I’m writing this in late August - by the time this post appears I should have received all of my Kickstarter goods or they should be in the mail. Interestingly, even though the Kickstarter backer cycles were spread over about a three month period, they’re all supposed to be delivering the product at around the same time - 4th quarter of this year. As of the time of this writing, this is the status of my Kickstarters:

Back around May I backed Jonathan Coulton and Greg Pak’s kickstarter Code Monkey Save World. The ONLY reason I backed it is because of this stretch goal to have Takeshi Miyazawa draw a children’s book based on Jonathan Coulton’s song, The Princess Who Saved Herself.

if you don’t see a “play” button below, click just left of the left-most number and the song should play

Those of you who have been reading this blog long enough know that I often write my blog posts during my lunch break at work and set it to post at some point in the future. I’m writing this post almost 1 month before it is to appear on the blog. So in the middle of July I find myself in what many who have backed projects probably experience as the Kickstarter Lull. I backed a project by I Fight Dragons and interviewed them about it here and I backed a comic project by Greg Pak and Jonathan Coulton. During the backing period as a way to drum up support there was a constant stream of both updates and digital goodies. IFD, in particular, gave backers 2 albums (live concert recording and a conceptual album) and a concert film. A little while after the backing period was over, the projects contacted us for the info they needed to fulfill our backer rewards. Since then I haven’t heard from either of them. On the rational side, I’m glad they’re focusing on creating what we paid them to create. But after the constant communications it just feels odd to have “radio” silence. Now we just wait for the products to be created. In the case of these two projects, the members involved are all veterans: IFD put out records before having a record company contract and Greg Pak has already done about a half dozen Kickstarters. So, outside of catastrophe, I don’t fear for my money. I could see where this silence might be more disturbing with an unproven team.

A little over a month ago I came across an article on Boing Boing about the movie Zach Braff was trying to get funded via Kickstarter. It was interesting time as I had just contributed to two Kickstarter projects for the first time - I Fight Dragons’ Project Atma and the Code Monkey comic by Jonathan Coulton and Greg Pak. The Boing Boing piece linked to an article by Ken Levine saying why he wouldn’t support Zach Braff’s Kickstarter. His premise was essentially that Braff has money and should finance it himself or use his Hollywood connections. Save Kickstarter for the indie film producer/director. He mentioned that he didn’t want Kickstarter to get all corporate like Sundance. He had a response blog post in which he showed that his lamentations had come true - Melissa Joan Hart was asking for money on Kickstarter and was only offering to follow her backers on Twitter. Ten days later he posted his final response (at the time I’m writing this) in which he pointed out that Braff’s Kickstarter was pointless because he got “gap funding” anyway. Although I’m sure most of the air will be out of the tire by the time this post appears on my blog, I’d like to take the chance to refute and elaborate on some of what Ken Levine said. (Also, this isn’t the Ken Levine of Bioshock, just so you know)

My first ever Kickstarter! I just backed Project Atma - @IFightDragons Creates An Epic New Album on @Kickstarter http://t.co/Bo5XglkChl

— Eric (@djotaku) May 5, 2013

Back on 4 May I backed a Kickstarter project for the first time ever - I Fight Dragon’s Project Atma. Anyone who’s been following my last.fm posts knows that I really like the Chicago-based band. I first discovered I Fight Dragons when listening to a web comics podcast that featured “No One Likes Superman Anymore” from 2009’s Cool is Just a Number EP as the closing song. I have no idea if they had permission from I Fight Dragons, but it was quite fortuitous for the band as it led to me buying Welcome to the Breakdown and Kaboom! (and participating in this Kickstarter) As I’ve said before, the band is the inverse of Anamanaguchi. They are a rock band that uses Nintendos and Gameboys to create extra background instruments (whereas Anamanaguchi tends to have the instruments take the background to the chiptunes). Here’s one of the songs of their new album, Kaboom!