Collaging.

I was happy to find an old collage book.
Something I'd played with years ago.
Cutting and pasting.
Trying to make no sense of images brought together on a page.
this little notebook has an image that I want to include in my SuperWeirdoes book.
I'll have to scan him from this page, that's the problem with collaging. Once it's stuck down it's stuck.
Made me smile to find him again though.

Super Weirdoes.

I'm working on my own little artist project in the background.
Hopefully sometime next year I'll be printing this, and maybe getting it on Kickstarter.
I now have an Instagram (davewest42) account and pop progress up on there.

Each image will represent a Letter of the Alphabet in an A to Z.
Each will have a story, poem or some other prose to accompany the artwork, and hopefully explain it.

Enter the Asylum.

The first Kickstarter (KS) for me, and Accent UK, was Enter the Asylum.
This is a steampunk book written about the personas of the people who dress up for and attend the Steampunk shows across the country.
We started with a fairly small (24 page) colour comic and told stories of a handful of characters.
Involving the people themselves in plot development was an interesting departure from our normal approach, and proved to be fun.
Ahead of the launch we produced and handed out fliers at a couple of Steampunk Cons, and other comic shows.
We also plugged the KS on various Steampunk Facebook Groups.
Then we launched and went around the Facebook Groups again telling people it was now active.
A £500 target was hit very quickly, I think within a day or two.
The final amount raised pretty much paid for everything.
I think we were short a little on what we paid out for artists and colourists etc but it certainly allowed us to consider reporting the whole thing next year.
And every year going forward if the KS boost continues.
A great first Kickstarter.

Kickstarter and me.

Anyone who has discussed Kickstarter with me over the years knows about my reservations.
It never felt right that people should ask others to help them fund something that they should really be funding themselves. Somehow to me it just seemed wrong.
And then time passed.
And I chatted to a lot of my fellow comic book creators who were using it for every project.
I got an account and started backing a few things and exploring what it was really all about.
I noticed that other people like myself were actually now turning out more works than they used to and it started to make sense.
In order to make the money back on a comic book and have enough cash to finance the next one takes months of selling at Conventions. You end up with a backlog of things in development that have to wait for the cash to come in before they can be sent to a printer.
If Kickstarter can provide that initial capital. Enough money to get the book printed then that's a huge help and actually means that you can start to consider producing more books. You can also start to consider paying artist more money than before if the Kickstarter money coming in is sufficient.
I'm convinced there is a limit to how many books it is healthy to produce and a maximum that the good people backing Kickstarter projects will support. You don't want to become a nuisance.
For me having now done three comics this year through Kickstarter I think the limit is one comic per quarter.
There's a lot to do in the background.
Setting it up.
Promoting it on Social Media and anywhere else available.
Working out the little extras that will hopefully tempt more backers.
Producing the book itself.
And then if successful, posting the comics and any extras out after the campaign.
It's a little nerve wracking at times too... my first had me sat in front of the monitor watching its growth. Hoping it'll reach the target. Then hoping it'll stay above it. Then hoping it'll hit targets that I set week by week.
It's stressful but ultimately rewarding.
And one of the things that I like the most is that people across the globe get involved and get to see your work, not just those that you see at Conventions in the UK.