Good Dog, Bad Zombie: A Cooperative Board Game

Pre-shipment has begun!
over 4 years ago – Tue, Jan 07, 2020 at 08:47:19 PM

Hello hoomans, Hannah here. Happy New Year!

A quick update to let you know that pre-shipment has begun for custom dog cards. What does pre-shipment mean?

• With final custom dog cards in hand, we've ordered the proper shipping materials needed to get your cards safely to you! Those materials have arrived (pictured below—stacked taller than my head).
• Next, we'll match cards with their correct labeled and addressed envelopes. If we stuck cards into envelopes at random, you'd be guaranteed to get a lovable pup... but a pup that probably belongs to someone else's family. :)
• We'll be spending the next week updating addresses on address labels (we have a few hundred address changes to catalogue) and preparing labels with tracking.
• We'll mail out the first big batch of cards!

We're still sending batches of cards to our printer as we speak. As mentioned in previous updates, the majority of multi-dog card orders (folks receiving four our more custom dog cards) had at least one pup that needed special attention. This isn't anyone's fault. In general, around 30% of dog cards required an extra pass to meet our standards, and with multi-dog orders, the likelihood was statistically higher that one or more images required additional color correction, redrawing an ear, or one-on-one backer communication.

We will send another backer update out the moment we've begun shipping the first batch of cards!

More soon! We're so excited to be at this step of the process.

Hannah

Happy holidays! First batch of custom dog cards have arrived
over 4 years ago – Tue, Dec 24, 2019 at 11:29:51 PM

Hello hoomans, Hannah here!

I’d started writing this update to let you know that our tracking still had us waiting on custom dog cards... but I’m thrilled to say that that big box was delivered in the middle of my update draft!

I wish I could leaf through and show you all these beautiful cards, but with the perforated cut lines, each set has to be lifted out and assembled one by one. So I will show you lovely Carly Bug, the first friendly face peering up at me from the box.

Because FedEx estimated the arrival by end of day today, I wanted to stick around to wait for them before leaving for the holidays. These aren’t easily replaceable items and I wanted to be here for their safe arrival! We’ll have another update for you after the holidays with timelines for shipping this first wave (it should be very soon) and press estimates for printing the second and final big batch of custom cards.  Until then, have a very happy holidays and a happy New Year! I’m howling with joy to be able to share this wonderful news with you.

Best, Hannah

Custom card printing update: presses are rolling!
over 4 years ago – Wed, Dec 04, 2019 at 12:17:41 PM

Hello hoomans,

An update to let you know that presses are rolling! As you know, we sent our first big batch of custom dog cards to the printer about two weeks ago. We’ve gone through a few back-and-forth rounds with our printer to verify that everything looks good on their end, but they are currently in the process of printing the first 500 dogs.

After sending that first batch to press, we immediately jumped into our “round two” dogs. These included single dog orders that didn’t make it into the first batch because of image issues, and the majority of $150 and above orders (4-plus dogs)! As we mentioned in our last update, the pups have to go to press in one large batch at a time. We’ve found that about 30% of the dogs we’ve worked on need a second quality pass - contrast boosting, adjusting the filters, fixing the placement of dogs on cards, and sometimes even drawing in an ear that was cropped out of the original photo. For backers with 4-plus dogs, that means the likelihood of at least one dog in the pack needing additional work is high, and that’s what we’ve been working on the past few weeks!

The great news is that we’ve been working round the clock on this. After sending the first 500 dogs to print, we’ve been able to fix an additional 400 round two pups in the past two weeks. That’s 28 dogs a day!

We’re now prepping all remaining files to send the final big batch of dogs to press next week! Any pups that don’t make it into this batch are dogs that we weren’t able to fix without additional backer communication, and we will have reached out to all backers by then trying to secure new photos if those are needed. Those dogs will be done in a third print wave of pupper stragglers, and we’ll be communicating with those backers about what we need to make that happen.

From our communications with our printer, it sounds like it’s possible that the first round of dogs will arrive to us by December 14th. We will then begin the process of shipping the custom dogs to you!

We’ve made it to the final stage. All pups are headed to press and many are being printed as we speak. We’ve been working around the clock, working through holidays, and working weekends to get these pups to the printer. We’re reaching the end of a 2,000-custom reward journey. We’re so happy that you’ve helped us make it happen and we’re so grateful to every one of you for working with us when we’ve had questions about your cards.

We’ll have another backer update as soon as we have the next update from our printer! We hope you have been enjoying the game, and we can't wait for you to be able to add the custom doggos to your collection.

Very best,

MBT

101 Dalmations? How about 501... Dogs off to press!
over 4 years ago – Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 10:45:34 PM

Hello hoomans!

We’ve been all hands on deck working together to get a big batch of custom dogs to print. Now, we’re ready to send the first big batch to our printer! Here’s a look at just a few of the pups who are off to press:

Just to catch you up on where we’re at, here’s what we’ve been working tirelessly on:

• Processed every single custom card survey you filled out
• Laid out the text on all your custom cards
• Cut ~2,000 dogs out from their photo backgrounds
• Sent ~2,000 canines through a photoshop pass
• Placed ~2,000 pups on custom-illustrated backgrounds
•  Proofed every last card to make sure they look great!
   

Now, we’re ready to send the first big batch of dogs to press. We’ve been prepped to send our first batch for a few weeks, but our printer needs us to send as big a batch of dogs as we can in a single print run, which is why we’re taking the time to do a final proof of every last dog to ensure we catch as many issues as possible. Because these are totally customized cards, issues include things like:

• Original photos that were too low contrast or low resolution to go through the filter process
• Photos where not enough of the dog was visible or parts of the body were obscured, so the pup got awkwardly placed or cut off on our illustrated backgrounds
• Text inconsistencies or text that’s too long for the card
   

Why is it important that we send as many dogs as possible to the printer in one batch? Can’t we just submit the dogs one by one as they’re finalized?

Every time we go to press, our printer has to set up their machinery again for this print job. It’s a lot of work for them, and it costs around $750 to set up the die line and to start the printing process. That number isn’t so bad if we can process hundreds of dogs at once. If we were to do that dog by dog though—that would be, well… one very glamorous canine.

This makes it important for us to make final decisions now about which dogs can be sent to press together, and which dogs we’ll be working one-one-one with backers to print in a second batch. As we prepare to send the first big batch of dogs to press, we just wanted to give you a better sense of why the printer isn’t able to accept dogs in small batches!

Our first big batch of a minimum of 500 dogs will be going to press Monday. We’ll have another backer update next week letting you know how many dogs went to press in our first batch! After this, we’ll continue working with backers whose pups needed a little extra love so we can get them to the printer as soon as possible. Our pinter estimates a few-week turnaround from receiving the files to when they arrive to us, and we’ll let you know every step of the way when we have estimated arrival dates! We expect the next large batch to go to the printer next week with hundreds of more dogs - but this allows us to get the process rolling on printing, assembling, and shipping!

Thanks for following along with the process. Any custom reward involves a lot of moving pieces and we appreciate you following alongside us!

More soon,

MBT

Custom dog card proofs approved!
over 4 years ago – Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 11:22:39 PM

Hello hoomans!

We’re so excited to announce that the custom dog proofs have come back from our printer, and they look great! We met on Friday to give our printer approval to create the custom dieline for this project (a diagram that shows them all the proper cut and fold lines) and to make some final decisions about the next steps.

What comes next?

• Using the dieline, the printer makes a large metal sheet they will use to print and cut out your dogs
• This week, we send the first batch of custom cards to press!

Upgrading the materials

Working on these cards has been a journey, and we know waiting for them has been a journey too! The final total came to around 2,000 custom dog cards. That’s a huge amount of custom rewards, and we’ve been involved in every step of the process. It’s been great to see so many fluffy friends (and occasionally lizards) staring back at us from the computer screen.

We want you to be really happy with your cards, and we met Friday to make a few decisions that we hope will make you even happier!

We’re upgrading the card stock

Your cards will be on a beautiful 130 lb cover stock. The cards can’t be *too* thick, but we’ve upgraded the stock to give every card a little more thickness and gloss.

We’re upgrading our shipping

A big part of figuring out how to complete 2,000 custom rewards was figuring out how to ship them. Unlike the base games or expansions, these rewards can’t just be dropped into a box or envelope at random. Every single card has to be matched with the correct envelope so it goes to the right backer. We came up with a clever way to do this. By printing addresses directly onto the press sheet which accompanies your dog(s), we could pop out all the custom dog cards from the dieline, drop those cards into an envelope, pop the address card out of the dieline, and paste the address card to an envelope before dropping it in the mail.

While this process makes a lot of sense for minimizing errors, the dogs would end up shipping in a standard machinable envelope, which means they’re not eligible for tracking! We want you to be able to check when your dogs have shipped and when they’re going to arrive. Because of this, we’re making a big decision. We’re upgrading our shipping so that every single envelope will come with tracking. We can still use our method to make sure the right address goes on the right envelope, but every single address will then be entered into shipping software so it’s eligible for first class postage with tracking. This will increase our shipping budget, but we hope it provides some peace of mind for our backers :)

Timeline and shipping in waves

As with every step of this process, we’ll let you know the minute the first wave of cards has gone to the printer. They’ll then give us an estimate on how long printing will take them. We’ll write a backer update with all that information, but we plan on sending the first wave of cards to them this week.

As we’ve mentioned before, a number of your lovely pups could not be processed in our first design pass. Reasons include images that were too dark where it was difficult to separate the dog in the foreground from the background, photos that were too small or had low resolution, or pups that extended past the frame of the photo so their silhouettes couldn’t be cut out and placed on a card.

We’ve already reached out to many backers about these images, and we’ve received many of these second pass photos. These back-and-forth communications take days or weeks to resolve, and right now, we’re all hands on deck sending your cards to the printer.

We’ve received some messages asking if your images look okay and worked well on the final cards. We’ve needed to pause these communications to get the first batch of dogs press-ready, but we will resume these check-ins shortly. We’re in the process of moving every pup that will need a second pass to their own template, and it will be much easier for us to search for your pups when we only have to search through that one file! :)

We’ll have another update for you soon when we hear back from our printer!

Best,

Brian, Evan, & Hannah