July So Far: A Few Changes, a Few Updates (Patreon)

Hey Everyone,

A few fun updates, but first a few Patreon-platform housekeeping things.

Dollar Conversion: This week we got a message from Patreon: "We’re reaching out to you directly to let you know that in the coming weeks, Patreon is launching a new feature to allow patrons to pledge to creators in their local currency of Euros (€), British Pounds (£) or US Dollars ($)."  For some of you, the converted number might look a bit strange, because the conversion isn't always a clean number and the conversion will fluctuate to match the changing world market. It's another step toward Patreon making their business more professional, and in general it is most likely a more transparent practice. This all comes just a few weeks after Patreon had updated the tax policy. Which leads us to the next update:

A New $2.00 Tier: As of this week we are updating the $1 tier into a $2 tier. There are a number of reasons for this:

Patreon now recommends the minimum tier to be $2.00 USD.

The content we offer at the Citizen tier has grown and compounded over the years to include greater and greater content.

Patreon's fees are 33 cents on $1 patrons as of their 'revised transaction cost schedule'  (~December 2018), as a means of encouraging creators to eliminate or revise their $1 tiers. If the true intent is to support the creator at $1 per creation, this is sadly not done with a $1 tier anymore.

After many discussions as a team, it's the right decision for us as we intend to always work toward growing, not only at even the smallest tier, but for our company as a whole. 

Current Citizens who pledge $1 will not lose anything, but future Patrons will not have the opportunity to join as a Citizen for a $1 pledge. We were apprehensive to make this move to a $2 minimum tier because we wanted to be sure it would not change anything for those long-time and early patrons at the $1 level who have been with us and supported us even while we were just starting out. Now that we are sure they will not be negatively impacted, and we are ready to take this step. Thank you for your continued support, and for growing our community to where we feel confident enough to make this change.  

Now for some far more fun updates!

BBC Interview  - Last week, Travis and Kaitlin spoke with the BBC about remote recording, VAST Horizon, and The White Vault. Also in the same episode is David Devereux (Audin Barrow on VAST Horizon) from Tin Can Audio and Neil Gaiman. Check out the interview here!

[The Archon is Watching...]

Liberty Comics: We know duration isn't always a mark of quality, but after 13 years we have finally finished coloring the last page of Liberty: Deception (Volume 4). It's been a bit of an emotional week for us as we work toward concluding the project. We still have some continuity corrections to make, and we have to letter about 300 pages, but we're on schedule for finishing the series before the end of 2020. Oh, and the Archon herself is going to play a major role in the final volume.

The White Vault - Iluka: Last week we finished the sound design and editing for Iluka. We are still mixing and mastering the episodes and will be releasing the series conclusion (Episodes 9 & 10) over the next three weeks. Kaitlin is hard at work writing Season 4 for The White Vault.

The Boar Knight: Last week Kaitlin and Travis sat down for a few hours to work on lyrics for the first four songs, and get further into defining song structures. It's a slow-moving but fun process. We're setting time aside each week to get a little bit further into the fun fantasy universe of the Boar Knight.

[Dark Dice fan art of Iaus Innskeep trying to sleep - by Erebusodora: https://twitter.com/erebusodora ]

Dark Dice - The Date with Uriel: Will be released by late next week. It was a fun time recording with Cecil Baldwin a second time and we can't wait to share it with you all.

Our Discord: A few of our fans put together an unofficial movie night on Friday. There have also been quite a few really interesting conspiracy theory discussions of late for all of our shows, and some new fan art being shared there. If you have a discord account, be sure to connect it to your Patreon account to gain access to the server!

VAST Horizon: We're making great headway into VAST Horizon season 2. However, we had an amusing aside - A cast member couldn't get into a studio due to COVID, so we mailed him an H4N recording device. It randomly hissed static every time the actor tried to record and this was the #1 troubleshooting video we found for the issue. (We were both dying of laughter when we watched it) Fortunately the comments section helped us find an answer.Thanks for stopping in to check on the updates, and that's it for now!-Travis & Kaitlin (& Eezo)