Dual Purpose
Now this may be a new one — I’ve seen Kickstarter campaigns to print comics that have already been released to the web, and I’ve seen Kickstarter campaigns to support the production of new webcomics. I can’t recall seeing the two wrapped up together in a combo platter of past and future comics before, and as nature abhors a vacuum, so Rob Balder’s Erfworld abhors the opportunity to try something new. Thus, the newest Erfstarter (the fourth by my count) is to both produce a print version of Book 2 and determine how fancy Book 3 will be. The rough breakdown will be:
- 100% funding (already achieved) — Book 2 (comprising nearly 250 pages, and more than four years of updates) and assorted tchotchkes made, Book 3 released as prose only
- 138% funding — Book 3 will be prose with inset panel illustrations
- 198% funding — Book 3 will be alternating comics and prose/inset illustrations, as were Books 1 and 2
… with the differences in funding correlating directly to the costs of paying artist David Hahn and his almost frighteningly-skilled Periscope Studiomates.
Balder’s previous overfundings on a percentage basis were 354%, 476%, and 537%, which would seem to make his top stretch goal pretty easily reachable; however, Balder’s previous dollar goals were well below the US$49,000 he’s seeking here (as of this writing, he’s a little north of US$54,000). In fact, his previous top funding target in dollar figures only half what he’s seeking now (US$24,000). Then again, that project raised nearly US$85K, which is a bit less than the US$97K that reaches the top stretch now, and he’s got another two years of fandom and goodwill built up in the meantime.
Applying the ol’ Triple-F calculation¹ give a prediction of Balder ending up somewhere between 204% and 408%, and since even the extreme low end of the predicted range clears the threshold for the top stretch, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet (with 25 days left to go) that Balder will be writing fewer text pages and more comics scripts. In any event, this oddly hybrid, looking-forward and looking-back campaign is something I expect we’ll see more of in the future, so I’m sure I won’t be the only one watching to see how it turns out.
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¹ The Fleen Funding Factor, or Formula, or some combination of three f-words: take the trend value of the project at the 24-30 hour mark from Kicktraq and divide by both three and six; the final total will most likely be somewhere in the middle of that range. In this case, the trend at that point was sitting as close to US$600K as makes no difference.
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