What’s a kickstarter?

Kickstarter is one of the many crowd-funding platforms that enable artists and entrepreneurs to take their projects to light. It allows you to invest as little as a $1 to help fund these projects. Only when the project reaches it’s goal, then will the project get funded. It’s an all or nothing deal.

This has allowed for indie movies, board games, products, books and so much more to be produced with the help of the community. As a person trying to get a comic book store and a short film funded, this is a beautiful collaboration with fans and artists. There has been kickstarter, fundable, indiegogo to name a few. In the past few years, thousands of projects are campaigning for your attention.

Make’s ya feel wanted doesn’t it?

I’ve contributed to a few campaigns I felt strongly about and they have succeeded (League of STEAM! Yay!).

And now here’s another one that caught my attention and almost lost it. Until I interviewed one of the campaign managers.

What caught my attention? A webseries about evil overlords.

1. I love webseries

2. No zombies. No vampires. Something different! Yay!

Except, there was nothing else. The website doesn’t offer  a backstory, just a couple of trailers. The trailers show a rebel looking woman fighting off a possessed guy, and some shots of other cast members.

So….

Here’s where I almost left the project. There was nothing for me to emotionally attached myself to. I love watching ass-kicking females fight paranormal beings. But a fight scene wasn’t going to cut it. With so many projects vying for my attention, I need to have some sort of connection to it. It felt like opening a mysterious, shiny carpet bag and finding…a pen.

I wanted to like this project. I didn’t want to give it up without giving it a second chance. So I decided to extend an invitation to the campaign managers to answer some questions I had. Zack Drisko is one half of the team and was absolutely stellar in his answers. The enthusiasm sold me. Check out the Q and A below.

(Heads up, I do not have a degree in journalism, so the questions are from own honest curiosity and weirdness)

dragonmaiden:  Is Ava just a regular girl or does she have superpowers?

DRISKO: Ava doesn’t have any superpowers to bring into battle against the overlords of death. She’s going to have to rely on her knife-throwing skills and contempt for authority.

dragonmaiden: Of all the crowdfunding ventures out there, why should people support yours?

DRISKO: I’d encourage you to back “Ava Snow Battles Death” if you’ve ever felt like an outsider, if you’ve ever felt like the world wasn’t made for someone like you, if you’ve ever hoped that adventure was right around the corner of your everyday life. That’s who we are, that’s who Ava is, and that’s who we are making this project for.

dragonmaiden: What are hoping to show people with this webseries? A   romance? An action story?

DRISKO: Above all, we’re hoping to show people something they haven’t seen before. We plan on telling a story with romance, comedy, thrills, and an entire universe that we dreamed up. At its core, though, “Ava Snow Battles Death” is a romance between two people who don’t fit in with the world and band together as a result

dragonmaiden: If there is a romance, will be there be some smexy times?

DRISKO: I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of “smexy times” in “Ava Snow”; however, I can say that if there is, it will be something that you most certainly do not want to miss.

dragonmaiden: Would consider the web series a paranormal, science fiction, apocalypse kind of show?

DRISKO: We blend a lot of genres and tones, so if I had to classify “Ava Snow Battles Death,” I would call it a fantasy-romantic-horror-comedy. Any more hyphens and people would think we’re lying or completely insane.

dragonmaiden: It is refreshing that there are no zombies. There are no zombies, right?

DRISKO: While I will always have a fondness for the brain-eaters, there are not any traditional zombies in “Ava Snow Battles Death.” There are some folks in Ava’s town who have their souls stolen by evil overlords. Ava sees them loafing around aimlessly and thinks they’re zombies, but she’s wrong. Damn wrong.

dragonmaiden: If you could stop a crowd in the middle of a comic convention (SNORT) and have less than 10 seconds to get their attention, what would you say or do?

DRISKO: I would start singing “A Man’s Gotta Do” from “Dr. Horrible” at the top of my lungs until my ten seconds expired. I don’t have much of a singing voice, but I’m hoping that my sheer enthusiasm and awe-shucks sensibilities would grant me the goodwill to continue.

It’s hard not to support anyone who references “Dr. Horrible Sing-Along-Blog” (And if you don’t know what that is…check it out here). Zack Drisko was a great sport in answering my question. Plus, I am now intrigued about what happens with the series. It still doesn’t answer what to expect but I hope that once the project is funded, I will get to see it.

As of right now, they have 17 days left to the campaign. They are more than half way to their goal. If his answers swayed you like they swayed me, then go ahead and contribute.

Go ahead and search through the projects that are campaigning while you’re at it. It’s inspiring and amazing to see the creativity out there. When it comes to visual content, there’s not much on TV for me. WIth the few exceptions out there, I don’t even bother having cable. My entertainment is spurred by webseries. Let’s face it. The time of Buffy and Xena are long gone. I need some ass-kicking female characters  fighting against paranormal creatures. You may feel the same or you may scowl. That’s the beauty of crowdfunding. There could be project that speaks to your guilty pleasures out there.

The website is http://www.avasnowbattlesdeath.com/ where you can watch the trailers and be sent to the kickstarter page.