June/July Update~

Heya all,

Apologies for not having an update during June.  As everyone is painfully aware, June wasn't a very good month, to say the absolute least.  

There are plenty of updates to go over since last time, so let's get to them.

The main thing we wanted to focus on showing off this time around was background art.  We've finally been getting in new background art in which we can start showcasing, mostly surrounding that of the Kingsmen Mechanics shop first introduced in the Hellbent video.  While most of the backgrounds will be variations of the shop and the surrounding Road Runner-esk landscape, we do have some backgrounds of stuff we can't quite show off yet on account of the whole spoiler thing.

Animation for the video is mostly finished up at this point, give or take one or two straggler shots.  Most of the current effort is going towards clean up at the moment, gearing up for what we hope is still the October release.  We've gotten some really cool looking shots all cleaned and colored up lately and it's getting more and more painful to not be able to show them yet.

I will need to start compositing shots together to make sure things are flowing as we want here up shortly.

On the merchandise front, for the past two weeks, we have had an ongoing sale for some shirts based on Mystery Skulls's new album release of Now or Never.  While that was originally planned to end today (July, Friday 17th) we talked about it and will be extending the deadline for the pre-orders for another week (July, Friday 24th).

If you haven't seen them yet, you can go to the following link to check them out.

 https://mystery-skulls-animated.myshopify.com/ 

We've never attempted to make a long sleeve shirt, or an actual glow in the dark shirt before so we hope people like how these new types of shirts turn out.  Additionally, I threw in the "Mystery Crossing" design along with them because we had never introduced a more silly, cute design before and after playing Animal Crossing every day since release, I was more than in the mood to do so. 

As stated in an earlier graphic, I will be donating a portion of what we earn from this batch of shirts to the Doctors Without Borders charity in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.  When we get all the pre-orders in and the accounting finished up, I will be able to figure out exactly how much gets donated and I will be sure to publicly announce how much I send their way.

Before I close out this update, I wanted to touch on some of the stuff going out in the world at the moment.

As I stated at the top of the update, June has been a painful month for a lot of people.  As COVID-19 surges across the country, I want to please, please ask all of you reading this to be careful out there.  Please stay inside if you are able to do so, and if you do need to go outside, PLEASE wear a mask.  I don't want any of our fans out there getting sick from such an awful disease so do what you can to stay healthy.

I would have never guessed I would have gotten to the point where I'd be getting $400 dollars a month from Patreon in such a short amount of time and I would like to once again give everyone my eternal thanks for what you've given so far.  I really do appreciate the generosity.  I once again wish to state that, ultimately, while the contributions do help quite a bit, I am otherwise fine financially speaking. 

If I had to ask a favor of any of you at the moment, it would be, during these trying times, to give some of that generosity to people that need it far more than I ever will.

In particular, I'd like to share links that help the Black community and the Trans community, 

 https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/#donate 

 https://www.thetrevorproject.org/ 

Any other such donation sites that you would be aware of would be great as well.  If for next month, you were to give the amount you would give me towards charities such as these, I would very much appreciate that the money goes towards communities experiencing so much pain right now. 

Once again, thank you for your patience and kindness, especially during times like these.

-Ben