I have good news, and bad news. First, the good news: this will probably be the last post you’ll see where I mention Kickstarter for a while, because our campaign concluded as the calendar rolled from February to March last night. This brings me to the bad news, however: we fell short of our goal, and so are essentially back to where we started back in January.

So where does that leave the Summit to Sea project, then? At the moment, it leaves it back in project limbo, where it’s simply an idea again. I don’t know if Lorie and I will be able to figure out an alternative means of funding the project in time to be launched this summer as planned, but one way or another, we’ll figure out a way to do it someday. I’m too interested in the project to ignore it!

Because our fundraising campaign was unsuccessful, we’ll receive none of the pledged funds, so if you pledged support (thank you!), your credit card should not be charged. Lorie and I won’t see any of the $2,000 that was pledged, which is actually fine for this particular situation, since we wouldn’t have been able to fully fund a project of this scale just based on that amount– it would be sort of like building a house, but not being able to afford a roof to finish it. So, we’re reseting the counter to zero for the project, and brainstorming alternatives.

Will another Kickstarter project be in the future? It’s hard to say. We’ve learned a lot about it, and definitely have some ideas about what worked well, and what we’d do differently next time. Lorie and I will be doing some post-season analysis, and figuring out either modifications to the project parameters, budget, marketing, or some combination thereof, and then we’ll decide from there how to proceed. We got started with a very ambitious project for our first-ever Kickstarter campaign, and it might be a great venue for some smaller projects with more tangible or more appealing rewards for backers. Kickstarter probably hasn’t seen the last of us!

We might be back to the beginning in terms of our fundraising, but it’s nice that we get to keep our experience. And we also got to market the idea of the project out to a lot of places, so we hope that the next time we make a public move on this expedition, those of you who supported us during the Kickstarter will continue to do so in the future! Send me an e-mail if you’d like me to add you to our marketing list about future updates and projects, and I’ll be sure to send you a message the next time we make a move concerning the project. For now, it’s back to the drawing board!

In my case, this actually kind of literal, since I’m working on a comic that you’ll be seeing in the coming weeks… although it’s not about the Kickstarter campaign, or the Summit to Sea project.