MrGcCc 2012-06-18 17:57:07

Looks like everyone in NG is poor.

Sheizenhammer 2012-06-18 18:04:11

For the evidence of ability offered, I'd have to say the amount was just too high.

They got, what, $16000 pledged for it? That's a lot of money by any standard, so no, I don't think the times or the apathy of the website has much to do with it. Which just makes it look all the more ridiculous to think that it somehow wasn't enough.

Thay shouldn't have asked for all 9 episodes' worth of funding straight up. Instead, they should've made a kickstarter for just the first episode. After making the first one (if it actually lives up to expectations), the publicity from it should be enough to raise the money for the second episode, which in turn would raise publicity, and enough money, for the third, and so on.

One of the issues I saw was that quite a lot of people were skeptical and / or reluctant to hand over money to a group of filmmakers who have little renown or proof that they could actually do what they set out to do, and reducing the amount to an episode-by-episode level would've enabled the skeptics to put down their reservations and help out (or indeed confirm that this wasn't worth the money after all; you never know).

ZJ 2012-06-18 18:18:41

Timmy, I work at Home Depot for eight bucks an hour while going to a nice college. I don't have the cash to throw away on silly little cartoons. Only t-shirts and video games. Jeez.

Malachy 2012-06-18 18:21:17

I believe they tried biting off more than they could chew and asking the funders to do the same. Sheizenhammer is correct - asking for a full 9 episodes, at the cost they wanted to fund each made the total too much to swallow for donators. They should try re-doing the kickstarter at a lower level and try for fewer episodes. They can still ask for their dream amount of money to produce each episode, like they did originally, but only shoot for half the number of episodes.

They should also try to show us what they can do. Give us all an idea of what we can expect. You can donate a whole lot and get a sci-fi channel movie. They should self-fund a first episode and then ask for funding based on that.

Luis 2012-06-18 19:57:56

I think the initial trailer just wasnt convincing enough. The first day or two of a kickstarter is the make or break moment. I think the trailer was just too mysterious and too vague for anyone to get excited over it, that and not much happens in it. I think as I saw the animatronic and other stuff, i started to get more excited about the project.
I think it just wasnt ready to be kickstarted when they presented it. I would have waited a bit to get more content before putting it on the kickstarter stage. I think that should have been the case for the Newgrounds documentary too. Yes, in the end it got funded but who knows when and if that ever will come out. Who knows, maybe that rubbed people negatively and as a result a project like this got the cold shoulder.

Its unfortunate if this project doesnt get funded though. I did like the creativity in interpreting the newgrounds lore and its characters.

Pride 2012-06-19 02:29:48

First off I don't honestly believe that everyone in NG is poor......

I believe that a lot of the issue was actually that most of the users who could not donate are just too young and don't own credit cards. A lot of users complained that their parents wouldn't let them fund the project. Besides 30k is a lot of money for a small community like this, and generally only other successful artists and creators can afford to make a grandiose pledges. I also couldn't find out that much about the studio and their previous works, which made me skeptical.

Another aspect was that I did not feel that comfortable with the trailer they released. For a movie about Newgrounds, they really did not properly introduce any of the characters that we know and love (which is why many of us were not as excited). Sure there was concept art, but it just doesn't take the place of seeing the characters come alive. I believe if they were only asking for a smaller pledge to fund the initial first episode, this would've happened.

That being said, I still chipped in a pretty penny for this project. Only because Tom felt so strongly about it though. Otherwise I wouldn't have been as convinced to donate on the studio's merit's alone.

Knights 2012-06-20 15:06:16

This is why people need to stop relying on Kickstarter so much, or at least not have it as your only way of acquiring funds for your project. Just because a majority of things on Kickstarter are funded doesn't mean your project is going to get backed. Hell, Tim Schafer only got his project backed so fast was because he is a well renowned player in the gaming industry. That leads me into my second point: exposure.

One of the main reasons why I think this project didn't get backed was because it didn't get a lot of exposure outside of the Newgrounds community. And the reason for that is because this is a project that only appeals to a Newgrounds demographic, having no appeal to people of NG to begin with. Sure the creators could have just slapped the gimmick that this was some sort of dystopian future movie or something, but that's not guaranteeing success here.

What I think the creators should do is revamp the story to appeal to a larger audience while at the same time have it relate more to Newgrounds and its mythos, if only to hopefully obtain more money a second time around.

InputUnknown 2012-07-08 01:30:57

Wow! Not sure how I missed this post. Thank you for believing in us. I know that that when fairly new faces show up on the scene and ask for something like helping to build capitol on a media project - one can be hard pressed to step up and commit. I want to start by letting you know that while we didn't reach our goal, we definitely didn't fail. Newgrounds has been a creative home for about half of my life. I love this place. There are a lot of things that we feel we might have been able to managed better as far as the campaign went. But that is behind us now. The future is bright. The Forsaken City isn't done with, or dead, or abandoned. We've put so much work and care into the story and the characters and the creative development that one way or another, it will get made. We are so lucky to have had the support from Tom and a large portion of the NG community that we did. And for the nay-sayers, I don't blame them. What I can promise is, should TFC ever come back on the chopping block for public funding, Studio Firelight will be much better known for the quality and the entertainment of our work. Thank you, again, for your interest. You rock!

-Chase

LukasExemplar 2013-03-26 09:32:05

Am I the only one who think they were just really bad at viral marketing? :O

LukasExemplar 2013-03-26 09:34:54

Also, it's not about "relying" on Newgrounds guys. Newgrounds is simply a tool to get you, well, kickstarted, and not fully funded, or not most of the time. Take Freddie Wong's web series Video Game High School for example. They set the goal at 85.000 thousand or so, and they got 200.000. After that they paid out of their pockets and got sponsors. That landed the budget at around 600-700.000 dollars in total.

Did you also know that of the hundreds of films, both big and small, that were screened at this year's South By Southwest Film Festival, over 40 of them were funded through Kickstarter and IndieGoGo? And even more of the tools, like camera sliders and independentaly made cameras were funded through crowdfunding.