from Backerkit and won't be able to log in to complete your survey.

With the surveys going out, the Backerkit store is now open, so if any of your friends missed out on the campaign, tell them it's not too late to join the party! Anyone can now follow the button at the top of the campaign page to place late pre-orders.

In other cool news...

The Cassini Hacker model is done! (And he turned out SWEET...)

Just check out these renders...

David Arberas did a bang-up job on this little guy -- considering he only had the one drawing to work from, he added so many cool details: the little robot, pretty much everything on the backpack, etc...

These little statuettes started off as a bit of a lark, but they turned out so much cooler than we expected! Guillaume is over the moon, and we're already thinking about what other things we can do in the future...

If you pledged at one of the four "Traveler" Tiers that includes a choice of one statue, that selection will be part of your Backerkit survey. Watch for that question when yours arrives. (The question makes the options pretty clear, with pictures of the three statuettes to choose from.)

There are also limited extra copies of each statuette available in Backerkit to add to your order if you haven't already added them in Kickstarter. Reminder: once Backerkit is locked, quantities will be locked down for manufacturing, and these will only be produced for this campaign!

We will be locking orders at the end of January!

One other bit of good news: Considering how close we came to that final Stretch Goal at $160k, we wanted to express our gratitude with an alternate EXTRA BONUS thrown into your packages. Specifically --

The Bonus Sketchbook is now 48 pages!

There was so much material to choose from, we couldn't decide what not to include, so we just went ahead and ADDED 16 MORE PAGES. 

All this goodness will be sandwiched in a cardstock cover and included FREE with all physical pledge tiers. (Digital-only tiers will get a PDF version for FREE.) You're welcome. 😎

All of the files have been delivered to the printer, and we'll make as much progress with them on proofing and approvals through the holidays as possible. Their goal (and ours) is to have everything produced and on the water before Chinese New Year, so things will move relatively quickly between now and then despite everyone being pretty much closed during Christmas week. We'll keep you posted as things come together, however.

If you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to ask! Thanks, everyone!