The Invention of Cloudsurfing

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation!  Today I am joined by Andrew Mitchell the creative force behind the film “The Invention of Cloudsurfing.”  Thank you for joining us today Andrew.

Thanks for the invite James! I’m a director currently finishing my masters of fine arts in visual effects on a scholarship at the Savannah College of Art and Design.


You have quite the evocative title there, can you give us a description of your project?

The Invention of Cloudsurfing is a short introduction to character Walter Wells as he struggles to turn his grandfather's failed inventions into the stunning new sport of cloudsurfing. It’s an introduction to this character because I’m currently writing a feature film based on this character of inventor Walter Wells.

Walt lives on an old airstrip farm with his grandfather, J. P. Wells.  J.P. also known as Gramps, is an airplane mechanic who has spent his life creating inventions that just don’t work.  Walt’s spark for progress leads them both head first into this new adventure. It’s a story about staring adversity in the face and leaping over it, through it, and around it. . . at all costs. What do you do when the people you believe in most give up on the dreams you shared and the road ahead seems impossible? That’s where we are with Walt in this film. The time is short, the stakes are high.

I’ve spent several years writing about the character of Walt. This short story about his time spent creating cloudsurfing is what I’ve managed to boil down to a short sweet introduction to this world, Gramps and this gyro-stabilization engine that is the basis of many of Walt’s future inventions.

Although my world and characters are based in reality, the sport of cloudsurfing is based visually on Disney’s TaleSpin. It was a cartoon I watched addictively as a child, and we pay visual homage to the cartoon in a few ways throughout the movie.

MATH WARRIORS Season 3

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation!  Today I am joined by the talented Kristina Harris the woman behind the MATH WARRIORS Season 3 Kickstarter.  Thank you for joining us today Kristina!

Thank you so much for chatting with me about Math Warriors. I’m excited to be here.

MATH WARRIORS is a pretty bold title (in all caps yet!) can you give us a bit of a description?  Your tagline “The Big Bang Theory” meets “The Office” is very evocative.  

MATH WARRIORS is a webseries about a team of math nerds who take their math very seriously....Like warriors going into battle.  In Season 3, the “Funky Functions” math team is striving to win an International Math Olympiad gold medal; they encounter obstacles in the process - and have to deal with the many dramatic situations that arise. Love, betrayal.... and calculus. Could you ask for more?

Wargame Tables, Table-tops, and Dice Trays

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation!  Today I am happy to introduce to our readers the hard working, tool wielding creator behind the Wargame Tables, Table-tops, and Dice Trays kickstarter, Callen Johnson.  Thank you for joining us today Callen!

Thank you, James.  I am pleased to be here.

I’d like to start off by congratulating you by hitting your goal exactly of $2000 as I write this.  Well done!  Do you have any special plans now that your project is going above and beyond your initial goal?

Thanks.  I am a little surprised at how fast the goal was met, to be honest.  Nothing too special in the works for the extra funds.  I may pick up an extra tool for the shop to help turn out a higher quality product, depending on the funding amount at the end date.  The main priority will be to get the rewards to our awesome backers.

Unique Puzzles for a Yankee Echo Alfa Romeo

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation!  Today I am pleased to be joined by Roy Leban and Parker Lewis from the small startup company Puzzazz.  If the name didn’t seal the idea, wait until you check out the name of their Kickstarter project!  “Unique Puzzles for a Yankee Echo Alfa Romeo” is not only a Kickstarter about puzzles but its title is a puzzle! Thank you both for joining us today.

Roy: Well thank you for having us! We’re glad to be featured on your blog.

Parker: We’re really excited about what we’re doing and are happy to chat about it.


I think we can all understand you guys like puzzles and have started a company about puzzles, but can you be a bit more specific about what your puzzling Kickstarter is all about?

Roy: Puzzazz is a puzzle technology company, which means that we’re all about building great technology to let people enjoy and solve puzzles on their digital devices, whenever and wherever they want to.

This Kickstarter campaign is for something that has never been done before on the scale that we’re aiming for. We want to produce a puzzlehunt -- a set of interconnected puzzles that combine to form a larger puzzle -- for everybody who likes puzzles. Not only does it show the world how much fun they can have with new types of puzzles, it highlights something that’s important to the company -- helping people have fun solving all types of puzzles.

Parker: Usually puzzlehunts are created for small communities and are not very accessible to larger audiences. We are trying to change that by creating a yearlong puzzlehunt for puzzlers across the country, and beyond!

Roy: In addition, we made our Kickstarter campaign a mini-puzzlehunt in and of itself. For example, there’s a picture of a pizza on our main page, which is one of the puzzles in the campaign.


Parker: Notice how it doesn’t look like your standard pizza? That’s because there is a secret answer word somehow encoded into the pizza. Try visiting our How to Solve Codes page if you get stuck.

Kilobyte Delay Pedal

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation!  Today I am joined by Philippe Herndon from Caroline Guitar Company.  He’s joining us today to bring us his company’s second Kickstarter, the Kilobyte Delay Pedal, thank you for joining us today Philippe!

Thanks, and thanks for reaching out to me.

This is your second Kickstarter with the Olympia Fuzz pedal being successfully Kickstarted last year.  Why return to Kickstarter?  How well has the Olympia done since last year?  

Olympia has done well. I think there were a myriad of reasons why we came back to do this with Kickstarter. Many of them have to do with my skepticism regarding a lot of the pre-sale/advance sale mechanisms used in my industry. Kickstarter allows me to easily show my hand - you can see just how many people backed the project at what levels. The second benefit is that Kickstarter, more so than just a pre-order page, seems well designed for people to share and promote projects that they would like through social media networks. I was pretty blown away to see how many people have shared our project.

Anime Sushi

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation!  Today I am joined by Tip McPartland, one of the producers of the Anime Sushi  TV show and Kickstarter.  Thank you for joining us today Tip!

Thank you for having me!  It’s a pleasure to be here, and thanks to you for recognizing that we’re doing something very special by promoting anime culture and working to bring the world of anime into millions of living rooms nationwide.  

You flatter me Tip! As someone who was big into the anime scene from 1998 onward I have to say I jumped at trying to get an interview with your group. Can you give us a brief overview for those who aren’t crazy otaku like I was?

Anime is Japanese animation, which has a very different visual and emotional appeal from American and European animation.  Most Americans who are unfamiliar with the format would immediately recognize it as the style of animation featuring characters with “big” eyes.  There are many different sub-genres of anime with different story themes, and each has passionately involved fans.  Our TV series Anime Sushi focuses on anime, obviously, but also on manga, which is the print form of anime and cosplay, in which fans dress in elaborate costumes and role play their favorite characters.  Otaku culture is fascinating, with contagious energy.

Our group has been drawn to anime first through influence, and then through appreciation.  His two teenage daughters, both serious fans and cosplayers, exposed Karl Laundy to anime.  Karl worked as an editor on several shows, and came to realize that anime has some of the best characters, artwork and storytelling on TV.

My kids also drew me into anime. They took me to some cons and shared some great series with me.  As a writer/producer, I loved the high quality of the storytelling and the warmth of the characters.  When I watched Tadao Tomomatsu holding forth as Toastmaster at ALA, I realized that here was a person who could embody the spirit of the anime culture and bring it to TV.

Tadao and I spent two full days shooting HD video at Anime Expo and when Duncan Burns and Kelvin Porter saw this fantastic footage, as seasoned TV pros they both immediately realized that something special was going on and jumped in with both feet.  Duncan in turn brought our lead publicist Tracy Blackburn in, since her background included helping launch the Neon Alley streaming anime network.  Duncan also brought social media specialist Erik Vanlier onto the project, and Erik is an otaku himself. The synergies were just too great to ignore.  So here we are!

Hear the Doors

Welcome back to another Kickstarter Conversation!  Today I’m yelling across the pond to two talented siblings from Cheshire, England.  Please welcome Leonora and Jonathan Moore the creative team behind the Hear the Doors project.  Thank you for joining us today!

Hey everyone! You can call us Leo and Jonny Moore. We’re excitedly drawing close to our planned set building and shooting dates and are happy to answer a few questions and give you all a greater insight into our project

Your Kickstarter describes a pretty deep concept for your film, can you give us a brief rundown of the project?  

First off, we can’t really compare our film to anything else out there, or anything we’ve ever seen before, because it’s going to be an utterly unique experience, in style and storytelling. No matter who you are or what you believe, we truly believe this film will have the potential to amaze you.

The main theme is exploration and viewing mankind as only just verging on a kind of comprehension of what it means to exist.

We view themes that have always fascinated us (consciousness, existence, reality, a belief in God) through the curious eyes of a young boy. His innocence and wide-eyed wonder reflect the relative youth of mankind in a larger picture, and a desire to realise its place in the cosmos.

We will journey down space-like corridors of infinite depth, gliding towards black abysses hinting at unknown possibilities of spirit and mind, all within an ethereal soundscape that constantly permeates our world.