Crossposting this from the campaign page!
So a few things from Editor Caitlin! First of all, we wanted to announce that, after consulting with our contributors, we’ve decided to change the charity we’ll be donating the zine funds to from the ACLU to the Southern Poverty Law Center. After discussion, we thought ultimately in order for the donation to go more directly to fighting bigotry and advocating for minority groups, we would donate to the Southern Poverty Law Center! There's more information about them on their website here.
Secondly, an update on where the zine is at! I realize on our last update post I indicated aiming to get the zine would be sent to print in “early September” when I actually meant “early October” so suffice to say, I’ve been a little frazzled for various reasons that I’ll get into later in this post. But first of all I wanted to give a more in-depth summary of what exactly we’re doing when we say “putting together the zine” and what still needs to be done. I’ll do a tl;dr version of it at the end, but here’s the detailed version for those of you that are interested in what goes into setting up a zine.
The zine itself is made up of 72 illustrations depicting the Major and Minor Arcana, and 72 accompanying pages of codexes, all by our contributing artists and writers. The tarot illustrations require only a little formatting to make sure they have the proper dimensions for print and the title of their card. The codex pages are a little more complex, since they’re given to us via a basic word doc and we do all the formatting to make sure they all have the correct layout and a uniform design. The final product of the pages looks like this (card and codex by @vlwv)
Depending on whether the files are properly formatted and organized, set up for each tarot and accompanying codex can take anywhere from fifteen to forty minutes. Aside from formatting, there’s also plenty of time spent on organizing spreadsheets, sending emails, and sorting out issues with files to make sure we have everything we need to put the book together.
Beyond the tarot illustrations and codexes, we have more boring book layout stuff we’ve been working on including: the cover, interior intro pages for each of the suits, title page, thank you page, contributor bio pages, end pages, etc. Basically all the stuff that will make the book look like an actual book and not just a bunch of random card illustrations slapped together.
Right now, we have all the card illustrations that are currently completed fully formatted. There are 11 cards currently “incomplete” for reasons that range from some minor file issues that can be easily fixed, to a person dropping out last minute and someone had to come in to fill their space (there are exactly 4 of these). There are currently 16 codex entries marked “incomplete” for similar reasons. Unfortunately while using the Tarot as a basis for the zine has been a lot of fun, it also means that we need to fill any unfilled spots or else there’ll be a weird open spot in the middle of the Suit of Swords.
We’re mostly behind on formatting the codexes (for reasons I’ll get to), so that’s our main area of focus in the coming weeks. The current tallies are-
Tarot cards formatted: 61 out of 72 (11 cards still being completed)
Codexes formatted: 5 out of 72 (16 codexes still being completed)
Right now I’ve scheduled it so I’ll be formatting 5 codex entries per day, with completion on that particular part of the zine on October 22nd. I’d really love to have the rest of the zine ready and formatted by then, but that depends on a few different factors, but rest assured we’ll be working our hardest!
And finally, some Reasons for the delays. Without getting into a ton of personal details, my current living situation has been kind of… a mess the past few months, and I’m currently at a stage where I’m actively getting ready to move, and will be moving mid-to-late November. Right now I’m a little overwhelmed trying to figure out an apartment, transferring/applying for jobs, and packing up my stuff. My day job has been giving me a lot of extra hours beyond what I’m used to since I work in a coffee shop and most of my coworkers started up school in September (and I have nothing but open availability), and because of the moving situation I wasn’t going to say no to the extra money. I also had a big stressful freelance thing I wrapped up just last week, which was taking up a lot of time. Basically, things have been incredibly busy and stressful and hectic and I haven’t been able to devote as much time to working on Arcana as I should. I feel terrible for letting life get in the way of getting this book out, and I can’t really make up for the lost time but I can work harder to get things done now, so that’s what I’ll be doing! Thank you for your patience and apologies for all the delays!
Anyway tl;dr, the book is nearly done, we’re waiting on 11 cards and 16 codexes to be complete with some formatting still to be done, estimated completion of most of it to be October 22nd!
