👀A Peek into Preparing the Dragon Kings

Hello everyone!

It’s been a whirlwind of a year, and we can’t believe October is already wrapping up. Right now, we’re incredibly excited to begin fulfilling the Dragon Hoard Keepers, but today I’d like to talk about this year’s Dragon Kings project and its happenings behind the scenes!

We know we’ve been quiet on the Dragon Kings front. While we’ve let our surveys simmer (they’re sent, but not locked down yet), Ryan has been hard at work transforming the campaign designs into polished design files. Today, we want to pull back and show a little bit of that process.

During a campaign, many of our designs are shown in a rougher state. While it’s possible to send those images straight to a manufacturer, providing our own crisp vector files guarantees the final pins will match our exact vision. This step gives Ryan the opportunity to dive deep into the art, make small tweaks, and refine the elements to make them really shine!

Mapping the Metal

Below is an example of our lineart layout. Here, the blue represents fully raised metal, while the red lines indicate half-raised metal that will remain subtly visible beneath a transparent enamel. These images are how we clearly communicate our intentions to the manufacturer.

At this stage, rough lines get smoothed out, and details are carefully pushed and pulled until everything fits perfectly. We always try to stay true to the original designs we showed during the campaign, but some elements naturally evolve to make the final product even better.

For example, Ryan just cannot resist giving the dragons claws. Or changing out the borders to match those used throughout our campaign to bring it all together.

Let’s take a look at each of these majestic dragons and see how they’ve evolved as they prepare for production!

What’s Next?

We are currently putting the finishing touch on the rest of the pins in the collection. Once all the design files are finalized and submitted to our manufacturer in the next month or so, we will officially lock the pledge manager.

We are so grateful for the patience and support of our backers. If you want to make sure you don’t miss out on any of these dragons, be sure to drop by the pre-order store!

Thank you all for joining us today. We hope you get to step outside, enjoy the autumn air, and have a wonderfully relaxing weekend!

Until next time,

Arielle + Ryan