Sunday 6 September 2015

Will my crowdfunding campaign succeed?

Hi, my name is Dylon and I am artistic spectrum - which means that the world I inhabit often doesn't make very much sense to me.

A few years ago a close friend of mine who was a gifted musician jumped off a very tall bridge attempting to get a similar point across - it didn't work.

After this I decided that I wanted to help other artists and creative individuals who might not be heard in this turd of a world. But, as an archetype starving artist myself - who often can't make head nor tail of the system - I didn't know where to begin.

"How could I help others if I couldn't even help myself?"

After many failed attempts I finally realized that I simply didn't know enough and set out to educate myself.

This turned out to be a difficult task and I became very disoriented and lost.

Then in the autumn of 2014 my father, multimedia artist Jack Whyte, came along and suggested that I help him with a winter's project to in his words, "help stave off cabin fever."

At first I was somewhat resentful, like surely there must be something more important I could be doing to help keep my family warm - hunting mammoth maybe? Then I recalled some old wisdom that when you can't build your own dreams, you should help somebody else build theirs.

So I swallowed my pride and we got to work. Spending almost every day for the better part of a year crafting a Scrapbook based on his sixty plus year career as a professional artist who has worked in just about every medium imaginable.

Unlike any project we had collaborated on in the past - and there have been many including 7 previous titles - this Scrapbook had no rules except that it would be formatted so that it could be read for free online, potentially printable and would cover the evolving story of my dad's interest in art and the creative process.

"A true full-colour memoir as it were." 

This meant that we were free to create the story he wanted to tell. Each night he would write and sketch out what he wanted to add the next day, photograph art and artifacts and I would help him assemble pages and edit text as we went along.

"Then it came to me like a bolt out of the blue!"

I was finally helping an artist find their voice and in doing so I was able to add to my own repertoire by learning how to see as they saw - the closest thing I can related this to is a Vulcan mind meld from Star Trek.

With how to let creativity evolve, knowing when to stop and how to literally create something from nothing by working without constraint being just a few of the skills imparted.

It was like learning ancient secrets of transmutation as our project took shape almost magically and dad jokingly started to refer to me as the Sorcerer's Apprentice. For those who know his story there is a wonderful running gag about "Mickey Mouse" experiences being carried on here.

As I mentioned, previous works used to be much more meticulous - such as cleaning individual pixels for print reproductions - an almost ridiculous task these days.

Dad also kept a journal of our progress, which is included in Scrapbook as a story within the story. Like the time I arrived at his house one spring day only to find that it had almost burnt down in the night thanks to a rogue icicle working it's way down the wall into a live electrical socket.

Or how I eventually convinced him and my lovely wife, Ashely, who spent those barren winter days minding our family gallery and cultural gift shop at the Harbour Centre on the Gore Bay waterfront, to run a crowdfunding campaign for the production of a hard cover edition. Not a difficult task after we received the gorgeous Scrapbook prototype from our local print shop.

Of course we had no idea what we were doing and our first campaign on RocketHub was a complete flub and despite all our efforts we are still only 35% funded with 32 hours to go on Kickstarter.

So, will our campaign be a success?

You decide...

Scrapbook: a story of art on Kickstarter

This is not intended as an advertisement or spam - you can read the whole story for free at scrapbook.whytesonline.com and follow our content across most social media networks with the hashtag #JWScrapbook


If you agree that we will succeed then please share, repost, ask questions, become a backer or do whatever you are capable of and we thank you in advance. 

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