Love Dark Horse’s Aliens comics from the 90’s, Seven and Jurassic Park are on your favourite movie list - then ARKS is for you. Catch up on the series with the full colour comic, containing stunning artwork, a brand new world building story inspired and based on real science, wrapped around a diamond hard sci-fi police procedural set in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve meets Alien! Plus there's a behind the scenes look into the art and science of ARKS, with every issue in the Arks Appendix and our brand new spin off story Proximan - to take you deeper into the ARKS universe!
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
This year has been FULL BEANS!
In August we had a bit of time to complete the back cover for Arks Issue 5 and as we haven't decided what Kickstarter to run next we did both covers.
WARNING SPOILERS -- WARNING SPOILERS -- WARNING SPOILERS!
I have done so many conventions this year that I think I'm actually getting better at them. The next four are:
And here- buried at the bottom of the update, is the sneaky news.
Basically, I'm having to take a bit of freelance work to finish Arks Issue 5. These books cost between 13k and 16k to make and as a new'ish book, we can't yet raise that amount of money through KS. Hopefully, one day we will, but not yet.
We invested a lot of time into the Arks Issue Five Kickstarter and whilst we are thrilled we raised nearly 10k, we spent a few thousand pounds on ads which didn't convert to a bigger campaign. So annoyingly I'll need to log back into capitalism to complete this Issue. All this means for you is a slight delay on delivery from Dec 24 to Feb / March 25
Because of this, we are thinking of changing our strategy for the next KS campaign. We might pay for it ourselves and release the book later ( to avoid the cost and pressure of running a campaign) or only launch on getting 800 prelaunch followers on KS. This could take more time or less but would make us confident of raising the bucks that we need etc. What do you guys think? Please let us know in the comments*
Thanks all - More in Nov ;)
Rory
From a sort of sunny UK. We are back from beautiful Glasgow after our very first World Con, which for those who might not have heard of it is the longest running Sci Fi Convention it started in 1939. It was Scotlands turn to host and it was amazing. (I mean some people can't hack it ;-) see the photographic evidence below, in Holly's defence it was a 4 day con!)
We met loads of new fans and crossed paths with researchers actually working on Interstellar Studies, naturally they walked away with a copy ;-)
Good timing really, as World Con is going Stateside for the next two years, Seattle 2025 and then LA in 2026!
The next half of the year is continuing much like the first half, day jobs, comic work and peppered with more comic cons. We will be attending LICAF for the first time in Sept (27-28th), which is in the Lake District, so very much looking forward to the picturesque setting by water. October brings the MCM London, our local comic con and rounding out the year back north with the first con we ever did Thought Bubble in November. What a way to see out the year.
This is where you can find us at the Lakes International Comic & Art Festival - Table 2
We have TWO new brand new Inked pages from Issue Five, WITH SPOILERS, or without as long as you don't look too long / read it! ;-)
All digital rewards that are ready have been sent to everyone AND over 92% of surveys have been completed which is FANTASTIC news. There's only about 27 surveys left to complete. If you're one of those, need any help, or survey has gone astray, drop us a DM and we can get you sorted. Or click here to get your survey
As you know we close out each comic with the front cover for the next issue on the back page, and we've just had the artwork in for the front cover of Issue SIX and it is INSANE!
We will save more of the reveal for the next update ;-) but in the meantime, here's a little teasssse....
And another....
That just about brings us up to date on where we are and what's been going on. More at the end of this month!
Cheers everyone!
Holly & Rory
Hello gang! Just a quick one to say check your inboxes /‘spam and promo folders as the Backerkit surveys should be landing in your inboxes as I type.
Digital rewards that we have completed can be downloaded at the end of your survey - so that’s Arks Volume one, Arks issue four and Arks Proximan.
Once we have issue five and the Polyptych we’ll upload them to your surveys but that won’t be until the end of the year.
We’ll obviously be keeping you updated on the comics progress with a monthly update!
Thanks everyone - and as ever - any queries with Backerkit drop me a DM and I'll look into with them.
Cheers & happy downloading
Holly
We are just making some adjustments following feedback from Backerkit, we'll then have the smoke test (where 5% of surveys are sent as a test) and that all being well, the rest will follow at the end of the week/early next!
I'll drop another update to confirm when all surveys have been sent just incase the email ends up in your spam/promo and junk folders!
I've put a bit more information about what Backerkit actually is, a note on shipping the physical comics & shipping fees, charging cards as all of that will be happening later in the year...
It's a neat survey system to finalise your reward preferences as well as shipping details & postage, helping us to ensure that we get everyone their pledges.
Everyone can easily check what their original pledge was, and if they have something digital to download you can see it/find it via your survey.
It's also where we will add any new digital content like the Polytpych screensaver and the pdf of Issue Five.
In the past we've had brilliantly timely responses, allowing us to get, names added to the comics, print totals calculated etc. So once they hit your inboxes if you could check & complete as soon as possible, even though we are ahead of the game, that would be really appreciated. The emails will look something like below (and def check your spam/junk mail too).
As we are fairly early with our survey, we won't be charging any cards for postage, or additional items until we are closer to shipping the physical comics later in the year around December. The survey will still prompt you to update all your details to help check counts on orders and getting names in the comic and card details etc But no payment will be taken and we'll send out an email before we do so next year.
Once Arks Issue Five is completed we'll upload the digital version to Backerkit too - but we'll drop a note to let everyone know about that nearer the time and before charging any cards.
Getting the survey out in the next week does mean that our Pre-order store will be opening shortly too so any folks who missed the campaign, can pick up copies (digital /print both available) - we'll share the link in the next update!
Last bit on this! Promise! We're using whole order shipping weights again. We feel that it offers the best value to you guys, what with postage prices on the rise, and as our comics have a fair few pages, it means they can just edge over into the next weight once you include packaging. Leaving a fair bit of unused postal 'space' before reaching the tier above.
But that does mean that you may be able to add (if wanted) additional copies, without seeing (on occasion depending on whats selected) the postage price changing at checkout. Worth a look.
Think that's it for now, but if anyone has any questions please feel free to DM me, especially anyone who is new to Backerkit, I'm happy to try and help ;-) and if I can't I'll check in with the amazing Backerkit team (cos I'm still learning all the ways of Backerkit!)
Thanks so much!
Holly