The Last Unicorn - Tarot & Oracle Deck by Geekify Inc

Profile Name Change to Geekify Inc
over 5 years ago – Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 11:53:11 PM

(This update is unrelated to anything specific to this particular campaign, and pertains to some account maintenance)  

      We're changing over the stated name on the account from John Taylor to Geekify Inc to more closely reflect the profile as a company profile rather than as an individual profile, for the sake of future campaigns. Rather than create a new account and so we can maintain our project and backing history, Kickstarter has requested that we make this post on our existing projects. We're notifying you to maintain transparency, and the only thing that will change is the displayed name :).

Almost There!
over 5 years ago – Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 01:36:55 AM

Dear Lords and Ladies of the Realm!

     Greetings from the snow-covered land of Colorado! Things are beginning to trickle in and we're finally starting to see campaign completion ahead! We don't have decks in hand just yet, but we're marching steadily towards that date. Right now we're on track to have deck orders out the door to you guys by the holiday season. *Cheer!* In the meantime, all of the other individual items are shipping out, as we hack away at the list of orders and start fulfilling pledges.

**Shipping Reminder** - if you've ordered several things, they will all ship together once the final component is completed.  

**Shipping Reminder #2** - there will be ample notification when the decks are ready to ship, and plenty of time to make final adjustments for shipping addresses. There will be several updates and email alerts reminding you and notifying you, and you'll have about a two week window from that announcement as we process orders (there's a lot of them to go through!).

(Some of the sample decks in their pre-foiled glory, ready for a reading!)

Art prints and posters are shipping!

These are all now complete and in stock, and getting bundled up to go out the door for fulfillment. Over the next week or two you'll get tracking details if you ordered only art prints or poster versions.

We have a few of the extras on the workshop wall now and they look supremely awesome. 

Scarves and pins have shipped!

All individually purchased pin sets and scarves have been shipped. Many of you have reported receiving them, so thanks for the shout outs and hope you enjoy them as Fall sets in! We'd love to see pictures of them being worn or seen out in the wild!

Decals shipping soon!

The next batch of shipments is the standalone decals, getting ready to go out soon. Prep your binders, clean your windows, and buff your bumpers - you'll need places to stick all of them!

(-Anyone who ordered pin sets *and* decals will similarly get both at the same time.) 

Reading cloths:
The reading cloths will also be rolling in soon, probably arriving shortly before the decks, but here's how they're looking!

Measuring 24" x 24" with an embroidered border, gold unicorn print, and a backing, these have proven an excellent backdrop for the cards.


Next Steps:

Besides the obvious, we've got a few other things we'll be doing.

1) Firming up dates as we start to get shipments arranged from the manufacturers. This is still a little ways out, but we'll keep the announcements coming of when to finalize your shipping details and start looking for them in the mail.

2) Synchronizing the web sites and BackerKit to have all the accessories, extras, and prints fleshed out (for last minute order additions).

3) Guide Book PDF  - I'm currently finishing up formatting for a PDF version for the card guide that we'll make freely available for anyone who loses their copy, prefers digital format, or just wants to do some advance reading. I'll likely link it in the comments later on, as well as include it in a future update. 

4) Ordering shipping supplies and clearing out prep space. Once the decks come in, we'll begin shipping that same week!

Other things!
(**Reminder** - we're perpetually working on other projects simultaneously, but they don't come at the expense of the deck project, which remains our top priority. We have a variety of artists and manufacturers working on any given thing at any given time, and as part of our good faith in delivering on this project first, the others won't be released until after completion of this campaign. All the same, we thought you'd enjoy some of the other Unicorn goings-on in the interim though!)

DragonCon Visits
We really appreciated getting to meet up face to face with some of you at DragonCon, and were thrilled when Peter S. Beagle dropped by to chat for awhile and check out the sample decks and other projects we had handy. 

King Haggard Coins:

We'd mentioned these awhile back, but we've got our samples back of the King Haggard coins of the realm. They'll eventually join the Last Unicorn lineup, along with the posters further down the line. 

These will make great collectors pieces or way to settle bets or wagers with the flip of a coin. 

Tapestries: 

Some of you had expressed an interest in a tapestry version of the opening scene of the movie, and working with the masterful Adrianne, we recreated the tapestry in high resolution from scratch, ready to do up in glorious wall (or floor?) hanging form in the next wave of projects. 

Blankets:

We don't have much we're going to reveal on this one just yet, but we've finally found a supplier who can do extremely soft silky plush blankets with full prints, so there will be some Unicorn blankets rolling out this winter. Don't get *too* excited just yet...but maybe get a little excited :)

We also had a workshop visit from one of our super backers Kayliana to attend one of our Learn To Make classes! Thanks for coming by, and nice to meet you face to face! (If anyone else is in the Colorado area and ever wants to come by the workshop to see where the magic happens, we're happy to give tours!)

Thank you all for your continued patience as we get this behemoth done! We're looking forward to wrapping it all up with a pretty bow and talking about all the things we've learned from the process, as well as hearing all the great readings done with these cards. 

(TL;DR - we're almost there, some things have shipped or are shipping soon, and the decks will be shipping for the holiday season!)

How the Unicorn Sausage Gets Made
over 5 years ago – Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 12:24:38 AM

Greetings Unicornians!

It's been awhile since our last update - thank you for all your patience in the interim! We've had our convention season in full swing and been embroiled in a plethora of projects in tandem with the Last Unicorn project, and even finding time to finish this post has been a rare (and much sought-for) moment. A lot of people have noted that this is taking a long time, and they're absolutely right! The attention to detail and quality that we pour into our projects is one of the things we pride ourselves on, and that means there's a ton of tiny things that we have to make decisions on, which has meant research, testing, revisions, and execution. 

Since we've got two months to catch up on, here's some more of the behind the scenes process, and a look at the plates (tea cups with tea in them?) we're juggling!

Manufacturing:

Adding a stretch goal carved wood box was awesome!...and with it, a lot of extra work!  We've effectively been designing a whole other product to match and augment the decks, and there are questions that go with it. What type of wood will we use? What type of stains and finish? What shade do we want it to be? What joints do we want to use, and what sort of lining? What sort of hinge do they need to have? Will the surface be carved, embossed, lasered, or foiled? Should we divide the deck into two pockets to keep it flatter, or one and keep it deeper? Cut grooves for fingers to scoop out the cards? All these wonderful questions and more have been part of the design process. In the next post, we'll probably have some pictures of the carved boxes, unless we decide to keep 'em a surprise.

The books also needed heavy consideration - which weight of paper, which paper texture, which binding process, what textures of faux leather, what colors to use, what fonts, what artwork for the stamping, and that's in addition to writing, editing, and proofing the book contents itself to describe the artwork and the meanings of the tarot.

More Art:

Along the way, more art needs pop up unexpectedly (and constantly) - the extra decks we're making need a non-wooden box, so we have to design a more standard paperboard deck box for retail and late backers, which needs artwork and more design considerations, and double checking that they fit with the other choices we've made. Then there's the tags (for the scarves), working the copyright info into the products, and whatever other last minute graphic design work we need to do along the way that crops up.

Quality Control:

As makers of stuff, we can tell you that very little in "factories" is done by robots as some might imagine, and real world manufacturing always has a unique set of variables that can go wrong when delivering consistency and quality for each specific item. Heat, humidity, bad batches, inconsistent materials - manufacturing can be very termperamental, and we're working to make sure that everything turns out as expected. For instance, the Beagle cards turned out a lot more washed out after printing than the artwork looked on the screen, so we had to revise the color palettes and lighting to reflect what the printing process does to the cards in the real world. Elements that look good digitally don't always happily translate to physical tones.

An example here of issues with foiling:

Here we see bubbling and peeling, the result of hot, high humidity environments (which summer is creating the conditions for). Things like that are things we need to catch in the QC process and make sure all final productions don't have issues. 

Licensing:

Since these are licensed products, all of them (pins, stickers, boxes, tarot, reading cloths, etc) have to go through style, quality, and standards approvals, which is a beast unto itself. Everything has to be reviewed, emails exchanged, markups and comments noted, changes and revisions made and resubmitted before and after production, and there's usually a waiting period associated with each step of the process. This process is crucial to the arrangement, and it's why licensed products sometimes take years to make it onto the market.

Knock-offs:

And on the subject of licensing (or lack thereof!), one of our fans discovered that our "Star" art has been poached indiscriminately for use in a knock-off makeup kit. So that's...something. Flattering, insulting, maddening, a little of all three. 

One more thing we have to worry about, and that's why we've always released low-res images on most of the images we post online, just to be safe. But unicorns are in the world again, so no sorrow.

Customer Service:

This is a full time job in and of itself! People write in constantly wanting updates, wanting to hear the latest news, raging at us about how anyone affiliated with TLU is taking advantage of Peter S. Beagle (regardless of the situation), to update their addresses, or even just to send us very nice emails about how they like what we're doing (we love those, Saretha!). Believe it or not, a full 8-10% of our backers still have never entered their addresses or even answered their basic Kickstarter surveys, so we have to periodically reach out to remind them that they won't get their treasures if they never respond. Every now and then someone will write in complaining that there have been no updates since the beginning, despite our long collection of word walls, so answering questions is another thing we have to keep on top of.

Shipping Automation:

Now, we haven't used BackerKit before this campaign, but BackerKit has some wonderful tools for automation and integrating with our existing shipping software, *but* if done wrong, it can wreak havoc on a fulfillment and you'll never know what's already been sent out. We've taken a lot of time testing and making sure that notifications were all set up properly so you can track your orders when they're out the door, and setting it up properly so that the full Kickstarter can be done without issue. With around 2,000 backers, that's a lot to keep straight and streamlined, and we want to make sure everything is tracked properly to minimize the "where's my stuff" emails. Our pins-only backers were a good test sample to make sure everything was working out well (and we'd love confirmation that notification emails were received!)

Too Long, Not Gonna Read It:

The good news is that we're starting to get word from our manufacturers that things are beginning to wrap up. We're still...awhile out, since we have to receive shipments, get final approvals on the finished production pieces, and then start aggregating orders and that takes time. Now that we've got all of our shipping processes in place, all of the pins-only rewards have shipped. Stickers will be next up in a little while, and the little one-off things here and there (like scarves!) that people have ordered. 

Reminder: if you ordered multiple items that include the cards, all of the items will be shipping together. Shipping is expensive, even for a single item, so it's the only way to save on cost.

There will be AMPLE warning when things are ready to go. Some people write in worried that they've missed the shipping date - trust us, we will be trumpeting it long and loudly in preparation for these orders going out the door, and we can still fix and update addresses between now and then!

A special thanks again to Kayliana for running her contest with all its awesome rewards!

And a sincere thank you to all of you guys for working through this with us. It's a massive undertaking and we are a tiny team - we're still here plugging away, we're learning a ton, we're still having fun with the process, and we are hard at work making sure this is the best it can be. 

We'll have another update probably sometime in the next month with lots of fresh pictures as things begin to trickle in to the workshop. The end is approaching!

Other Unicorn Projects!
almost 6 years ago – Sun, Jun 24, 2018 at 12:41:20 AM

Hey Unicorn lovers!

(If you missed the last update with photos of the cards, details about production, and timeline updates, check here in Update #38).

Something to tide you over and help pass the time with your summer!

We haven't been idle while the cards are in production, and we wanted to give you a sneak peak at some of the other projects in production. Some of these will be available this summer, and some of these we're thinking of launching as another Kickstarter (to help facilitate pre-orders for bulk buying). The good news - we're doing most of the leg work up front, so the wait time on this next batch of projects will be drastically lower! Coming soon, we've got...

Scarves

The new design by Adrianne of the Unicorns in the Sea is complete and the scarves are currently in production - we're doing silk this time! These are 18 x 60", beautiful to look at, delightful to the touch, and they'll be ready to ship in about four weeks. This one will also be available as a print! 

Posters:

We're doing remastered artwork of some of the classic scenes in much higher resolution, as well as a handful of our own new original arts. Adrianne and I are cooking up a fun blues/jazz scene with the TLU cast. 

Mommy Fortuna's sideshow horrors are getting their own workups as a matched set for your walls, as well, courtesy of the talented Savannah Alexandra. 

And we've also got a great mashup in the form of the Unicorn and the Bull as well, with Haggard's face in the Bull's eye and the Forest in the Unicorn's. Plenty of consummate V's and majesty lines for everyone. 

Plushes:

There was a shortage of quality plushes for TLU, so we decided to spearhead that project and bring some new must-have plushes to life. A sneak peek at some of the works in progress:

Getting the Unicorn to look like *the* Unicorn instead of a generic unicorn is a little tricky. How do you capture her shining, her grace?  Perhaps we could send some sort of large Bull to capture one and bring her to us to study up close...

 And of course, the Butterfly! Before the embroidery gets done, these are what some of the roughs look like for sizing and patterning. He'll have a wire structure in the wings to make him slightly bendable and posable. 

Mugs:

Now Holly Pierson is outdoing herself again. From the creator of the artwork we're using for the keychains and figurines, this talented mind is tackling the artwork to make fully 3D collectible mugs. I'm making her work hard getting the poses just right, but here's a look at the concept art...

We're hoping to do the Unicorn, the Skeleton, but we'll see how the artwork and the ceramics cooperate.

Coins

The realm of King Haggard needs some currency, so we've some antique coins in production as well. A nod here to the prophecy of Hagsgate that ultimately leads to the downfall of Haggard. If you have no idea what that is...read the book! Or listen to the audiobook - it's read by Peter himself!

 
The Red Bull Suit:

One of our close friends is a world reknowned creature and mascot costume maker, so of course we were going to get one made. A custom commission from Menagerie Workshop, this monstrosity is seven feet tall with a fully puppetable mouth, face, and legs and rigged with a speaker system to growl and huff. It made its debut at Denver Comic Con this past week, to much acclaimed fanfare. We have some further modifications to make to him as time goes on, but he was impressive, to say the least.

Castings of the Red Bull head will *probably* be available as a wall-mount stuffed head, further down the road, if you want something a little more macabre for your collection!

(Sarah's also open to custom commissions, for your fur suit and creature needs - a Red Bull will probably run you around $7,500.)

Kayliana's Giveaway (you won't want to miss this!)

Turbo fan numero uno Kayliana, the host of Today's Trivia on our campaign, has generously decided to do a giveaway for the backers. Posting her comment here for all to see:

"A Last Unicorn Kickstarter Giveaway! Dun dun DUUUUUN! From 35mm Film Frames, Rare Vintage Collectibles, Signed Books, to a few ACTUAL incredibly rare Production Sketches and Film Cels! All the details are at the link provided, but do keep in mind you will have to be willing to give me your address so that I can ship you your prizes if you are a winner! Drawings will begin on July 1st, at midnight my time (mountain). That's 11pm Pacific / 1am Central / 2am Eastern. For international participants, you will have to convert the time on your own (sorry!)! I provided a time converter link in the details of the giveaway! You can enter the contest at any time until the last prize has been given away. Since the form has more information and details about everything I've summarized here, without further ado...
https://tinyurl.com/TLUKickstarterGiveaway
The submission page is just a few short questions at the end, the rest of the pages are informational only about the rules and the prizes offered. This giveaway is solely run by myself, with John's gracious permission (thanks, buddy!), so please defer all questions to myself, John won't be able to help you! :) You can contact me [email protected]."

The Peter S. Beagle Pledge

Last, but not least - this campaign was founded on love of the works of Peter S. Beagle. We support the author wholeheartedly and completely, and are renewing and reaffirming our pledge to donate a portion of everything that we make for The Last Unicorn directly to Peter. We recently processed all of the extra pre-order items for the BackerKits and collected funds and just issued another check to Peter a few weeks ago. 

We'll have this pledge on each listing of the items we make, so you can be sure that when you buy from us as an authorized licensee, you are helping support the author, the fanbase, and the amazing community supporting it. We also encourage you guys to check out our friends at Espionage Cosmetics - they're doing some neat TLU stuff as well!

We've got a few more projects in the works still, but we figured this should keep you busy for a little while at least. We're always looking for new suggestions on what to make, so if you've got any requests, make sure to send them our way or leave them in the comments. Thanks as always for your time, and hope you enjoy your weekend!

Sincerely,
John and the Geekify Crew

Cards Are In Production!
almost 6 years ago – Fri, May 25, 2018 at 12:59:17 AM

The cards are in production! Details on timeline, production process, and more below!

We've been out of the country for nearly a month visiting factories and manufacturers, learning how things are made, and then we had another expo as soon as we got back, so we've been running all over the place and are now playing catch up on everything and finishing last minute details for the decks.

We had a chance to take a tour of the card factory and see the step by step process of how the cards are made, and to share that process with you! Our partner company regularly works with tarot decks, casino cards, tabletop games, and playing cards of all kinds, so they really know their craft, and top of the line equipment for production. While ours were certainly among the more artistic of their current productions, we were a relatively small volume compared to some of the other clients they had at the time. 

The Process:

The cards are printed in large sheets on high definition printers. The final design size is  80 x 125 mm, making them a bit bigger than the standard tarot deck size, but not too much so. 

We chose a 400gsm fine art stock for the cards. They definitely came out a bit thicker than anticipated, but makes for a very solid hand feel for each card, which should hopefully make each one more durable.

The sheets are given various finishes (we opted for a soft-matte), and the end result is that each card has an almost velvety feel to it. The sheets are then cut down into columns on bladed machines, and then sliced into their individual cards. 

A punching machines gives them their rounded edges with hydraulic presses and dies.

Foiling creates some potential alignment issues, - when printing lines at 90 degree angles, the stamping process doesn't always line up the foil to the printed lines perfectly, so we had to adjust our artwork slightly to accommodate the foiling process to minimize visibility of such misalignments. Making a change to one thing meant we then had to adjust a few other things with the borders of the card for uniformity.

 
Little details have to be considered, down to the specific hue of gold foil to be used, and the factory has binders full of foils in all colors of the rainbow. 

I'd specifically inquired about holographic foiling, as the butterfly would have been a beautiful use of the foiled holographic effect. The factory had some beautiful examples. Tempting...but a smidge too gaudy. Here's a picture of how the material *might* have been. 

(I'll come back for you one day, holographic foil.)

Finally, the cards are then shrink-wrapped and set aside to be boxed up.

The store versions of the cards will have a retail box, and we went over various styles and designs of boxes and other card sets to get a feel for what would work best for the decks, as well as testing some of the other finishes for the cards.

The people we're working with have been fantastic, and it's been a pleasure working with our main rep, Cico (far right).

Despite the size of the company, there's only four artists on their staff, and all the rest are production crew, so this man worked very hard to help us lock in some of the details of the cards.

There's a lot more details that will eventually get a write-up on the main Geekify webpage, but this was a quick overview. We're working with some really great people who really know the art of card making, and it was such a blast to see them in action! Questions welcome in the comments!

Other Projects

Tapestries - While overseas, we found partners to create the tapestries at the beginning of the movie. Huzzah! This will be a pretty limited-run item in the future. 

Plushes - The Red Bull is still undergoing continuous revisions, but we'll have some good photos in the coming weeks. The Butterfly and Unicorn are currently in design phase!  

Posters - we have a bundle of awesome posters ready to rock. Details coming soon, but here's one to tease you with...

Scarves - the Bull / Unicorn design is complete, and we're thrilled with the final result. We've already shipped to anyone who purchased the scarf independently in our store, and we're actively working on the unicorns in the sea design.

Haggard's Clock - we also have a partner lined up to bring Haggard's clock to life. We'll have a small version, suitable for desktops and mantel pieces, and we will also do a grandfather clock size version, for the wealthy collector. If you are interested in a grandfather clock version, sculpted gargoyles don't come cheap, and we're looking at a price tag of around $10,000 , but if you *have* to have one, get in touch!

Pins - The Unicorn is finally wrapping up production and we can start shipping full pin sets up in about two weeks. 

Also, there's always a lot of contention in the news and social media about the ongoing state of TLU merchandise. While we can't speak for many of them, we *can* vouch for Espionage Cosmetics as being directly licensed with the parent company ITV (and subsequently are removed from the current legal contention). They have some kick ass Last Unicorn nail wraps available and more in pre-order, and a few years ago they voluntarily withdrew their Last Unicorn products from the market until they could be certain that they were doing right by everyone involved. But they're back, and we're super thrilled! If you're looking for a cool company to support and sport some great UUUUUNICOOOOORN fashion, they're your gals!

Current Timeline

As painful as it is to say it, the timeline has shifted considerably, for a variety of reasons. The final revisions we needed to do had to follow the completion of the artwork, and despite aiming for a late February completion date, the last of the art wasn't submitted until May 5th, meaning setup for the cards couldn't even begin until that point. The good news, is that the cards are currently in production. They will still take awhile to complete, assuming production continues without hiccups. 

However, the second hurdle looms for delivery - not a production issue, so much as a stretch goal issue. Peter Beagle's attorney has informed me that their new trial date is set for June 22, and stated that he can therefore probably begin signing cards later in July.

(If you wish to support Peter in his upcoming trial, this page is run by his team. )

Support Peter Beagle

Peter's people estimated it would be about three weeks for card signings, plus the time for getting them sent back, and getting everything packed, and shipped. I'm going to conservatively say August as our projected date, and let's hope that we beat that. That moves things back considerably from when we'd originally hoped to ship, but it is what it is - except for the literal cutting the corners off the cards, we're cutting no corners on this project!

Thanks for your time, and looking forward to hearing your questions, comments, and good-natured ribbing about constantly shifting timelines (be gentle)! I've got a deck of test cards with me here at home that I keep showing off to everyone, and if you're in CO you're welcome to set up a time to come by the workshop and hang out! Things might be a little quiet for the next few weeks as we ratchet up production and finish up some other TLU projects (new ideas welcome, too!), but we're still plugging away on everything.

Stay awesome, and be excellent to each other!

Sincerely,
John and the Geekify Crew