The webcomics blog about webcomics

Of Course Joker Is Krusty

Not webcomics, but I first noticed it because of the Twitterfeed of Cameron Stewart: a new collaborative project to wrangle 468 artists to each reinterpret five pages from the six volumes of Otomo Katsuhiro’s Akira in the style of The Simpsons. Bartkira, as it’s been dubbed, now has over 300 artists participating and a character assignment map that is brilliant in how appropriate some of the choices are. Part of Stewart’s contribution (with Ralph Wiggum in the title role) is shown above.

All together now:

BAAAAAAART!
MIIIILLLLLHOOOOOUUUUUUSE!
<mutations, lasers, sattelites ‘splode stuff>


  • Howard Tayler¹ sent me a very nice (automated) email over the weekend, regarding his recently-concluded Kickstarter campaign and pointing me towards something I hadn’t encountered before.

    After The Crowd is a pledge-management solution that imports the data that a creator (Tayler in this case) receives from Kickstarter, and allows the mapping of pledges to specific rewards (Tayler had several tiers that amounted to choose any x out of these y options) and add-on purchases.

    Unfortunately, I can’t show you the very nice interface that I was presented with (access to that part of ATC is via individually-tailored² links that are good for one use), but trust me, it was spiffy: pictures of all the possible rewards, an accounting of what I’d already pledged, what I’d already be receiving, and an easy way to tinker with my desired order. Then the money got added up and if I owed more for add-ons (I didn’t), a link to PayPal.

    Per Tayler, the add-ons that were so very easy (and tempting) to add pushed his funding total as of yesterday from 8571% of goal to over 9000 [A/V]. For anybody that’s running a Kickstarter³ with a wide variety of pledge rewards (or a mix-and-match approach to rewards), I’d strong urge you to check out After The Crowd or one of the similar solutions that will inevitably be developed in the very near future.

  • Also, a little bit after that, Tayler wrote up the most recent of his received wisdoms re: crowdfunding where he opines that the worst risk of a Kickstarter isn’t failing to fund — it’s a mixture of failing to deliver or to learn. Or maybe it’s just the risk of finding out that the world disappointed you deeply [NSFW?]. Bad world, bad, bad world!
  • In case you hadn’t seen it yet, Randall Munroe is playing out a story very, very slowly in today’s xkcd — from my casual observation it’s running about one frame per hour. Undoubtedly, once it’s complete it will be collected many places around for you to take in the full experience at a faster pace, but for the moment it’s utterly captivating, melancholy, and on the verge of existentialist dread. It could be telling us either a gentle, hopeful story or one full of loss. There needs to be an adjective to describe that midpoint between anticipation and dread.

________________
¹ Evil twin, opposites in all ways, etc.

² Or perhaps “Taylered”, in this case.

³ And isn’t able to get Make That Thing to handle all the logistics.

Update: 10,003%

I’m glad the Pledge Manager worked so well for you, Gary. It’s from the same guy who developed the Schlock Mercenary app — Gary Henson. He’s been a wonder to work with.

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