Sawdust Bear Makes Things

The first redesigned fattybug edition is the Angeles Forest Fattybug! He’ll be an edition of 8, and available…soonish.

The last of the original fattybug casts are headed to Leanna Lin’s Wonderland, for my show with Leslie in May(The Corner Museum of Dubious Beasts…just in case I haven’t repeated that enough)!

Here they are, looking all…fattybuggy.

Fattybug 2.0 is here! Expect the first colourway…well, once I paint it. The second colourway will most likely appear at San Diego Comic-Con!

I’m also working on an experimental project with my mother, who has been working with bronze a lot lately! Below are some preview pictures of what she sent me…hmmm, what could they be?

This one is a bronze cast, right after casting. They haven’t been cleaned yet.

These are large wax…lumps. They’re going to be arriving in my mail in a couple days and then back to mom for casting.

These will be fun! I think you’ll like them too…

Well, that was a successful Kickstarter! 253 backers, $7170, 15 days.

I like analyzing things to death, so if you’re interested in data and numbers – here you go. Here lies pretty(ish) graphs and charts. The public numbers for my project are here on Kicktraq, but I go a bit further and and also analyze my referrers, the people that pledged(friends, acquaintances, where we met), and some other miscellanous things.

Time for charts! I’m using backer numbers and percentages, not dollars made.

Friends or Strangers?

First, I wanted to know how many of my pledges came from friends, versus strangers. To determine this, I used the very unscientific method of looking at my backer’s list and noting all the names that were familiar to me. In this case, this includes internet-friends who I interact with reasonably frequently, and people who already collect my art.

Turns out that having friends is a good thing, because it was definitely my friends that carried this Kickstarter. In addition, all but one of the pledges at the $150 and $100 level were chosen by a friend or name I recognize! Also – and I can chart this later – based on a quick glance at backer numbers which are numbered in order of pledge received, friend pledges are primarily clustered at the beginning and the end of the project.

Referrer Data?

Secondly, I wanted to see my pledge referers. Kickstarter provides a pretty handy list, but I went ahead and translated it to something meaningful to me.

The most surprising thing to me is how many pledges actually came via Kickstarter! It doesn’t quite correlate to my “friends and strangers” chart, though, which means I think a lot of my friends may have pledged via Kickstarter anyway, even if they may have seen a link on Facebook or Twitter first.

Another place where having friends support you early on is very useful is getting on Kickstarter’s “Popular” pages, which drove a lot of traffic and pledges to my page. My Kickstarter made close to $2000(over 25% of the final tally) in the first 24 hrs, and the vast majority of those pledges were from friends. Without that early support, I don’t think I would have made it to the “Popular” page, which resulted in a large chunk of pledges.

Another surprising thing, is that I kept an eye on all the reblogs/retweets/shares of my Kickstarter, and the number of pledges via social networks only spiked whenever I posted. I did not try any “Please RT” marketing, and kept a comparatively low profile(although many friends and some strangers spread the word anyway), but I’m still not honestly 100% certain how effective social marketing tends to be for a Kickstarter. Perhaps someone else who really hit the social marketing channels to promote their Kickstarter can share…

Anyway, that’s it for Part One of this. Part Two comes after I’ve finished the accounting for the project, which should be another interesting read, if you find reading about budgets enthralling. Haha.

For more Kickstarter related feelings, and less math, read on.

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