Final, Final Inspection

Today, in our offices, we completed a highly satisfactory inspection of Sensu brushes with the revised design. We are very pleased to announce that everything passed muster. We will ship to our backers from this production, which will be complete next week, and in our hands on the 27th or 28th. We plan to inspect, pack, and ship for the remainder of the week with final packages shipping Tuesday the 3rd of April. These shipments will include only chrome brushes.

Gunmetal Exception

All gunmetal limited edition brushes will ship by April 15th. This short run of brushes in a special finish could not be plated sooner than that. Sorry. Anyone who ordered a combination of chrome and gunmetal will receive their brushes in two shipments to avoid making anyone wait longer to play with their new toys. 

Surveys

Surveys will be sent tomorrow to request your current shipping details.

International Shipping

Until we receive your completed surveys we have no way of telling which backers are from North America and which are international. We will also learn, for the first time, who has included appropriate shipping charges with their original pledge amount.

If you have not paid shipping fees, we will send you a PayPal invoice by email. These invoices will include a link and simple instructions for making a payment on the PayPal website. There are fees involved on our end, but we will absorb these in order to assure a smoother transaction. There are no additional fees for you to make your payment by this method.

Beta-Buddies

Here's what you have to look forward to: people are raving about Sensu! We got fantastic feedback from our beta-buddy testers over the last few weeks. Several comments were posted on the comment feed on our Kickstarter page. Some highlights:

Guido: "It's great!...painting apps will never be the same. It's truly a great painting experience...also great build quality.

Margi: "Gorgeous to look at, feels awesome and is weighted to perfection."

Michelle: "I am thrilled with the look and feel of the brush. I paint daily with actual paints and love to do studies on my iPad. The Sensu brush makes much easier work of that! It feels and glides like a high-quality brush, only without the messy cleanup."

Wrap-up

We are so excited to finally share Sensu with you all. We thank you all for your patience through a longer process than we hoped would be necessary. We really look forward to hearing from you as you get your brushes and start to paint. 

We're Wired

Wanted to catch you up with some Sensu news. Last week we were featured on Wired magazine's website. As one of Gadgetlab's "Gifts of the Future", we were reviewed alongside several other tech products including a limited edition "Back to the Future" Delorean. 

Teamed Up With Apple

Big thanks to David Nash of Apple. He saw Sensu on Kickstarter and thought teachers in the NYC school system would love it. Monday night, Maggie from our team was in NYC appearing on stage with Apple to present Sensu and talk a bit about our take on digital painting and our passion to fill the world with more artists. 

Our presentation was received with a lot of enthusiasm by the 300+ teachers in attendance. Many are eager to have Sensu in their classrooms, but they'll have to wait until after all of our Kickstarter backers get theirs in January.

Production

Everything is still on track and on-time. We can't wait to get these into your hands! 7600 Sensu brush heads are being built over the next 48 hours. The rest of the components are coming together well.

Sensu in the Wild

Thought you might like to see Sensu in action. Below is a video clip of our friend Matt Lynaugh painting in the ArtRage app on his iPad. He had Sensu in his hand for only 2 days before he committed this session to film. 

Matt is working in layers on top of a photo that he imported into ArtRage. In this mode he's chosen to allow the brush to select color from the original image. Each time he picks up his brush and sets it back down on the screen a new color is selected and can be used until he chooses to switch.

You can see how nicely Sensu moves on the screen. It has a lot of flexibility, but enough "snap" to come back to it's original shape. It has enough stiffness to allow the artist to open palettes and select menu items.

You can also see Matt using some nice multi-touch gesturing to change the size of the brush stroke.

Matt Lynaugh is a designer and illustrator living in Austin, TX. If you want to see more of Matt's iPad paintings visit www.mattlynaugh.com. Be sure to visit his painting-a-day blog.