JUICD Patch Notes #3 - July

Hey everyone,

Welcome back to JUICD Patch Notes.

This is a little later release than we’d planned for this patch notes and I know you all are eager to get an update on what’s been happening!

(we’ve been super busy 😅)

Lets jump into it.

Product Updates

NEW PRODUCTS DROPPING NEXT MONTH!

Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who sampled and gave us feedback. We put a lot of those responses to work and it helped us lock down the release properly. It means a lot that you took the time.

Here's what's coming.. We'll be releasing 3 tubs, 3 RTDs and a brand new variety pack next month. We'll reveal all the flavours at the start of next month, but we didn't want to leave you completely empty handed..

So here's a sneak peek at the new look and flavours of the RTD flavours dropping:

Gummy Shark

Sherbert Twista

Guild Quest

It was a lot of fun reading through the responses for the greatest villain of all time guild quest. We were initially going to put the winners up against each other, but ran out of time getting ready for next month's release.

The creativity and effort people put in was really impressive. Made it hard to pick winners!

Winners of our Guild Quest have been posted to #🔎 │ guild-quests.

You'll each receive a $50 JUICD voucher to spend on the new launch. Keep an eye out for the next quest coming soon.

Guild Program

July Promotions

Congratulations to our new Realm Seekers!

Receiving the Realm Seeker rank means you've genuinely shown up for this community and we want to recognise that. It's our way of saying we see you and we appreciate it more than you know.

Each of you will receive our new Guild-only JUICD Decal for free as a little thank you from us (available tomorrow).

How Promotions Work

Each month we go through the Discord, sales, social media and find those who are going above and beyond as a community member. Whether that is:

• Interacting with the community
• Sharing your passion and cool wins
• Helping others
• Repping the brand IRL
• Introducing new people to JUICD

If you’re putting in the energy one way or another, we’ll notice.

Before we introduce the next rank, promoted members need to hold Realm Seeker for a minimum of 2 months to be considered. We want our guild progression to mean something and are tweaking how it will all work in the back-end.

JUICD TV Guide

Introducing the JUICD TV Guide!

Every month we'll be putting out a TV Guide covering all our upcoming community events and streams so you can see exactly what's on and plan to be there.

That could be anything from:

• Twitch packing/team streams
• BTS Discord streams
• Game nights
• Watch parties and movie nights
• + more

Think of it like a programming schedule but for JUICD. We want you guys to have regular things to look forward to every month, and this is how we plan to make that happen.

We'll release the full August TV Guide at the start of next month. But to close out July, here's what's on:

Games Night | Wednesday 29th July
Community game of Meccha Chameleon. Come join us! More info will be posted in Discord next week.

Discord Stream | Friday 31st July
We'll be drawing the EOFY competition winner, sharing a comic update and giving you a BTS look at what's coming in the next drop.

Comic Updates

As some of you know, our goal is to release our first edition comic book this year and finally bring the JUICD lore to life. I just wanted to share a little on what that process looks like with a super small team.

Storyline

Adam is the mastermind behind the JUICD storyline, with help from Mike, and has been working on this since the brand's inception 6 years ago. Originally we just wanted a cool character to go on our tubs, but very quickly it became a lot more than that. From there we've gone back and forth on what the world of JUICD looks like and what his story is.

There have been so many ideas on characters, lore, and world-building. I feel like the core vision has stayed the same as what you've seen from the world of JUICD so far, but over time certain pieces really began to fall into place and feel right.

Creating a comic has really made us take a step back and figure out the exact path we want to take and break the story up into small segments and issues. While this requires a lot of decisions, being a comic also gives us the ability to not go too deep into things we're not 100% sure of yet, while still keeping continuity.

Once we settled on the timeline of events, we built a document called The JUICD Universe. Inside we've created a wiki-style page for everything that exists in the JUICD world; all the characters, realms, items, cities, all of it.

It's an ever-evolving document, but it lets us really dive into the essence of the world and bring places and people to life with proper backstories.

Here's a look at a character I spent some time working on. I'm a huge Avatar: The Last Airbender fan and really wanted to have our own version of the Cabbage Merchant as a nod to the series and how much it meant to me growing up.

Once we were happy with the direction for the first comic, we created a basic brief for each page outlining the purpose and story that happens on it. This let us go through and make sure the story was actually enjoyable to read and had all the elements we wanted.

Draft brief

Sketching

Once the storyline was locked in, Adam would do initial sketches on an iPad based on the purpose of each page and the story it needed to tell.

This part is really really hard. There's a real balance between making something look cool, telling the story clearly, and not making it too complicated to follow.

A lot of the time, not all of the story elements is included in the brief is able to be conveyed on page, so everything you see has been added purposefully. 

And because we're not full-time comic book creators, you'll usually find Adam working on this on weekends or at night outside of our normal work hours. Which makes it feel even more special honestly.

From there, sketches go through an approval process with myself and other team members to make sure the direction is right before moving to the next stage.

Completed draft sketches

Outline & Colouring

Cesar is our longtime artist who worked on bringing the JUICD world to life 6 years ago, so it felt only right to have him be part of releasing our first comic book.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cesar Sillet (@cesarsillet)

Initial character concept drawings by Cesar from 2022.

He receives the initial sketch of each page along with a bunch of notes, and then works his magic on the outline and colouring.

Colouring/Outlining draft

Once we're happy, we finalise and repeat the whole process for the next page.

Manufacturing

We really want the final product to feel good in hand, and be something actually worth collecting.

We looked at a few different comic books we love as inspiration, and I spent a good amount of time reaching out to different manufacturers to get quotes, timelines, and sample packs.

Our first sample pack arrived earlier this month. Inside were test prints of our comic pages along with samples of different paper stocks and finishes.

The whole point of a sample pack is to test different paper weights and textures to make sure we land on exactly the right look and feel. We want the comic to feel like a traditional comic; not overly glossy, no thick book covers, nothing cheap.

We went through everything together and decided what we liked to pass back to the manufacturer as feedback.   

Adsy and Adam reviewing samples

What’s Next

We've finalised 9 pages out of the 16-20 we want for the first edition. So now it's just about getting those remaining pages done so we can get a pre-production sample approved before the full print run.

We're really hoping to have this completed and ready to purchase by the end of the year. It will be a limited print run. I'm also working on a collector's pack for a special edition which will include a few extra collector's items we think you're going to love.

We'll be self-publishing on our website, and we're also hoping to get some copies into local stores which is actually something we might get everyone's help with.

Hope this gives you a bit of insight into the process. For what we've got, I think we're making some real headway, and we can't wait to share this world with you all!

Suggestions

Last thing, we've opened up two new channels in the Discord.

Head to #📺│tvguide-suggestions to throw in ideas for events and streams you want to see, and #📮│channel-suggestions for any specific channels you’d like to see.

If you made it this far, thank you for your support and I'm looking forward to seeing you in the next patch notes!