Kickstarter Video With Tom Racine

Here is the video Tom Racine and I made for the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning Kickstarter fund raising drive.

Head over to Kickstarter and pledge today!!


Kenosha Festival of Cartooning Kickstarter from Tom Racine on Vimeo.

We're Live!

We've officially launched the Kickstarter drive for the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning!!

Thanks to those who have already donated - we're already at 8% funding!

If you haven't donated yet - what are you waiting for?! It's a great event and we have some terrific rewards!

Kickstarter Launch!

We are launching our kickstarter drive for the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning in TWO DAYS!

Here is the official press release - send it to anyone and everyone you think will want to be a part of this great event!

Friends of Cartooning!

It is with great pleasure that I announce the second Kenosha Festival of Cartooning!

This year's guest speakers are:

Stephan Pastis - Pearls Before Swine

Michael Jantze - The Norm and Jantze Studios

Dave Coverly - Speed Bump

Greg Cravens - The Buckets

Norm Feuti - Retail and Gil

and festival moderator:

Tom Racine - Tall Tale Radio

In these challenging economic times, many of the donors that funded the last festival have seen their funding cut. As a result, we are starting a fundraising drive on Kickstarter that will launch Thursday, April 19 and conclude Tuesday, May 22.

Thanks to the profound generosity of our guest speakers, we have some great rewards to offer backers and thanks to the talents of Tom Racine, we have a terrific video for the project.

Please forward this press release to EVERYONE YOU KNOW WHO LOVES CARTOONING!

For Full Festival Details visit http://kenoshacartoonfest.blogspot.com/

or check out our page on facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/kenoshacartoonfest

With your help we will be able to put on a terrific event!

Anne Morse Hambrock

Founder and Director Kenosha Festival of Cartooning©

Kenosha Festival Of Cartooning on Kickstarter

I love the concept of Kickstarter. I don't know who thought of it but people in creative fields have always struggled to fund their dreams. When you are also struggling to stay in touch with your creativity, the dual role can really sap your creativity. 

I first found out about Kickstarter a couple of years ago when one of my friends sent me a link to Tony Murphy's "Coffee Talk" project.  (My Kickstarter profile doesn't list me as a backer of this because I did it jointly with my husband).

And, more recently, I backed Keith Knight's project "I Was a Teenage Michael Jackson Impersonator".

I speak from experience - you really get this great feeling when you get those emails saying you're a backer. It is so cool to help fund other creative people and their dreams.

I love doing the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning! I love organizing the events and interacting with the cartoonists. 

I'm even the sort of person who doesn't mind all the little nit picky things that have to be taken care of like getting folks to and from the airport and serving meals to the guests and setting up exhibits.....

The list goes on and on.

But the really hard part of the festival is getting the funding. Last year I was working on fundraising right up until two days before the first event.

And that's the stuff that keeps you up at night.

So, this year, I'm trying something a little different and, I hope, much more fun. 

This year the majority of the fundraising will be on Kickstarter. I will still have to beat the bushes in Kenosha for about 30% of my total festival budget, but the lion's share of the work will be the Kickstarter drive.

Head over to the festival blog and bookmark it so you can stay in the loop for all things festival related and also for info on the Kickstarter timeline.

No Rest For The Wicked.....

When I first had my accident I thought I had merely sprained my ankle. Then the ER doctor came in and told me that  I had not only broken my leg, but had managed to do a fine job of breaking it in two places.

He was starting to give me the technical rundown - which bone it was and where it was broken and what that meant and whether or not I would need surgery...  

And I was listening.

I really was.

But I must have had some kind of disapproving look on my face because he stopped mid sentence and said "Are you about to tell me you're really busy? Too busy to have a broken leg?"

And I said "Yes, I most certainly am!"

He probably hears this a lot from people. I mean, who isn't insanely busy these days?

But, in my case, it isn't just my regular job and wife and mom schedule. For 5 months I've been working on the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning. 

Because the festival is my brainchild, the responsibility for getting everything set up falls primarily on me.

I have help from my husband and a couple of other folks I worked with on last year's festival but all the scheduling of the events, all the hiring of speakers, all the meetings with sponsors and hosting institutions and assemblage of press releases and organization of exhibits - yada, yada, yada....

That's the stuff that falls to me. 

And I learned last time that emails are no good for getting things going. Emails are good for tweaking details after you get the ball rolling, but face to face meetings areessential when it comes to getting sponsors and venues on board.

There's also the fundraising. Fundraising is a special little hell all its own. Especially in a bad economy and in a state that has become the poster child for government funding cutbacks. Cutbacks to things like Universities that host guest speakers. And cutbacks to public museums.....

It's not enough to plan a festival and find guests, you actually have to be able to paythe guests. And fly them in. And feed them. And put them up in a hotel that doesn't totally suck.

And all that stuff costs money.

We're not talking movie making budget money. But we're talking enough money that it's a little challenging to come up with. This broken leg has put me majorly behind in my ability to get to meetings and move things along.

And I was getting pretty worried. 

Until someone suggested Kickstarter.

It took a lot of work and I had to navigate through a minefield of links and legalese but I submitted the festival proposal to Kickstarter and - Hallelujah!! they approved it!!

I'm not ready to officially launch yet because I have to come up with a video pitch (which I stink at so Tom Racine is going to help) but look for the official launch of the project within the next 10 days.

Woot! I'm so excited! 

And I hope you are too!

Diary of a Broken Leg: Stuff I Miss...

For those of you following the saga of my broken leg, there is an update here.