Happy to share that my latest Kickstarter is now live! Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap~! A big thanks to all my supporters who’ve shared and followed my project so far. It’s only the campaign’s first day, but a little summary of how I prepared the prelaunch.
So to recap! I’ve had my t-shirt adaptation of my risograph print, Can’t Pray Away This Gay, in the chamber for a while. My original hope was to fund my shirt run myself, however, after getting my business finances in order this year it became clear I didn’t have enough in my expenses chest to purchase new shirts any time soon. And so… crowdfunding!
Could I have launched my campaign for June 2025 instead? Perhaps! But this past spring I had plenty of market events to capture my attention. As June drew nearer, I decided instead that if I was able to get into Atlanta Pride’s 2025 Artist Market, then I could justify the huge effort and gamble it takes to put a crowdfunding campaign together.
I’ll admit I surprised myself with how quickly I was able to put Can’t Pray Away This Gay’s graphics together. I turned it around in less than a week after my official acceptance into Atlanta Pride, but it was helpful that I could refer to my old files for my Lucky Snakes campaign as reference.
While this is my third campaign after two successes, Can’t Pray Away This Gay is the largest amount I’ve ever aimed to raise, so I’m a little nervous. My first campaign, Tubluar Snake Shirt, was also a shirt run but expenses have gone up since 2021! So really doing my best to full-ass my promotional campaign… short of paying social media platforms for advertising, because I refuse.
And in that effort to full-ass, I actually made a little animation! Here’s a behind-the-scenes.
On August 8th, about halfway through my prelaunch campaign, it occurred to me. While I didn’t have the physical merch to make a promotional video like I did with Lucky Snakes, I coooooooould use the skills I studied at SCAD and… animate??? Outside of work hours???
A few pages of thumbnail doodles, Clip Studio Paint Youtube tutorials, and a weekend later, I had the beginning of something usable! Somehow, the program I had been using to animate for fun, Storyboard Pro 2, had become unstable, so, that’s on my to-do-later list. But! It provided an opportunity for me to finally learn about the Clip Studio Paint animation functions I’ve heard so much about it. I used it to animate the scene above! It was a lot easier to get the hang of than I anticipated so… could this be the beginning of more casual animations from me?????
Together with Adobe After Effects and Premiere CS5, I was able to put together a couple cuts of this promotional video! Big thanks to, Peryius, Youtube link here, for the music, “Take Me Home!”
Let me tell you… a new fear of mine, is accidentally using AI generated music. It took a little more time but whew, I’m so grateful for the talented musicians who are willing to share their work!
Will video help appease the algorithm when it comes to promoting my Kickstarter? Unclear, but any little bit helps!
Thanks for reading my ramblings. I’m still on the post-launch high as I’m typing, haha! Keep me in your thoughts and prayers!
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