Bark, sniff, and lick your way through the apocalypse to save the hoomans you love!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Custom cards: proof copy sent to press!
over 4 years ago
– Wed, Oct 02, 2019 at 10:07:18 PM
Hello hoomans,
A quick update to let you know that we’ve sent a custom card template off to our printer for proofing! In a week’s time, we should have those proof cards in our hands! This is an essential step to make sure the cards you receive have a consistent look and feel.
We’ll have images to share when those proofs come back to us, and if everything looks good, we’ll be able to send our first batch of custom cards off to press.
Image of a rare dog breed, the Grabby-Handed Acornpup, caught in the act!
We’ll have more for you soon! Happy fall!
Brian, Evan, and Hannah
Custom dog cards update: The final pass of the final pass!
over 4 years ago
– Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 02:58:35 AM
Hello hoomans!
Our long custom pup journey is finally nearing a close.
We’ve proofed every last bit of text
We’ve proofed every image
We’re ready to move these along to press
BUT—before we do that, there are two final steps we need to complete:
1. Updating addresses on the custom dog templates for backers who have moved. If you didn’t fill out our address change form here and you’ve moved, now is your final final chance!
2. Finishing adding add-on dogs ordered through Backerkit to the templates. Unfortunately, the add-on dogs get stored in a different way in Backerkit, so we’ve had to manually match each add-on dog with the pre-existing order. This has added a lot of time to the final layout and proofing process, but we need to finish matching these pups to their orders so we don’t separate the pack!
Ruby Roo, one of many good doggos whose layout is complete!
Final note: Doggos who need special care
As we’ve mentioned in previous updates, during our proofing process we’ve encountered a number of doggos in need of special attention. Examples include pups where maybe an ear or a butt extended outside of the frame of the original image. These pups look adorable in their original photos, but when we cut those pups out to place on our custom backgrounds, the effect is a pup with a straight “cut line” directly across the ear or butt or head. It’s not a great look for awfully cute dogs!
These doggos deserve our special care, and we’ve been in touch with many backers who have supplied us with new photos or have worked with us to make these photos work. This process isn’t finished yet though, and because of the nature of hooman schedules, some of these communications take weeks to resolve!
We're eager to move to press, and we're going to keep communicating with backers daily whose pups need a little extra love before we can finish their cards. To be fair to as many folks as possible, we'll likely need to move to press before we can finish all of these communications. If we do end up printing pups in batches and doing a second print run to finish all of the dogs whose original cards needed extra attention, we will let everyone know!
In the meantime, we'll have a to-press ballpark (ballbark?) for you next week!
Thank you!
Evan, Brian, & Hannah
Custom card update: What we look for in our final proofing pass!
over 4 years ago
– Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 08:43:16 PM
Hello hoomans,
It’s time for an update on our custom card proofing progress! We’re just about done with our second proofing pass on all custom rewards. As a reminder, here are the steps we’re working on:
Asking for new images from a handful of backers whose images didn't work well with our editing process
Sending those new images through the editing process again
Getting those new images onto their correct templates
Proofreading all cards to the best of our ability!
Finally, updating addresses in our templates for folks who have moved
Because we’re a team of three, we’d hired extra design help so we could carry on with card layout and proofing while the images got their own editing and filtering pass. It’s been a huge boost having outside help to keep this process moving along, but it’s still a ton of work! Because every card is unique, we’re in daily communication with our team of designers about your cards.
As we’ve mentioned before all pups have been cut out, filtered, and placed on cards! Right now, we’re in our second pass: proofreading, making sure the right photos are matched with the right cards, and making sure all images are well-placed and look great!
Here’s what that final proof pass looks like:
Peluche before & after:
We caught most of these scrambled characters on our first proofing pass, but always good to double check!
Much better, Peluche!
Lucy:
Lucy is looking good! She’s safely in all of our cut and bleed lines, with lots of wiggle room for the printer!
Moby & Renny:
Moby & Renny are looking good! It takes more work to get two pups and their customizations on one card, but the fit here is just right.
Logan:
Hey Logan, lookin’ good!
Tank:
Tank is an example of a pup with an editorial question: in this instance, a hooman hand made it into the picture. In a case like this we reach out to the backer to see if that’s okay, or if they’d like to provide another image.
Trudy:
You may have noticed we have a number of illustrated backgrounds for the pups! We don’t just pick these at random. This top-down background was designed specificallyfor pups photographed from this perspective—looking straight up at the camera!
We’re happy to have made it to this point and we’re going to keep proofing and reaching out to backers for replacement images through next week. After that, we’re going to wrap this up and send these custom dogs to press!
We’ll have another update for you soon. Thanks for your patience and support as we work on these custom rewards.
Best,
Evan, Brian, & Hannah
A video update about creating your custom dog cards!
over 4 years ago
– Tue, Aug 06, 2019 at 12:47:36 AM
Hello hoomans,
We wanted to give a little more insight into the process of creating your custom dog cards. We've broken this process down in various backer updates, but when we talk about why these cards take a long time to produce, we thought a video might add context and tie the whole process together!
Note: The video is English caption-enabled.
Like Hannah says in the video, here are the steps we can call DONE!
Downloading all 2,000 (the number just kept growing) dogs and add-on dogs - DONE!
Sending your dog photos to our designers - DONE!
Downloading all custom card survey responses - DONE!
Editing and updating survey responses with correct abilities - DONE!
Creating InDesign templates for single cards, 4-dog and 12-hooman cards, and other order variations - DONE!
Data merging all backer data into the correct templates - DONE!
Fixing overset text and text formatting on cards - DONE!
Cutting out all 2,000 dogs from their backgrounds - DONE!
Filtering the dog images in Photoshop so they match our illustrated backgrounds - DONE!
Placing the pups on backgrounds that match their photo poses - DONE!
Placing the pup images on their correct template cards - DONE!
And here's what we're still working on:
Asking for new images from a handful of backers whose images didn't work well with our editing process
Sending those new images through the editing process again
Getting those new images onto their correct templates
Proofreading all cards to the best of our ability!
Finally, updating addresses in our templates for folks who have moved
Thanks for bearing with us while we work with this final batch of images. We're eager to complete the proofreading and we'll have another update for you soon!
Best,
Hannah, Brian, & Evan
Custom dog cards: Proofing pass update and our big donation to One Tail at a Time, sponsored by you!
almost 5 years ago
– Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 08:24:56 PM
Hello hoomans!
In our last update, we talked about diving into the proofing pass. With the custom dog cards laid out and ready for the printer, here’s what we look for in our proofing pass:
Missing pictures, or pictures with quality issues.
Proper matching of dog photos to their character cards.
Formatting errors in the text.
Special requests we received from some backers.
Addressing overset text and formatting errors has been one of the easier parts of the process. All three of us are on the job and cross-checking for errors along the way.
During our proofing pass, we identified a number of photos that we didn’t think worked well with our filter pass. We’ve been in the process of reaching out to backers about those photos. We’re working one-on-one with folks to find a new photo, or to use a different filtering process in cases where a photo has special meaning or sentimental value.
We’re eager to get these pups off to press, so rest assured this hasn’t slowed us down too much! We’re still in the process of formatting add-on orders and orders for duplicate sets, which have to be created manually and can’t be data-merged like all of our other cards. We’ll check back soon with an update, but we’re close to wrapping up these final photos and add-on orders, then off to the printer we go!
Our big donation to OTAT!
We’re so happy to share that we finally met up with the great folks at the One Tail at a Time rescue shelter in Chicago to drop off our mega-basket of dog treats, toys, and care items! Brian was greeted with big smiles and puppy love, and we want to extend a heartfelt hurrah to you, the GDBZ backers, for helping to make this donation possible! It was a lot of fun organizing this dropoff, and we tried to select a mix of items from the OTAT wishlist that would let us really support these pups!
Here are just a few photos (re-shared from OTAT on Instagram) and we’ve got a few more that we’ll share in our next update:
Brian at OTAT with our doggie bag(s)!
Thank YOU, Delaney! :)
We know a number of backers have pups from OTAT, who have since found their forever homes with you! Sound off in the comments if you do! Thank you for being a part of this project and for sharing in the dog love!
