This week on Kickstarter Tuesdays, I am talking about two animated Kickstarter projects that needs your support!
Bee and PuppyCat: The Series
Bee and PuppyCat is a popular cartoon created by Natasha Allegri & Frederator Studios on Cartoon Hangover. And they want to make it a series! ”Bee and PuppyCat” is a very popular original cartoon created by Natasha Allegri. In it, Bee, an out-of-work twenty-something, has a life-changing collision with a mysterious creature she names PuppyCat (“A cat?… or maybe a dog?”). Between space and time, Bee and PuppyCat take on an intergalactic babysitting gig to pay another month’s rent. Now, you can help Bee write a happy ending for PuppyCat’s tale of betrayal, intrigue, and magical sparkle transformations.
Amassing four million views since its July release, the original 10-minute cartoon stands as a favorite among animation fans the world over (watch it again, why don’t you below!)
Now, overwhelmed with your emails and comments asking for more adventures of Bee and PuppyCat, they want to produce a Bee and PuppyCat series exclusively for their YouTube channel, Cartoon Hangover. But they need your help! Their minimum goal is to produce six, brand new, six-minute Bee and PuppyCat cartoons. The more money they raise, the more cartoons they make. T he series will be overseen by the creator, Natasha Allegri. Production will begin immediately, the first episode will be released in the the summer of 2014.
They know what you’re thinking, and you’re right; this is a lot of money for a handful of cartoons. To make a television-quality production, though, isn’t cheap, and it takes a lot longer than most of them would like, too. Here’s why they’re asking for $600,000. Bee and PuppyCat, like most of your favorite cartoons, will be “traditionally animated,” which means that each element is drawn by hand. It is time – and labor – intensive.
Each cartoon’s pre-production stage will consist of writing, storyboarding, casting and recording (in a top-of-the-line audio production facility), creating an animatic (shooting the storyboard with the final recorded dialogue), designing (backgrounds, characters, props, effects), coloring (of those models, effects, backgrounds, props, etc), and timing (which requires the director to go frame by frame creating exposure sheets). There will be as many as 25 cast- and crew-members on pre-production side alone.
After pre-production, they’ll send all those assets to an international studio where dozens of artists will draw every element for every frame, layout, key pose, animate, in-between, ink and paint, and, finally, composite. The animation then returns to sunny Burbank, CA, where Natasha and her team will give everything a good look and recommend changes. The overseas studio will make those changes and, after a little back and forth, will deliver the final animation.
Here’s what happens in the post-production stage: the animation is edited; sound effects, including foley, are recorded and added; and the composer creates the score. The sounds effects, music, and dialog are finally blended together with the animation in the last step of production, the final mix. So, yes, these cartoons tend to be a bit pricey. But the good news is Frederator and Cartoon Hangover have tremendous partners who are eager to reward your helping the Bee and PuppyCat Kickstarter. If you pledge toward the $600,000 goal, there are some really cool rewards!
As of October 15th, this Kickstarter project has raised around $127,600 of the $600,000 goal they need to be funded. And as you know in Kickstarter, a project is not funded until the fundraising goal is reached! This project only has 29 days left to reach the $600,000 goal. For a pledge of $15, you will get Early Access, access to the Backer Blog, Ringtones, and a Digital Membership Card. For a pledge of $20, you will get a Thank You Postcard, a Soundtrack, and Animatic Teasers along with the $15 pledges! There are many more awesome pledge levels! To learn more about Bee and PuppyCat and to pledge money, go to: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frederator/bee-and-puppycat-the-series
Learn more about the series at: http://beeandpuppycat.cartoonhangover.com/
Grace from Outer Space: A STEM Heroine to Inspire Girls
There was a Kickstarter project before to create this book, but it failed. Grace from Outer Space is back with another attempt on Kickstarter to raise the funds they need. This book is Star Trek meets Dora the Explorer in this futuristic, scientifically factual story about a young girl who probes the stars.
Grace from Outer Space is a fictional, but scientifically factual picture book story about a young girl who lives in the distant future aboard an interstellar space ship with her family. Stylistically, it’s a slice-of-life story filled with interesting space science facts, such as the speed of light and the temperature of the sun, plus big concepts like black holes and dark energy.
The book is written in rhyming couplets and full of creativity, making the story quite amusing and educational for both young kids and adults reading together. The book is an exciting concept: this book will give young girls a STEM-based literary heroine to admire and aspire to be like. Grace is smart, curious, imaginative, and adventurous. Her goal is to pique the interest of kids, girls especially, and get them wondering about our incredible universe from a very young age. Here’s some of the media coverage!
Jenna Bryson created ‘Grace from Outer Space’ to defy gender stereotypes; to not only get young girls interested in science, but to also show young boys that smart, adventurous girls are awesome, and that girls are allowed to be excited about space, too. Bridging the gender gap in children’s content is vitally important to our future. She also believe if girls have a female role model like ‘Grace’, despite her fictionality, she will inspire them to embrace science early on in their lives. Hopefully, by planting the seed while they’re young, they will continue to want to learn more in the S.T.E.M. (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields as they grow-up.
If you want to help fill the giant black hole in children’s literature/media/merchandise, and give girls an awesome, space-y, science-y character, the type usually reserved just for boys, please support this project. Check out the interview with astronomy grad student, Lauren Brewer, about her thoughts on the issue and what got her thinking about a career in space science.
Funding for this Kickstarter project will go towards funds to pay the illustrator Mike Davis to do his work on the book, to pay for a first run of 1,000 hard-cover printed books, and to fund the pledge support levels on the project. If more funds than the $11,500 goal is raised, extra funds would go towards creating two more books, creating an interactive app, witting and recording original songs, and maybe even an animated TV or web show? The possibilities are endless!
Together, by making this book happen, they can reach many young girls and inspire them to reach for the stars. And who knows? Maybe, in doing so, they’ll have played some part in launching the career of the next great astrophysicist, inventor, or engineer who might just change our world for the better… and wouldn’t that be wonderful.
As of October 15th, this Kickstarter project has raised around $5,680 of the $11,500 goal they need to be funded. And as you know in Kickstarter, a project is not funded until the fundraising goal is reached! This project only has 29 days left to reach the $11,500 goal. For a pledge of $5, you will get a PDF file of the book emailed to you as soon as the illustrations are complete, plus, you’ll get access to all mission updates and any digital freebies. For a pledge of $30 ($25 limited early bird), you will get a signed copy of the hardcover book plus the exclusive opportunity to vote on aspects of the illustrations! Help them decide what color ‘Moonfruit’ should be and more. Plus, they’ll mail you the ‘GfOS’ greeting card and stickers, you’ll get the PDF file of the book emailed to you as soon as the illustrations are complete, and access to all mission updates and any digital freebies.
There are many more awesome pledge levels! To learn more about Grace from Outer Space and to pledge money, go to: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jennabryson/grace-from-outer-space-a-stem-heroine-to-inspire
Learn more about Grace from Outer Space on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/GracefromOuterSpace and on Twitter @Gracefrmotrspc.
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Filed under: Animation News, Kickstarter Projects Tagged: Animated cartoon, Bee and PuppyCat, Cartoon Hangover, Frederator Studios, Girls, Grace, Grace from Outer Space, Jenna Bryson, Kickstarter, Natasha Allegri, Outer Space, science, STEM careers, STEM Heroine, YouTube