Dear Backers,

Here's an update on what we've been up to with some good news and bad news.

The Good

We've officially deployed the first ever Lamp Post Guild course! It's available now and backers who backed at a level that included one or more courses should receive an email with coupon codes that you can use to register to get the course for free.

The beta course is going great so far. We have some awesome students creating some amazing work! We've been learning a lot during the beta process and have been able to make the courses that much better as a result.

We're also getting better at creating and producing the courses. We have a camera crew, musician, video editor and writers and have hit our stride.

The Bad

We're behind on two out of the three initial courses that were slated for February. A few of the shippable reward levels are taking longer than we anticipated as well. 

Here's the status of each of the initial courses:

The Craft of Illustration with Justin Gerard

This course is 100% completed and available now! Register here.
Check out the intro video for the course:

Graphic Storytelling with Chris Koelle 

All of the live action footage is finished. We're in the process of recording and editing the screencast demonstrations. This course is about 60% completed. Here's an introduction to the course:

This course is not yet available but you may pre-register here.

The Art of Personal Work with Cory Godbey 

This course is only at about 10% complete at this point and is still primarily in the planning phases. 

Things are speeding up in the course development process as we become more adept at production. We've also brought on more team members to help us ship even faster.

We don't want to sacrifice any quality and just push these out prematurely so we'd like to take more time and deliver a high quality product for all of you.

The Ugly

The Llamas are not co-operating at all. Justin's course on The Art of Llama Herding has been delayed indefinitely. Here's a preview of what could have been:

We'll keep you posted on our progress Facebook and Twitter. We love hearing your thoughts, ideas and feedback so please don't hesitate to contact us.

Keep learning,
The Lamp Post Guild Team

Hi Everyone!

Our campaign is almost over. We only have 35 hour left! It's been an amazing ride and we are humbled by your support.

A few announcements as we enter the final stretch:

Course Gift Certificates!

Just in time for the holidays, we're excited to offer course "gift certificates" for any backers who backed at a level that includes courses and want to give them to someone else.

Here's how this will work:

• If you've backed the LPG at any level that includes one or more free courses, you qualify for  gift certificates. At the Lifetime level, you keep your full access and can give away up to three courses.
• We'll send out a survey that you can optionally fill out with gift details if you'd like to gift one or more of your courses.
• Once we've collected input from you we'll send you a printable gift certificate in time for Christmas!

Note: While the gift certificates will be ready by Christmas, the courses themselves will not be live for another few months (aiming for end of Feb 2013)

Lifetime Backers

There are only 11 of the Lifetime Membership backer slots left. This is likely the only time we'll ever offer Lifetime Membership to the Lamp Post Guild. So if that's something you're interested in, now is the time!

Help us spread the word!

If you know anyone who would like to get in on the Lamp Post Guild before the campaign is over, let them know that now is the time!

Again, thank you all for your tremendous support. We look forward to learning, teaching, and interacting with you for a long time to come.

Thank you,
- The Lamp Post Guild Team

We have some exciting announcements for you. Thanks to your generous support, we’ve met and exceeded our initial goal! Now we want to take things to the next level so we’ve set a series of stretch goals that will make the Lamp Post Guild an even richer learning environment for aspiring artists everywhere. Check them out:

We’d love to meet all of those goals so please help us spread the word!

New Reward Levels!

We've also added three new reward levels to help out our international supporters! All three of these levels are digital only so no need to worry about shipping costs. Here are the new levels:

$100 - TWO Courses of your choice for you or a friend + all previous DIGITAL rewards.

$215 - All THREE Courses of your choice for you or a friend + all previous DIGITAL rewards.

$450 - Lifetime access to the Lamp Post Guild including ALL of the current and future Courses and community features + a special “Lifetime Backer” badge on your profile + all previous DIGITAL rewards.

Thanks so much for your support!

- The Lamp Post Guild Team