Pin Prototyping | Patreon Weekly #79

Hey Patrons!

Firstly, here are the results for Content Poll #12:
Water Container:        92% Support
Tengu’s Mask:              83% Support
Dwarf King’s Crown: 96% Support
All options passed with very strong support! I’ll be looking to implement at least Tengu’s Mask in v0.9.2, maybe the water container adjustments as well.

v0.9.1 went to beta late last week. I plan to get it to full release later this week, and then move on to work on v0.9.2! Expect more info on v0.9.2 in coming weeklies.

Also, thanks to your great generosity, we’ve already passed the $400/mo milestone! I’ll admit that this caught me a bit by surprise, as I was expecting to hit this goal in another few months. There will be a bit of a delay, but I’m getting working on loyalty rewards, in particular, some pins!

An Early Design for Patron Pins

As mentioned earlier, I think one great potential loyalty reward is a unique enamel pin featuring the Shattered Pixel logo. Enamel pins work well as they are a reasonably small merch item, which helps with shipping costs, and they look great with pixel art designs. Here are a few important bits of info on enamel pins:

• Enamel pins are made using two main components: The metal backplate, which is raised at certain parts and cut down at others. The colored enamel, which is poured as a liquid and flows on top of the cut down parts of the backplate.
• The metal backplate can be one of various colors, black is the obvious correct choice for a Shattered Pixel pin.
• Enamel colors can never directly touch, there must be raised backplate between them.

With those limitations in mind, here is a prototype design for a Shattered Pixel logo pin:

• The black sections of the pin would be backplate, the green parts are enamel.
• I’ve simplified the colors slightly as we can have at most two with the current icon design, one in each section.
• I’ve added just a bit of rounding to the shape, and a black rounded border. The rounding is partly to ensure the two colors stay separate, and also to give the pixel art a slightly softer design/shape, to match with the rounded corners of the pin.

There are a few considerations yet to be made as well. I may put these to a poll:

• The pin can be hard or soft enamel. Hard enamel is flush with the raised backplate, whereas soft enamel is slightly recessed, which would make the black parts pop out a bit.
• The colors can have a glitter effect applied to them, which might nicely compensate for the shading reduction.

Please let me know what you think of this prototype design! I’m also going to be working on some digital loyalty rewards in the form of fancy styled emails. Those should be quicker to get going, and will likely be given to those with 3 or 6 months of loyalty, whereas the pin will be for 1 year.