Kickstarter Weekends: TOY, Enter the Bluebird

Here we are with another visit to Kickstarter. This month…there weren’t a whole lot of projects that struck my fancy. I usually do three four of these at once but hey; this is my nerd blog and I’m the one who makes the rules. So today we’ll just be doing two. Deal with it, I guess. Anyway before we check those out let’s revisit the projects from last month and see how they did:

BIT Parts: Funding Unsuccessful!

Final Earnings: $0 ($30,000 Goal)

Sadly things didn’t work out for this web series and I for the life of me don’t understand why. They did everything right and provided a hell of a lot more promise of returns (in the form of quality internet entertainment) than 90% of the other projects in their category. This is the first failed project that I’ve covered (as opposed to canceled ones) and it’s really depressing. Blue Goggles Films will be moving on to other projects but they are hopeful they will revisit BIT Parts someday.

Barkley 2: Funding Successful!

Final Earnings: $ 120,335 ($35,000 Goal)

Seeing as this project was funded when I posted the last edition of KSWs it’s no surprise that Barkley 2 (aka The Magical Realms of Tír na nÓg: Escape from Necron 7 - Revenge of Cuchulainn: The Official Game of the Movie - Chapter 2 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa) got funded. But man, they destroyed that goal! That’s always cool to see. What Kickstarter doesn’t often tell lookie-loos like us is that there’s some pretty notable fees (Kickstarter fees, Amazon fees, and taxes) so I like to see projects go past their goals to help pay for such things. Even so that is a huge chunk of change!

Nightwing the Series: Funding Pending

Final Earnings: TBA

Like I said last time these guys gave themselves a two month worth of error time for this project (which statistically is a problem as projects are more likely to succeed when they’re set for thirty days) so they still have a few weeks left to go. Still they have surpassed their goal in pledges so, barring a massive flood of backers pulling out, they’ve already won and now are just collecting gravy.

Forsaken Fortress: Funding Successful

Final Earnings: $ 121,096 ($100,000 Goal)

The bonus project form last week. I have to say that the game looks like it might be a lot cooler than I originally thought. Hopefully you weren’t broke like me last month and got yourself a copy.

Two new projects after the jump.

TOY by Kawehi, EP Vol. 3

Either she loops to perform her music or she uses clones

Goal: $3,000

Deadline: 2:59AM, 2/9/13

Here’s a fun Kickstarter story: Kawehi is a multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter based in L.A. who’s claim to fame is the loop machine she uses to create a full sound despite being a one woman show. A while back she tried to use Kickstarter to fund an EP and it failed. She tried again a short time later and POP (the name of the album) got funded in a damn day. She decided to follow this up with VOX, an EP done with only her vocals, and it ended up being similarly successful. Now Kawehi is back and ready for another go with TOY. She has to be one the best success stories on that website and a true example of “If at first you don’t succeed try try again”.

TOY is something of a concept album as Kawehi plans on using nothing but toy instruments, hence the title. Now this is really neat and while I was more intrigued by VOX’s concept Kawehi produces such catchy and cool stuff and takes such interesting challenges with her music that I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt as she’s yet to let me down. $3,000 is a pretty reasonable goal (especially compared to last month’s projects) and she already has a pretty good start but as always every little bit helps [EDIT: Since I wrote this the project has surpassed its goal in pledges]. Check out her Kickstarter page below and then also check out her website.

And no, I’m not supporting her because she’s really cute. I’m supporting her because I legitimately think she has a great voice and an extremely unique musical style that I really dig. (But yeah, I’m reasonably sure she’s the prettiest person on Kickstarter but let’s not make a huge deal about it)

Visit TOY by Kawehi's Kickstarter page.

Enter the Blue Bird

So jealous! So damn jealous!

Goal: $3,500

Deadline: 1:49PM, 2/2/13

Enter the Blue Bird is a new, unpublished Young Adult novel by Brendan Halpin. By his own admission Halpin is a “midlist author” meaning he makes a living as an author and has a lot of books to his name but isn't some ULTRA MEGA SUCCESSFUL author. Because of this the publishers, who are apparently in chaos right now, aren’t giving his new book a shot. Well that and also because it’s not a paranormal romance book. Which is both hilarious and depressing. Anyway Halpin has decided to go the Kickstarter route to gain funds to publish his book himself. Now as you probably can guess I’m not exactly the biggest fan of the genre. I mean, I’m totally not as young as I used to be, you know? However two things caught my attention:

1) The subject matter,  “superhero noir”, intrigues me. There aren’t a huge number of superhero books out there and by now you should know I enjoy my superheroes. If I had to choose between reading a book about a teenage girl who has to decide who she loves more between a Frankenstein monster and a mummy (or whatever) and a book about a teenage girl with superpowers fighting crime I’m going with the latter every goddamn time. 2) Honestly after seeing his KS video I feel like Halpin and I might be kindred spirit. His inspiration for Bluebird came from making a character for the tabletop game Mutants & Masterminds, a game I played and ran for years and still to this day have a ton of notes for characters I made that I think would make cool comic books. So yeah, nerds have to stick together. But also, as the word count meter on the right suggests, I’m working on my own novel and I have a strong suspicion that I’m going to be Halpin when I grow up (i.e. “ready to publish”).

If nothing else it’d be cool to help out a dude who wants to publish a book since I also want to publish a book. So check out the page for yourself (he has some links to sample chapters if you need to examples of what he’s doing).

Visit Enter the Blue Bird's Kickstarter Page.


If you know any cool Kickstarter pages, or if you have a project that needs support, feel free to post a link in the comment section (though take in mind as moderator of the comment section I have the right to not allow any KS posts that I am especially against for any reason).