Archiving Clutch: Part 2

 Hey so it's been a moment right? I've been reaching out to quite a few more book companies, same loop as last time, I either get ghosted or have to politely decline absurd prices. So the lowest I've managed to find someone willing to scan my books for is about $465, which isn't too bad, and it's leagues better than the $5,000 price I was given my another archival company.

So I'm sure no one is asking, but I'll give it anyways, here's all the prices I've been hit with! (In $USD)

$3,000, $5,000 by one company stating that their order minimum was that absurdly high, $600 (leagues more affordable than a lot of the others), and again, $465 which is the best offer I've been given so far.

So this cuts me down just a little over $100 from the previous best price I was given, does that mean it'll be archived soon? Unfortunately not since my job currently pays me in pocket lint, and I have to save up for college and college supplies regardless. Before anyone brings up my Youtooz post, I had specifically set aside those funds since the September leak so that doesn't count B)

I've also tried reaching out to friends and friends of friends to see if anyone I may be very loosely connected to has a book scanner and would be willing to get it archived. I have a sneaking suspicion that book scanning is only supposed to be this expensive for large scale projects, but for some reason I must be looking in the wrong places.

So this whole journey has been a bit of a nightmare for me! I'm not giving up on releasing this book (yet) despite the fact it's been a month now of scrambling to get this out there to no avail. Maybe a few more book scanning and document archival firms later, we'll finally see a light at the end of this miserably long tunnel. And for now enjoy this photo of my kitten that I accidentally sent one of the firms when they asked for photos of the book:

This is Francis. Say hello to Francis.

And that's all I have in terms of updates on this book for now! Let's hope we see some good news soon...

Archiving Clutch: Part 1

As my friends and Skylanders modding community know, a month back, I came into possession of an authentic copy of Clutch, the Skylanders Superchargers developer art book. And ever since then I've been on a bit of a wild goose chase just trying to find an affordable way to scan this thing.

Now let's start back at the first point, me coming into possession of the book. For anyone reading this that doesn't know the significance of Clutch, this book was only ever given out to developers who had worked on the Skylanders games. Which means this book was never available for retail sale anywhere, making this one of the most highly coveted pieces of Skylanders media ever. And as the self-proclaimed #1 Skylanders fan, I found a way.

Some people might already know about the already existing archive but once you look at it, the photos are blurry, incomplete, ordered incorrectly, and some pages are missing as a whole. In total the book has 310 pages while the archive only has 287, which include photos of the special sleeve it's included in.

So my goal over these past two months off and on, has been trying to find a suitable way to get this book scanned, full pages and full color, once and for all so the art can be archived forever, and other fans can finally have a good look at the contents. Sounds easy enough!

It's not. It's really not.

Over the time I have been spending looking into the digitization of this book, I've contacted a few book scanning companies, and each time they either flat-out ignore me (that can't be good for business...) or I end up getting smacked in the face with absurd prices.

All prices shown are in USD

That costs much more than I paid for the book, mind you!

So far I've been Sierra Oscar Lima... (That's pilot speak for shit outta luck.)

In the meanwhile, I can't even truly afford a large-scale digitization project due to the fact that I'm trying to save up for college, and my paycheck doesn't really cover much. So now what? There's a second method I could go for, destructive scanning. It's a lot cheaper and hell, I could even do it at home for free, but I am adamant on not destroying such a rare book at the moment, and I would hate to see the spine ripped out.

I'm intent on releasing everything in this book to the public, but at this rate, it's going to take a while. I've been racking up small amounts of money from art commissions but it's not really enough to cover anything. I flat refuse to pay $650(USD) to scan a book that didn't cost nearly that much, but if push comes to shove and in a few years time I can't find any other solution, I might just have to bite the bullet.

It's a bit rough putting in the effort to preserve this book properly. Right now I'm taking the full cost of the project. The book, the time spent researching these scanning companies, and probably the scanning cost too. I've been wondering time and time again if it's even going to be worth it, I am not receiving anything in return, which I don't care too much about really, but when it comes to the fact that I'm shouldering huge costs and sacrificing time to release a single book, it's a bit disheartening.

Still, at the time of writing this post, I'm sure I won't give up just yet. I've been reaching out to a few more book scanning services, document firms, and the like. Maybe I can get Clutch into the clutches of the Skylanders community, but unfortunately, that won't be anytime soon.

IT'S YOUTOOZ TIME!!!

That's right! The Skylanders Youtooz have finally been released! The about- 8 Month- wait has been so worth it... Now all I have to do is wait uh, 5 more months for them to arrive. Yay!

(Terribly sloppily cropped photo of me watching the countdown, Can you blame me?)

I waited at this page for, well I didn't think about how long I was waiting as I eyed down the counter, but it was only several minutes. The second the timer ran down, I gunned it to each of their pages to throw into my carts, and blasted over to the check out, and watched my bank account balance drop significantly. 

Ouch. Who knew that spending money made you lose it...

This is the total for my order in the USA. It rounds up to about $111 USD. Nice. I don't know if shipping in other countries costs more (although from what I was hearing from other Skylanders fans, it's the same worldwide.) since it all ships out of China. Personally I think $21 shipping is a little bit absurd... Can't you do that package shrinkwrap thing too..?

I think it would be a lot cheaper...

My Skylanders Spending Woes

So whenever I get money, it also comes with a hard choice, to either save my money for potentially infinitely more useful items in the future, or buy more useless Skylanders merchandise. Of course, though the decision was hard (it wasn't) I have come to the conclusion that I need more useless Skylanders merchandise. So why not make a makeshift funny little merch review? Alongside this I suppose I should make a new tag...

I ordered A Spyro clock since my parents kept mentioning how I needed an alarm for the mornings. I managed to set it up properly and it works pretty well, I wish that the alarm sound was customizable or even Skylanders themed in some way, but it's a normal-sounding beeping that will gradually get faster until you wake up. The portal can glow and change colors, it turns off automatically after a few minutes. It took me a while to figure out but the alarm switch is on the back as a tiny little on/off-switch.

To everyone looking into this, there's a number on the bottom, ( Target 074100466F16973608-12/13 )

A small Skylanders keychain that I got, I think it's a flashlight of some sort since there's a little clear plastic piece with a tiny LED inside of it. But it uses these strange little circular batteries that I don't have and don't actually know what they are? But I carry it around now since the little portal can click in, similar to the 3Ds portals, though it is much much smaller than any 3Ds portal. Occasionally when I click it, sometimes it glows a faint blue for a moment, probably from the batteries left in by the previous owner.

A 3Ds case and stylus! (The case is more visible in the next photo) I like my 3Ds a lot, and I play Skylanders on it super frequently, and since I lost my previous stylus I decided that I could get a funny little Skylanders stylus to go with the case I ordered. There are multiple different 3Ds styluses actually, all with a little Skylander on top, from my memory there's also a Spyro and Terrafin stylus. The little Skylander on top bobbles around on a (pretty flimsy) spring, very cute. If only mine didn't break after two weeks... Now I have a normal stylus with Skylanders text plastered onto it and a super tiny Gill Grunt.

And here's a bit of a look at all of these things together, The Spyro clock has actually been waking me up consistently for a few days now. And again the Stylus is a bit flimsy, and the Gill Grunt snapped off... But that's okay since he fits beautifully on the tiny portal keychain at least. I also actually already owned a 3Ds case, one with spaces for game chips and accessories and everything, but this new one is also nice for simple carryability and getting bullied, 8/10 overall. Still a bit sad about Gill Grunt snapping off.