So looking at the underwhelming Kickstarter results, I was pretty discouraged for a couple of days… I had a goal of $10,000 for producing the first episode of this series, but only got $1,587 in pledges over the 30 day campaign.

I had thought that I would get a lot of help from the Animation:Master community in spreading the word about the project, so I was suprised that I only had a few friends share the link. The same was true on Facebook (which actually hurt my feelings)! I can understand not having the money to pledge–but I expected that my friends would at least help me get the word out.

So to those 48 backers who DID pledge, I am extremely grateful. And to those friends who DID spread the word, thank you!

It is a humbling experience for an artist to put there work out there and discover how small their fanbase really is. I have learned that my “network” is pretty small–and I have to work on putting stuff out here that is for those true fans, and hope that “my people” find their way here. Without true fans, there is no way a crowdfunding campaign is going to get the attention to succeed.

I found that blogs like Cartoon Brew and Animation Scoop are not interested in covering a project like this–though they would be happy to sell me a banner ad on their blog for $300/week…. CGTalk will not even let you make a POST on their forum about your campaign, even though they would like to think that they are helping artists develop their own IP.  The A:M Community boasts 10,442 members–however there were only 10 pledges that came from the hash.com domain…. One pledge came from Twitter.

So I have to rethink where I have been posting my work. I have a WIP section on the Hash forum where I’ve been posting my stuff, but I think that I should have been posting here instead.

7 Comments

  1. I wish I read your blog more often! Totally missed out on this.

    You might want to consider showing your work around the Furry fandom community. I think you’d find some new fans and supporters there.

    Don’t buy into the bad press furries sometimes get. Many of them are awesome and generous people.

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  3. I wish I would have caught this earlier. I always wondered how we smaller guys could get more pledges on projects.
    Cartoonbrew is always supporting big name works on kickstarter.

    Cgtalk which should be supporting us “CG” creators does not help and almost hinders you from reaching folks by blocking kicstarters. Leigh is a b! and a big part of that.

    I think the one who replied about the Furry community might be a big help.

    Also I think you should do something with the sexy fish, bird, ,girl thing. Model her before the Hyena. Do a quick animation for Newgrounds or something with a kickstarter ad at the end. The guys at newgrounds seem to be good supporters of projects like yours.

    Try comic book websites and other successful folks.

    Move your project over to indiegogo so you can keep some of your money. 🙂

    And don’t be discouraged. Just chug along like M Dot does.

    I also had an idea. Maybe working together with folks. Maybe do that short animation and see if you can enlist someone like Terrence Walker who can do a 1-3 minute in Poser. I might be able to get your characters rigged in Poser, only because you can work with many other things.

    What happened to your mocap stuff?

    All these suggestions are what I’m working on right now.

    Why not a quick comic of one story? With some gifs for flash lilke Zac Gorman. I hope this helps you.

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  4. I like your blog. I like what you have going with your project.

    I just saw your kickstarter for the first time (months after it closed), and was surprised at how poorly it really represented your work.

    I don’t think the result was as much a response to your art, but how you sold your project. It was boring.

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