The webcomics blog about webcomics

Porn And Piders

I’ve been thinking about something that might be more suited to coverage tomorrow, but work-related travel may make that impractical. It might be even more appropriate to Monday morning, but regular work means that the majority of my embloggenation happens at lunchtime, and that’ll be too late. So it’s today, Thursday, one of the lesser days of the week, where we discuss it. Feel free to check how my thoughts actually pan out in a couple of days.

Smut Peddler 2014 is currently sitting (as I write this) at US$136,624 on a goal of US$20,000; the FFF predicted a finish of US$133-266K, so yay it’ll land within my excessively wide margin of error.

The question now is, as we enter the last 100 hours or so, will an end-campaign bounce take place? SP2012 had a mid-campaign spike and no real uptick at the end; SP2014 has followed the usual long tail, and may need a final, exciting stretch goal to prompt a sudden spike in funding.

Here’s the other thing I’m very much wondering about — lots of web-type people note that their traffic is highest on Monday, lowest on the weekend; SP2014 finishes just before noon EDT on Monday. Will the relatively low weekend internet browsing levels work against a final spurt? Will the fact that it finishes on a Monday mean that people happen across one last-minute link and get impulsive? It would be very tough to put an effective control on Kickstarter project analyses for launch day and wrap day, but I have a feeling that launching on a Monday (to catch high traffic) and finishing on a Tuesday or Wednesday (to catch high traffic for the this is your last chance reminders) would possibly be most effective. Ask me when we’ve got another 1000 or so webcomics campaigns we can dig through for data. In any event, come Monday (so to speak) we’ll be able to quantify exactly how much people like porn.


Speaking of Kickstarts, click here. Did you spontaneously exclaim Oh man, I love Baman Piderman? No? Then take an hour of your life and watch the shorts because honestly, the only people that don’t spontaneously exclaim are those that are watching Bamanm Piderman for the first time. For about three and a half years, starting about five years ago, Baman Piderman has been a labor of love, and in order to bring it to a satisfying conclusion, creators Lindsay and Alex Small-Butera are looking for a quite modest sum of money (US$50,000) to make five episodes, each running probably about five minutes. In an actual animation studio, that US$50K wouldn’t cover craft services¹ for a week.

But still! Fifty thousand dollars is a lot! Consider, though: US$10K/episode or US$2K/minute gives a budget of US$33.33 per second of animation, or about two bucks for each of 15 frames per second. Are you willing to draw a couple-ten thousand very precisely designed pictures for two bucks a pop? How long would it take you to draw each of those, and would it be worth your time? Fifty grand is a bargain, and it appears that many of you agree, as the Small-Buteras² are sitting at about 90% of goal one day in (and the FFF is giving a final funding of around US$115-330K) with 29 days to go.

Seriously. Check out the shorts. You’ll love ’em.

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¹ Which under the rules of studio accounting would also incorporate the executive hookers ‘n’ blow line item.

² Or possibly Smalls-Butera.

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