The Desert Peach in Concert

We are happy to have helped to support The Desert Peach in Concert Kickstarter campaign!

The Desert Peach started as a comic book created by Donna Barr, chronicling the adventures of the eponymous protagonist, Erwin "The Desert Fox" Rommel's fictitious homosexual younger brother, the "Desert Peach."

The Desert Peach was originally produced as a musical 21 years ago and they  are looking to recreate with paid artists and an even higher production quality. 

Learn more about The Desert Peach and the musical campaign.

Lear more about Donna Barr and The Desert Peach

Guest Lecturers: Seattle Central Community College

Several days ago we had the opportunity to guest speak at Seattle Central Community College for a comic course taught by Leonard Rifas. We were invited to talk about our Bezango film and the process of documenting local Pacific Northwest cartoonists. We were able to show some excerpts of the project as well as talk about our recent successful Kickstarter campaign.  The majority of the students were under 25 and it was a good reminder to include information about new and upcoming artists in the film, along with historical cartooning information.  BTW-The image is not from the college class we spoke to, but is one I found on the web of Leonard teaching a comic workshop for K-12 students a while back.  

Leonard is a comic scholar as well as a comic creator. In 1976 he started Educomics. He also made All-Atomic Comics, about the use of nuclear energy, as well as Corproate Crime Comics, Tobacco Comics, and many others. Sine 1986 he has taught cartooning to all ages, and currently is an adjunct professor at Seattle Central Community College. In a few weeks we will be interviewing Leonard for the Bezango film.

Hernandez Brothers Book Signing

We've been laying kind of low since the successful end of our Kickstarter campaign December 4th. We'll return to "work", sending out Kickstarter rewards, and doing more production/editing after the Christmas break.

On December 8th we did attend the 6th anniversary for the Fantagraphic Bookstore in Seattle. Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, of Love and Rockets fame, were on site signing posters and copies of their books. While the Hernandez Brothers are not from the Northwest, their work has been an integral part of Fantagraphics. The above 1 minute video was filmed and edited by Ron Austin and Louise Amandes, December, 2012.

Final Kickstarter Days!

The Final Days of the Bezango, WA. Kickstarter campaign are upon us. The event has gone very well and we met our initial goal. Thanks so much to everyone who has donated and/or shared the link and got the word out!  There are still two days left to become part of the Bezango project. Join us in making a great film!  Check out the rewards by artists such as Peter Bagge, Robert Gregory, David Lasky, Steve Willis, Jim Woodring, Pat Moriarity, John Lustig, Scott Ball, Dan McConnell, and Robert Kelton.

Click on the picture below to see a larger image.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1230569287/bezango-wa?ref=live

Jim Woodring Signed Print Available

Hi-we wanted to let Bezango, WA Facebook friends and blog readers know first about a great new reward just posted on the Kickstarter page. The amazing artist JIM WOODRING has generously offered a HIGH QUALITY SIGNED AND TITLED ONE-OFF PRINT. The sample of the image is posted above.  This will be signed by the illustrator in pencil. The  actual size of the image is: 15.5"11.5". 

According to Jim the street value for this print is at least $50. This along with the the special DVD of Bezango, WA, a  digital download, credit on film, postcard, and supporting the film, is a GREAT deal at $95.00 ! There is only one of these rewards available.  Knowing his work, the value of this print is most likely just going to appreciate in value. It is suitable for framing.

More information about Jim and his awesome work is available on his site: Jimwoodring.com

To purchase the reward at Kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1230569287/bezango-wa?ref=live

New Kickstarter Video

Thanks so much to the generous contributions from comic fans, friends, and family the Kickstart campaign is going well. With 13 days left we are almost 75% complete with the Kickstarter goal. This is good by most any Kickstarter standard.

We recently updated the home page video at Kickstarter. It goes into much more detail about the film, and showcases excerpts of interviews with Brian Basset (creator of Red and Rover), Roberta Gregory (creator of Bitchy Bitch), Ellen Forney (author of Marbles), and Shary Flenniken (former cartoonist and editor of National Lampoon Magazine). The first video was fun, but the new one has important information about our budget and samples from the film. You can view the new video, and more information about our film, at the Bezango Kickstarter site.  I've also posted both the new KS video and the first one below. We hope this helps put us over the set financial goal. Thank you for sharing the link and/or your financial contributions to the film (both are much appreciated!).

New video posted at Kickstarter, November 18th, 2012.



Original video at Kickstarter site posted October 22nd, 2012.

Chelsea Baker Cartoon

A cartoon by Chelsea Baker about our film Bezango, WA. Chelsea interviewed Ron last week and then a drew full page cartoon for Olympia Power & Light, a newspaper serving the Olympia, Wa community.     BTW-even though Ron is the main one featured in the interview above, both he and Louise have been working as a team on the project for over two years.  If the KickStarter campaign is successful we can have it completed by early 2013.

Chelsea is featured in the film as one of the local artists. For over three years she has created a cartoon every day called: Daily Comics.

Bezango Launching on Kickstarter

We released the Kickstarter campaign for our film, Bezango, WA today! 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1230569287/bezango-wa

It has become nearly a right of passage for artists to turn to Kickstarter to help fund their projects.  Louise and I have been producing this film for over two years, travelled many thousands of miles to conduct interviews, and much work still awaits us. We've paid for all of this out of our own funds, which is as it should be. However, we are finally at a point where we could really use some assistance. Our hope is that the Kickstarter campaign will help in offsetting some of the production costs, travel, and post production. As you probably know, it even costs a lot of money to distribute a movie after it is all done. 

We are very proud of our Bezango, WA Kickstarter page, and all the artists who have graciously donated their time to help with the project! 

Mike Tackett, cartoonist extraordinaire, developed the postcard that we are using on the site, as well as part of our promotional material. Above is the final version of the postcard. The image below is an early version Mike created for the project.  We have 37 1/2 more days to go on the KS campaign, and we purposefully set a low goal of $3,000 hoping that will make more than that. We added the extra days (normally KS campaigns should last about 30 days) because of the holidays. We know that people will be very busy this year. We'll let you know in 38 days if this was a good plan or not.