STUDIO SOL UNION

With the holidays, new years, and other chaos, the new model production schedule got a bit mussed up, but we should be back on track soon enough!

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Forgot to post the release pack news for November, but MMF continues to hurt and push away small creators in favor of their top 100 and those that shell out hundreds of dollars extra for special treatment. While we were scraping by before this "new and improved" MMF system, we're now seeing about 12% of the income that we used to, which puts our future in extreme danger. But this is the season for cheer and happiness! Crush corporate greed with this month's pack of minis! We've got a selection of our scifi designs and our latest SFW pinup from our crowdfunding campaign!

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It's the best month, spooky month! There was good progress on pinup work for rounding out the MMF campaign rewards, but there was also a crippling back injury, which halted 2D work. November should hopefully be more normal.

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Display models and pinups for the Summer Sale season, oh my! The new pinup designs from the crowdfunding campaign are slowing getting done, should have a new design to share each month for a bit!

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It was a busy month, and August is going to be even busier!

So, real talk time, MMF is changing up their site, again, bad enough that they imposed a new "protecting you from AI fee" for every purchase made...staff agreed that they handled that poorly, and didn't do anything...

Now they're going to take even more from creator sales, and tax us for payouts...like what's the point of paying a monthly fee to be here? The site is making well over $50k a month, and that's not counting things like advertising and the actual printer company deals the site has. It's likely that the site is earning WAY more...so now they're making it even more difficult for small groups and independent creators to survive here. Many are leaving or forced to raise their prices, heck, they made a new cheaper store tier, but it takes away the crowdfunding and tribes access, but they take even more from the creators, so it's not worth it, even though that's the tier that the staff want groups like ours to be in. So yeah, utter shitshow. Creators and end users get screwed harder and harder while the guys that do almost nothing rake in more and more.

Will our prices go up? Hopefully not, we benchmarked everything to be as fair as possible and not predatory towards our customers (turns out pumping out a bunch of minis for super cheap to prey on impulse buyers is bad for the market, who knew?!). But since we don't pay for advertising, sales are dismal, not to mention that our products get us labeled as creative scum amongst many of our peers and money movers. But we might not be able to survive the big pinch if we can't rally against the profiteering. So we need you, yes you, dear readers, to spread the word of the Sol Union. Now go! Unite the people under the flag of our golden sun! The good of humanity will not be oppressed by tyrants!

Ahem. Well, in good news, we *should* have a new design release coming out every month for a bit. And there's a number of 2D art commissions in the queue so work's cut out for us!

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A small delay in new model production, but that's mostly for the crowdfunding supporters, we have lots of designs to release to the tribe still! We apologize also for customers making new purchases, MMF has snuck on a new "protection" fee/tax into the checkout process. We're not happy about this either!

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What a month, commission work for the Secretary game has been taking up the schedule, and competing with a series of unfortunate events. Like a rent hike, then a drawing pen breaking, then a headset breaking, then the laundry dryer breaking, then the keyboard breaking. This is what happens with old tech that gets used well past it's lifetime. But fingers crossed we'll see new model work starting in June!

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The seasonal change has brought a lot of chaos last month, and it hasn't slowed down! But we've officially started the production of the new pinup series from our Stardust crowdfunding campaign!

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What happened to this month, it feels like it just started! What happens when working logistics and prep for a new cycle of big projects. Starting next month we're going to begin work on the new pinup designs! Still got a lot of minis to share for the tribe in the meantime!

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What a month, such busy work trying to just stay alive, the Frontier Campaign served as a beacon of hope though. Absolutely stellar support from around the world! The customary tribe rewards have been sent out though, finally!

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https://www.myminifactory.com/frontier/stardust-saga-1302 We're live! The crowdfunding campaign has started and there's loot to be had! Come check us out for free models, help bring characters from dmitrys_futa, yinyue_art, and GigCherry to the 3D realms! And please be sure to share the link, even if it's just for the free models!

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Again, sorry for the delay, between getting the final touches finished for the Frontier campaign, and the new site features (and costs), it was hard to get around to taking care of the small work.

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Ough! What happened to the month?! Well, it's a busy season, and I was caught up in trying to recover from missing a month of work. For a special treat this month, it's a double pinup combo!

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A little later than planned, again the fates cursed me at the beginning of the month, this time long covid was brought into the house, and it's still kicking my butt... Still though, the month's pack should be up and available. And as the Black Friday sale will be happening soon with our entire catalog going for 50% off, there's no monthly discount code. Fingers crossed I can get back to my usual work schedule, I had planned on starting a holiday themed grim fairy tale character series for the Turnip setting.

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Again, sorry for the long delay, each month seems to start with major psychic trauma... This time it was MMF's announcement that for *our* benefit, the print on demand service, Only-Games, will soon be charging a $25 monthly fee also. Wow...great...I'm paying $25 a month here on MMF and only getting about $10 back...and on Only-Games I get...$2....This cannot continue... So there's been a lot of clerical work and stress otherwise from the mounting starvation and malnutition involved with giving money to sites so that I have the *priviledge* of giving them a reason to exist and to take even more money from sales. So the press screws tighten ever more seemingly in hopes of driving away small creators. Still, there is no going quiet into the goodnight, though the crowdfunding project schedule is going to be pushed back until January because everyone wants to do December crowdfunding.....but on a better note there's plans for more free models for Turnip28 planned. These are good personal practice for getting better at the 3D modeling stuff, and hopefully there will be some new scifi stuff when the skills are improved.

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Sorry for the delay, it's been a busy month with attending to wedding duties and getting into the swing of doing 3D sculpting for prints. So keep your eyes peeled for new free models! There's at least a couple planned out.

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With the new welcome pack, there's a bunch of new models for everyone, but we're also including the full Cyberite collection! The MMF servers have been acting weird, and I guess this has delayed the summer sale also...so if the rewards aren't showing up in your library, just let me know and I'll ping the MMF staff.

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As we continue with our 2nd year of tribe operations, we've expanded and simplified our welcome pack! From 5 to 7 models, no more builder files, and a whole lot of extra coolness!

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Sorry for the delay, been avoiding MMF like a plague due to the upload system/server being terrible again. But the July pack is up, and hopefully next month will be a bit faster. There's been a lot happening this month otherwise, most of it on the NSFW side of operations, but hopefully we'll have some good updates to share soon!

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The June Tribe Pack is released! Sorry for the delay, not the latest of releases, but this month turned into a very busy one. Next month is likely going to be be busy also though, so keep your eyes peeled for updates!

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We've been going for 1 year now, we should have shut down long ago because of lack of support/interest, but pressure from MMF has said otherwise.... We're still beset by production delays, but packed up for this month is another pinup and some game infantry.

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Sorry again for the delay, no new SFW models were done, and production delays are holding up the MMF campaign for more NSFW models. Overall, April was a bad month! Let's just reset and try again!

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Sorry for the delay again, no SFW models made this month either!

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It's my birthday, so I'm running a sale here on MMF for 66% off all store items if you use the discount code [SolDay23], this code will be valid through the end of the month! https://www.myminifactory.com/users/Studio_Sol_Union Tribers this month also get a patented Studio Model Credit, good for 3 game minis or 1 display model or pinup of your choice. Just send a message with your pick(s)! And if you need help, feel free to ask!

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A bit of a fool's venture to be putting in work on a design as I brace for homelessness. The studio isn't getting enough sales/support each month to even withdraw from MMF without incurring penalties/fees, so there's not much chance of this design seeing the light of day...but these are the things we hope to make, accept no substitutions or ripoffs!

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Sorry for being so late, none of our new designs were close to being SFW enough for MMF, so we've packed up one of our popular existing pinup designs and some infantry game minis from the Mercy's Reach collection.

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Sorry for the delay, the intended model work didn't happen, and I got busy with finding an alternative due to some crunch work. A rocky start to the year, but hopefully this is the worst we'll have to deal with. [As I nervously teeter on the cliff of homelessness] This month's designs are the primary Mercy fleet ships! We'll get back to character models next month, promise, even if I have to whip all the modelers into action.

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Happy New Year, the first art piece of the new year has been finished. I'm taking 2D commissions, working on a comic, and still managing 3D productions. We should have a new pinup or 2 getting done this month, and more coming soon™. So alas, the new tribe pack might be a little delayed as work gets done, if things get pushed back too far, we'll zip up some previous designs to share.

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New to our store, and now added to the rewards for tribers!

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Our 2nd guest OC, from Cherry-gig, is now available in the store! And is the 2nd part of this month's tribe models release! Fingers crossed that the distribution system worked!

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Hooray and happy December to all! The Natyss designs are now complete as directed by Nyuunzi himself. If you want more of Natyss, be sure to track Nyuunzi down some appreciation for joining us. Now that we have a base model to work with, new designs will be much (eh, kinda), easier to make since especially the outfit is now settled on. Tribers of appropriate tier should have this reward available now, if not, well, MMF's systems are still imperfect so let us know!

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And it will be available for tribe supporters in the December pack!

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This month's pack is jammed full of big models, and a custom build. We're going to be starting production on a lot of NSFW projects this month, so there will be pinups included for tribe supporters when they're completed.

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Huzzah, the October Tribe Pack has been updated with a full collection of the new design series!

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After 5 months of delays, the work is almost done, just some minor fixes and then they'll be released with October's reward's pack.

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Looks like it should be working now, for some reason the servers prefer/default to zip mode, and even if there's no zips uploaded, if the upload mode gets set to zip, then all other files disappear. Either way, this should be resolved now, if there's any future problems, please let us know.

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thesolunion/stardust-saga There's only about a week left for our lewd 3D printable model (and art  pack) kickstarter, all our pinup catalog items are on sale for ~75% off with  these deals (we're also adding some free extra lewd game type minis to the $50 tier and up). Store prices will going up after this campaign is done, so now's the best time to get in on it. We've unlocked a majority of our  goals and even have a new character to add to the list of 3 from  Nyuunzi, Cherry-gig, and Rino99. It's not too late to secure a  commission for yourself also! We'll do 2D art and model up your  character!

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Apologies for the delays with these, but the 80's style Space Catgirls have been added to the August Tribes pack for early access. Please been sure to check your library rewards for the files.

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We've just released the October tribe model pack. We hope to have the EVA adventurer's finished for real this month. If not, then we're going to take the work away from the current modeler and task a new one with finishing the queue. Likewise, August's Space Catgirls *should* be finished sometime within the first week this month. So those with access to the older release will get the files added to that...and we'll likely add 1 of the poses to this month's pack as well. In more positive news, the kickstarter is proceeding well, we're more than half way through funding our guest characters, that means 4 unlocks are already available.

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Exciting news! The studio kickstarter is live!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thesolunion/stardust-saga

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I've added another unique hero build model to this month's tribe release pack. Again, apologies for our modelers falling through on delivery dates. We're pushing hard for getting everything on the queue done by the end of next month. MMF is pushing on tribes also for October, make or break, we're likely going to shut down the tribe in November barring some sort of miracle.

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thesolunion/stardust-saga We survived site review and have the prelaunch going now! Sign up early and get notified first thing when we go live to snag the earlybird deals and limited offerings like physical print delivery and commissions!

As for local productions go, we also got word that the spacecatgirls will be getting finalized towards the end of the month, so those with access to the pack will see updates soon™. We're also formally pushing the EVA adventurers back to October, this month's release pack will be updated with some other items as an apology.

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Looks like we might have to defer the EVA Adventurer release, so I'm going to be adding some extra models to this month's tribe pack. Starting with a kitbashed hero built from the Elite Daemon model that was already included. It was built up with only SSU bits and parts from other designs (the base isn't included because it was cobbeled together from other creators). But fingers are still crossed that our 3D modelers will be able to get out of their slumps and finish up the in-work queue. If we do get the EVA units done, this recent addition will be an lucky extra, because it's almost the month of the first of the two only holidays that exist. In related news, keep the eyes peeled for more stories coming up, including lore, but also a quick rundown of the build process for Beleth, one of the big perks of 3D printing is the digital kitbashing, but there's not much done for this aspect of the hobby. In other news though, we're almost done with setting up our long awaited NSFW kickstarter, so brace for impact when we get the pre-launch signup put out.

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Sorry for the delay, I learned that MMF's servers were having a time with deliverying tribes rewards, so the pack release was deferred until the issue was resolved. If you still haven't gotten the pack, please let us know and we'll try to get the problem solved ASAP. For this month though, we've included 4 models to start, and hopefully we'll be able to get the new EVA adventurer series finished before the month is out. We're still waiting on fixes for the Space Catgirls, so past supporters, please continue to bare with us during these rough times. We're also working hard to get the crowdfunding campaign going, it's fallen behind schedule, but we should be getting prelaunch going before the middle of the month.

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The old MMF server decompiled the organizational zip files, and now the listings have been updated. Hopefully they will retain their integrity at least until the next time MMF updates their systems.

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We're hammering out the final details and fixes for this design series, hopefully we'll be done in no more than a couple days. Once done though, they'll be added to the August rewards pack so all supporters will get access to the files.

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Family deaths and illness have stuck the studio staff hard, our schedule fell behind by about half a month and only now are we getting updates for this design series. Hopefully the last bits of the production will go quickly, but if they get done next month, we'll still include them with this month's pack. September will be for finishing up the EVA adventurers. Due to MMF's payroll snafu, we're still in debt to the site, but as we've been making poor sales and getting side lined by modelers...and there's been no improvements as of late, only a getting worse, we're still on track to close the tribe in October since we won't be able to meet the site standards for a tribe providing exclusive fresh content.

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While waiting on the Space Catgirls to get modeled up, here's a preview test print and paint for one of the designs we'll hopefully be releasing in full soon. It was also brought to attention that the July Tribe pack got nuked by the MMF server, so if you were supporting us during that month, the download should be working properly now/again. Though it's not listed, this model design and its variants are included!

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We're still in our death spiral, members leaving the tribe, no new blood, delayed production schedule and MIA modelers. It's looking like we're not even going to be able to get out of debt to MMF before we have to shut down the tribe. The new model series will be released before the month is out at least, so fret not! And since most of our support and sales comes NSFW operations, and MMF isn't focused on such, we'll see if we can get our 2nd wind with the coming crowdfunding campaign. Hopefully we'll be able to send our links for earlybird signups within the first week of the month. We'll see...we'll see...

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We decided to revisit the spacecatgirls concept, originally we wanted to do something more unique, but there's been an increased interest for classic 80's catgirls, so we're going to go with this new look. Still in tune with our house setting, we're going to build the design so that it will be printable as a human form also, eg. the tail will be a bit to add to slicing or printed seperately, and there will be multiple head options. Otherwise the poses will be similar to what was concepted prior in keeping the bendy and fairly alluring look appropriate for catgirls.

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Finished up a character study run rampant into some key art, but nonetheless, at the center of attention with this piece is something we hope to bring to the realm of 3D soon; a female Nephilim Void Knight. Hopefully too we'll be introducting the jump kits which will be also useable for the existing Void Knights. Future plans though, gotta work through the current backlog and, and and... We're going to be starting a kickstarter soon, more news on that later though.

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Argh! Or whatever a zombie says, barbarism and horror abound as we're now into month 1 of unlife. The tribe was supposed to be shut down at the end of June, but the fates (well, MMF's staff) have forced us to continue turning profits for them. I guess it all worked out in some ways, the new Extrema Bandit infantry got done, several months late, so we're using a majority of them for this month's model pack. Pushing back the public release even further! This means that our Catgirl Aliens are going to be pushed back even further also. And the EVA Adventurers will be done...uhh...one day...hopefully before September is out. We also released a new free model, I got inspired by some cool terrain ideas, so put my mechanical 3D skills to work. Artistic 3D stuff is still a ways outside of my comfort zone, so the detail work isn't the best, hence why it's free. I'll get back to 2D work and hopefully get some more public release writing done now that I can't afford to do print and paint work, though I miss doing lore entries. Feels like I'm also zeroing in on the big novel release also, but it will need significant rewriting as my understanding of epic storytelling grows.

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Due to a clerical error on the MMF staff's side, we're now in debt to the our hosts and must sustain the tribe until the debt is paid. We're still working to get the last of our 3 latest model series finished, so it looks like we're forced to release them in a trickle fashion to conform to the need for paywalling new content. What a system...

We're also being pushed by staff to start a crowdfunding campaign, but if we can't get modelers to work, there's no point to collecting money...except that MMF would collect their cut, and potentially axe us for failure to deliver.

All this is causing great psychic pain...the fingers are still crossed though that there will be some form of minor miracle that will happen to allow us to continue with regular operations otherwise, we were supposed to be doing votes for new designs for July...but until we can clear our backlog, no dice on that front.

Maybe by September or October we'll be free from production hell, we'll see.

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Huzzah! June marks our 1st year of operation, and with that comes news, updates, and sales! Our primary MMF catalogs (Game Minis) are now updated with fully pre-supported models ready for printing. The pinup and display models will be updated in short order as well, but in the meantime, we have a 50% discount code for all items! Just use the code [SolSupport1] to take advantage of our celebration sale.

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Again, apologies for the lateness of the new models, this hasn't been the best month, but the new infantry series is now complete and the tribes reward package has been appropriately updated.

In other news, we've gotten our core catalog fully pre-supported, and updates to the listings has begun. This will be a slow process since the MMF file manager system isn't super straight forward, but it will be done soon! Then we'll move onto doing supported files for the display and pinup models.

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MMF's user interface issues strike again! Hopefully this post will show off the image better. We're still dealing with sidelining, but while waiting, after some 2D art commissions are finished up, the rest of (including our NSFW models) catalog will be uploaded to only-games for print on demand needs. There might also be some news coming soon regarding voting for pending model designs.

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We've got lots in queue, going so far as November as shown with the pictures here, we hope to work with 2ndDynasty on a collaborative ship project. More news on that sometime in late fall/early winter. Short term we're still getting through more complimentary infantry, we have 3 neutral forces in work;

• EVA Suit Type Adventurers

• Extrema Environment Bandits

• Space Catgirls from the 90's

And an addition to Mercy's infantry;

• Glamorous Castor Pilots

Once we get closer to finished with this list, we'll open up the votes and polls. So expect June or July for for regular voting to be starting. Fingers crossed anyway.

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Hurrah! The last model series is finally done and we have 1/4 of the soon to be released models now available for download.

Now onwards to prep work for next month's models!

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We're offering a special deal for April!

Anyone who joins SSU's tribe gets free access to Mad's Minis, where you can get the 2nd pose for our new Hive Queen design. And vice versa, anyone who joins Mad's Minis gets free access to SSU.

Go check em out!

https://www.myminifactory.com/users/madsminis

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Our print-on-demand store is now live with the full game catalog!

https://only-games.co/collections/studio-sol-union

We still have some addons to upload, along with the display models, but we're well on the road to having everything available for professional printing in April. This includes NSFW items, and each sale helps with our goal to have a fully presupported file catalog we can include with our digital downloads!

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https://discord.gg/zXm6FDtdu8

Come join us on discord, share your creative projects, chat about games, share dank memes, get the inside on studio business and more!

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We're in the process of having all our models pre-supported by the pros over at only-games.com. It's a costly venture and takes time to test prints for optimal results, but it will be done! Our current phase for this is prepping the files for transfer to OG. Several designs require a bit of optomization for the slicing systems, then we'll have a fully stocked print-on-demand store.

After our storefront on OG goes live, you can help us reach the $2000+ cost of getting vetted-professionally supported files to everyone by purchasing physical prints from that operation. This will not only directly push the programming process, but will help pay for the labour involved as we'll direct all funds back to OG until we have our entire catalog supported.

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