[Background Blog] Midwest FurFest 2023 Update!

Hey Patrons, Compymono here!

As some may have missed our announcements on our Twitter and Discord, we attended MFF this year as Pawprint Press! There was a lot going on the past month and more in preparation, including lots of travel, planning and design work from myself. So I apologise for not being able to update this page until now.

I prepared a lot of announcements and promotional assets while travelling for this event, many of which the morning or hours before posting due to my tight travel schedule from Australia to various locations in the Unites States. (Mostly to take product photos of upcoming plushes!)

While on the plane to the United States, I completed story editing for a new sub-chapter of Astatos Chapter II, along with Tao working on the Chinese translation revisions afterwards. Which means I’ll be ready to start getting back into some cutscene scripting after I get home.

Next I designed some banners, wrote marketing text, and prepared the website for our Black Friday sale nearly immediately after my arrival in the US.

With the sale out of the way, we worked on finalising what we needed to put our MFF Dealer’s Den booth together. This includes finalising the prints, designing business cards, banners, and signage for both Pawprint Press, and some of the games we represented at the convention. We brought a lot of stuff to the convention, so I had to design over 18 signs!

While @Relax_Lion designed some new Nekojishi: Lin & Partners stickers for the convention, hopefully we’ll be able to do banners and business cards for that game next time!

While visiting the Pawprint Press warehouse in California, I had the opportunity to use some of the facilities to get last minute photography done for the convention! This included photos of the stickers, and blind boxes that would be appearing at MFF, and would be used on social media leading up to the convention.

During the prep day for the convention I also released Astatos v0.7.4! While I finished the build in advance, I found some last minute bugs I needed to fix by accessing my PC back in Australia on the convention internet. (It was very very slow)

On the first day of the convention Pawprint Press launched the William Plush from The Smoke Room by Echo Project! I helped out on the photo editing and the design of the page and announcements. (And then trying to get it posted while our Dealer’s Den booth was super busy with customers)

The following day, Pawprint Press also announced the upcoming release of Pawbs! These were actually on display the previous day at our booth, but we decided to focus that day’s announcements on the William Plush.

As usual, I did the photography and some design work on these. It’s a shame they couldn’t arrive in time to be sold at the convention, but I’ll be looking forward to their release later on.

With the convention over, I’m making my way back home next week! It was great getting to see so many fans of Pawprint Press, Studio Klondike, and FVN I’ve worked on in general. Not to mention meeting so many other team members in-person. (Although the setup leading up to the convention was a little stressful)

In the coming days, I’ll also get back into my usual work on Nekojishi: Lin & Partners, and Astatos! Without needing to worry about preparation for this convention, things should be able to move forward a bit faster.

PS: Progress on Beek v2.0 has been moving forward. Most of the mechanics have been re-implemented except for progression while the game is closed, notifications, and achievements. Although this project isn’t on the same priority as my other two, hopefully it doesn't take too much longer to finish up.

Since things have been quiet the past few months I’ll be sure to put out a few more updates throughout this month. Thanks for your support Patrons!

- Compymono