Kickstarter Madman of Magic Q&A

I have received a lot of questions surrounding my choices with Kickstarter and the Madman of Magic Comic Book project. I figure instead of answering the same questions over and over again, I will share them here for everyone to read.
If you have a question of your own, leave it in the comment section and I will answer them too.

Question

What do you think of Kickstarter?

Answer

Kickstarter is ideal for projects like mine.  My wife and I don’t have any way to raise funding for investing in this project or, at least in our case, not to cover all of it.  With Kickstarter we can pre-sell and see if people are interested in our work.  It turns out they are interested in our project and in a big way.

Question

Isn’t Kickstarter a scam?

Answer

I guess it depends on how you define scam or who’s projects you fund.  I am not sure what happens if a user doesn’t fulfill his backer’s rewards.  Maybe someone could have a project, collect the money, and run.  I am not sure, but the 3 projects I have funded all seem to be fulfilling their rewards

Comics Online: Pink-N-Lips Number 001

Pink-N-Lips COMICS:

More art at http://www.jasonloveslife.com/category/cool-online-art

Comic Book Flow Dissidence

When I was a child I collected comic books. These stories were great for my young mind.  I found them mimicking the fantasy life I lived in my own head. The writing was easy to understand, the plots were exciting, and the illustrations allowed me to see into another world. With all my love for them there was one thing that always turned me against comic books and that was confusing panel order or confusing imagery.

How are panels confusing?

Confusing panels happens when the reader is unsure of what panel to read next or is unable to understand what is happening in between the panel; this does not include bad drawings or where a person is unable to recognize objects in a panel.  When the reader is unable to make an easy decision on what panel, word bubble, etc to read next they are temporarily pulled from the story and causes what I call “flow dissidence”.

What is “Flow Dissidence”?

Motion Comics and Music

I got an interesting comment on the 1 or 3 rough draft video and my other motion comics (Video Below) and it talked about how they felt the music overpowered the images. This is a very interesting idea as I felt that animation on its own would feel dull with no sound. With the music, however, it complements the animation while creating an opportunity where no sound effects or voiceovers are needed since the music works as the audio track.

If you want to post your comic book on YouTube my recommendation is to go ahead and use video editing software to show each panel in sequence and have background music to enhance the experience (making motion comics).  If you have the skill or can afford to hire someone voice overs are always nice, but need to be top quality or else they distract more than improve the video.  I feel

Creating a Comic Book Cover

I found this to be helpful source while working on my comic book cover. Hope you can use it as well:

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/03/02/best-comic-book-covers-ever-this-month-february-2012/

Kickstarter Update #2

Yada says I need to fix it now!

We have hit 8% funded, which is awesome! There is a long way to go, but we are on our way with a great start! Thanks everyone for sharing links and telling friends the past few days!

By order of Yada, our producer, I posted the updated version of the trailer yesterday. It needs some music added and a few touch ups but I felt people would enjoy it more than the shorter version, but it still didn’t upload 100% correctly. I hope to get at least some of the problems fixed by tomorrow, but the music is going to take a few days.

The shorter trailer seems to be getting a good response. I have been responding to YouTube comments, most of the morning in fact. The current stats are 463 views, 38 “Likes”, 6 “dislikes, and 140 comments (with about 70 of them being my responses to other people’s comments) in 2 weeks. Now figuring out how to get those viewers to the Kickstarter page is the trick.

Since I said there would be an update today I did add a few photos I put together this morning. Thanks for following along and enjoy the updated video and the images.

16 Hours into our Kickstarter Campaign

We are 16 hours into our Kickstarter campaign and currently at 5% completion! If we can do this every day Leah Love and I will have full funding in 19 days. Keep your fingers crossed, post on this project on facebook pages, and share it with others; this will help us to that goal. Remember, time is limited, so action needs to happen now!

Thanks again Chris and Josh for getting this party started!

Sincerely,

Jason Love