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We received our office copy of Creatures in the mail today! Our new little friend is called the “Chimephbaquier” and he lives exclusively on donuts, which is what we wish we could do.
Save Blue Like Jazz by Steve Taylor
On September 16th of last year, New York Times-bestselling author Donald Miller updated his blog with a post that began, “The book that swept the country will not sweep theaters.” The book in question was Blue Like Jazz, Miller’s influential collection of essays he had since adapted into a screenplay. Why wasn’t the movie happening? “It’s really hard to raise money for movies right now,” Miller wrote. “In fact, it’s worse than it’s ever been in the history of Hollywood.”
That should have been the end of the story. But it wasn’t. Eight days later, two fans of the book — Zach Prichard and Jonathan Frazier — launched a campaign to save the film from oblivion. Their project had an audacious goal ($125,000 in 30 days), a strong set of rewards ($10 downloads, $100 associate producer credits, $1,000 cameos), and — crucially — the blessing of Miller and director Steve Taylor. As one of the rewards Taylor even agreed to personally call every backer — which he is still doing.
Stunningly, just eleven days later the goal was reached. By the project’s end it had raised a then-record $345,992 from more than 4,495 backers. An incredible total. But even bigger was what the project signaled: even when traditional funders like Hollywood wouldn’t support a project, the fans still could.
In the months since the project’s end, production has recommenced and principle shooting will finish in Portland next week. The film’s release — whether it be theatrical or other means — is still a ways off. But for the project’s backers, as well as the film’s cast and crew, the unique process of bringing this project back from the brink is already an unforgettable experience.
Comix Journalism: Send Ted Rall to Afghanistan
Journalist/cartoonist Ted Rall spent this past August reporting from Afghanistan, using a satellite phone to upload reports from the ground. The recipients? Not the New York Times, Village Voice, or the hundreds of other outlets that have featured his work. Instead the reports were sent directly to the 211 Kickstarter backers who funded his journey.
From a journalism perspective, Rall’s daily cartoons (see them all here) — covering topics as wide and engrossing as Taliban biker gangs, Afghan hipsters, the travesty that is Afghan pizza, and numerous brushes with death — are remarkable. They’re honest, spur-of-the-moment, and deeply connected to daily Afghan life. From a backer’s perspective, receiving the daily emails was incredible — without question the most unique experience I’ve had through Kickstarter to date. They brought both history and the daily struggles of a faraway land into sharp focus.
See more Kickstarter awards here.
Handmade Theremin Wristwatch, Musical Robots are Ready for the next OCTANT Release
Matthew Steinke is Octant, a one-man band featuring a slew of homemade, robotic instruments. His project was to release his new album on vinyl, but one reward in particular really caught our eye: a homemade Theremin watch. Matthew demos the watch at the one minute mark of his video, and it’s a mind-blowing artifact.
A sampler runs into the wrist-piece, with the small stem bendable and wave-able for all kinds of Theremin-y goodness. In all, seven backers grabbed the watch for a reasonable $300 — and we badly wish we were among them. In the event of a Kickstarter museum ever happening, this will be one of its inaugural pieces.
It’s not surprising that the best project video comes from a talented filmmaker, but in the case of Jocelyn Towne’s I Am I, the project video ended up becoming a memorable short film in and of itself.
Like many project videos, the scene opens unassumingly with Jocelyn speaking to the camera about her film. The camera follows her from room to room, introducing each her cast of creative co-conspirators. As the camera takes you from living room to kitchen, from kitchen to bathroom, and from bathroom to upstairs bedroom, somewhere along the way you begin to realize that there have been no edits, no cuts, and no mistakes. This is all one take.
For a moment, you’re a visitor in her home, delighting in the little escapades she invents just for you. It’s not until Jocelyn finishes her charming, funny explanation of how I Am I came into being that you realize this little project video quite possibly had its own script, its own crew, and required rigorous practice and memorization to nail the timing. For a moment you forget about all the things that make a movie come together.
Jocelyn invites you into her project through the magic of cinema, and surely that’s the best pitch a filmmaker can make.
Art Space Tokyo by Craig Mod
Craig Mod’s post-mortem “Kickstartup” of his project Art Space Tokyo hit us like a ton of bricks (or art books). Not only did the renowned designer exquisitely document the production of his fabulous book — a $65 reward pre-ordered by 155 backers — but he provided a thorough and honest analysis of his and others’ Kickstarter projects. Craig went into such depth that it inspired us to take his research even farther and produce a similar report looking at trends in reward pricing and duration across the entire site. Craig’s effort paid huge dividends to his and our community, so we’re awarding him with the best Kickstarter post-mortem of 2010. Interested in checking out more Kickstarter analysis? Take a peek at Coffee and Celluloid’s Behavior Patterns of Kickstarter Funders and How to figure the true cost of a Kickstarter project.
See more Kickstarter awards here.
Open Locksport by Schuyler Towne
After watching Schuyler Towne’s “Open Locksport” video, we were, like many others, curious about the relatively obscure world of competitive lockpicking. But if anyone could make locksport a household name, it would be Schuyler, whose unabashed enthusiasm for the sport eventually attracted the support of over 1000 backers and inadvertently launched his new career as full-time locksport evangelist.
The excitement that arose around Open Locksport coincided with Schuyler’s masterfully crafted project updates, each one offering a personal look inside not just the world of lockpicking, but also the endearing passion that Schuyler possessed for the abstract sport. A graphic designer by day and a competitive lockpicker on nights and weekends, Schuyler would post updates at all hours, often filming a tutorial in the middle of the night and uploading it in the wee hours of the morning.
Part interactive workshop, part lecture series on the history of lockpicking, and part autobiographical creative non-fiction, Schuyler’s updates became the place where Open Locksport transformed from a project into a full-fledged community. He posted a hypothetical dialogue between himself and an imaginary backer as a way to address early questions about his project. He brought backers along for the ride when he competed at DefCon and LockCon, and patiently explained the technical intricacies of lockpicking one diagram at a time. And when a backer made the pledge that put Locksport over the 200% funded mark, Schuyler leapt out of his chair with so much force that he broke it on the landing, offering to send a piece of chair to the backer for posterity.
Open Locksport may have officially ended on September 24th, but the updates keep coming. To read them from beginning to end is to vicariously experience Schuyler’s joy in having the freedom to share something he loves with the world.
Glif - iPhone 4 Tripod Mount & Stand by Dan Provost and Thomas Gerhardt
There’s nothing more satisfying than watching your reward being assembled right in front of your eyes, especially when it’s done by hand by the creators themselves — and time-lapsed! Dan Provost and Thomas Gerhardt launched their project Glif, a clever tripod mount and stand for the iPhone 4, hoping to raise $10,000 to bring their simple, elegant design to life. They ended up becoming the first design project to shoot into the six-figure range, raising over $135,000 from more than 5,000 backers, and they did everything right along the way. They posted a slew of fantastic status updates, chock full of images and videos about the design process, and Update #12’s video of the two designers assembling thousands of Glifs by hand amassed pages worth of enthusiastic comments from backers.
EyeWriter by TEMPT1 and Zach Lieberman
Named one of the Best Inventions of 2010 by Time Magazine, the Eyewriter is an ingenious synthesis of open-source eye-tracking technology and drawing software. A famed graffiti artist stricken with Lou Gehrig’s Disease named TEMTP1 inspired the creation, and the project video shows the paralyzed artist using their invention to “tag” buildings in Downtown Los Angeles — right from his hospital bed. It’s breathtaking work from the people behind Graffiti Research Lab, OpenFrameworks, and Free Art and Technology — and it came in a Kanye West edition.
Honorable Mention: An intricate and ornate installation inspired by William Morris’s “The Strawberry Thief,” The Beauty of Life is a handmade, 100-square-foot installation.
Cursed Pirate Girl by Jeremy Bastian and Thomas Negovan
When Jeremy Bastian and his publisher Thomas Negovan launched a project to print a collected edition of Cursed Pirate Girl, the response from Jeremy’s fans was swift and determined – this was a book they couldn’t wait to see. Jeremy’s fans had always been a patient bunch, willing to wait up to a year for each previous issue of his comic. Considering that most comics come out monthly, a year for most fans is an eternity. But looking at Bastian’s artwork, it’s clear why his fans were willing to wait – he draws each panel using impossibly small brushes, his eyes just inches away from the page, meticulously going over each line as he incorporates maddeningly complex levels of detail. His Cursed Pirate Girl wasn’t just another adventure story to be read once and placed on a shelf; it was a work of art, rendered with stunning craftsmanship that you don’t see very often in mainstream comics. With the help of his fans, Jeremy will be able to to continue his anachronistic craft, and as always, they’ll wait ever so patiently for the next issue.
Runners Up: 70-year-old Howard Saunders reminded us that growing older is no excuse for letting a good story lie un-drawn with AxeMan. First-time comic book creator Leticia Silva wowed us with her haunting storyboards for Into the Shadow, an unconventional rendition of Little Red Riding Hood. And how cool was it when Brian Katz introduced Neutron Girl, which took a fictional comic book from within a film and brought it to life in the real world?
Indelible Dance Company did everything right with its campaign for Illuminate, a modern dance work about the Big Bang that featured an original score and specially designed sound-sensitive LED costumes. Riding on its mission to “create work with the awareness that the Internet exists and that it is an integral part of experiencing art,” Indelible offered backers a totally immersive experience with a beautiful pitch video, a teaser of the piece posted halfway through the project, and awesome rewards at accessible prices: everyone who pledged $10 or more got a ticket to the performance plus a digital download of the score! And on top of that, Kickstarter backers got to enter the theater first, a nice prelude to a lovely performance.
Honorable Mention: Stefanie Batten Bland sashayed her way to success with a pitch video that made you want to dance, a series of gorgeous photo updates, and coveted rewards like rehearsal invites, videos of the dancers, and even private dance lessons. And Karl Cronin’s morphing of scientific research with dance in The Dancing Ecologist blew us away, as he personified plants and animals of all kinds through graceful movement.
Lumi Co. by Jesse Genet and Stephan Angoulvant
Young, LA-based designers Jesse Genet and Stephan Angoulvant earned widespread acclaim in 2010 for their design partnership Lumi Co. The pair engineered a new textile printing technique that prints vivid, photo-realistic images onto natural materials — without any chemical treatment. Backers could receive unique, limited-edition goods with designs of their choosing. This warm and fuzzy project was just the beginning of what is sure to be an illustrious career.
Honorable Mention: SeedBomb sent backers gumball-shaped balls of wildflower seeds, meant to bring new life to urban landscapes.
The Future Is Shiny by Design Glut
Liz Kinnmark and Kegan Fisher are Brooklyn-based designers whose work has already landed them in the MoMA store (a creation called “Egg Pants”), and their Kickstarter project unveiled a flirtatious new line of jewelry. The girls won us over with their enthusiasm and positivity, not to mention their frequent glossy updates about the forthcoming collection.
Honorable Mention: The stylish headwear of Yestadt Millinery was both charming and thoughtfully executed.
See more Kickstarter award winners here.
Fresher Than Fresh Snow Cones by Lindsay Laricks
Lindsay Laricks has peddled all natural snow cones out the window of her Kansas City-based food cart for years, cultivating a loyal community around a menu of handcrafted, crazy flavor combinations like “ginger rose” and “watermelon basil.” Such idiosyncratic charm is a plus in any project, but Linday goes above and beyond with a smart approach to rewards that encompasses both locals and far-flung snow cone fanatics alike, offering everything from free scoops to downloadable recipes, pouches of fresh herbs from her garden, and namesake flavors.
Honorable Mention: The Yogurt Pedaler hooked a dairy culture machine to the back of her bicycle and set off across America on a mission to teach people how to make yogurt, and Raven’s Occasional Spice Club educated members on the history and use of rare, unusual spices.
