largento

Thanks, Gene!

...And that's the end! $2,202.42! 367% of my goal! I'll have to wait to see what the final tally really is, though. Just checking now, $165 of pledges "errored," meaning I probably won't get those. In addition, Kickstarter takes 5% (presumably from the pledged amount) and Amazon takes an unknown amount (usually between 3-5%.) I'm guessing it'll end up being around $1800. That should more than cover the cost of replicating DVDs, printing the packaging, shipping them to me and shipping out the 87 DVDs to the backers. Many are overseas, so they could be pricey, but it should cover it all. As exciting as this has been, I'm relieved it's finished. Now I won't have this constant urge to keep checking the progress and I can just focus on getting the work done. :-)

That looks great, Gerry! Congrats on the story & cover! Look forward to reading it.

Well, the freelance job ended up taking up a majority of the last two weeks, but I'm back on task again. On the plus side, I was able to send shots to render over night and finished all the rendering up to the current part I'm working on. I have just over ten minutes of finished footage now. I've experimented with color-correcting it for broadcast and exporting it as 2.97fps (both from Photoshop) and the result was really good. The colors do get choked some, they blow out without doing this and it does make it look more like an old TV show. Normal/Broadcast Safe I'm about forty-five seconds into this last section. I'm finding it slow going, but I expect it to speed up as I start to see the finish line. Once it's done, I'll start working on the wraparound sections for the Paunk! Show episodes. Those are easy to animate and should go quickly. I want to complete everything before I start putting them online. The has gotten over 900 views without a whole lot of promotion, so I'm hopeful that there'll be an audience for it when it launches. Wild to think that just three months ago this project wasn't even on my radar.

Thanks, Gerry! My Kickstarter campaign has entered it's final 24 hours. Kickstarter says you get a surge of people near the end, but even if that's not the case, I am beyond thrilled with how successful it's been. I'm going to get to make my DVDs! Which was the whole point of it. Giant thanks to everyone who's helped out!

Welcome back, Al! v16 was an amazing improvement. The biggest thing (like Robcat pointed out) is the render speeds. Amazing (even on the Mac.)

Cafepress isn't too great for merchandising. Their cut is far too high on high-priced merchandise to begin with. And I don't think the quality is very good, either. I had a few readers ask me to put up Wannabe Pirates T-shirts and 2 of the 3 people asking ordered one. Since you have to make at least $25 before you can withdraw your funds, it was basically me making money for Cafepress. I ordered a shirt for myself last year and the quality of the printing was poor and the shirt itself disintegrated after a couple of washes. From what I've heard from people who do manage to sell T-shirts, logos and branding don't sell well at all. It's more clever stuff and gags. The people who are good at this do well, but usually banking on existing properties that they don't pay a license for (ie a Peanuts-styled Dr. Who sitting at Lucy's psychiatric stand with the sign "The Doctor is In.") And they print their own shirts, so they can get a higher cut of the sales. Print on Demand is great as a vanity press, but not-so-great for trying to make a profit. I've even considered doing a 16-page comic adaption of Stalled Trek, but the POD cost is just too high. It would force me to charge at least $3 per copy, with printing coming to $2.25 per book and shipping eating up most of the rest of the difference. Selling 100 of them would probably net me less than $25. And the likelihood is that I might only sell 5 of them. It becomes a real what's-the-point? That's why I'm focusing on DVDs. I can sell them for higher than a printed comic with less cost to make them.

Well, my Kickstarter campaign is coming to a close, and to my surprise is continuing to gain donors. The donations are now over 300%! I've even had an email from someone considering donating $500 to get the puppet-cameo! Wild stuff! Currently 52% of the pledges have come from within Kickstarter and 48% from outside links, which means the majority of donations are coming from people who just saw the project and decided to back it. That's a great boost! 79 people have pledged at the level for getting a DVD, with three of those choosing to get no reward. That means I've pre-sold 76 DVDs! I'm still waiting for the final tally to make any decisions about what to do with the extra money, but as of now, I feel confident I'll be able to print 1,000 DVDs (up from the 200 I aimed this at) and still be able to look at getting some things for the convention (like a banner stand that isn't made out of PVC pipes.) I'll post again as things happen, but barring something horrible, using Kickstarter to raise a small amount of funds seems to be working well.

Congrats again, Will. I'm sure you'll figure out a way. Pardon the pun, but you've got the will. :-) I think sponsorship will definitely have to play a part. Tar isn't something you can knock out over a weekend. Kickstarter could definitely be one source, some local fundraising of some kind could be another. I guess the pie-in-the-sky option would be to get some sort of venture capital, but I have no idea how you go about that, and I've even heard that some of them charge *you* money to pitch ideas to them, which sounds criminal.

Hey, you should wear those years of experience with pride! Happy Birthday!

I'm thinking maybe the Symbiont2 plugin doesn't work under Lion. You can remove it from the Textures folder and that warning should stop. Not sure about the dictionary file thing. Hopefully Robcat's suggestion works. (I've never used it.)

Better.

First glance, looking at Design 101: • The stylized delta shape you are using in the poster draws the eye down to the lower right, where absolutely nothing is happening. • There's no focal point, no large image for the eye to be drawn to. Given how striking the ships are, I would choose one and make it the focal point and arrange the other elements to support it. • I would try to avoid the tangents of the shape intersecting the bald dude's face. • Negative space is good, but it should be used to balance content. Design is about contrast and compliment. • Not having a natural sense of design, try using the Rule of Thirds: See the grid over the poster and look at this quick rip and relocate: I'm not suggesting you do exactly this. Find your own way.

That was great, Chaz! Very entertaining and fun.

I think Gerry's right about it being easier to parody a drama than a comedy ...but they used to do it all of the time in Mad Magazine and Cracked when I was growing up. I just agreed to do a huge freelance job today that might throw my schedule off whack. I think I'm going to be okay with fitting it in ...but I really have no choice, since I need the dough. I haven't gotten the final tally yet about what's going to be required of me, but it could be substantial ...and due this month.

Robcat is closer, although Indy would be a lot of fun. Gerry, that idea is greatness, you should totally do it! I could see that being very funny. I'm still in the bouncing between ideas phase. I've got to finish this one first. :-)

I finished the animation for part 3 yesterday and it ended up coming up short (2:37) of the three minute mark. I could probably let it go, but since I've cut it down to four parts, I really need to get more story in. I wrote a new "captain's log" transition and plan on moving about a minute and a half from part 4 to the end of part 3. By coincidence, this ends part 3 at the point where the original webcomic version was abandoned. I'm hoping to finish up the new four minute version of part 3 today and then I'll have only one more part to do! And I'm thinking 4 minutes might be enough to encompass all of it, meaning I won't have to cut anything. I'm thinking that with the longer running times, I may cut back on the wraparounds for those two episodes. I won't be able to make that decision until I've written them. My Kickstarter campaign passed the 200% mark last night! My thinking now is to create a run of 500 DVDs. Beyond the convention, I'm thinking about contacting some Star Trek Fan Clubs and offering to come do a showing of the short at one of their meetings and sell copies there. I think I've picked the next show I'm going to parody, too, but I'm not ready to announce (ie commit) yet. :-)

Thanks, Rodney! And no worries! After the convention is over and I come out of my inevitable coma, I plan on looking at a way to sell DVDs online. I'm kind of getting excited about doing another series of episodes. I think it would be possible for me to get the ball rolling again and have another 4 come out in September.

A quick update! One week into my Kickstarter campaign and I've raised nearly twice my goal! It's looking very good for me to be able to make a decent enough number of DVDs that I won't have to worry at all about selling out during the convention! I'm back at work on animating and after a little bit of a rocky start, I'm back to having fun. From here on out, all the shots are set on Vulcanine and I'm so looking forward to getting to the fight sequences. Those were the whole reason I wanted to do this animated all those years ago. I think I'm okay, schedule-wise. I'm giving myself until the 24th to finish the animation, which should be more than enough time. After that, I need to move onto the wraparound stuff. I've got some breathing room with that, since the episodes will be weekly. I won't receive the money from the Kickstarter campaign until about the 20th of April, so that's my deadline for having the DVD finished. Depending on the turn around time needed, I might could cheat that up to the 1st of May if necessary. Thanks again to everyone who donated and/or helped spread the word!

Neat!

I wish I could offer any solid advice, but I was completely taken by surprise. For me, I had a specific need and tried to keep it as low as possible, because I *really* needed it to succeed. :-) An interesting statistic I can offer: about 30% of the funds pledged have come from Kickstarter visitors and that's the area that seems to be growing the most. However, the vast majority of pledges have come from people I know. I don't know if that's typical, but it makes sense. So if you think about it, if you're looking to get $10K, you're basically expecting $7K from your friends, family and acquaintances. If you know 7K people, then that's not too big a deal, but if you're like me and don't know that many people, it's a tough sell.

Thanks, Marcos!

Take a look at the rewards offered and you'll see that I'm doing them one better. All contributers' names appear with ranks in the Thank You section as the crew roster of the USS Secondprize! The Captains appear as 3D puppet versions of themselves. :-) No small type. :-)

Thanks, Paul! I think it's definitely a viable option for a small project. I think the bigger projects require much more networking and/or a large audience base.

Thanks, Walter! I really appreciate it!