Tagged: Kickstarter

Gerry Anderson’s Gemini Force 1 Heads To Kickstarter

GF1-logo-trans

Based on concepts and story written by Gerry Anderson, a new adventure series from the creator of Thunderbirds and Space: 1999 will be funded by his fans via a Kickstarter campaign starting September 5th.

Gemini Force One (or GF1) is, as the Anderson Estate describes it, “the story of a secret organization involved in rescues and averting disasters and terrorist events”. Gerry began work on it back in 2008, but was unable to complete development due to his advancing Alzheimer’s Disease, which led to his passing at the end of last year.

The project has been planned as a series of adventure novels, the first of which will be completed by best-selling author MG Harris, writer of The Joshua Files, under the guidance of Gerry’s son Jamie, who is spearheading the project.  Harris has experience with popular science fiction series; she’s just recently completed a new Blake’s 7 adventure for Big Finish Productions.  Television, film and other media development will follow, based on the success of the book series.  The GF1 vehicles, a cornerstone of any Anderson series, will be designed by Andrew Probert
(Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica) and Dominic Lavery (New Captain Scarlet, James Bond, Event Horizon);

GF1 will be fan-funded with a Kickstarter campaign, with the first book scheduled to be completed and released to backers in April of next year, leading up to a full launch in August, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of his most famous series, Thunderbirds..  The campaign will provide the project with the funds for an initial print run, an audio-book edition, and a major media campaign.

The Anderson estate sees the project as a way to reach not only Gerry’s current fans, but a new generation of fans. Gerry lost the rights to many of his series in the 60s and 70s, and as such, never benefited properly as they grew into global cult favorites. With the renewed popularity of young-adult fiction, a new adventure series from such a franchise name seems like a good bet for success all around.

Details of the campaign, including backer awards, are available at www.gerryanderson.co.uk/GF1

WEIRD WESTERN COMIC IN THE WORKS-WELCOME TO PARIAH, MISSOURI

Pariah, Missouri: The Graphic Novel Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Local Man Uses Kickstarter to Realize His Hollywood Dreams


Ventura, California – December 7, 2012 – Doing something creative that you love is a challenge.  Finding an audience for your work and getting paid for it is even harder.   Andres Salazar understands those struggles.  Andres is a stand-up comedian,  has directed and produced short films, written screenplays even sells his paintings at craft fairs.  Most recently Andres has turned to the crowdfunding website, Kickstarter.com to find an audience and realize his dream of being a creator.

His latest project is a graphic novel titled Pariah, Missouri–a supernatural story set in pre-civil war.  He wrote it originally as a television pilot script in hopes to get attention from the cable networks.  “I pitched it as Deadwood meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but nowadays you gotta have the script, a cast and director attached and half of it shot before they will look at you, and that’s only if you have an agent, manager and have previously worked on three shows,” says Andres. 

So instead of beating his head against Hollywood’s doors, he turned to other mediums to tell the tale.  “When I conceived Pariah, I wanted something that I could tell graphically since comics have been my love as a kid.  It’s much cheaper of course to generate a comic and this is a good way to build a fan-base and that is always something that Hollywood wants to see,” says Andres.  Turning an hour drama script into a comic book is not without it’s challenges.  An artist needed to be found so Andres turned to sites such as Deviantart.com to find affordable and dependable artists. 

“That was a challenge.  I mean, I could have drawn it myself, but comic book art takes an incredible amount of time, plus there is value in adding others creative juices to the mix.  I was lucky to find a great artist like Jose,” says Andres.  Jose Luis Pescador is no stranger to the comic book world.  He studied at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and has worked on a number of independent graphic novels and has shown fine art in galleries across the country. 

His super-team was assembled, but Andres still needed funding.  Enter Kickstarter.com  Kickstarter is a new phenomenon in what is dubbed crowdfunding which gives creators a chance realize their ambitions by asking others to “back” their project.  From films, music albums to food, Kickstarter generates hundreds of projects daily in the hopes that they meet their funding goal.  If the goal is achieved, backers then receive rewards according to their pledge amount.

Having worked for Howard Chaykin as an assistant, Andres learned much of the business from his mentor.  Andres also wrote and directed SAG short film After Cheri and stated , “We are very excited about our Kickstarter for Pariah, Missouri!  It will be an exciting story for the next 30 days to see how we progress through the campaign.  I will be posting videos and updates often so backers really get a sense of the “behind the scenes” of what it takes to make a comic book.  Please check us out.”

For a 23 page preview of Pariah, Missouri- go HERE.

To see the Pariah, Missouri Kickstarter campaign to go: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andresjsalazar/pariah-missouri-the-graphic-novel

###

If you’d like more information about the Pariah, MO graphic novel or to schedule interviews with Andres

Salazar please email andresjsalazar@gmail.com or call 805-746-6884

Pariah, Missouri: The Graphic Novel Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Local Man Uses Kickstarter to Realize His Hollywood Dreams

Ventura, California – December 7, 2012 – Doing something creative that you love is a challenge.  Finding an audience for your work and getting paid for it is even harder.   Andres Salazar understands those struggles.  Andres is a stand-up comedian,  has directed and produced short films, written screenplays even sells his paintings at craft fairs.  Most recently Andres has turned to the crowdfunding website, Kickstarter.com to find an audience and realize his dream of being a creator.

His latest project is a graphic novel titled Pariah, Missouri–a supernatural story set in pre-civil war.  He wrote it originally as a television pilot script in hopes to get attention from the cable networks.  “I pitched it as Deadwood meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but nowadays you gotta have the script, a cast and director attached and half of it shot before they will look at you, and that’s only if you have an agent, manager and have previously worked on three shows,” says Andres. 

So instead of beating his head against Hollywood’s doors, he turned to other mediums to tell the tale.  “When I conceived Pariah, I wanted something that I could tell graphically since comics have been my love as a kid.  It’s much cheaper of course to generate a comic and this is a good way to build a fan-base and that is always something that Hollywood wants to see,” says Andres.  Turning an hour drama script into a comic book is not without it’s challenges.  An artist needed to be found so Andres turned to sites such as Deviantart.com to find affordable and dependable artists. 

“That was a challenge.  I mean, I could have drawn it myself, but comic book art takes an incredible amount of time, plus there is value in adding others creative juices to the mix.  I was lucky to find a great artist like Jose,” says Andres.  Jose Luis Pescador is no stranger to the comic book world.  He studied at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and has worked on a number of independent graphic novels and has shown fine art in galleries across the country. 

His super-team was assembled, but Andres still needed funding.  Enter Kickstarter.com  Kickstarter is a new phenomenon in what is dubbed crowdfunding which gives creators a chance realize their ambitions by asking others to “back” their project.  From films, music albums to food, Kickstarter generates hundreds of projects daily in the hopes that they meet their funding goal.  If the goal is achieved, backers then receive rewards according to their pledge amount.

Having worked for Howard Chaykin as an assistant, Andres learned much of the business from his mentor.  Andres also wrote and directed SAG short film After Cheri and stated , “We are very excited about our Kickstarter for Pariah, Missouri!  It will be an exciting story for the next 30 days to see how we progress through the campaign.  I will be posting videos and updates often so backers really get a sense of the “behind the scenes” of what it takes to make a comic book.  Please check us out.”

To see the Pariah, Missouri Kickstarter campaign to go: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andresjsalazar/pariah-missouri-the-graphic-novel

###

If you’d like more information about the Pariah, MO graphic novel or to schedule interviews with Andres

Salazar please email andresjsalazar@gmail.com or call 805-746-6884

Michael Davis: Visible Only To The French

davis-art-1210023-3915740Hi, there. I’m not Michael Davis. I’m his editor. Yeah, that’s not a good sign, is it?

Here’s the deal. Michael wrote the first part of his latest life-shattering saga Why Does Michael Davis Still Read Comics? We ran that last week; if you doubt me, click on the link. Then, according to Michael, he wrote the second part, scooped up his wife, and caught an airplane to France. That’s pretty cool, if you happen to like France. Evidently, Michael doesn’t. He doesn’t like flying even more. He likes his wife, and I suspect he likes the work he’s doing out there, and he probably changed his mind — in part — about France after some good old-fashioned American tourism. 

Please note, I did not say “Michael sent me the second part of his series and then caught an airplane to France.”  This is because he didn’t do that. Michael said apologetically he was in such a rush he forgot. This is entirely possible. It’s a human thing. We all do it. Unfortunately, one of the things I do is mock my friends given any opportunity, which is why I will no doubt be found floating face down in that dirty ol’ river next to Patches some day. But, to quote Michael when he rips off Peter David, I digress.

(By the way, did you know that Peter David’s last name is really Davis and he is Michael’s father? There’s a reason that story doesn’t get out much.)

Here’s the thing. The last line of Michael’s column reads “End of part one!” It does not say “continued next week.” Hmmmm… Makes me wonder. 

Anyway, Michael told me he’s having a lousy time, possibly so I wouldn’t get jealous. He says the bacon sucks, and I believe that part. Did you know that in France, French bacon is called liberté de bacon? Go know!

Since Michael is over there and not over here and evidently there’s a law against him contacting his assistant and having her e-mail me the missing column (it’s amazing what technology can do these days), Michael says he will probably go to a French comic book store and write up his experience there for next week. We’ll see. Personally, I’m doing a Kickstarter to raise his bail. 

Love you, pal. Enjoy your trip.

In spite of yourself.

WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold Gets Serious

 

AMAZING STORIES TO RELAUNCH JULY 1

For Immediate Release

AMAZING STORIES Relaunch Prelaunch Launches July 1, 2012.
Hillsboro, NH

Amazing Stories, the world’s first science fiction magazine, will begin its return to regular publication this July 1st with Volume 0, Number 1, the Relaunch Prelaunch issue.

All kinds of wonderful things have been happening at Amazing Stories over the past several months and some of them have prompted a change to the overall plan for Amazing Stories return.

As some of you may recall, I was planning on beginning the funding effort following the presidential elections in November. I’d originally wanted to go for the whole enchilada all at once and scale back from there as necessary.

Recent developments have caused me to accelerate certain aspects of the plan and to modify my approach to launching.

Now the plan is to break the project up into smaller pieces and fund those individually. Instead of scaling back, we’ll be building up.

This change has been engendered by a very exciting recent development that will both strengthen Amazing’s brand and create a revenue stream. The details of this development will be announced the weekend of July 14-15. The announcement will take place at the San Diego Comic Con (CA) and Readercon (MA) conventions.

I felt that it would be foolish to waste such an opportunity and decided to create the Relaunch Prelaunch issue of Amazing Stories so that there would be somewhere to go and something to look at when the announcement was made,

Since I had already gathered a fair amount of material for the blog, I decided to put it all together and create an issue of the magazine with it. The content ranges from reminisces on Amazing from Robert Silverberg, Barry Malzberg and Patrick L Price, to fiction by Jack Clemons (all of which is being reprinted from earlier renditions of the magazine) to an extensive series of round-robin interviews with 13 of the Book View Cafe authors – Maya Bohnhoff, Brenda Clough, Chris Dolley, katharine E. Kimbriel, Sue Lange, Vonda McIntyre, Linda Nagata, Pati Nagle, Phyllis Radford, Deborah J. Ross, Sarah Smith, Jennifer Stevenson, Judith Tarr and Dave Trowbridge and some (short) editorializing from me.

I think there’s plenty of good stuff there that will be released throughout the course of the month. Anyone who hears about Amazing Stories from the announcements (I’ll be sending it out to you all as well) will find several pieces to read when they visit and the promise of more to keep them coming back. And this will not be the last Relaunch Prelaunch issue; I’ve already started getting stuff in for the next one (an essay on Tarzan & Burroughs from John M Whalen) and more on the way (though I am not anywhere close to the three-months-out I ought to be). Hold on to your fiction, but if you’ve got an interesting article, interview, review, feel free to send it inI. I’m not paying and I can’t promise I’ll use it, but….

It now seems that the time to pull out all of the stops has arrived a few months earlier than I had originally anticipated. I am now putting together the outline of a Kickstarter (or similar) crowd-funding plan and presentation that will be released in the next couple of months.

In order to make it all work I will need everyone’s help.

So what can you do?

Nothing if you’d prefer. Or you could:

Visit the site. Share it with your friends. Comment on something you find here. Link to it. Sign up on the Facebook page. Sign up here.

Say nice things and think good thoughts.

The more Amazing Stories resembles a going concern, the easier it will be to obtain the funding and the closer we will all be to seeing what we want to see, the return of Amazing Stories!

The website and blog can be found here: http://www.amazingstoriesmag.com/
The Facebook Page is here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Amazing-Stories/267141773319031

I have plenty of space on the site to help promote and publicize fellow travelers. If getting a spot up on Amazing’s site will help you promote the magazine, please send your artwork and link or get in touch so we can put a plan together. I’m happy to do what I can in return for your support.

And finally

Thank You All for your support, your kind words and your good wishes.

Steve Davidson

Ray Dillon / Artist & Writer: My wife, Renae De Liz, is going to be okay, but she is in the hospital. :(

2011-06-womanthology-2-2161520Spreading the word: Renae De Liz, the creator behind Womanthology, is in the hospital, according to husband Ray Dillon:
Hi, everyone-

Been avoiding saying anything publicly because I didn’t want to cause worry prematurely and wanted to make sure I had more information and talked to our immediate family first.
Renae is recovering right now, just very slowly.
She has an infection that has spread into her blood and kidneys, as well as pneumonia and some other things we’re worried about, but I don’t want to say anything there until test results are back. As of today she’s doing a bit better and we’re told after perhaps a week in the Critical Care Unit she should be mostly recovered. It got really bad and we almost lost her. :( Been a very rough couple of weeks. We’re behind in work, income, communication, and our nerves are just shot from all this. (I can’t even think about the likely $30k or more in medical bills we’re racking up here with no health insurance and we don’t qualify for assistance…)
So, please understand that we’re unable to get back to everyone checking in on current or future projects, Womanthology copies, or anything else right now. Please give us 2-3 weeks. I’ll do my best during that time, but can’t promise to get back to everyone. Renae will likely be in CCU for a week or more, not sure how long she’ll be in a recovery room after that. My focus is taking care of her and the kids during this (which I can’t do at the same time because Critical Care doesn’t allow kids).
I just can’t keep up on all these messages right now, but I’ll do my best. If you could help by spreading the word so no one out there is getting frustrated by not hearing back from us sooner that would be amazing. Particularly on Womanthology. If you happen to see someone asking about it, please direct them here and to the updates on the Womanthology Kickstarter Updates page, which should answer all questions. Books and other rewards are in process as quickly as we can get them out. Most of them are done! But we’re sorry for any delay this might cause, if any. It’s mostly out of our hands at this point and just about everything is already on its way to the backers.So aside from a few pre-scheduled tweets and blogs to keep things running I’ll be away from the computer most of the time for right now.

Huge thank you to Stacie Ponder (check out her movies and comics!) for helping with the kids while I visit Renae and to Renae’s sister Kimberly De Liz (check out her art!) for offering to fly all the way over here to Maine to help with the kids.
And to everyone who already knows and has offered their support and love and everyone who surely will. Thank you.

Get Well Cards!

Oh, and if anyone wanted to send Get Well cards, flowers, chocolate, or anything like that to Renae that would be so sweet! You can send to our home: 18 Killdeer Road, Cape Elizabeth, Maine 04107 or directly to her hospital room Mercy Hospital, 144 State Street, Portland Maine, 04101 – Critical Care Unit c/o patient: Renae Dillon. (Keep in mind that is the Critical Care Unit so nothing too elaborate, but once she’s in her recovery room you could send real elephants and stuff). That would make her feel really loved and special (which she is!)

~Ray
www.RenaeDeLiz.com

Are We Taking Donations?

Wow! I’m overwhelmed the amazing support, love, and offers for donations. We’ve even gotten a few already! Wow! Thank you! Generous people!!!!!
The answer is:
Kinda?
Part of me (the scared part) wants to say, “Yes, please help!” But … some of you might remember a few years back, when we lived in Kansas, and we were about to have a baby and things with the home we were trying to buy (and had been living in for a year) fell through and we had to move in 30 days and didn’t know what we were going to do. Back then we asked for donations and took on a ton of commissions and new projects to try to raise the money to save the house. Despite all of our efforts (and yours) it still didn’t work out, but we moved to Maine and life is incredible here and we’re actually glad now that we didn’t stick our roots down there, even if we loved the house.Everyone was SO generous and helpful, and in fact we still owe some commissions from back then (moving across country and having a baby who didn’t sleep for his first 2 years is like jumping in a time warp). So I know we totally don’t want to be the people who are like “We need help AGAIN!” You know? And this is something that we can probably work out. We might be paying these medical bills forever, but it’s not the same as needing to raise a certain amount by a certain time to save a house or to have a major operation to save a life or anything like that. It’s just going to be some really, really bad debt that we were really hoping never to have. Taking a huge bite out of our future plans and the getting ahead of debt that we’ve been hoping to do forever, that’s for sure. BUT, right now we don’t have any dire need and there are a lot of people out there who probably do.

Also I can’t ask Renae our thoughts on this yet. She’d probably think you’re all amazing for wanting to but not want to bother anyone for the help. That’s just who she is.

SO, with that in mind (the fact that we’ve gotten an amazing amount of help before and this isn’t an urgent and dire need … at least not yet … knock on wood) if you still want to help and totally have it to spare (if you’ve got your own financial worries, please take care of you and yours first) then you can donate by clicking this button:

But please read the above information before you do that. We’ll probably be fine without donations, but of course they would help! But there are people who need it more, too. 
You’re all just super incredible people for being so sweet and supportive and wanting to help so much.
THANK YOU!!
~Ray

 

via Ray Dillon / Artist & Writer: My wife, Renae De Liz, is going to be okay, but she is in the hospital. :(.