I have to run out for the afternoon, but before I go I want to just drop you all one more note thanking you for your help. Thanks to Danny, Binaca, and Julia, who blogged, facebooked or tweeted the heck out of this project to all of their friends. Thanks to Al, the first backer we had. Thanks to Darrin, Tom, Elizabeth, Michael and all the other supporters who came through in a last minute effort to push this project over the line. To everyone who has offered anything, from $2 or just words of encouragement to those who were able to offer more, I sincerely thank you all! I was always excited about this project - now I'm raring to go!

But what better way to show my support than to work really hard and make it the very best that I can!

Please keep sending me messages and I'll keep blogging as much as I possibly can. I still can't say the exact completion date, but I will keep you all posted...

Thanks, and Happy Memorial Day! Hug a soldier and eat a cheeseburger for me!

Hi everyone - we're moving into our last week of Mr McFrawley's Kickstarter run. As you might have noticed, we're still $1,600 shy of the final amount. I feel a little silly about it - $5000 was a relatively arbitrary number. It's not enough to print the number of copies (250?) that I no doubt will want to print, but I figured it was enough to help me subsidize the printing process some. Basically I found a book like mine with art that was comparable that was trying to raise $5000 and ended up raising something like 180%. I figured if it worked for them...

Of course, some people have a built in fan base, and I think I neglected to consider that. Kickstarter seems to do very well by bands or artists who drive a lot of visitors to their work. This is my first book, so I don't have that base established yet. So we're squeaking along.

A word of consolation - If the Kickstarter doesn't happen, I'm still making this book.

Kickstarter takes 5% off the top for their service. If we can't raise our $5,000, I'd still like to print the book myself and save that 5%. I'd love it if each of you would stay committed to buying a copy. It's great to know that nearly 60 people have decided to join me on this adventure. I'd love to print 250 copies and all 13 tarot cards, but the posters and some of the other elements might not end up printed if the Kickstarter doesn't make it to the end.

For now, though, let's see if this thing can make it across the finish line! One last push!

Good question, ETHH! I'm actually hoping this is just one facet of a larger project/series of projects!

This story was originally thought up as a film, but I realized that I just couldn't allot enough time to that sizable of a project just yet. The steps I would take for _film_ development would be:

Brainstorming
Drawing/Writing
Storyboarding
Recording temporary scratch dialogue and a temp score
Animating

The book falls into the visual development part and the Read-Along cd we're making falls into the temp sound part. So this project as a book serves the purpose of helping me develop the cartoon, from design to score, helps build exposure for the idea, helps determine interest in the idea and prevents me from jumping headlong into something I can't finish given time or budget constraints.

My hope is that the book will look great and perform well. Then I'll write a screenplay, further develop music and sketches, and then animate one sequence as a test. That would give me everything I could possibly need to try to pitch the idea.

My fear with just going ahead and doing animation for kickstarter was that what I'd need for a budget would be far more than I could possibly raise - enough to employ a few animators for a year or so. Making a book first helps me get the idea into the world in a tangible form instead of having it just floating around in my head, while not making a cartoon version seem redundant.