Now the bad news. I'm still having difficulties getting the patch and pin order straightened out. The ones with the Miskatonic logo are already in production, but after two weeks I still haven't received a production proof for the varsity-style patch. Keep in mind I sent what I thought was production ready artwork- a vector Illustrator file. It's literally exactly this, but with the black replaced by empty space.
Here's the first artwork proof I received.
Wait...what? What was supposed to be a varsity letter inspired design...isn't. To my chagrin, I clarified that it should be "The letter "M" surmounted by the bar with the "Miskatonic" name inside. Like the original image". This was the result.
You can't write comedy like this. In their defense, the bar is surmounting the "M", but not in the way I meant. Hopefully everything will be straightened out on Monday. The irony is that I thought the keychain production was where the biggest risk for screw ups resided. Instead, that part of the project appears to have gone off swimmingly.
In other news, I discovered that the USPS has raised their Priority Mail package prices from $5.50 to $6.80. It's not a huge change, but it means I have to bank a bit more to make sure everything gets mailed quickly.
I'm once again developing a profound respect for business people that do this kind of thing full time. None of these production issues is a project killer on its own, but the minor delays and complications add up over time. It's the death of a thousand cuts. Now that I've plunged into it again I find myself gaining new sympathy for the poor schmucks who have their Kickstarter projects go off the rails. A goodly number of them are scam artists, to be sure, but I'm getting reminded how even someone with good intentions can get in over their head.
I feel your pain. : /
ReplyDeleteIn AI, if you have all your strokes converted to outlines (and your text, too), you can use Pathfinder -> Merge to combine all touching same colors and obliterate everything covered by other vectors. Give it a test drive on something.
Or do a quick Google search for Chenille patch & submit your art for quotes to other manufacturers.
-MJ
Yeah businesses are affected by everything.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, I'm hoping to support you with an order!
Also, if you buy pre-paid Priority Mail packages in bulk, you may be able to save some money. I don't know that for sure, but it's a possibility.
ReplyDelete-MJ
"In their defense, the bar is surmounting the 'M', but not in the way I meant."
ReplyDeleteOHHHhhhhh, that hurts! A heraldic badge whose blazon/description (but not EMblazon/artwork) I saw had a fleur-de-lys surmounted by a sea-lion, and — as I could not picture in my head how the sea-lion could simply overlay the fleur (which would be the usual meaning in heraldry) without so obscuring it from view that you couldn't tell what it was — I decided the other meaning of "surmounted" must apply [like a statue surmounting a building], and tried perching the sea-lion atop the fleur's tip, well, with his tail curled around it. This, the owner assured me, was quite wrong; the solution was to make the fleur large enough that little of the beast touched the background, while the petals extended clearly and visibly beyond. Two different scales of charge; duh-ee [slap head]; blazon didn't mention size differences, I hadn't thought of that factor.
I apologized heartily and redrew it to his satisfaction; it's the upper part of this armorial achievement.
@ Raven
ReplyDeleteI can't remember where I read it, but there's a theory that the rules of heraldry provide one of the foundations of modern programming languages. They feature formalized language, modular components, a strict order of execution...and bugs still crop up. Heh.