Goblins XVI: Corrupted to the Kore

[BannedInSchool]

The fact that the RSS feed seems to have been kaputt since this summer doesn't exactly help.

Hmm, http://www.goblinscomic.org/feed/ has been working for me with the Feeder Chrome extension.

[Draconi Redfir]

IThis is a project where they literally have brought in several of the BIGGEST VAs possible (I mean, we've got alumni from Disney feature films, a guy who has flitted around EVERY major franchise ever [Phil LaMarr has done some of the most visible Justice League, Avengers, and Star Wars animated series, among dozens of others] and Billy West, as a cherry on top). These are close to the biggest names you can get without pulling a dreamworks and just straight up dumping whoever the biggest celebrity of the day in.

Maybe he would have been better off nabbing some mid-level V.A.s, like some of the more talented abridgers and the like? I'm guessing that could have knocked a couple grand off the project.

As far as i am aware, LaMarr at least, and probably that other guy who was in the trailer with him, approached Thunt for the animation, rather then the other way around. For those two at least i'd imagine it's more a labor of love rather then money, and i wouldn't be surprised if it was the same with some of the others, LaMarr and some of the others using their connections in the industry to get people interested over paying them to do it.

Still probably going to get paid of course. wouldn't be surprised though if most of the money is more for paying the animators rather then voice actors.

[Lissou]

Honestly, I think the big names are an asset to the project rather than a downfall. Their fans, without knowing Goblins, could pledge because they're fans and want to support a project their idol is a part of. The more famous the stars, the bigger the fanbase that can rally around them. The only potential issue here is the huge overlap between the fanbases of the various VAs, but we don't know everyone who is involved with it yet.

Speaking of which... I don't know if that's a good thing. Keeping names secret like this. Maybe it will create some press when they're revealed, but it could have been better if they all separately told their fanbase about the kickstarter before it even started, and then linked to it as soon as it was up. There are lots of people who won't even bother pledging for a kickstarter if it's not fully funded early on, or not funded enough. You want to start with a huge backup of people already ready to pledge, and while I think it was true of the Goblins fanbase since Thunt had been talking about the project forever, the fact that the other actors are secret means that, unless I'm mistaken, they weren't able to direct their fans to the facebook page, the comic, etc and can't direct them to the kickstarter yet.

I've been following kicktraq and the project is trending further and further away from its goal, and I just keep wondering why they decided to make revealing voices a stretch goal. Maybe it's because those characters only appear in the respective episodes? But even then... Being told "X will join the voice acting team if we reach this stretch goal" would totally motivate the fans of X. Saying "we'll reveal a name if we reach the stretch goal" is probably only exciting to people who were going to pledge anyway.

I do worry the kickstarter is being handled poorly, but I'm also hopeful that I'm completely wrong and they have something up their sleeves that will make thousands of people pledge all at once. If so, I hope they use that secret weapon sooner than later.

[Vinyadan]

Hmm, http://www.goblinscomic.org/feed/ has been working for me with the Feeder Chrome extension.

Thank you, I'll try using that. I was with the "comic only" feed, and that stopped working some months ago. It now gives me a synchronization error message for www.goblinscomic.org/category/comics/feed .

[Lvl 2 Expert]

BTW, I think that the thread should have been titled "Korrupted".

It should have been named Axe don't yell. Still a shame that's not what we went with.

[Lizard Lord]

Wait is it actually confirmed that Tarol is able to get Billy West AND Jim Cummings (if it gets funded)? Those two are voice acting legends.

[Draconi Redfir]

Well he's got Tara Stong. so anything is possible.

[Typewriter]

A third of the way through the campaign and not even 20% funded... that's gotta hurt. Not only that but, of the funding he does have, nearly 1/3 of that comes from 11 people. During the board game I almost backed it but cancelled at the last minute for a variety of reasons. I'm not surprised that this project isn't getting much steam - the story progresses so slowly it's hard to imagine putting money into a project that is dependent on an incredibly slow moving web-comic.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

the story progresses so slowly it's hard to imagine putting money into a project that is dependent on an incredibly slow moving web-comic.

As a bit of a counter to this: Thunt has stated years ago that the story is actually all finished, and pretty much was before he started drawing the comic, or something close to that. There are some shifts in tone and such throughout the story, so I don't think everything is nailed down a 100%, but things like the meaning of that prophesy and whether Minmax and Kin will have a happy ending together or kill each other in the slowest and most horrible way imaginable (yes, those are the only options) is, as far as I know at least, set. So if the series is made with Tarol as the actual main writer with creative control rather than just being based of his comic that might actually give him the means to tell the complete story within our lifetime.

I'm not sure that's going to be the case with the amount of animation hotshots that are on board, maybe they'll just do entirely different things in a very similar world, but the story pace of the comic should not be a huge concern.

[Quild]

There are like 1300 backers so far.
Thunt has 524 patrons on patreon.

I think he already has good numbers of the number of backers. But a 465k goal... It may be a little high.

Before launching this, Thunt should probably have:
- Delivered what he owes on Tempts Fate.
- Finished the whole G:AR thing.
- Posted regular updates for some time and managed to do it as well during the Kickstarter.

I'm pretty confident that Thunt can write the story for the animated goblins if the project goes live. And that the story can go further than the actual plot and be resolved in the animated before in comics. Even if it follows a different path.
And yet, I don't feel like this is going well.

[Typewriter]

As a bit of a counter to this: Thunt has stated years ago that the story is actually all finished, and pretty much was before he started drawing the comic, or something close to that. There are some shifts in tone and such throughout the story, so I don't think everything is nailed down a 100%, but things like the meaning of that prophesy and whether Minmax and Kin will have a happy ending together or kill each other in the slowest and most horrible way imaginable (yes, those are the only options) is, as far as I know at least, set. So if the series is made with Tarol as the actual main writer with creative control rather than just being based of his comic that might actually give him the means to tell the complete story within our lifetime.

I'm not sure that's going to be the case with the amount of animation hotshots that are on board, maybe they'll just do entirely different things in a very similar world, but the story pace of the comic should not be a huge concern.

Fair point but, even if the story is done, there's still the question as to whether or not he can actually deliver. I believe he's the kind of guy who would kill himself trying to do right by his fans/backers but I don't think I'd have much faith in it going anywhere.

There are like 1300 backers so far.
Thunt has 524 patrons on patreon.

I think he already has good numbers of the number of backers. But a 465k goal... It may be a little high.

Before launching this, Thunt should probably have:
- Delivered what he owes on Tempts Fate.
- Finished the whole G:AR thing.
- Posted regular updates for some time and managed to do it as well during the Kickstarter.

I'm pretty confident that Thunt can write the story for the animated goblins if the project goes live. And that the story can go further than the actual plot and be resolved in the animated before in comics. Even if it follows a different path.
And yet, I don't feel like this is going well.

It's really not - I'm honestly surprised that he's been spending time on this project. I mean, my initial reaction when I saw it was to laugh and think, "Really?" I thought about it some more and looked into it because I remembered how hard he worked to fix the wrongs of the previous project but the way he runs his comic leaves me unable to bring myself to back him. Everything he starts just feels unfinished to me - I'd sort of forgotten some of the things you mentioned too.

[Draconi Redfir]

There are like 1300 backers so far.
Thunt has 524 patrons on patreon.

I think he already has good numbers of the number of backers. But a 465k goal... It may be a little high.

Before launching this, Thunt should probably have:
- Delivered what he owes on Tempts Fate.
- Finished the whole G:AR thing.
- Posted regular updates for some time and managed to do it as well during the Kickstarter.

I'm pretty confident that Thunt can write the story for the animated goblins if the project goes live. And that the story can go further than the actual plot and be resolved in the animated before in comics. Even if it follows a different path.
And yet, I don't feel like this is going well.

pretty sure he's just trying to figure out delivery of the G:AR thing. so that's more or less one box checked. G:AR as a whole is finished, the shipping it out bit can still be done in-between other things without too much hqastle, or setting up one day hwere they figure it out or something.

[Lissou]

I think you guys are getting ahead of yourself with how much of the story is available in comic form and wondering what will happen to the animated version. The 450k or so are for episode 1 only, and even if meeting all stretch goals it's only going to fund the first 10 episodes (aka book one). I'm guessing there would be another kickstarter for book 2 if it gets to that point, and so on, and the question of what would happen if the animated version catches up with the comic would probably be addressed then. That would still be in years, I'm sure.

Right now, we're not even sure the first episode will get funding, so talking about a future season 4 or 5 is premature.

[Draconi Redfir]

i keep forgetting about that... wonder how much it costs to make a single episode of m,y little pony or futurama for comparison...

[Max_Killjoy]

i keep forgetting about that... wonder how much it costs to make a single episode of m,y little pony or futurama for comparison...

https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepon...ake_my_little/

[Draconi Redfir]

https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepon...ake_my_little/

6 million per 26 episodes, 6m% 26 = 230,796 ...

holy ship. One episode of goblins animated is going to cost more then TWICE the cost of an episode of MLP... assuming i did my math right. wich is completely possible i did not,

[F.H. Zebedee]

To be fair, the production process for MLP is much more streamlined at this point; there's a reason each stretch goal costs a lot less than the initial cost. Once you hit your groove and get resources established, it makes producing the rest of a series smoother.

[Draconi Redfir]

alright yeah that makes sense.

[Lissou]

Looks like they're planning something like 160k per episode, plus an initial investment of 300k. So the first episode is 460k but that's because the upfront cost is there regardless of the number of episodes they make.

[Draconi Redfir]

phil and matt are live on kickstarter right now. they explained the reason why they chose to do a kickstarter; larger investers would likely want to nerf / alter the story a LOT. they do have backup plans if the kickstarter fails though.

[tomaO2]

Decided to take another look at the kickstarter. Whatever my criticism of Thunt, I have to applaud the fun, creative, things he does to drum up support. I love the concept of these unlockable VA reveals. Get to X money and then get a little quest and story, for a big reveal. Really showing off his Game Master roots.

You mean this one?

Wow. He actually did it.

Well, great job Thunt. I mean this with total sincerity. Well done. It just amazes me that you put in the effort, got the donor list did the cards, and playtested the game for a project that wasn't even yours. I've given you quite a bit of crap over the years, but this is something you did right. You went above and beyond to get this and it's finally done. This is the first time I've been REALLY impressed by something you've done since the creation of the original Tempts Fate 9 game. That may sound like a snub, since I bitch about that falling through a lot, but it's not. Regardless of what was done with the game, the thing was finished, and ready to go. The effort put into the creation of that world was something that genuinely enthralled me.

Toma, I have a silly question: are you German? Mostly because of the webpage vs website choice of words (German uses the same word for both, Webseite, which looks like website but actually is a literal translation of webpage.)

Canadian. I actually remember looking at the way I was writing those words and confusing myself a bit, before deciding I didn't care and left it as is.

No, he didn't. And that makes sense to me: this kickstarter is run by Matt King, and I'm not sure about the ethics of sharing all these email addresses to someone who wasn't part of the other kickstarter. Plus, the kind of message you mention is sent through kickstarter so he wouldn't be able to do that since he's not the owner of the GAR kickstarter, the guy who scammed him is.

Huh, well I suppose that is one way to look at it. I don't think that is the reason that list wasn't used though. I mean, I got an email for the kickstarter due to my having bought an e-book of Goblins way, way, WAY back in the day. I had actually forgotten about that website but it was a way of reaching out to people that have supported Goblins in the past, so I thought it was reasonable. I'm pretty sure Thunt was not sharing that email list with Matt but he still could use it himself.

Man, what a waste. He actually finishes the card game AFTER he starts this, it would make so much more sense to me if he had waited just a bit longer.

Yeah, way too ambitious. $465,000 just for the base project, with stretch goals going almost to 2 million? Even the OotS Kickstarter only got to one and a quarter million, and that was starting with something people had been clamoring for for a long time, with known existing products and a very large fan base. I don't think Goblins has as large a fan base as OotS, and Thunt is springing a new project on us unasked for to create something that so far has little more than concept work.

Even worse, the animation is supposed to be 10 minutes long. Ten frikken minutes long. Four hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, for 10 minutes. Just... Ohmygod that is a lot of money. The talent he has gathered is beyond expectations, I'm not really aware of any other animation kickstarter that has gotten so many A-listers from the voice actors, but it's just so much money for so little animation.

I wish they had picked a different comic for this sort of effort. Not only is Goblins a bit of a niche webcomic, but it really hasn't been growing either. It probably doesn't have the same amount of fans as it did before the year long meltdown. Webcomics could really use a breakout story to make it into high end animation.

Why couldn't we have a more vibrant scene, like in Japan. Anyone heard of One Punch Man? It was just a webcomic, written by a guy that could barely draw, and it became a manga with professional artists doing the work, and even a super popular anime. I'd LOVE to see that sort of thing in the West.

Your Rob and Thunt comparisons are weak.

Rob manages to use the fact that he's got supporters who pay him for on-time updates to update his comic on time.
Thunt famously quit his contributor funded "job." The ethics of whether or not he should have returned the money he had accepted for making his comic would make for an interesting business ethics dissertation.

Thunt discourages fanfic.
Rob encourages it.

Rob uses the money he earns to pay professionals to handle the artwork. Also leading to on-time updates.
Thunt's inefficient drawing method and the fact he's done it all himself for so long has led to breakdowns. Preventing on-time updates.

Rob takes vacations and announces them keeping members informed of changes. He updates bi-weekly.
Thunt takes weeks between updates.

I just wanna point out that Rob has only been like that for the past 2 years or so. Before that he was every bit as bad as Thunt in the updating sense, and got paid monthly, regardless of whether or not an update was posted. We could go months at a time with no word whatsoever. He also failed on his first kickstarter to deliver the Motion Comic Project.

Since he failed at that, I refuse to ever donate to the man again, although, in fairness, he hasn't screwed up any of his subsequent kickstarters. Heck, Erfworld probably would have collapsed by now if books 2&3 kickstarter hadn't overshot the goal by an incredible amount. None of the other kickstarters even broke 100k. If not for that, I'm positive things would have gone very differently. The outpouring of support really amazed me, especially given how spotty Rob's record was at the time, and continued to have, until he switched to the 'pay per on-time update" system he now uses. That was the game changer that finally got us a reliable update schedule.

Rob hired professional artists, not to help him get on time art, but because he just can't draw, and he's had tons of trouble. Every book has a different artist. Book 1 we have Jamie, then book 2 has Xin, then book 3 has TWO artists, the first one was added to big fanfare before it collapsed, while the second guy also bows out within a year. Now we are back to Xin. Which I'm happy with, she is my favourite of the lot.

Honestly, having to hire artists has been a big point of failure for the comic. Rob has had tons of issues that Thunt didn't have to worry about, due to him not having to rely on anyone for it.

Also, it's not like Rob is Mr. Dependability either, he still owes backer story content from his first kickstarter, which is due, in part to him making the stories way longer than promised. He also doesn't do any work on the Erfworld wikia, even though that was a reward for reaching the 1000 dollar mark. No one complains about it though.

I'm not sure Thunt hates on fanfiction. He used call out for fancomic submissions in the early years, and put them on his main page. That was also the draw of the original Tempt's Fate 9 game. A dozen posters all gathered together to create fanfictions of the world. There was a big old forum story that was written about it. Also, as I have mentioned before, one person, Worst Case, wrote a kickass fancomic based on that world. In my opinion, it was the best period to be a fan in the entire comic's run.

At the same time though, Thunt has pretty much deleted all his fan comics, and I haven't heard him doing anything to encourage them like Rob has. What do you mean by discouraging fanfictions? Has he written down something saying no one should do them since I last noticed?

[Doran]

He also failed on his first kickstarter to deliver the Motion Comic Project.

Regarding this - I was one of the backers and he did offer a refund of the dvd motion comic amount Or wait for a future attempt to people at that level.

Given animation is insanely hard, and I’ve had issues with a 3D printer Kickstarter for $500 that collapsed - it wasn’t so bad.

Same reason I’m not backing Thunt’s KS - too much worry about production issues

[tomaO2]

Oh yea, I think I remember that. I think my donation was too small to get a partial refund, but it wouldn't make any difference if I got anything anything back anyway. Still, I guess I do have to give a bit of credit for that.

Even so, the motion comic is what the kickstarter was for. If anything was going to be canceled, it should have been the rest. If the server was the most important thing, which seems to be the case, then that should have been the primary push. Plus, the new server money that was supposed to be funded, also needed another kickstarter to get. There were so many things promised for that kickstarter, and failed on quite a bit. Lets see here...

Motion comic (not done)
new website (funded through a new kickstarter)
reprint book 1 (I think he managed that one?)
Hamstard comic maker (not done, was repurposed as a 1500$ toolshed award instead)
hamstard beanie (don't know)
licenced Erfworld CD (not done)
board game (not done)
golem t-shirts (???)
bonus postcard (probably done?).

So, the thing was a massive failure.

[Draconi Redfir]

so Thunt just Tweeted out a thing.

edit: And he has now tweeted that this is not to ask for money, it's just an update on how tempts is doing apparently.

[Draconi Redfir]

New comic update.

[Agi Hammerthief]

Kickstarter canceled at 101k$ 23 hours ago.

Moved to Indigogo, where they don't have to meet a goal to take the cash.

[Typewriter]

Kickstarter canceled at 101k$ 23 hours ago.

Moved to Indigogo, where they don't have to meet a goal to take the cash.

My general opinion of Indigogo is much lower than my opinion on Kickstarter. Does that align with what other people think or am I out of the loop on the quality of various crowdfunding platforms?

[Anteros]

Is there any possible reason to move the fundraiser other than the obvious "keep everyone's money when we inevitably don't hit our goals" thing?

[Typewriter]

Is there any possible reason to move the fundraiser other than the obvious "keep everyone's money when we inevitably don't hit our goals" thing?

That's what it looks like to me which means that already this project is making Thunt look bad IMO. Regardless of who is involved, regardless of how much he'll try to fix it if it gets messed up - his project just said, "JK about that original goal, please just give us money" which does not look super credible. But I'm overly negative and I admit that so maybe I'm overly judgmental here.

[Anteros]

That's what it looks like to me which means that already this project is making Thunt look bad IMO. Regardless of who is involved, regardless of how much he'll try to fix it if it gets messed up - his project just said, "JK about that original goal, please just give us money" which does not look super credible. But I'm overly negative and I admit that so maybe I'm overly judgmental here.

I don't think you are being overly judgmental. I think you're being the exactly correct level of judgmental. Unless someone can come up with some other credible reason they're moving the fundraising site? I've always given Thunt the benefit of the doubt in the past that he at least had good intentions despite being horrible at delivering on his promises...but this seems super shady.