by Funding has been a source of constant experimentation in the webcomics arena since almost the start. You give away the webcomic, the thing that you are in the whole thing to do and the question becomes how do I make a living. Or maybe just, how do I fund this cool idea I want to do with the webcomic next?
Kickstarter didn’t necessarily bring new ideas but it did bring solid execution, a well-designed platform and eventually a real community around its mission. Webcomics seems to have used it a lot for pre-funding books and other spin-off things based on established webcomics. There’s been a lot of just people doing comics using it too. If you have been putting out a webcomic though you have the leg-up of a fan base when you get around to thinking about a campaign.
Gary@Fleen did a recent post where he gathered up a bunch of data for webcomic-related Kickstart projects and tried to make some sense of it. Well worth reading — he was also on a podcast recently about Kickstarter where he talked a little about the post. Collecting data can be a bear and unfortunately there’s no “webcomic” category on Kickstarter. Even if there was, I think Gary was interested in things generated by webcomics creators as much as anything. That’s why you get a motion comic project or a board game included as well.
I’ve contributed to some campaigns, not as many as I really could have but I chalk that up to a busy year and often just too decisioned-out at the end of the day to think about it to much. I do like checking in on new projects at the Kickstarter blog though and I think I’ll keep highlighting ones I think are interesting and potentially cool things to support.
