The Kickstarter Tumblr

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The story of J03 (pronounced “Joe” — get it? Cute!) begins when he finds himself rebooted in an unknown location with no recollection of where has been, and with a very spirited, totally devoted fuzzy companion at his side. Together, the unlikely duo go in search of J03’s lost memories and, in doing so, find a bit of his future. Sound neat? We thought so! It’s the premise of graphic novel Gather, and our Project of the Day. We also love that the tale was inspired by author/illustrator Anton Peck’s childhood, which he spent kick around railroads with his grandfather and drawing cool, mechanical things. If J03’s past is anywhere near as cool as that, we’re in for a good read.

Michael from Oceanverse shared this awesome sketchbook he made for backers. We want one!

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mrjakeparker:

Starting to draw the sketches for the Antler Boy books. #kickstarter (Taken with instagram)

EXCITED!

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Dork Tower + Kickstarter = Happy Happy Friday. See also solving project issues with time machines and when project’s don’t reach their funding goals. We love!

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HOW TO KICKSTARTER: Cartoonist Keith Knight’s 14 Tips for a More Successful Funding Campaign.

Aw, we liked this one a lot.

You may recognize Bill Corbett — or, at the very least, you may recognize his voice — from the popular television show Mystery Science Theater 3000, but have you seen his Kickstarter project yet?

SUPER-POWERED REVENGE CHRISTMAS is a graphic novel using classic Christmas characters as the basis for an assembled superteam who fight off a conspiracy of powerful villains. It’s a comedy retcon of Christmas itself! The story brings the world of pop-culture Christmas characters — think Rudolph, the Grinch, and even those beloved people from “It’s a Wonderful Life” — into the universe of comic book superheroes.

A $15 pledge gets you a copy of the book and all other kinds of electronic goodies. We don’t know about you, but we’re getting ourselves an early Christmas gift…

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Hangboy!

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Hip-hop artist Murs is breaking all the rules with his latest project, YUMIKO: Curse of the Merch Girl, a Manga-themed album complete with an original comic book. Despite prior critical and commercial success, no label would come near a project, which not only features “a collection of 10 new songs from  Murs, but also a full length graphic novel (broken into 10 correlating chapters), written by Josh Blaylock with art by amazing newcomer Jose Garcia and colors by Jose and Juan Urueta.” So, Murs brought it to the people! We dig that, and so, it is our Project of the Day. 

The Week On Kickstarter. (We animated one of Order of the Stick’s cool funding graphs as a way of baiting you to check it out.)

In a battle of titans, who will emerge victorious?!?!? As Richard Stevens, creator of popular pixelated webcomic Diesel Sweeties says in a recent update: ”I have a hard time picking a winner in this match-up. I love Johnny Toaster, but I can survive a morning without him. I need coffee, but I don’t always like its attitude. When these two fight, no one wins.” #TRUTH

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Just like they promised, here’s a sneak peak at the mini-expansion cards from the Order of the Stick project. Sticky Shticks!

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Our second million dollar project. Tim Schafer’s project just passed $1M in funding, in less than 24 hours, from more than 26,000 backers. That is incredible.

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Rich Burlew has been drawing his popular stick figure webcomic, The Order of the Stick, since 2003 and self-publishing print copies since 2005. Those books consistently sell out, though, so Rich is going to print a few more. And by a few, we mean thousands, thanks to the extraordinary enthusiasm of his devoted fans. We’ve devoted our Project of the Day spot to him; be sure to drop by his project updates for his uniquely comic take on funding graphs.

"I had no idea that this far into my comic’s lifespan, I would have an opportunity to reach a new height of exposure like this, but it still ultimately comes down to the fact that I’ve been doing this for so long. I don’t update as consistently as some webcomics, my art isn’t as polished, but I’ve still churned out over a thousand pages in a single story.

Apart from that, I would say that the best thing is to have a way of marketing yourself away from the Kickstarter site… Because Kickstarter is only a tool that helps you collect money, it’s not an end unto itself. You need to identify who the potential backer for your project is before you start, and if you can’t do that, it’s probably not going to succeed."

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There’s some great advice hidden in this Q&A with Order of the Stick creator Rich Burlew and Comics Alliance. Read it here. Other favorite lines include:

…my email inbox is a swirling eldritch nightmare that threatens to burst the fragile digital bonds that restrain it from devouring me in my sleep. Other than that, though, it’s all going very well.

Check out the project here.

We should start a photo gallery of the different ways project creators illustrate what “Kickstarter” is in their pitch videos. This one, from artist M.R. Loehr, is pretty awesome. (It’s part of his project to self-publish a book of single panel comics called Sour Cream on the Side.)