The Newsblade ~ Let's Dream Big

[2 new Swords episodes, 3 new Stars episodes, some extras]

Last night I attended the 48 Hour Film Festival Finals! There was a lot of really strong competition!

You can watch the winners here - Spoiler Alert, Party Puffers and Once Upon A TIme There Was You are all very chefs kiss emoji

You can watch our entry The Bad Tasting Hero here! We didn't win Best Production Design in the end, but being in the finals is still a huge accomplishment.

---

I am setting new Community Stretch Goals and I'd still love your input.

Since the topic of Steel Tribe has come up, I got a lot of flak when I suggested putting it as a stretch goal before. The prevailing thought was something like "why should I financially support Swords when I want Steel Tribe? This feels like a scam!" What I think those people fail to understand is that it has always been my plan from day one for Swords to build a foundational support for me to tell more serious, self-contained stories, build a team and support a fledgling industry of New Zealand webcomics and I am like... halfway there. I would LOVE to disappear for 4 years and come back with the next Sandman or Watchmen. I will disappear at some point to make the next serious-business graphic novel everybody loves forever. It's just a matter of when.

Let me dream a bit big here and pull the future closer:
At 1500 patrons I will upgrade from Silver to being a Gold Tier Sponsor of Wellycon; and will become a Sponsor for Great Games With Pals. I will also fill in every single Character section on the swordscomic.com archive as a treat.
At 2000 patrons I will become a Platinum Tier Sponsor of Wellycon; and will become a Sponsor for the Pav awards; and will start releasing Steel Tribe in whole chapters as a Patreon exclusive 100ish-page story, destined for a physical book release.
At 2500 patrons I will become a 48 Hour Film Festival Sponsor for Animation (if they'll take my money!) and I will hire another artist to work with me on comics and animation part-time.
At 3000 patrons I will open an online store that isn't in partnership with any overseas brands so I have complete quality control; will have Quest Sprout and Choplet plushies permanently available forever; and will start donating 25 native New Zealand trees on a monthly subscription to offset shipping from New Zealand

Some of your suggestions from the previous post, we can weave in as smaller goals - so keep 'em coming!

---

Now back to little things, I made Swords: Pens & Papercuts a much smaller project. It was never my intention to make a DnD killer or something that generates revenue, so I'm just doing my own thing that focuses on being free, quick, collaborative and entry level. I'll be happy to take on your feedback to make it better (but not necessarily much bigger) if you'd like to be added to the credits.

Stars is back! I am taking $20 donations per episode like I did earlier in the year if you'd like to request any particular character get more screentime. Thanks to Arwen for requesting more of Dusk the sleepy space... kangaroo? weasel??

Here's a graph of my productivity mapped across every Newsblade letter since I started doing them 63 weeks ago. The blue and yellow bar are both Swords so it looks a bit wavier than it really is. Plenty of other life events like shipping Cut The Deck explain some of the dips (and also being human). That very tall Stars section was our previous Crunch-a-thon.

I have to do my taxes this week, which is always a bit painful. I've also still got more Sticker Club to send out too.

A man has been pooping on my street and I had to pick it up or nobody else would!! Straight on the concrete!! You CAN beat Wellington on a good day. I've also been having a lot of severe headaches lately.

This week I've been keeping up with Taskmaster UK, Taskmaster AU and playing frankly, a shitton of Silksong by staying up until 3am. Some of the bosses are infuriating, but I always prevail eventually. But I'm just built different.

That's it! Stay hungry for the future. Time to go make something. See you next week!