Short Summary
Hey everyone! Stephen here. If you're not familiar with who I am, I'm a big fan of Ally from Titan and am one of the biggest supporters of the Titan Cards YouTube channel. I, with the help of some community members, produced a set of cards known as Year One to commemorate the first year of the channel Ally built. We spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars of my own personal money to produce Year One in limited quantities for Ally to distribute to the community. You can see her open the gift here:
We're currently working on Year Two, and we'd like your help to make it the best it can be. I can't spend the kind of money I did last time to produce Year Two in any real quantity. Year Two is nearly twice the size of Year One, and the community is over three times the size it was when I started Year One.
The set will be produced regardless of the outcome of this campaign, just in very limited quantities as a much smaller gift for Ally. With your help, we would like to make this set the best it can be, make it available to anyone who wants it, and remove some of the distribution burden from Ally.
What We Need & What You Get
We calculated the projected art costs using the same artist from Year One, considered volume order discounts, and added Indiegogo platform fees to arrive at the goal for this campaign. Reaching the goal means there is more money for art and production/distribution costs are completely covered by the community. Exceeding the goal means additional perks via stretch goals, opportunities to work with more artists, faster turn around through a rush art and shipping budget, and reasonable compensation for Ally for all the autos she'll be signing.
Anyone who backs the campaign at any perk level, or contributes at all financially will have the option to have their name on campaign exclusive short print (SP) cards as a thank you for all the help. We do reserve the right to reject any names deemed inappropriate for the nature of this set.
Certified First backers will receive one Year Two deck with campaign exclusive SPs and a collection of super short print (SSP) cards exclusive to the campaign. This special collection will include autographs, a special card to recognize the first 150 backers, and a surprise or two included with their deck.
Year One backers will receive one Year One Second Edition deck, an error corrected second printing of Year One.
Certified Completionist backers will receive a collection of one Year One Second Edition and one Year Two deck with campaign exclusive SPs.
Certified Rudy backers will receive one case of 12 Year Two decks, each with campaign exclusive SPs, and a super super short print (SSSP) card exclusive to the campaign in a custom printed box.
Given that we are inexperienced at crowdfunding, we wanted to keep the campaign fairly simple to help ensure its success. We do have plans for stretch goals, and you can read more about those below. This is a campaign entirely by and for the community, and we want to do everything we can to make it a success.
About Year Two
We originally set out to create a set of cards to capture the highlights of Year One so that Ally would have an easy, and very meta, way to look back at all she had accomplished. We ended up succeeding, but more than that... we created a celebration of the community that grew around her. Year Two leans heavily into that, with 4x as many community cards and many more meme-able moment cards.
Year One was a 52 card set with Moments, Community, Fashion Icon, Cosplay and Art subsets. Year Two expanded to a 97 card set with all subsets returning and the addition of an entirely new one: Gags (joke/reference cards). Niv even has her own Art card this year!
We've been collaborating via Google Sheets and Drive throughout the year to build a list of card ideas, manage the project, and design the cards. We are in excellent shape to wrap up all card design shortly after the end of Year Two. Art will take longer as I can only budget so many commissions a month, but hopefully this campaign can help with that.
Stretch Goals
We set out to fund a passion project by a community, for a community... not to profit off all the hard work Ally has put into building Titan Cards. With higher order volumes come lower costs for everyone, and we want to pass on as much of that excess to Ally and the community as possible.
With that in mind, we've come up with a few plans for bonus rewards should the campaign meet certain thresholds. We want to keep the focus on the goal in front of us, so we will update this section with new goals as previous goals are achieved.
Risks & Challenges
The single biggest challenge we faced with Year One was delays and the resulting missed deadlines. Most of those deadlines were self imposed, as nobody was really expecting it... and most of the delays were out of anyone's control. It was an excellent learning experience, and it's part of what has led us to be so realistic, even bordering on pessimistic, when it comes to the delivery date. We don't want to set ourselves up for failure, or add any more stress than necessary to the campaign or the project.
Our second biggest challenge with this campaign will be shipping the rewards. We're, as a team, as experienced at shipping out orders as we are at running a crowdfunding campaign. We've done enough research to get safe shipping prices globally, but that's as close as any of us have come to bulk mailing. Thankfully, Ally has offered to assist in shipping... and most of you probably know, that is something Ally is very experienced at.
We rose to meet all the unknown and unforeseen challenges of Year One, and we're confident we are well prepared to minimize and conquer the challenges of Year Two.
Other Ways You Can Help
We know not everyone can afford to or is interested in contributing financially, but that doesn't mean you can't help the community reach its goal!
We'd appreciate you talking about this campaign with anyone you think might be interested, or sharing it on any platform you frequent. Any and all help is greatly appreciated by us all.
Thanks for taking the time to read and consider this campaign!
Privacy Policy
We will only use your personal information to ship your perks to you. We will not retain your information once it is no longer needed. We will not share your information with anyone other than shipping companies, as needed. Perks requiring a name can be substituted with a name of your choice (within reason) or opted out entirely.
