So, do you guys all know about Kickstarter?

IF YOU ALREADY DO, THEN PLEASE SCROLL DOWN A BUNCH FURTHER UNTIL YOU SEE THE WORDS 'THE PROJECTS'. THIS IS WHAT I REALLY WANT YOU TO READ ABOUT.

It's an amazing and inventive 'crowdfunding' program through which artists of all kinds (dancers, musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, and on and on) can create projects and raise the money to make them a reality. Regular ordinary folks just like us are the ones who kick in the bucks and make these artistic dreams a reality.

The way it works is that the artist creates the project (the more concrete and/or tangible, the better) with a target funding figure. Then the project creator sets up pledge amounts for potential funders -- and generally each pledge comes with fun thank you gifts (or premiums, just like PBS or your local public radio station) from the creator, usually stuff that's related to the project. Like you might get a signed print for donating $100 to an artist creating a book. Or a copy of the DVD a documentary filmmaker's creating (the husband's pledge for a documentary about VW campers got his name in the credits of the film -- boy, was he pumped!) The pledge amounts often start at pretty low figures -- sometimes as low as $1 or $5 -- but of course, the more $ you give, the cooler the stuff you get in return. The Kickstarter project is usually set to run for 30 days -- sometimes longer -- and at the end of that 30-day period, if the total amount pledged is equal to or greater than the project goal, the project is funded -- the artist gets the money! If the amount pledged falls short of the goal, then the creator gets nothing, and the backers don't have to pay anything. This is, of course, a sad outcome, but it means that you as a backer are supporting only successful projects that are really going to happen.

And there are some AMAZING success stories out there. One young woman who is a comic strip artist set a goal of $9,000 to complete a cartoon story she'd been working on for a while. She ended up raising $126,507! That is, yes, like 1400 percent of her funding goal! Gloriosky. I mean, can you imagine how psyched and inspired she is? That girl's gonna get her dreams going in a very big way.

I get very excited about the visionary projects I see popping up on Kickstarter, so I've funded a bunch of them -- about ten or eleven, I think. I'm happy to say that every single one I've kicked in for has been successful! Which means I'm getting a lot of books, prints, and other groovy things in the next couple of months.

THE PROJECTS

I wanted to write about two projects going on right now that I'm really into -- and encourage you, exhort you, embeggen you to go check them out and then pledge, pledge, pledge. The first is Animal Gas, a really really REALLY funny book for kids (and silly grownups), created by my INCREDIBLY talented and funny buddy Bryan Ballinger. It's a scratch and sniff book about, well, animal gas! And it's hilarious! (And it's gonna smell GREAT.) But listen, here's the deal. It has only eight (that's 8!) more days to go, and there's still a ways to go to reach the funding goal. This book needs to happen, it really really needs to happen, so I want y'all to watch the video, read about the project and see just how groovy Bryan is -- and then get on over to his Kickstarter page and MAKE A PLEDGE! You'll come up smelling like roses once you're an Animal Gas backer, b'leeve me.