Friday Hangout: Crowdfunded Projects?
Here’s a question I’ve been wrestling with this week: is the recent surge in crowdfunded projects a good thing for the Blender community or not? I love the concept of crowdfunding, and it works amazingly well for the Blender Institute’s projects of course.
But should it become a more mainstream thing in the Blender community? When should I feature a crowdfunded project here on BlenderNation, and when should I reject it?
Feature if it’s awesome and appears to be going somewhere (if it looks like it will actually finish)
How would you determine that?
A good thing to look for is if the people involved have finished other projects of their own. Look for demo reels,shorts, demos, etc.
A trailer is also a good sign.
Crowd-funding is a great way for developers (or authors, artists, designers, musicians) to find out whether their intended audience values their prospective project. Your question is “when is it worth it to give coverage to such a funding effort?”.
Basically, I think you already have proper standards for note-worthiness for art, development milestones / new features, and so on. Personally I think the bar is set at a good level for the kind of work that gets covered now. Not every add-on or new feature or finished render gets a post, and neither should every funding drive. You should apply your editorial standards to the proposed finished outcome of the funding project. If what they are trying to produce is cool enough, cover it. If not, let someone else.
Readers don’t want to be flooded with “fund my high school movie project” posts, but we do want to see cool stuff, and potentially help fund it. You already seem to know what counts as cool, so there shouldn’t be a problem!
That’s a very helpful remark, thanks!
Also, after reading some comments, I noticed that some crowd-funding projects taking the money and running, so to speak, is a concern. As others have noted, Kickstarter is better in that regard, as they don’t fund the project unless 100% of the donation goal is reached. I guess, as with anything else, ‘caveat emptor’ though.
Just like when I donated 20 euros in the Unlimited Clay project…
The same thing happened to me after I made a donation to Farsthary. The next day he announced his new job. That didn’t feel very rewarding, to say the least. Donations are tricky things.
To be fair, he has been waiting for BMesh to go live in the trunk to finish off Unlimited Clay. So there’s still a few months before we will know for sure if he will see if through or not. But from what I’ve seen from his comments he still plans to finish implementing it for Blender, so I guess we just have to cross our fingers and wait.
The upcoming film Iron Sky is a Finnish crowd funded feature film.
See: http://www.ironsky.net/
The Trailer has had 6,408,185 hits on youtube so far.The film is released on 4th April 2012.Crowd funding is allowing those outside Hollywood to make films.
Yes, agreed. There are many strong examples of where this works well. I guess my fear is that projects may pop up that are not run by talented people and that the money simply gets wasted.
Without Crowdfunding, Iron Sky would not have made it into the cinema’s. I think you should read there website and maybe contact them. They used Lightwave to make there films.
They also were involved in setting up http://www.wreckamovie.com/ which helped people get together on projects. That is an idea, I think you might also want to explore.
The guys involved started off making films in there bedrooms. It is the culmination of years of work. There previous film Starwreck was a fan made film that had special effects as good as most Sci-fi films.
I would not crowd fund someone unless they have a previous track record of some description.
One of the guys working on Iron Sky taught at our school. He showed
some breakdowns of effects from it. At least visually it’s gonna be
great.
Don’t just jump on the bandwagon here without doing some serious due-diligence… in some countries crowd-funding is unregulated, and potentially viewed as even illegal because of the way “funding” is solicited. It’s not quite a simple as it looks from a TAX and a financial investment protection point of view – http://www.katsbits.com/smforum/index.php?topic=364.0
I think the principle of crowdfunding is a good one. I’m sure a few scams will pop up every once in a while and the odd project won’t get done but there’s more than enough great work out there to balance that out. Just look at how well minecraft did.
As for which to cover… I’d say base it on what they already have done. If theres a bunch of really awesome concept art, then thats worth seeing on the blog in and of itself, even if for some reason it never actually translates into film. If they haven’t really got anything to show, keep an eye on them and wait until they do.
Hi this my first post here :)
Things to look for when it comes to crowdfunded projects are:
1. credibiltiy of the team (or in special cases – the individual behind) the project
(idea may be cool, but is it possible to become reality with these people?)
2. big part the proposed outcome is already done and working
the team should showcase important milestones of the project before or during the crowd funding campaign. Projects that
start from the ground (eg. invest in me so i start working) should be avoided
Use your better judgment. There’s probably no way to know if a project will take-off or not, but I think there are much better odds if the people involved are committed and know what they’re doing, and obviously the project goal has to sound interesting.
I’m interested in whether or not crowd-funding is scalable in the long-run. i.e. the biggest crowd-funded projects make several hundred thousand dollars at most generally. That’s a lot, but it’s still very little compared to traditional film budgets, which even on the low-end tend to be at least several million. But crowd-funding has been growing quickly in popularity, so I’m wondering how far it can reasonably take projects in the future. Will it be possible to completely fund a multi-million dollar film production through crowd-funding some day?
create something first, then ask for donations… as I do with dead cyborg game
but blender is a good example too: blender is already exist (and was a good program in that time) when the donation/opensource thing started
Are you talking about providing coverage here on projects you think are worthy? Or something more direct? You might consider making a separate ‘forum’ for crowd-funding blender related movies, or for crowd-sourcing creative talent, like wreckamovie as mentioned above.
Given the popularity of Kickstarter, it’s bound to attract scams as well as honest people biting off more than they can chew.
But if you feel that showcasing a project here that ends up being bogus will hurt this site’s reputation, just be careful of the people involved, and only post the ones you yourself have pledged to. Put your money where your social media is, so to speak.
This principle is really great and works fine! We all were the witnesses how it’s efficient (Ocean Sim, now – Tiles Compositor).
I hope that someday will be started a crowdfunded project for node-based geometry and physics (so obviously it’s not moving fast because the main author probably have a job or some paid projects to live and eat). I’m talking about this because Houdini has many many followers and many people talk about it. All other (non-node based 3d editors) has it’s own systems for special vfx and graphics or useful plugins.
I think it’s just a “step on the stairway of CG” in the context of time and technologies’ evolution.
Of course.. for Blender this means that we need working 2.63 with stable BMesh. I’m not a coder but I suppose it’s impossible to start some implementation of nodes for geometry without some completeness of the “mesh basis”.
About the question:
My IMO is that –
anyway people will decide to support or not support a project by it’s potential usability (or worthiness in cases of films). So maybe it’s better to think HOW to feature the concrete project. Obviously authors must be taking their targets and describe what people can expect from their future work. Using proper words and simple terms is always should be a good tone because we get more and more novices who will become advanced sooner or later. So…I think the best way is to keep everything simple and easy to get.
Sorry for that “Captain Obvious’ stuff” :D
Echoing what others have said about quality of supporting material for
I agree with Adrian. Probably a good idea to find out what works and what doesn’t from a project perspective before jumping in with funding. The reality is that the person who created or came up with the project may not be the best person to lead the project. We probably need some established project leaders in the community to get things going. That sounds “corporate,” I know, but if we want quality output from projects, we need leaders who know how to run projects. I’d urge the community to be open to leaders from all disciplines when it comes to project leaders. Having been involved with X Blender project in the past isn’t probably the only qualifier to lead these types of efforts. Funding will come if a quality leader is in place to run the show.
I believe that a crowd-funded project should be supported or endorsed here only if it has a definite production plan and enough concepts to get a grasp of what the project is working towards. Picking up projects willy-nilly is crazy, but if after a bit of research the project looks well managed, it’s worth public attention.
I wouldn’t necessarily look for previous work though. There are loads of people who have built up practice in Blender and whatnot without sharing (wise or unwise, you decide) but haven’t broken into the public sphere yet. I’m always supportive of newcomers, and I think that a first project should be helped out. It always helps to make something great when you have public recognition and responsibility.
Iron Sky has raised ~$1.000.000 by crowdfunding. I myself have invested nearly $2 :) So I think crowdfunding is a great thing that opens huge possibilities.
In more traditional models, people have to prove themselves to an extent employers/labels/producers/whatever by previous accomplishments as well. I think the crowd funding model operates on the same principles. People have to prove themselves to some extent before people are willing to risk money on them.
But deciding whether to feature a project or not is ultimately going to be pretty subjective. I would say just use your own judgement, and feature projects based on your own knowledge of the person or people behind it. (Or maybe in some cases even if you just think the project is really interesting.)
You can also just make sure to be clear about the degree to which you are endorsing something. e.g. “I know the people behind this, and I know that if they raise the funds they need, they will deliver,” vs “I have no idea how legitimate this is, but it looks really interesting in any case.”
I would also recommend being a tad more wary of projects that are doing crowd-funding via Indiegogo. Indiegogo gives the raised money to the project regardless of whether it meets its funding goal or not, which makes it easier to exploit. Kickstarter, on the other hand, doesn’t take people’s money unless the funding is fully raised, which makes it harder to abuse.
Anyway, I really like the crowd funding concept, and I think it can be broadly applicable to a lot of things. Nothing to be afraid of. But, indeed, the norms around its use are still evolving. It’s new territory. :-)
Crowd funding has always seemed a bit sketchy to me. Granted in some cases it’s led to good things, such as the ocean simulator, but if I understand correctly there doesn’t seem to be any legal structure to it. What’s to keep someone or a group from raising funds then running off with them?
Take Freestyle, for instance. I’ve been downloading Freestyle builds since 2009 and I’ve been hearing since I discovered Freestyle that integration would make it to the main release soon. That’s been a little over three years (June of 2008 was when I heard about it, according to the archives) and I’m still having to download the new versions from GraphicAll.
Now if it was crowd funded and I would have donated to it I basically would be paying for unofficial releases (assuming it followed the same model that the ocean sim did, where for a time the investors were the only ones given access to it) that are often unstable and three years after donating I’d still be waiting on a stable version. It’s starting to look like it will always be a side branch, which would have cheated the investors unless they guaranteed that their releases are as stable as the official releases from the Blender Foundation.
This is just personal opinion, but I feel that crowd funded projects shouldn’t be reported unless there’s some form of accountability in place to insure investors against fraud, if it’s not going to make it to the main release (in other words, your investment buys you a custom build) it’s guaranteed to be at least as stable as the official Blender Foundation releases, and if it is something advertised as eventually making it’s way to Blender officially it’s guaranteed that it will, in fact, make it to the official release.
Well Bart, I think that Blender is one of the best example of community driven software on the web. In terms of crowd funding project for new feature or project for blender, you should have a reference guide that can be created with the help of the Blender Foundation and the Blender Community itself. That guide can require the experience of the developer, a proposal, the cost of the entire project,a schedule for the project (divided in phase 1, phase 2, …), and compiled version of blender that include the new feature. A group of blender developers to give help in the process of development and for review the work. This site can be used to give updates on the crowd funding project for blender. In the end, the community will continue to give support to people that meet their goals of the project and will drop the support for the people that do not accomplish it. I think the community of Blender is very strict in terms of Quality (this web site reflect that).
best regards to all Blender Community,
Interesting timing… (and full disclosure…) I’m working on a Kickstarter.com crowdfunded project using Blender.
My take on it is that the “market will decide” in several ways. First, if there really isn’t a market for the concept being pitched, then this is one way to discover that. Call it a “free focus group” if you will. (Naturally, it’s no substitute for real market research, but in general it does give you SOME data.)
Second, the market can, to some degree, decide for itself if this is a “take the money and run” operation or something likely to actually make good on its claims. Again, I think Kickstarter has a better angle on this than most in that they do some slight vetting of the project before they let you post, and no funds exchange hands until the full goal is met. The idea here is that if you say you can produce the product if you reach $X goal, and you were taking money as it came in and fell short, you could just shrug and say “well, I didn’t reach the goal and I can’t do the project… but thanks for the dough.” The “all-or-nothing” approach removes that excuse. You got your money… now go finish what you said you would!
Lastly, the evaluation of the “team” that is producing the item functions much like the management team in a company seeking funds from outside sources. Often times the difference between getting a bank loan and walking away empty-handed is how much does the bank trust the capabilities of the management of the company?
If you’re interested in seeing a Kickstarter.com funding project that is making use of Blender, mine is here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bischofftep/code-dancer
Crowdfunding only works if the content is CC-licensed. I don’t want anyone to make money of it.
But while the funding enables them to make the project they still have to put the work in. Remember a crowd funded film is putting all the money into props, sets, insurance etc. The director doesn’t cut himself a paycheque from it. Surely once their film is finished they deserve to profit from their labours?
If they want their project funded and reap the profits they should find investors, not crowdfunders. Crowdfunders are essentially donating money and they expect something in return, i.e. the freedom to use and see/hear the endresult. I’ve donated to several crowdfunded projects such as the Ocean Simulator and the GPU Node Editor. If the developers had copyrighted and sold these as commercial products I never would have given them a single euro.
Crowdfunding works for artists that want to realize a movie / song / game etc. but lack the money to do so. I would vehemently object to any artist that wants public money but wants to keep the copyrights (and potential profits) for themselves.
But crowd funding is the exact same model as finding large investors it just spreads the cost among many more investors. The funders almost always get to see the final product because projects give out rewards to the investors. With crowdfunding for, let’s say a short film, the rewards often include a copy of the film, posters, tshirts, personalised thankyous from cast and crew and credits in the film. Crowd funders get to see the realised film, get to have the satisfaction of helping someone realise their dream and get exclusive swag related to the project.
Investors have legal rights to the finished endresult, crowdfunders do not. They are essentially donating and have no say in what the producer does with the work. If they want to make a commercial product I would want part ownership (or at least a guaranteed part of the profits) just like any normal investor would. Since I don’t have these rights I’d want the product to be freely licensed, i.e. GPL or CC.
Your argument that the crowdfunders get to see the finished result is nonsense. The producers would release the end result in any case, possibly asking money for you to see it too if you’d let them.
I’m recommending people NOT to fund non-CC licensed projects.
That’s ofcourse your choice if you don’t want to help out but you could keep your recommendation to yourself.
http://www.ironsky.net/
Hey, everyone have the human right to make money from his/her work!
If only people weren’t enabled by monopolistic laws to exclude others that would be all fine and dandy.
Monopolistic laws are given to the Creator of content to acknowledge his/her hard work and efforts that were put into production. These monopolistic laws are called “copyright” and in principle gives him/her the exclusive right to profit from the work. If one person (or small team) made it what is the role of that “others”?
Here is what John Locke has to say about land and ownership.
If you work the land and produce something all the benefits of that work should be yours, if another person works that same land the benefits of that work should be exclusively his so the one doing the work is the one who should benefit from the work done, meaning that creating a music is not enough to go charge rent to others for doing all the work and having to give you anything, that goes for videos or any type of intellectual property.
Besides you are wrong, copyrights are an incentive to make people produce more, they are not for the benefit of an author they are for the benefit of society.
Those laws were corrupted and now are an abomination, life plus 95 years is too long and harms society in the process.
It’s a stretch to apply Locke’s comments on land ownership to other types of property, particularly intellectual property. Besides, saying “here’s what x had to say about y” is a weak argument. John Locke’s writings hold as much merit as, let’s say the writings of Alex Wilson of Ozark, MO. Authors become popular by preaching to the choir. People who don’t already hold to their views couldn’t care less what they have to say. That’s why you’ll rarely catch a liberal buying Mark Levine’s book or a conservative buying Al Franken’s.
Since you used music as an example we’ll run with that. The most difficult aspect of music is writing it. If anyone could write music that people wanted to hear then the market wouldn’t support songwriters and composers “renting” out their work. Performing it, on the other hand, is relatively simple if you’ve “rented” a copy of the score. All you have to know is the “language” it’s written in, the speed at which to play it, and which string/key/valve on your instrument corresponds to the notes written on the page.
Without the “monopoly” given to the copyright holder a person could invest a substantial amount of time in writing a piece of music and someone else could earn a living off of it, depriving the guy who wrote it, who did the majority of the work, of income derived from it.
The whole concept of “freedom” in intellectual property is one sided. The “freedoms” everyone advocates for come at the cost of the author/programmer/composer’s freedom. A person should be free to do whatever he wants with his idea, as long as it doesn’t violate any laws or cause harm. If he wants to give it away free of charge he should be free to. If he wants to rent it to other people that’s his right. Those who complain should stop complaining and come up with their own works.
“Copyleft” is an opt-in program. If I don’t want to release a program as GPL I don’t have to. No entity can force me to. When you advocate that it should be the rule, not just an option, you advocate for the power of an entity to grant freedoms that are the IP creator’s alone to grant.
IP creators do a favor by releasing their property. If a songwriter/composer just wants to write music for his family to enjoy he doesn’t have to record it and put it out on the internet. If a programmer writes an application to do something he needs and he makes it available to the public he’s not acting out of obligation. He’s throwing people a bone.
I’m all for freedom of intellectual property. Let the people who put the work into creating it keep the freedom to determine what’s done with it, and let the people who complain about what they choose to do with it come up with their own works.
Quote:
So John Locke is not good?
I know one guy that would disagree with you and he keeps using John Locke to justify more copyrights.
Quote:
That is not true, it is difficult to find yourself with inspiration but writing it is not difficult at all, it comes naturally and is derived from the enviroment you are in most of the time, so if you are in the right enviroment you produce something. One great example of that is the Ghostbusters theme song by Ray Parker Jr. which I believe did the song as a “work for hire” meaning he gets nothing, also most musicians and other types of artists gets nothing today, in the words of the RIAA 99% of all artists are failed artists and the other 1% that make it are shackled by contracts that are crazy and they get bounded it by those without recourse, maybe that is why a lot of artists keep suing record labels, that suing is what makes the market extremely hazardous for any upcoming artist, because it creates uncertainty in the market it raises the cost for doing business here is an example of the risk, one photographer Janine Gordon was suing another because she claimed he infringed on her work the problem is by looking the evidence you don’t get that sense, and she even lost initially and it is appealing the rulling at the moment all the while the other photographer has to incur the time and money to defend itself from that lawsuit.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120204/01440917661/photographer-appeals-ruling-saying-its-not-infringement-to-have-vaguely-similar-photos.shtml
It happens all the time, so you are not free to do anything anymore, besides what is wrong with the old way of doing things?
Name a price and do the work, what is so wrong about that? why do people need a monopoly to be in the market place?
Fashion people don’t have “protections” it doesn’t stop it from producing Gucci, Versage and others, restaurants don’t get “protections” it didn’t stop McDonald from appearing and making a living, it didn’t stop Subway, Red Hat has no “protections” and it is a multi million dollar company, Arduino is a open source hardware manufacturer and also a multi million dollar company and it doesn’t have those “protections” those don’t raise the bar for entry to the market, they don’t depend on exclusionary rules to be in the market and are in a better place because of it, they can’t exclude others so they have to work for a living and not seek rent.
Copyright stop everybody else from having a chance in the market for the benefit of one individual or entity that is not right at all.
Quote:
So you acknowledge that the sweet of the brow is important just as John Locke said back in the 1700’s?
Because that is what he said, if you work the benefits derived from the work should be exclusively yours, the assets underlying that work are of no consequence, the music is irrelevant if you can’t perform it, the music is irrelevant if you can’t write it, the music is irrelevant if you can’t connect with people and make them like it, the combination of all those things is what makes something valueable not just part of it and nobody should be rewarded for half a job done, that is not how the real world works.
Quote:
Well then copyright should end right now because it is harming everyone including artists, it is the tool used for stopping others from deriving income from their work, it is the tool used to censor others and it is a tool that keeps getting expanded, in the last 50 years it was expanded or modified 16 times, the rights those people claim comes at the expense of the public and others and it only can be used by a few who really have the money to use it, I doubt you have the resources and the time to spend litigating and “protecting” what you call your work on a global scale, I very much doubt you should be able to do it, what people should be able to do, is to have a free market and see who is more capable on that market and that means people should be able to use the same assets of others and apply their own twist to their business without fear of being ruined by the legal system which is not in a position to decide what is good for the market or the creators at all. The only one sided atittude is the attitude of some that believe that they have a right to exclude others from doing anything they don’t like, now that is something harmful.
Modern copyright or the Statute of Anne was originally conceived as a censorship tool, where the Stationers’ Company would enforce the will of the Queen, it also was used to block the competition from Scottland, which was flooding the English market with cheap books. The US version was an utilitarian version of that where the forefathers recognized the danger of granting a monopoly and made it clear it should be limited obviously in 300 years people found ways around those limitations, it was supposed to encourage only learning and sciences and got expanded later to include music and moving pictures and now it also includes designs and it keeps getting expanded on the courts by rullings that acknowledge today non-literal copying which means it doesn’t need to be an exact copy it just need to be “similar” and the rules to decide that are anything but clear on how.
Quote:
They can’t eveything is locked away, do you know how much costs to clear the rights for any movie made today?
It cost millions of dollars, those who don’t, do it at their own peril.
Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron because Cameron said he stole the idea for Terminator from a story of Ellison’s(The Outer Limits: Soldier), and he won since Cameron just settled because he could others would be ruined by that kind of stuff. Cameron took the idea that a soldier from the future came to the past and that was it all the rest was original and since copyrights are supposed to protect expression and not ideas one can see how this is troubling.
There is also the case against Hangover II where the producers are being sued over the Tattoo the character wakes up, the lawsuit of the Turkish city Batman against Batman, because its residents have trouble getting trademarks offshore. In Europe and other places landmarks must have the rights clear you can’t take a photograph of the Eiffel Tower and sell it, you can’t make a model and sell it, I think it was Batman Begins that had a building show up in the movie and got sued over it.
Legal ignorance is bliss apparently since people don’t realize how laws are violating their rights and freedoms.
Quote:
Copyleft is opt-in today because of the legal fiction called copyrights, the natural state of works is the commons not some government granted monopoly.
Excluding the public from the public space is not in the best interest of society or creators.
Quote:
Please don’t do me any favors keep your stuff for yourself and leave the public space to the public so everybody can play in it and not just you.
Quote:
I’m affraid that is not going to happen, because the freedom to exclude others from the commons should never be granted to anyone.
Here is another good one
Vancouver Train System To Charge Buskers Huge Fees To Play In Stations
by by Mike Masnick on Fri, Jan 8th 2010 11:44am.
SOCAM wanted to charge the city of Vancouver for the busker on the station, that happened in a US city too where a collection agency threatned to sue if they didn’t pay royalties to them because of busking.
Also there is the venues. Musicians are getting less and less space to perform because of collection agencies.
Also there is the case of Defend our freedom to share (or why SOPA is a bad idea) where the first example is why bakeries in the US stopped to offer printing sugar plates, because kids like to draw copyright works like the Little Mermaid and policing that was just to much, so that capability was withdraw. That is stopping innovation from happening, that is money that is not circulating in the market putting pressure on the market to find other ways to move the money, thousands of bakeries lost an option to attract more clients it made their business less attractive, that is what copyright does, it give power to one person or entity at the expense of everybody else, it harms not only economy it harms democracy because as an exclusionary tool it is tempting to use it to censor others and the courts are full of cases where people use copyrights to threaten others.
Heck the DMCA just gives us an idea of the size of that abuse, according to chillingeffects.org 60% of all DMCA’s sent to Google are either wrong or are from rival companies which obviously point to the obvious indication that those DMCA’s are not used to protect content at all but to harm competitors, even though the DMCA has penalties for misuse but to be classified as misuse the bar is high when the claim copyright infringement the bar is very low, this asymmetric is what makes copyright so terrible and wrong.
Project Guttenberg Search: John Locke Author
Free as in freedom is a beautiful thing, monopolies on the other hand try to exclude others from everything and harm society.
This is writen not for “open source enthusists”, calm down:)
There is also quality issue, in general open projects tend to lack the quality of commercial ones. Look at Blender. It is free, thats true, but it costs much more than other apps.-you have to learn it -it takes more time and is in the long run more expensive than good documented propertiary apps, and Blender since switch to 2.5 seems to be less stable, and has more bugs than previous versions (2.4x), which were derived form “commercial blender”. I like using Blender, because it is free, but if someone can offer me a “free propertiary app” or Blender, i should have to think a little bit.
If find very little that support the smallest amount of scrutiny in what you say but, hey, what’s the use to discuss since you dismiss me offhand as an ‘open source enthusist’, aka Open Source enthusiast?
I am pro – Open Source and enthusiast myself. But I am no biased against “commercial”, “propertiary”, and “copyright”. Thats all.
Then you are not an open source enthusiast, maybe curious.
If you were an enthusiast you would understand that open source is about freedom first.
On the quality of commercial vs open source, I believe you are living in the 90’s, I can’t find anything open source that is not equal or very close to the commercial offering when it is not outright better than anything else in the market, also the cost of commercial it is much higher than just financial, you get on the upgrade treadmill, you are locked in, you can’t modify it easily, you can’t build a community around it without having to beg the commercial entity to let you or else they shut you down with endless legal threats and lawsuits, not to mention the cost of training that is the same, the learning curve of most others 3D software are high they are not easy to learn so I don’t see where you get this idea that if it is commercial it will be better probably that is not true at all.
Nonsense. I’ve tried several 3D packages over the years and my general conclusion is: 3D is HARD! To get professional results you need to invest LOTS of time to learn how to make use of it, no matter which package you choose.
And i did not responded to main question: “is the recent surge in crowdfunded projects a good thing” -I personally think that crowdfunding itself is a tricky thing. First: Author of something creates a product. The value of work has to be covered in some way.
So the idea that “Crowd” will pay for it first, and then the author will make it, leaves the problem of quality – He/She has no motivation to put quality, since money has been paid. The better option would be: observe results, pay later, and pay on free will!
And we come to (terrible for many) idea : this is how normal economy works! It would be nice to see the product first and pay
later. This creates real free market – because there are many products, not only those “primary selected”.
The quality is present in larger amounts. BUT here comes problem of illegal downloading which ruins the healthly model and throws us into crowdfunding. This in turn demoralize content creators, and takes away value from society.
Remember – this is MY opinion, if you have other arguments i will be glad to hear.
This method looks really nice , I’m a modeller and i have my own ideas and proyects , now i ‘m working in one .
Here in my country we don’t need millions of millons of dollar to produce a movie .
In the past one company did a movie with only 400 000 dollars , and produce more movies with similar amount of money but the quality was really terrible i must confes really really ugly but this was in that company .
Well, i will try to produce something really good and show what i’m planning to do . and maybe in the near future develop Blender contract developers with the money we can earn in the product to realize .
This is part of my dream hope can do it soon
For code/feature, it’s obvious- there should be a proven dev on the project, as was the case with the wave modifier.
For film projects I would lean that way as well, someone with a proven body of work. Also, they should have all pre-production done, and I mean ALL of it, script, storyboards, and concept art.
This is shockingly timely… I don’t think I can objectively write an opinion here, since something is going to ‘happen’ to tube very soon..
‘happen’ like we are going to witness the awesome power of it or….
Well… I have my own python projects I would like to get out in the open soon. And donations would be nice of course. Though people will not put money into something what they wouldn’t find usefull somehow or they feel it’s not going to finish anyway. And I think that is for the best in any smaller project.
So, my way in a big project:
1. The project should address Blender’s worst shortcomings first. You have to think big things first, what most of the people could use (in the limit of your skills though).
2. You have to proove you can do it by having it more than about halfway finished or you’re known for a man to keep his word or the project really REALLY seems like a one that would finish.
If it’s a small project like, most of the python addons:
1. Finish first, payment later, if it’s usefull for people.
So, sure. It should become more mainstream but there will have to be some rules and there have to be some people looking after this all and evaluating what projects would be worth investing money into, also taking into considerationg people’s opinions for the project.
Like, you could just dump your money to someone/some firm and say, this project is what I wish to see finished. Then this person/firm would balance between what would be worth the investment and what people would like to see finished.
I mean, is there any other way to do it really. XD
Kickstarter is a popular platform, but understand that you have to be a USA resident to start a project. IndieGoGo is a better worldwide platform.
I did not know that! Amazing how internationals can donate but can’t use the service. A shame because it’s the most widely trusted platform :(
What count as positive points, IMO:
1. Show being capable of going through the project to deliver the targets
2. Have a great proposal e design
3. Have a portion of the work done
4. Being in touch with the community
5. Initial portion of the code must be quickly revewed and approved to meet Blender’s codebase standard
I think it’s a great concept, though it hasn’t worked for me. I’ve actually tried it 3 times, the third time being for our current feature film in post production, Ark Of The Witch https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ark-Of-The-Witch/126776487358753 . My initial plan was to bring in other Blender artists for post production, but it never happened, which is ok, it was a great learning experience for me. I ended up raising financing for my film through traditional channels and salesmanship. Raising 50K in just a few months, which was quite a feat I must say, but unfortunately wasn’t enough for post production CG/vfx. Today, we’re just a couple guys chipping away at the stone for our CG/vfx needs on AOW, which is coming along great.
This topic, I know I’ll raise again with my business partners before the end of the year for our next feature film.