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World of Eragon - Collectible Saphira Statue

Created by Wraithmarked Creative

Saphira, Queen of the Skies, as imagined by Christopher Paolini himself!

Latest Updates from Our Project:

The Results Are In! Finished Art! New Pin Prototype!
14 days ago – Mon, Feb 03, 2025 at 11:44:28 AM

The Saphira statue is getting pulled from the Late-Pledge store after February!

Hey all! Bryce here! I apologize, I said it a bunch in comments and stuff, but I never formerly announced that the statue was getting pulled from the pre-order sales after February! 

As you guys can see from the result screenshot bellow, most people DID want the statue up for as long as we could make it available. However, it wasn't anywhere near the majority we would have needed to feel comfortable allowing that, so in the end we decided to go with the compromise of keeping Saphira available for 3 months post-campaign and pulling her at the end of February.

We realize that 70% of you wanted a different specific outcome, but hopefully you can see why we had to split the difference and go with the middle ground. Hopefully the 31% of you who wanted it to only be 1 month will understand that nearly 70% of people wanted 3 months or more, while on the other hand those of you who voted for "until prints #s are finalized" can see that more than 60% of you wanted 3 months or less.

Thank you everyone who participated, and let me know in the comments if you have any questions!

PLEASE NOTE: As mentioned in the campaign, there may be one more opportunity for people to purchase Saphira after all pledges and late-pledges are accounted for. This will only occur IF there are any units available from our security overprint (done to account for damaged/flawed units), and even if they are there would only be an EXTREMELY LIMITED number available.

Joshua has finished the Certificate of Authenticity Illustration!

Check THIS bad girl out! Full approval from Christopher, myself, and Joshua! SO HAPPY WITH THIS!

Also, the Oversized Saphira Pin (Prototype)!

Hiya! Heather here! We’ve finally received feedback from Christopher and his team, so now it’s only fair to show off what we’ve been working on!

Saphira, in all her glory!

Here she is - the Saphira prototype! Just like the other three designs we showed off in the last update (Flaming Zar'roc, the World of Eragon emblem, and Saphira's Runes), this one will also have a minor change: we’ll be reducing the amount of scales on her neck to lessen the clutter! The added glitter affect to some of her scales will really make her pop! Hopefully you all think so, too!

Prototype of a less-scales design

To reiterate, we'll be reducing the amount of scales on her neck (example above), and we'll be keeping spots of glitter on her! Doing both makes her look a bit cluttered - so merging the two concepts will really round out her final design!

Everyone loves a gif! So shiny! - May take a moment to load fyi!

Why prototypes?

We like to get this small order to ensure our designs translate well and the colors look as good as we expect. A good example of this in action was our previous "YouTuber Pin" campaign. We had some pretty cool designs, but the colors we thought looked good on screen didn't translate well in reality. So getting the prototypes ahead of time helped us make sure the final production run was perfect.

One final note…

We just wanted to take a second to reiterate that this project is due to be fulfilled in January 2026! We’ve had a few folks reach out to ask where their items were, so we thought it may be a good idea to just remind folks that we’ve still got a ways to go! As always, thank you all again for the support! Stay tuned for more updates!

Happy New Year! Have Some Pin Pictures!
about 1 month ago – Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 11:15:28 AM

Hey everyone - Happy New Year!

For those new to Kickstarter and/or Wraithmarked, we wanted to remind folks that we like to post updates once to twice per month to ensure you all know we're staying on top of our projects; sometimes in that period there's nothing new or exciting enough to share! When that happens, we still post just so you guys know we haven't forgotten about the campaign, we're just waiting for updates from the artist/printer/designer/etc!

Now that's out of the way, we DO in fact have something exciting to share! 

Ta-da! Everyone 'ooh' and 'ahh'!

Here are some of the prototype designs our own Heather Shields (hello, it’s me!) has illustrated. These designs and sizes are mostly finalized, the only change to these being the Flaming Zar'roc enamel pin will be slightly larger! Take a closer look below!

SAPHIRA Runes Prototype Enamel Pin
WORLD OF ERAGON Prototype Enamel Pin
FLAMING ZAR'ROC Prototype Enamel Pin

As always, thanks so much for being a part of this campaign! We'll be posting pictures of the oversized Saphira pin once we iron-out some final details, so stay tuned!

Just to reiterate an important note for folks who have not yet completed their surveys, if you haven't seen your invite email as of yet and you backed while the campaign was live, please take a look at the following:

  • Spam Folder: Survey emails can occasionally find their way to your spam folder. If you don't see anything come through from Backerkit check your spam folder first.
  • Apple ID Email Addresses: If the email address tied to your Kickstarter account is a secure Apple ID address, the survey email may be blocked entirely. The email addresses look something like this:  "[email protected]".  If you're not seeing the email from Backerkit, check to see if your email address looks like one of these.
  • If after checking everything, you can't find your survey, please send an email to [email protected] and we'll help you get access to your survey! Please don't comment here as it's likely to be missed!
     

A quick fly by to assure people about their shipping fees/surveys requests! And an art update!
about 2 months ago – Fri, Dec 27, 2024 at 08:17:06 AM

Hey all! Bryce here! I'm still the only person online right now, which is one of the reasons I wanted to do a quick drop-in and assure people that if you haven't received your survey links (or heard back about a refund request) yet, please don't worry! We ARE getting your tickets sent to [email protected] requesting your links, and they WILL be answered. It's just terrible timing with the holidays and everyone being gone.

The team will largely be back Monday, so we'll really start tackling the backlog next week! We apologize for the delay in getting survey links (and refunds!) to everyone, but I wanted to assure you it's only because Christmas/Hannukah has us short-staffed, and things will get moving again in Jan!

ART UPDATE!

Wanted to give you guys a quick update on the bonus illustration we're providing as an apology for the excess shipping fees some 10% of you suffered in the first 24hrs the BackerKit was online! This is FAR from done, but Joshua Raphael is working on the color balance right now and getting feedback straight from Christopher through us! This is gonna look really good on the back of your Certificates of Authenticity!

Rough color testing of Saphira illustration WIP!

We hope everyone had a great holiday season, and talk soon!

-Bryce

A reminder to complete your surveys! Update on keeping Late-Pledges open! Update on extra shipping fees refunds!
about 2 months ago – Sat, Dec 21, 2024 at 06:47:02 AM

Hey all! Bryce here with a super quick series of updates, mostly so you guys know we're still working on/keeping an eye on everything even through the end of the year!

PLEASE REMEMBER YOUR SURVEYS!

I know some of you are waiting to complete your surveys until after Christmas/New Years, but if you aren't deliberately delaying completion, I highly recommend you fill your survey out asap! 

Only about 76% of you have completed your surveys at this time, and we usually have about 90+% filled out by now. Every campaign we have about 4% of people who fail to remember their surveys, and many of those people don't ever get their product because we have no way of getting the information from them before we have to close the project to eliminate an impossible amount of campaign clutter building up.

We REALLY want to make sure everyone who backed this project gets their statue, so please please make sure to get to your survey asap!

You WILL be able to update your addresses anytime you want till shortly before we start fulfilling in your region, so if that's a concern please don't worry about it.

If you have any questions let me know!

LATE-PLEDGE TIMELINE UPDATE!

Firstly, thank you to the 2129 who have partaken in the survey to decide how long the Late-Pledge period will be open for! We aren't making the call right now, but we can tell you the period will not be "as long as we can"!

While we appreciate the largest portion of voters wanted us to keep it open for everyone as long as possible, just over 60% of total voters have asked for it to be 3 months or shorter, so that's probably what we're going to do. We still want to give it a few more days before we make the call, but we're likely going to go with 3 months, as that seems like a reasonable happy medium where the period is open long enough for latecomers to have the opportunity to get a once-in-a-lifetime item but also not essentially make it an unlimited product.

EXTRA FEES UPDATE!

[Find more information about this on Update 19]

For those of you who incurred additional shipping fees and are waiting for your refund, just a quick update that they are being processed, just slowly. We only had one team member on the helpdesk this week, and she'll be out for Christmas and some extra time off before everyone is back in January, so handling tickets is slow going. However, we WILL get to everyone, we just ask for your patience given the time of year and the fact that we are a veeerrryy small team!

Cheers all, and Happy Holidays from Wraithmarked!

Extra Shipping Charge for Backers - We Come Bearing Refunds!
2 months ago – Tue, Dec 17, 2024 at 11:04:48 AM

Hi all! Bryce here, coming with an apology, an explanation, a solution, and refunds! 

If you already know what's going on and you just want to get to claiming your refund, you can skip to HOW TO CLAIM YOUR REFUND below!

THE PROBLEM:

When we launched full surveys yesterday, a problem occurred in some carts on final checkout: About 10% of you were charged extra shipping when you should not have been.

While this is normal IF you purchased additional add-ons during checkout, this is NOT normal if you didn't make any additional purchases before finalizing your rewards.

AN EXPLANATION:

TLDR: Bundled items that were supposed to get discounted shipping had their shipping instead calculated per the shipping of each individual item as though you had bought them individually instead of bundled.

Slightly longer version: Wraithmarked made a mistake while compiling our item lists in BackerKit. Three of our Add-Ons included more than one item (for example, the "All The Pins" bundle included 1) the Pin Pack and 2) the Oversized Saphira pin). When putting together the BackerKit, instead of creating a separate SKU (identification number) with unique discounted shipping for each of those three Add-Ons, we simply added the individual items together into those bundles.

This resulted in shipping being calculated as the total of the shipping for each individual item, rather than the discounted shipping for buying the bundle being applied.

Again, for example, the difference in the discounted shipping for the "All The Pins" bundle vs the individual shipping for the Pin Pack plus the Oversized Saphira pin was $2, which is why so many of you found yourselves with a surprise $2 charge.

THE SOLUTION:

The first part of the solution has already been applied. We corrected the issue yesterday, so any new surveys will not have this problem.

The second part of the solution is REFUNDS, which is the major reason why I am here. No one (who did not purchase additional Add-Ons on BackerKit) should have been charged an extra shipping fee! If you were charged an extra shipping fee (and did not purchase additional Add-Ons on BackerKit), we are here to get that back to you!

HOW TO CLAIM YOUR REFUND:

Send an email to [email protected] with the Subject "SAPHIRA SHIPPING REFUND REQUEST"

Please do the following:

  • Copy the following template
  • Fill out your name (as per your shipping information), your Kickstarter account email, and the amount you were charged.
  • Attach any screenshots you have of the overcharge. We understand not everyone will have screenshots, it just saves us from having to go and manually check that the overcharge amount is correct.
  • Again, please make sure the email Subject is "SAPHIRA SHIPPING REFUND REQUEST". Failure to use this subject may result in significant delay getting you your refund, as we will be using this subject line to sort and prioritize requests.

TEMPLATE:

Hi Wraithmarked Creative! I'm requesting a refund for excess shipping costs on my recent survey for the COLLECTIBLE SAPHIRA STATUE:

My name: XXXXX XXXXX

My Kickstarter account email: YYYYY @ YYYYY . YYY

The amount overcharged: $YY

OUR APOLOGY:

Ya'll, I am SO sorry about this. The smoke test surveys went out last week to almost 500 of you, but even with that many and 72hrs to test for issues, this one went completely under the radar. Bundled items in Add-Ons was a first to be done in this way by us, and combining that with the fact that it was my call to add so much during the campaign has me feeling awful.

We have already implemented two changes to our campaigns and post-campaign management that will help mitigate this in the future, but that doesn't change the fact that this happened here, and I'm very sorry.

The good news:

If you've ever been privy to a Wraithmarked screw-up before, though (and they DO happen, try as we might not to), you know I rarely come empty-handed. As an extra apology, all Backers who pledged for one or more statues (during the campaign or after) will be getting a small bonus illustration in their boxes! It will be on the backside of the Certificate of Authenticity, and feature amazing art from the incredible Joshua Raphael, who has done some incredible dragons like Magic: The Gathering's Moonveil Regent and my own Black Dragon for an older project.

Moonveil Regent by Joshua Raphael
Black Dragon by Joshua Raphael

Again, you have my sincerest apologies, as well as the apologies of those team members whose duty it was to ensure this kind of thing does not happen. At the end of the day, though, it's on me to make sure the final project is perfect, so this is on my shoulders. I hope the refunds and the bonus illustration will help alleviate the sting of this issue for those affected.

Thank you all - please send us those support requests as soon as you can. With the holiday season approaching, responses may be slightly delayed as we're running on a tight crew, but rest assured, we'll make this right! Happy Holidays to those who celebrate, and be safe!

Bryce O'Connor, CEO
Wraithmarked Creative, LLC