KickstarterForum.org

[shavenhobo]

Hi All,

I thought I was prepared for Kickstarter but I underestimated the nature of the beast. I think I have a nice project and im fully integrated i'm just wondering if anyone had any super ideas for a push in interest. It's hard to get people even friends to genuinely care or share the campaign.

http://kck.st/1gPuPC7

Please take a look and let me know what you think. Im hearing so many success stories and I have some overseas backers but im worried I have peaked at only 4%

Please help
Thanks
Ross

[sbriggman]

What do you feel you underestimated?

Have you considered doing a few free portraits for influencers and then emailing them the portrait and if they like it, ask them to tell their fans about the opportunity to get their own portrait via the Kickstarter? Example: a youtuber or a blogger.

[shavenhobo]

Now that is an awesome idea thanks sbriggman

[Chesu]

I think there's a bit of a problem in the fact that it's not really clear what you're trying to do, from the video and a quick once-over of the page. I normally don't think a breakdown of what the money is being used for is necessary in a Kickstarter campaign, but £2,000 is a lot of money to go into the creation of a poster.

Let's shave off the time it takes to go through the backer surveys, communicate with people, etc. and just look at the time it takes to make the pixel portraits. I know that there can be a lot of variation in how long it takes to draw each one, and pixel art at that scale is all about experimentation and tweaking things to look just right, but as a pixel artist myself I can say that you should be able to draw them in approximately ten minutes.

Doing a little math on that, assuming you're funded you would be drawing these pixel portraits for about £33/hour. Even after allowing more time to draw each portrait and factoring in communicating with your backers, that will still seem like a lot of money for what you're doing to people looking at your project. You need to explain what you're using the money for, why you can't justify taking a few minutes out of every day to draw without it.

In terms of pure promotion for the project, I would create a blog showcasing your work. Preferably on Tumblr, as its tagging system will allow you to reach an audience that would be interested. You could post a piece once or twice a day, tagging it as "pixel art", "8-bit", "kickstarter", and anything else relevant, and with each post, include a link to your project.

[shavenhobo]

Hi Thanks for your post I think you have mis-read my intention and this has impacted in the maths you just laid down.
As in my video I plan to make 356 portraits and produce these as posters and prints as rewards.
The way I came to my total was by dividing £2000 by 365 = £5.48 there-abouts.
Now i would say £5 for a custom portrait to be made possibly GIF'd and printed as an A4 print and A3 poster is pretty reasonable not to mention the overheads.
I felt my short video illustrated this without getting too detailed about finance. I'm intrigued by your £33/hour sum.

I shall pursue tumblr none the less.
Thanks for looking,

[Chesu]

Sorry, let me better explain myself. I think £5 is a reasonable price, if you were just selling custom pixel portraits... but Kickstarter isn't a site for selling things, it's a site for creating communities in support of projects. Your project isn't selling individual pieces, it's creating individual pieces to form a whole, in this case the poster. You know all this, obviously, but the point I'm trying to make is that while people would be willing to pay a caricature artist to draw them as they sat there, they wouldn't be so keen on the same artist taking a photo of them, saying that he'll draw them sometime in the next year, and asking for payment.

The ideal situation you're outlining in the project is that half of the portraits could take up to six months to arrive, and the other half will take six months to a year. You need to explain to people what you're doing with their money, and why they should give it to you instead of going to Pixel Joint and paying someone for something guaranteed to arrive within a week.