Nat Iwata's Blog

New storefront on Society6.com! A bunch of my art is now available as prints of various sizes and formats. Check it out here: http://society6.com/NatIwata

MY FIRST TIME-LAPSE VIDEO. A DRAGON REQUESTED BY MY SON :) a deer pretending to be a goat. subsequently, goat is uncomfortable. My oldest boy asked me to draw "a giant that protects people."

Well, after months of thinking, scheming and planning, the Kickstarter campaign for the Steampunk Pirates Bicycle Card Deck is now LIVE! The hosts of LiveSpeak Radio were gracious enough to have me on the show for a live kick off, and so far it's going amazingly well.

It's been less than 2 hours at this point and my fantastic backers have pledged over $4,000! Insanity. You all rock...and roll...all night long...sweet Suzie. (bonus point to anyone who can name the movie this is referenced from).

It's always a humbling experience to see the level of support people offer me with my projects. Ok...gotta go hit "refresh" obsessively.

The proofs came today for my Elves & Orcs deck. It's easy to get so far into these projects, all the work, the money spent, and just come to view them as another product. Today when a tube containing the hard proofs of my latest deck arrived, Erin and I unrolled it and took a few minutes to look over the result of many late nights and hours and hours of work. I wasn't particularly excited, but as the day wore on I think I allowed myself some room to say "hey, I made that. That's pretty neat."

It is neat, and the cards look great. When I look at them I don't just see my art, but the hundreds of people, some literally pictured on the deck, that made my little dream into something I could hold, feel and be proud of. Thanks :)

With the Steampunk Cthulhu deck finished and in the backer's hands, the Elves & Orcs deck being printed by USPCC, I'm now moving on to my next endeavor, the STEAMPUNK PIRATES BICYCLE DECK! 

I've told a lot of people, the project has been approved by KS, and now I'm drawing, tweaking, getting feedback, and preparing to launch on Sunday September 22nd at 2:30pm PST. The butterflies are there, the fear of public failure, the anticipation that something awesome could happen, reminds me of playing music on stage when I was a kid. But the best part, just like my many years as a band nerd, is that I'm not doing it alone. I've got a whole group of people that I know and trust nerding it up right alongside me. 

I'll be hitting that shiny green 'launch' button on air with the hosts of LiveSpeak Radio Justin, John and Alan. These guys interviewed me a few weeks back and have checked in a couple of times on KS related progress. 

As with previous campaigns I'll have some really great early backer specials, the best being 50 first come first serve decks at only $6, US shipping included. So mark your calendars, and hopefully someone will pledge so that I don't look like a boob on the radio. 

I came home from a vacation at the coast a couple of days early to sign for delivery of my first custom Bicycle deck! 4,000 decks of cards, weighing over 900lbs! The driver almost didn't make it past the tree lined driveway with that huge FedEx truck.

It was very cool to finally see the deck in person. After staring at the digital files for months, it felt like meeting an old friend to finally hold the cards in my hands.

Hopefully this will help my backers know that I'm a man of my word and can deliver a quality project, at least close to on time. In the meantime I'm working hard on the final bits of art for the Elves & Orcs Bicycle deck, with only a few cards left before I can submit the art to USPCC.

Oh, and I want to give a huge THANKS to Printsync Inc! They handled all the packing, labeling and shipping for the 1,200 some rewards that went out. They were great to work with and were so reasonably priced, but most of all they let me focus on the art instead of packing boxes.

Just barely scraping by in the final day, my wonderful backers pulled through, pushing the project over the funding goal! I was out at a pub for my birthday, and it quite the scene seeing my family and friends counting down the end of the campaign (rather loudly) and then toasting its success. THANK YOU everyone!

Now I need to get to work :)

I haven't posted in a while, as I've been busy launching a new card deck on Kickstarter! The Elves & Orcs is a dual themed custom Bicycle deck where the red suits are Elves and the black are Orcs. Check out the widget on the left to see how funding's going and how much time is left. Thanks to everyone that's contributed so far!

I'll be posting more art and car reveals in the coming days, so stay tuned.