Kickstarter.com

Alice at VINI turned me on to Kickstarter.com today. It's a funding platform for independent creative projects. Basically, you submit a proposal for a project you need money for, set a funding goal, and site visitors can become "backers" and pledge donations to your project via Amazon. If you reach your funding goal within the time limit (between 1 and 90 days), you get 95% of the money pledged; if you don't, you get nothing and none of your backers are charged. It's still in beta, but I they're accepting proposals. I think I'll be putting something together soon.

CHECK OUT THESE PROJECTS:
Reading With Pictures is a project looking to get comics into schools via one big compiled textbook. They made over $4,000 over their $10,000 funding goal.








Fresher than Fresh is Kansas' first all natural snowcone stand. They're raising funds to renovate their snow cone trailer.







Almost Super is the third book by Matthew Buckley. He's more than halfway to his $5,500 goal to pay for self-publishing. He's giving away first edition prints at the ridiculously cheap price of one per $10 pledge. His first chapter is available for download as a PDF. I'm in the process of reading it now: it's smart and quirky.

Kate Beaton

Kate Beaton is an illustrator / comics artist whose blog I've been following for close to a year now. She's got a real clean, whimsical style and a work ethic that I'm damn envious of. Like most comics artists, she writes autobiographical strips from time to time with anecdotes from her life, like owning a finicky cat, working an office job, and dealing with a family who doesn't always understand her. The real unique thing is that she's got a degree in history, and writes mostly about historical figures and the real stories behind the misconceptions, but with contemporary slang and good comedic timing. She posts pretty frequently, so bookmark her livejournal and check back every few days; you can find it here: Hark, A Vagrant!. She's also just published a book of her favorite historical cartoons that you can buy here: Never Learn Anything From History.

Rhonda Forever

http://rhondaforever.com
This is a pretty cool video demonstration Rhonda Forever, a 3D Drawing software developed by Amir Pitaru in 2003.

Pitaru is a classically trained musician but makes really badass digital art with his own custom programs. The coolest part is, he has no formal computer programming training; he's completely self-taught. The Design Museum website says he strives to create interactive animations with the same fluency as music, which is pretty obvious once you take a look at his stuff. This one is call "Geisha", also made with another custom software. You can check out more of his work at pitaru.com.






The hands & drawings in the video belong to James Paterson (no, not the guy that writes those paperback novels my mom reads), another self-taught software geek. So the interwebz say, the two of them met at a conference in London, then realizing they lived on the same street in Brooklyn, and started collaborating. His stuff is a little more my taste than Pitaru's; kindof purposely rough figural line drawings. He likes to use the computer "like a sketchbook". He's has a few creative outlets on the web but I like halfempty.com/james most.

BONUS: If you visit the site, there is a field at the bottom of the page to sign up to be a tester. They'll e-mail you a password to download the prototype to play around with. I already got mine!