I've been working on a thing, and I'm going to take a few minutes to talk about it here.
These are tentative plans, not set in stone yet, but representative of the general direction things are headed.
This will be a short thread.
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The idea is to use this quarterly subscription to help fund the initial production waves of each of our new toys. If we can get enough people (50 or so) signed up, we'll be able to release an average of one toy a month all year, with the initial production run funded by the fanclub.
In exchange for that, the vanguard gets 3 toys per quarter, with at least one of them in a fanclub exclusive color scheme or with fan club exclusive accessories or packaging, plus a monthly behind the scenes video, early access to comics and cartoons and video games and things of that nature, and your choice of new posters or t-shirts when they're available.
If enough folks are interested, I'll even set up a discord channel where we can chat about upcoming releases, and folks can vote on which characters (or lines) will make it into the next production wave.
We'll also do a kind of prototypes and one offs marketplace, where members can purchase pieces that didn't make it into production, or the early versions of pieces that did (like the original GIANT HEAD versions of our Mysterious Air Pirates keshi toys, of which we made 5 or 6 before adjusting to something we could produce more consistently.)
If this (12 original hand made toys a year + digital copies of all of our video games, comics, cartoons, and fiction, + your choice of poster or comic or game cartridge twice a year, + behind the scenes and maybe discord) seems like the kind of thing you might be into, let me know!
I'm still working out the details right now, and trying to figure out exactly how it'll all work, and I'm very open to feedback and discussion.
Right now, if we were to do one new toy per month, we could go for 3 years on just the designs we already have finished.
When we make a new toy, the biggest expense is in the production the metal molds that we use to produce the toys. These metal molds currently runs us between $250 and $1500 for each new toy (depending on the complexity of the parts and the number of parts in the toy.)
This is very cheap compared to the rest of the industry, where similar productions tend to start at around $10,000, and can easily reach the low six figures.
But it's a lot for our very small team to have invested in a new line, especially when we're not doing regular events to help fund production.
If we had a group of regular contributors who could offset or wholly cover those initial expenses, we could bring new designs out more quickly (and free up more attention and energy to build out our marketing materials and secondary media in order to get us to a fully sustainable production!)
The alternative I've considered is launching a quarterly crowdfunding campaign for each of our new toy lines.
The benefits are the same (early access, limited edition colorways, optional add ons, etc) but without the ongoing commitment (and, under the standard crowd funding setup, no one gets charged if we don't raise enough to do a full production run.
I'm not sure I like this, but I'm open to being convinced.
So far, I feel less inclined to do crowdfunding than the fanclub route for two reasons.
1) We're going to make the toys either way, the fan club just lets us make them faster.
2) If I'm going to commit the effort to marketing a crowdfunding campaign every quarter, I could instead spend that effort marketing the fan club, or the toys themselves (or the comics, games, and cartoons that accompany the toys.)
That is to say, I'd rather build a relationship with someone that will last over time than scramble to close a single transaction.
We've figured out how to make injection molded action figures at a professional level for 1/10th the initial investment of the major players (which means we can sell 1/10th as many and still cover our expenses.)
We're doing all of this with a blend of recycled plastics (that we're recycling ourselves, in house) and a new PVC alternative bio-plastic that was custom developed to replicate the feel of a vintage action figure (And take paint! that was a real challenge), while being significantly safer to work with and more environmentally sustainable.
We're doing, as a team of two (well, four really. It's me @ajroach42 @djsundog, my wife, and my good friend Wanda Sue, with occasional support from the incomparable @MannycartoonStudio, but most days it's just me and sundog in the workshop) using consumer grade equipment, an array of open source software, and some techniques that were essentially impossible in recent memory.
It's working, people are responding to the toys and the characters and the stories.
We're producing video games and comic books and cartoons to support our toy lines, and we're doing it all because each of us deserves some joy.
All of us, everyone reading this and everyone ignoring it and everyone who will never see it, deserves some joy.
We deserve an alternative to the media oligopoly that ensures major companies only tell stories that support the status quo.
That's why our lead character at the moment is Kumiai-Ki, The Mighty Labor Union Mech and his team of pilots.
That's why our lead vilains at the moment are Geoff Bozo and Elmo Tusk, evil billionaires trying to suppress the workers and wreck the planet (and the skies.)
We're making toys, comics, cartoons, video games (and more) about people working together for a brighter future.
I want to release 12 new toys and 2 new video games and 4 new comic books and 4 new cartoons next year.
That's my goal.
And, with a little luck and a lot of help from you all, we'll be able to make this effort economically sustainable.
So if that seems like the kind of thing you want to be a part of, let me know.
You can sign up for our newsletter at https://joyfulrevolution.ghost.io
In a few weeks, when we're ready to launch the vanguard fan club, I'll send out an email to that newsletter with details on how to be a part of things. and a detailed breakdown of exactly what we want, and how we'll do it.
Of course, I'm a fediverse person at heart, so I'll also absolutely keep talking about it here as things get closer, and if you'd rather hear about it here than there, that's fine.
If you have thoughts or feedback or just want to chat about what we're doing, or what we could be doing, or what we shouldn't be doing, that's fine too. I'm around and open to it, let me hear it.
Early next year, we're going to roll out a fan club with a quarterly subscription.
I've been calling it the Vanguard of the Joyful Revolution. What do you think of the name?