Crowdsourced Projects – Page 7

Gritty werewolf murder mystery “Mongrel: S.O.B.” Kickstarter & graphic novel

Mongrel: S.O.B. is a three-issue comic by artist Andrew Mitchell Kudelka and writer Edward Dunphy, who describes it as a gritty murder mystery, “one part The Howling and one part CSI: Chicago, [that] pits a monstrous werewolf against a veteran Chicago detective.” The first two issues have already been produced, and you might even have them if you were at comic conventions like SDCC 2012, C2E2 or DanCon. The last convention I went to was ECCC 2011, and the Internet’s a big place, so I didn’t know about Mongrel until Tah told me about it this morning, with characteristic brevity. The first two issues have garnered enthusiastic praise, and the werewolf action seems firmly based in the horror genre, which is why the Kickstarter campaign to fund the concluding issue and a graphic novel collecting all three is worth your attention.

The modest $3,500 goal will cover artist fees and production costs for the graphic novel, and the backer rewards span the tried-and-true range of swag, including shirts, artwork, posters, advertising space, and several chances to be drawn into the final issue (either as a speaking character or a werewolf victim). They’re less than a day into the campaign and it’s already halfway funded, so some of those stretch goals (the most exciting of which is a Mongrel resin sculpture) seem likely, too.

I want to reiterate that I haven’t read either of the existing issues, but the first page of the first issue (below) is enough to get my pledge. If you’d like to learn more, hit up the Mongrel web site, Twitter account (@mongrelcomic) or Facebook page, and if you like what you see, kick in a few bucks!

Angela Quinton Mar. 15th 2013

“The Werewolf of NYC” Kickstarter perks are pretty sweet

Last November I posted about Edwin Vazquez’s Kickstarter project for his comic “The Werewolf of NYC“. I just got my rewards package in the mail, and I think it warrants sharing here because it’s a very generous array of high-quality swag: two copies of the comic, a limited-edition t-shirt, a tattoo flash page (designed by Jenai Chin), stickers, buttons, and a hand-written thank-you note containing a limited edition piece of art. If you want to get the comic, the sticker or the shirt (in non-limited black), you can visit the Werewolf of NYC shop.

If every Kickstarted, Indiegogoed or otherwise crowdsourced project I backed resulted in stuff like this showing up at my office, I’d be broke in the time it took you to read this. Thanks, Edwin! I can’t wait to read about Albert’s troubles on the train ride home.

Angela Quinton Jan. 7th 2013

Kickstart historical killing-spree “Dreadline” & play a werewolf girl who collects human hearts

Last May I posted about Eerie Canal‘s game Dreadline, an action/RTS mashup in which you play one of several monsters (including a werewolf) who time travel to the scenes of historical catastrophes in order to kill all of the victims who were just going to die anyway. At the time, the game was in development and scheduled for a Q1 2013 release, which is basically now. Since I’m writing this post instead of playing the game, and given the category this post is in, you can probably guess where this is headed, but I’ll let the Eerie Canal team explain:

What was originally going to be our quick-turnaround/low-risk/easy-breezy/genre game evolved into a completely original game that is far more exciting, but also far more challenging to build. Now that we’re ready to really get down to building this thing, we’re out of cash. We have enough of it up and running to know that it’s going to be ridiculously fun, and we can’t wait to finish it.

They’re hoping to raise $167,000 on Kickstarter, which seems like a lot of money to more mortals like you and I, but consider this: Eerie Canal is two dudes who’ve worked a ton of games for giant publishers, who want to take the best of what they’ve learned and make something informed by their own (sick and twisted) sensibilities, and who really know what this sort of thing costs. From the KS page:

Dreadline is currently slated to be an English-language, single-player, PC release that will be completed around August of 2013. The plan is to have 9 playable monsters and 7 calamities. We have estimated that it will cost us $167,000 (minus the take of Kickstarter, Amazon, and our prizes) to get Dreadline out the door. It’s quite a bit less than what other game projects of this size have asked for since we’ve been self funding for over a year now.

But we would love to offer more. We want more monsters, more calamities, multiplayer monster fights, Mac port, iOS port, more languages, or anything else YOU may want. We don’t want to put up a table of new features that could be rolled out yet, because we would first like to hear from people like you.

So, the Eerie Canal guys have the experience, the creativity, the tech (they even built their own game engine, called ‘shoe_gazer’), and the will. They just need the cash! If you want to play this game as much as I do, go contribute something to their Kickstarter project. To entice you, here’s a graphic they created that shows what some of the rewards are:

Angela Quinton Jan. 4th 2013

Is this one-eyed schoolgirl a werewolf? Support the short film “Howl” to find out

“Howl” is a UK-produced short film in which schoolteacher Karen Crawshaw “unravels the mystery behind the odd relationship between her new pupil and a stranger with a dark secret.” It’s being shot in Surrey this February, and it’s the most well-organized “indie” production I think I’ve ever been asked to help publicize. They’ve got their cast, location, gear, storyboards, creature FX and basically everything else figured out, and they’re using Kickstarter to raise the remaining £2,000 they need to pay for the project.

Director Jamie Sims emailed me a few months back to see if I might be able to recommend a UK-based maker of creature prosthetics, and while I wasn’t able to help much in that regard (I live in a Canadian city where they’re making at least one Hollywood werewolf picture a year and I can’t even get a foot in that door), I can share some more details from Howl’s Head of Marketing Ben Cowan:

The film hopes to regenerate interest in the horror/monster genre through combining metaphorical parallels between a common evil within society (child abuser/paedophilia) and a traditional creature of nightmares. Using this, the film explores both adult and child fears.

We are currently releasing production videos and concept art on both our Facebook page and our website, that will allow followers to feel a part of the action, and also feel a part of our production team, embarking on the filmmaking journey as we do too.

At the time of this post, the Kickstarter campaign had less than £800 to go with 19 days left, and there are some really interesting perks available, including two pieces of world-building bonus content:

Ministry of Defence Classified Dossier

In July 2010, Scotland Yard ran an investigation into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Karen Crawshaw. Upon reading and analysing the events described in the late Miss. Crawshaw’s diary, Scotland Yard concluded that the case be passed onto the Ministry of Defence. The investigation is ongoing and strictly classified, but a number of restricted dossiers have surfaced online.

Karen Crawshaw’s Original Diary

Locked away in the vaults of the MOD for a number of years, very few have read Karen Crawshaw’s original diary from 1994. Handwritten, she describes the strange occurrences in the village of Chillum and beyond, including the bizarre behaviour of Eleanor Stagg as she grew up. The diary has seen some wear over the years, but still retains the various ink splodges and sketches by the original owner within.

If you’d like to start 2013 off with some charitable giving in support of a short werewolf film, give Howl a look!

Angela Quinton Jan. 1st 2013

“The Werewolf of NYC” – a gorgeous grotesquerie by Edwin Vazquez

I don’t want Werewolf News to turn into a Kickstarter directory, but I don’t want to pass up cool stuff, either, and Edwin Vazquez’s The Werewolf of NYC is pretty damn cool. It’s a 4-issue comic series – created entirely by Vazquez – about unhinged shut-in Albert Shaw escaping his Hell’s Kitchen apartment and roaming the streets as a werewolf. From what I’ve seen of the preview [mildy NSFW], it’s going to be a surreal journey. The thick lines of Vazquez’s scratchboard art renders a New York neighbourhood literally melting with pop art colours, and the narration describes a man whose mind is even more tortured than his body.

The Kickstarter goal is a modest $3,000 to cover production costs of this first issue. The perks include stickers, buttons, hand-screen-printed t-shirts, and a lovely hand-made accordion-style promo book. The first nine pages of the first issue are available here, and I’ve posted the first three below, so you can get a taste of Vazquez’s delightfully grotesque visuals. If you like what you see, why not support it?

Angela Quinton Nov. 5th 2012

Allison Moon continues lycanthropic exploration of feminism & queer identity with “Hungry Ghost”

Author, sex educator and distinguished fur vest wearer Allison Moon is writing a sequel to her debut novel Lunatic Fringe, and she’s put together a Kickstarter campaign to help pay her production expenses. Hungry Ghost is scheduled for an April 2013 release. From the campaign page:

Lunatic Fringe is Book 1 of the Tales of the Pack series, which gives werewolf stories a lesbian twist. It follows college freshman Lexie Clarion as she encounters the strange and scary world of feminist politics, liberal arts education, and forests filled with nasty creatures. Hungry Ghost (Book 2) picks up where Lunatic Fringe left off, as Lexie becomes part of the Pack and takes on her role as a werewolf hunter. She makes new friends, discovers new powers, and has to defend her family and her town against a new Big Bad. The series explores feminism, queer identity, gender politics, and community, all within the werewolf world.

Allison is looking to raise $4,500 to pay her editor and her cover art designer. Additional funds will go towards the cost of merch production and the setup and distribution of the paperback books. The good news is that the campaign has already surpassed its goal with 6 days left, and is within $800 of reaching the first stretch goal: audiobook recordings of both books.

I’m a fan of Allison’s fiction but I also deeply admire her writing on feminism and gender – please support her work if you’re able!

Angela Quinton Nov. 3rd 2012

These are your roots: Kickstarter for Deluxe “Werewolf the Apocalypse” 20th Anniversary Edition

Before the emails about this thing started arriving in my inbox yesterday, I hadn’t thought of Werewolf: the Apocalypse in years. I rolled my last dice in that system during the spring of 1998, and at the time, I didn’t actually miss it much. My group of gaming friends moved on to a weird hybrid of Rifts and Rolemaster that resulted in me getting less sleep and more C’s than I would have liked during my final year of high school. But I kept my WtA book and leafed through it occasionally, enjoying the artwork and the florid-yet-melancholy world described within. I don’t know where that book is now – probably sold to help pay for rent during my dipshit years – but my interest in the game and its universe has suddenly been renewed by news of a Kickstarter to help fund the creation of a Deluxe “Werewolf the Apocalypse” 20th Anniversary Edition.

The goal is to fund the creation of “a deluxe hardcover edition that stands proudly on its own as an amazing volume, or with Vampire the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition.” This volume, referred to as “the W20”, is planned as a black leatherette hardcover with “an inset disk on the spine featuring the W20 round symbol, with 520+ full color, silver-edged, interior pages, and a red silk ribbon bookmark.” Naturally, the cover will feature the classic Werewolf claw marks, die-cut right through the cover material.

Contributors will receive perks that range from a listing of their name on the thank-you page of the book, to the book itself, to an Ultra Deluxe W20 Heavy Metal Edition – a version of the book with an actual metal slab in the cover, bearing punched-out claw marks. In between (and beyond) these tiers are a treasure trove of PDFs, artwork, wallpapers and even a chance to have WtA “showrunner” Ethan Skemp GM a game for you and your friends over Skype.

As of this post, only two days after its start, the project has been 138% funded with contributions totalling nearly $120,000. Both of its stretch goals have already been met, too: all backers will also receive a Making of the Art of W20 PDF “that details via sketches and the text of emails and phone conversations the chaotic process of creating the art for W20“, and early access to a PDF copy of a new WtA novel by Bill Bridges.

I fully intend to get on board with this thing, partly out of nostalgia and partly because I think Werewolf: the Apocalypse is an important part of modern werewolf culture (if such a thing could be said to exist). Whether you played it or not, what you see when you search the Web for “werewolf” is influenced in some small way by what Ethan Skemp and his colleagues first released in 1992. Much of its aesthetics are things I turn my nose up at now – the cyperpunk/eco-warrior bent of its stories can be heavy-handed, and the spiritual elements of the game’s world are the purest distillation of that “tree-hugging anthropomorphic wolf in a loincloth” business that I love to hate) – but if you’re a werewolf fan who was old enough to get an allowance in the early 90’s, you’d better pay WtA some Goddamn respect or I’ll go Crinos on your ass.

Angela Quinton Oct. 3rd 2012

Short film “Animal” is a tasty little werewolf snack & an example for would-be Kickstarters

Yesterday, @werewolfnews follower @jasonious alerted me to the existence of Animal, a 5-minute short by Cosmic Mutt Pictures. It’s a short, simple little snack for the werewolf-hungry. I liked the makeup, especially the menacing portrait at 3:22.

Okay, unsolicited opinion time. Are you thinking of raising money for a short film or a web series? Do you need five (or twenty-five) grand to pay for the actors, equipment and makeup? Let me make a suggestion: don’t even create an account on IndieGoGo or Kickstarter until you’ve got something like Animal to show as an example of what you intend to do with the money you raise.

I don’t know how much money Cosmic Mutt spent on the production of Animal – they’re a 2-person production company that makes “micro micro micro budget films (for now)!” – but I’ll bet it wasn’t much more than the cost of the MacBook I’m typing this on. Showing what you’re capable of with a small budget you raised yourself will go a long way to reassuring potential backers (and promotional venues like Werewolf News) that you’ll put your crowdsourced budget to good use.

Angela Quinton May. 25th 2012

Werewolf Wednesday Digest – May 2012, Part 1

It’s been a few weeks since my last celebration of Werewolf Wednesday, but when I woke up in my Boston hotel room this morning, I had this inspirational image by Tandye in my inbox, so I knew the time was right. (more…)

Angela Quinton May. 16th 2012

With a week to go, indie werewolf horror comic Anathema needs your help

There’s seven days to go on the Kickstarter campaign to fund the remaining five issues of Anathema, and with a current shortfall of $4,480, I’m starting to get a little nervous. See, I think this comic series is something that really needs to happen, and not just because I loved issue 1.

As a writer myself, and the spouse of an illustrator, it’s in my nature to root for independent creative types, particularly when they’re talented, focussed and driven. Those three words form a creative version of the Project Management Triangle, and to find all three of them in effect at the same time is extremely rare. Creative people who makes smart, cohesive and well-executed stuff wants to get their stuff out there so people can see it (and buy it), but for every Miss Monster or Scott C., there’s a hundred equally-talented creators who mean well but just can’t get their shit together. Rachel Deering is in the company of those creators that have somehow achieved the mystical trifecta, and Anathema’s first issue has already proved she knows how to use that condition to produce something awesome.

$4,480 is not an insignificant amount of money, but if everyone who’s visited Werewolf News in the last month put a quarter in the jar, we’d have helped her clear the hurdle with room to spare. If you’ve been on the fence about whether to pledge or not, please, now’s the time to make a no-risk, guaranteed-to-pay-off investment in something great. Remember, you get something for your contribution, and if the project doesn’t get funded, you don’t pay anything.

If you’ve already pledged something, consider following David Fuller’s example and boost your pledge amount a little bit. In fact, I’m going to go do that right now. Boosting my pledge from $75 to $85 means I get to buy two less coffees this month, and it gets me a tiny bit closer to enjoying a lesbian werewolf comic series created by someone who’s really good at it.

Angela Quinton Apr. 23rd 2012