(BIG UPDATE) All designs & line-up is now finalized!
Hi everyone,
Just another update and this will probably be my last update for a while until my manufacturer gets back from their holiday break in early February. I wanted...
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Jin
4 days ago
JAN 27 UPDATE: Clarification on changes, reminder to comment on previous update to make your voice heard for a future design!
Hi everyone!
I'm trying to avoid sending so many emails since I know that many people have been experiencing a huge uptick of emails from Backerkit in regards to their pledg...
Hi everyone!
Thank you all so much for a very successful first 2-3 days of the campaign. I was blown away from the support and am happy to announce that we've unlocked the ...
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Jin
7 days ago
[DAY ONE UPDATE] ALL BASE GOALS UNLOCKED!!!
Hi everyone!
Thank you all so much for an amazing first day of our launch!
I am so, so thankful and happy for the support that was received on just day one of the campai...
Just another update and this will probably be my last update for a while until my manufacturer gets back from their holiday break in early February. I wanted to get all of this out of the way before February just because I wanted to give the supporters and pledgers at least two weeks to plan out their pledges. (As of me writing this, the campaign ends in 15 days.)
I want to preface by saying that these designs will no longer be changed UNLESS there is a good reason for it. What you see is what will be sent to the manufacturer and be made. At this point of time I've touched up all designs to the point that I like them and finalized all of the "blueprinting" for them. This is a good time to take a look at all of the designs and change your pledge appropriately. Please note that if you were going to pledge for all designs, there's now 15 designs (including our ultra stretch goals of Emolga, Flaaffy, Espurr and Milotic).
All of the original Pokemon designs / options ARE THE SAME. Based off of feedback I received, I realized that many of you were here for the original ultra stretch goal designs. I've touched up all of the designs - the only one that was completely redrawn was flaaffy as the original was too static for my liking. The others I could manage All other designs were kept and touched up to my liking. Emolga, Milotic, Flaaffy and Espurr were all kept, so rejoice! (♡ˊ͈ ꒳ ˋ͈)
Please double-check the designs for all of the designs to make sure that you'd be happy with receiving an enamel pin based off of the art below!
For now, the extra community design may or may not be added. I originally wanted to have a poll as I was going to replace Milotic and Emolga, but because so many of you were here for them I've decided to keep them. I still want to give everyone an opportunity to choose another Pokemon so I will still try to do this but I will have to assess the situation as well since 15 designs is already a lot to me and I want to make sure that I'm paying close attention to my existing designs. I will keep you all in the loop about how this goes, but for now please assume that these 15 designs are the only ones in the roster!
Please feel free to email me [email protected] if you have any questions or concerns. Please also feel free to leave comments, I read all comments and am always happy to hear from all of you.
Thank you all so much for a very successful first 2-3 days of the campaign. I was blown away from the support and am happy to announce that we've unlocked the ability to make at least 4 more designs. From the original 4 I've designed: Emolga, Espurr, Flaaffy, and Milotic. Out of these four my favorites and the ones that I felt comfortable making would've probably been Flaaffy and Espurr as two of my personal favorite Mons.
I like Emolga a lot and the concept is cute, but I wasn't sure if I could've been using the opportunity for another Pokemon that backers would like. Additionally while milotic was a crowd favorite on Patreon, I wasn't too happy with how milotic looked in the end and felt that I may have wanted to either revisit redrawing the mon differently or changing the Pokemon altogether and choose two more new ones from Backers instead.
I did however to get the opinion of those who were a part of this campaign to give an opportunity to see what kind of Pokemon they would like me to make. Thus, I'm opening the floor to suggestions (and highly would happily encourage it) and discussions on what kind of Pokemon you'd be interested in. You can list as many or as few as you'd like and add on comments to anything, add on any ideas, I'd love to hear it! When there is a good list of Pokemon, I will compile a list and have the Pokemon that are mentioned the most times put into a poll where they are then voted on.
This will be an open discussion while I revisit touching up Flaaffy and Espurr. If you like Milotic and Emolga, please also feel free to tell me that you really like them and you'd like me to continue them as well and I can definitely look into retouching them.
As a reminder these are what the original designs looked like - which haven't been touched up in months.
Keep in mind that I have plans on making a Mochimon campaign for eeveelutions only, so they will be made eventually down the line. Though it wouldn't hurt if you still wanted to throw them in the ring, I can definitely consider a v1 and v2 for two separate campaigns!
I'm trying to avoid sending so many emails since I know that many people have been experiencing a huge uptick of emails from Backerkit in regards to their pledges, etc. I was shocked to see that it was only day 4 of the campaign and I had already sent two emails, now it's three. However I feel that this is a pretty important update since I've received several comments and I come bearing clarification on the comments that arose (by the way, thank you VERY VERY much for voicing your opinion - I mean it when I say that I really want to hear what everyone has to say! I'd like to propose another discussion where you're free to comment and let me know what you think about this - and I'd also like to take the time to remind everyone to please comment on the previous update about Pokemon that they might like to see if you haven't already! I will be pulling Pokemon with the most votes or mentions.
Right now there's several Pokemon with the most mentions are: ditto, wooloo, stufful, bulbasaur, eevee, mimikyu, cherrim. I encourage you to comment and upvote other comments that you agree with and I'll compile the most popular ones on a poll - just a reminder that for polls they only have the option of voting for one! So make it count when it comes up, make sure that your voice is heard on the previous update and during the upvoting of the comments!
First off, I wanted to clarify the designs that were for the ultra stretch goals.
Clarification on the selected designs - I know some of you have expressed that you have only pledged for a particular design that I no longer wanted to produce. Due to the amount of people expressing how much they wanted Emolga, I have decided to keep Emolga. Some of you have also expressed that you wanted Milotic. I want to be completely transparent with you - I went into this campaign not thinking that we'd hit our ultra stretch goals so quickly and these designs were all made in mid 2024 while the designs made for the campaign as regular stretch goals were made more recently with Pintopia in-mind. I'm fine with the other three designs of Emolga, Flaaffy and Espurr - however I am not really that happy with the Milotic design and I don't want to create a design that I am not happy with because I also want the backers to realize that if I cannot envision how it should be pulled off and how it should look, I don't want to end up delivering a product that I have a difficult time liking. However I hear you, and I understand that some of you have backed for Milotic and I will try to come up with a design that I feel I can deliver with pride. I will have more updates on this and I'll continue to try to draft a better design for milotic or fix the design.
Clarification on changes made to existing designs - I also want to specify and clarify to those of you who mentioned that you already like the designs for espurr, flaaffy, and emolga. I think for Espurr and Emolga we will not see many changes as I'm already OK with the designs for those. Flaaffy may have a re-draw, but if I cannot find something that I deem "better" as a design for flaaffy, then I will continue on with the design I have. All designs are meant to be an improvement to their original design. I've done a lot of studying on soft enamel pins as I own many, many of them of my own from my own favorite creators to see what I find appealing and it comes down to a lot of minute details, even moving it a few cm or half a cm away from each other makes a huge difference. This is what I mean when I say changes. I understand that there's a large amount of fear about your pledge and support for a specific design and you want to get what you backed for, and I absolutely do too - but there's some improvements where I want to make to the designs.
I want to specify this:
All changes will be revealed several days or over a week before the campaign ends - if you decide that you do not like the change, you can freely drop your pledge or change your pledge. I don't mean to say this in a negative way where if we have a differing opinion then I don't want you here because I'm truly, truly appreciative of any support - whether it was a $1 tip to the tip jar or if you wanted every single enamel pin in the collection. I wanted to remind you all that your money and time and support is incredibly valuable and I truly just want you to get something that you'd be fully happy with. Many of you have very impressive and beautiful collections and I only want you to be happy with a product that you feel earns a rightful spot in your collection. But I also have a responsibility to myself to be able to deliver a product that I'm happy with as well. I am currently working very hard on getting those changes finalized so that everyone can have ample time to make their decision; however there are now 15 designs that I'm working on and setting up blue-prints for, so this will not be done today or tomorrow, I find it more realistic to find it to be finished by Sunday (2/2) and everything will be compiled and presented to you.
Please voice your opinion if you have one! I'm always looking for feedback, positive or negative, I'm always receptive to change, I will happily consider your opinions if I feel that it would benefit the project. I read every single comment and am always checking on my campaign multiple times a day. If you don't feel comfortable voicing it here, please always know that my emails are always open ([email protected]). Just know that for most of my designs, once they are revised and shown, they are usually at the point where I am content with them.
Right now I wanted to show you just what these changes look like so that you know what to expect and what they'll be presented as - for most of these I tinkered with the anatomy, colors, or placement of things. A lot of these I feel are definitely improvements.
Jirachi: Body was made rounder, the arm "blankets"? were made shorter, the yellow trail or tails of his design were also made to be symmetrical, I felt that this looked better.
Dragonite: The wings on the previous design were awkwardly placed and covered too much of his body. His arms also were weird. I've redrawn the design so that the arms and wings are more natural.
Shaymin: I changed the color of the red and tightened the seeds (red part) in his flowers, I added another yellow to his bottom part - I felt that the previous red was too dark. I also made the heart rounder and cuter.
Gardevoir: I studied her original design. I placed the white on her head to be closer to eye-level which is faithful to her design. She was also missing that small white undershirt that was across her body and below the red things on her design. I've added that and fixed it. I've also made the green more faithful to the light pastel green of her design.
Oshawott: I've changed the placement of his face so that he looks more natural compared to the bigness of his head. I've darkened the eyes and freckles. Changed the colors of his shell and cleaned up the lines for his design.
For Jirachi I was also bent between the two designs of mouth open or mouth closed. I personally like the mouth open and think it would've been cute to make it recessed and colored so that more texture would make Jirachi look more unique, but I feel that the closed mouth would also be cute and faithful to what everyone has already pledged for. I don't really know what to do for this one, let me know if there's one that you strongly prefer. Right now I'm leaning towards keeping it with the closed mouth as it's the design more accurate to what people have pledged for.
Feel free to let me know your thoughts on these two Jirachis!
Where can I leave my comments for my suggested Pokemon design?
That is all that I wanted to mention for the time being, I know that you're all getting a lot of emails from Backerkit and I didn't want to overwhelm your emails with unnecessary information, but I felt that this was definitely something that was worth mentioning early on in the campaign. It is only day 4 of the campaign and I'm so, so grateful for the support that you've all shown me. I'll continue to work very hard! Thank you all again!
Thank you all so much for an amazing first day of our launch!
I am so, so thankful and happy for the support that was received on just day one of the campaign! At this point of time, we have UNLOCKED ALL 11 OF OUR BASE ENAMEL PINS! Which is amazing!!
This means that these designs are FULLY UNLOCKED and available to be chosen as your pledge option at the end of the campaign:
I giggled a bit since when I launched the campaign I literally left in the description of the stretch goals, "While I do not anticipate to unlock all goals..." and this was absolutely blown away on the first day with haste. Thank you all so much for the overwhelming support on my campaign!
So now we are moving to our "fully funded" stretch-goals.
For almost all of my projects I always try to put in some funds to guarantee a successful project and this was what I assumed would also be the case and was fully prepared to do so (especially with the not easy task of having ELEVEN pins in this campaign). However, we are very close to meeting full funding at $4,500 which would be the point of the campaign where everything is completely funded by the support of you, the backers! Thank you so much!!!
As I love, love, love enamel pins. I would like to continue the journey to unlock more and more enamel pin designs, and there were some that didn't quiiiiiite make the cut for me even though they were drafted and done very early - way, way before I was even accepted to Pintopia.
At $4,500 I will be touching up some of the oldest designs (Espurr, Emolga, Flaaffy, Milotic) to present to you to see which ones that the backers would have the most appeal towards. We'll continue to add them to our campaign. I do want to let you know that due to just how old those designs are, it's likely that while I may or may not keep the concept, I want to re-draw them or re-visit them with fresh eyes as it's been months since I've put a pen on their designs. They may even be re-worked or scrapped completely but I intend to bring the best of my ability of my own designed enamel pins to your collections. Right now my favorite of the four mentioned is Espurr.
What's the plan now?
So as of last night, I have already started to get my ducks in a row. Many manufacturers are away on Lunar New Year break and they're estimated to come back around the week of February 8th. That's still quiiiiite a bit of time away. I've let my primary manufacturers know to expect my project's blueprints around the same time that they come back from break so that we can immediately spring into action. I will continue to follow my plan of revising my artwork, setting up blue-prints, and will submit them as soon as they come back from break - albeit I do not expect to receive any response from my manufacturers as the only major break they take annually is Lunar New Year and I want them to have a good break and rest.
Artwork Revision
During this time, I have started to revise my artwork. It's pretty important to note that for my previous kickstarter, I didn't really change much beyond fine-tuning the colors during production and the artwork was not changed a lot. However, all great artists must grow over time. During the time from the conception to the launch-date, several designs have all gone through multiple sketches and drafts and I admit that while I set up the blueprints for these enamel pins, that is the best time for me to scrutinize how colors work together, what areas may need to be thinned, thickened, changed to make the best enamel pin possible.
I wanted to give you an example of my Shaymin pin that I was tinkering on last night to show you what kind of changes might occur during this "artwork revision" process. The concept is moreso the same, however when I'm setting up all of the artwork to submit it to the manufacturer this is when I look at every single corner and color to see how it can be better revised.
The one that is currently featured in the campaign is the one on the left. The one that I've revised and tinkered with last night is the result on the right. The red was changed to make it look cuter with the hearts. The eyes were revised to make them slightly rounder. The mouth has been cleaned up. The red inside the flowers were tightened together closer. The flowers were also puffened up just slightly and the leaves were redrawn to make them rounder. I added another small yellow dot for Shaymin's hedge. The nose ridge is a cleaner curve. All of these are subtle changes that I've made to help make the design look nicer and this will generally be the process going forward for all of the designs.
Rationale behind changes to designs if made / Comments about Previous Mochi Pins
The designs that you see are meant to be solid concepts of the designs for sure! But I just want to be transparent with you to let you know that it is indeed, my second time working with a more complex idea with Mochi-pins. The first time I ever made Mochi-pins was with the Jack Frost / Black Frost which only required two recessed areas around the corners and a cut-out that was very easy to do so I had faith in my manufacturer to pull the rest of my designs off successfully. They came out perfectly, so I decided to move forward with my favorite of the older pin designs WITHOUT a sample, which was Skitty and Pinkbean, and I personally felt that I could do better given the outcome that I received and I discussed this with my manufacturer to see what areas could be improved in the future, and I quickly came to a conclusion that these will all require sampling to ensure the best product possible as it's higher stakes (as Skitty and Pinkbean were personal projects and were not for any pre-ordered items so I felt OK with taking the risk of a less-than-perfect product). However, I'm really happy though as it seems that my own Skitty pin is still quite loved, still and many of you have added her to your pledge and I'm so, so happy to see that my Skitties are going to good homes. Thank you so much for adopting her!
I don't intend on remaking her at this time (but may revisit in the future seeing that Skitty is one of my favorite Pokemon) as I want to continue to branch out to make new enamel pins. However, this taught me one thing which is why my goals are a little bit more padded - the funding by you, the backer, allows me to go to new heights and opportunities that I would otherwise struggle with. This means that I am getting a sample of every design to make sure that they are perfect this time. I will be getting samples made for all of my pins this time to ensure that I am delivering the best product possible. Skitty was made NOT for a project but for a personal want of mine. Now that I have all of you on my side, I want to make sure that my Mochimon pins are the best that I can deliver. This means revising designs and making edits if necessary. I know that this may seem alarming to some backers, but I will be presenting all of the final designs that are cleaned up before the campaign ends so that you can make your decision on which Mochimon pins you would like to have.
I think that that's most of what I have to say for now as I'm going to go straight back to work on revising my project for you all and preparing for a future update.
Again, thank you all from the bottom of my heart to the steam coming from the top of my head - thank you!
I will be in touch with everyone soon with some updates, polls, and discussions. When those come up, please, please feel more than super welcome to comment and leave your opinion. I'm always looking for feedback and the opinion of others!
If you have any emails about this project at any time, please email me at [email protected].
