Gotta Explicate them All: The World of Pokémon

Another quiet week in furry crowdfunding, must be the summer doldrums. A few fun new projects, but for me one of the highlights of the week was a pair of excellent podcast episodes from “Fear the Boot,” a thoughtful and long-running tabletop RPG podcast, focusing on Kickstarter strategies, pitfalls, tactics, and so on. Granted, it’s not the furry fandom, but certainly another colony in the great nation of geeks. If you’re thinking of starting a crowdfunding campaign, give them a listen (ep.1, ep.2). Anyway, today a long-overdue look at what must be the Audubon Society of Pokémon fansights.

And then a bunch of other stuff.

The World of Pokémon

Pokémon: Rich world, but aimed solidly at a younger crowd. In his pitch video, author Joshua Dunlop talks about a view of the…uh…Pokéverse that has matured with its older fans: a rich interactive website that looks at the world of Pokémon like a nature documentary, National Geographic, or travel guide might, exhaustively and elegantly.

“The World of Pokémon” cracks open every aspect of Pokémon with an almost academic fervor, looking at regional histories, gyms and trainers, technology, the “why” of the Pokémon league, and some artistic extrapolations into religion, ancient history, architecture, wars and lost empires…and the art we see in the KS is impressive, both professional and diverse in style, and the long-term/stretch goals–weekly newscasts from the Pokémon world, professionally-produced pokémon calls, soundtrack, webcomic…it’s an ambitious project.

An ambitious and accredited project! Dunlop’s staff includes students of zoology and biology, composers and sound designers, entertainment professionals…and strangely, more theater people than you can shake a stick at, but maybe you have to be a little insane to take a project of this scope on without corporate backing, and theater people generally qualify.

Is this a viable project? It’s hard to say. Pokémon’s star seems to be setting somewhat, it’s not the international craze it once was–though the games are still doing well for Nintendo, that’s not the same as a base of sustainable support for an ad-driven multimedia project that doesn’t directly feed into the games. And thusfar, the Kickstarter support has not made a deep dent in the campaign’s ambitious goal, which may or may not be meaningful given the peaks-and-valleys shape of most KS pledge patterns. Regardless, the World of Pokémon campaign is an excellent read and an exciting project.

Books/Print

The Dragon Princess (Ends: 8/2/2013)
A princess cursed to be a half-dragon, half-human creature looks for love to lift her curse.

Talonridge: Book II (Ends: 8/5/2013)
Heavily-illustrated young adult series of mice on a mission in a fantasy world, very “Mousegard”
Part two of a planned 63-book series. That’s ambition!

Children’s Products

The Tales of Shakespuss (Ends: 8/3/2013)
Stripped-down, lightened up, and retold versions of Shakespeare for kids, live action, theatre, and animated.

Clothing/Costumes

Right to Bear Arms tees (Ends: 8/9/2013)
Tee shirts with long, furry sleeves
Cute tees, unfortunately the shirt slogans aren’t as funny as the concept.

Woof — Dog Themed Pinback Buttons (Ends: 8/25/2013)
Cute, quirky, 1.25-inch buttons for your jacket or whichever. Cute little guys! Cats too.
Scroll down a little, the “extra dog” pins are adorable :) Watch the artist on DeviantArt or FA

Piki Charms (Ends: 9/21/2013)
Tiny charms for phones, etc, with an amazing range of designs, by DrawWithLaura
The goal is a little high for the nature of this product, but it’s to fund some business capital equipment. But it’s fixed-funding, so no accidental scams.

Comics/Graphic Novels

Dreamkeepers: Prelude (Ends: 7/31/2013)
A bound edition of the Dreamkeepers “prelude” webcomic, with a cast of graceful, stylized and colorful critters.
More artsnstuff on the Dreamkeepers FA account.

The Legend of MonkeyRonin (Ends: 7/31/2013)
A comic series featuring a Monkey King sort of character, very nice illustrations!

Animal Inphantry: Hupsalupa Beginnings (Ends: 8/2/2013)
A team of five critters takes to the street in a war against bullying.

Rabbit (Ends: 8/3/2013)
The graphic novel story of a rabbit working as a bar bouncer (among other things) in a city of carnivores

Sam & Fuzzy – Two Volume Omnibus (Ends: 8/7/2013)
The story of a man and a bear, in a crazy absurdist comic universe, a 1500-page epic comic collection.

World War Kaiju graphic novel (Ends: 8/12/2013)
What if the ultimate weapon that ended World War II didn’t usher in the atomic age, but the Kaiju (giant city-crushing monster) age? Excellent video, great retro propaganda visuals, and bizarre immersive stretch goal toys.
“Furry” is a stretch, but there’s a lot to like here for fans of giant, Tokyo-crushing armadillos.

Bulletproof Chicken (Ends: 8/13/2013)
Comic about “The most bad-ass fowl to ever wear a badge.” Cleaning up the streets with the cock with a glock.

Of Mice and Madness: Tails from Out There! (Ends: 8/15/2013)
The adventures of the mouse bounty hunter Othello and his trusted if dim cat steed as they travel the galaxy in search of riches.
More galleries and info at ofmiceandmadness.com.

Birdland (Ends: 8/22/2013)
A comic set in New York City, thick with jazz, noir, murder, and anthropomorphic birds

Owlgirls (Ends: 9/1/2013)
A “paranormal detective” genre comic, three shadowy sisters touched by the goddess of Death. Oh, they have owl heads.

Danger Squad (Ends: 9/9/2013)
Sci-Fi Comedy featuring a crazy captain and malajusted crew, and a nice range of anthro characters and villians.

Events

CANterlot, Ontario MLP Con (Ends: 8/9/2013)
Funding campaign for Ontario’s MLP convention in November

DerpyCon South (Ends: 8/14/2013)
Fundraising for Year 1 of DerpyCon South: the New Orleans Brony convention!

Film/Animation/Theater

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Blood Brothers (Ends: 8/23/2013)
A short, live-action TMNT film with some amazing props already in the works.
From the people who brought you Marvel Zombies: The Movie: The Trailer…. Disorienting KS video, total lack of business plan, but nice mock-ups.

Cat’s View Feature Film (Ends: 8/21/2013)
A crime thriller filmed from a cat witness’s point of view, along with information about the life of a feral cat, trap/neuter/return projects, etc.

Anthro: Animating the Soul (Ends: 8/27/2013)
A documentary look at beloved anthro characters and their creators.
Stitchfan has broken this project up into a series of small-goal IGGs, interesting model and I hope to see it succeed!

BiPolar Bears (Ends: 9/1/2013)
Animated series about manic and depressive polar bear twins Manny and Preston (orderilies in a psych institute), the Post-Traumatic Puffins, Randolf the Alcoholic Reindeer, and other friends.
Bleah. The promo vid is “join me in my philosophy” rather than “here’s this cool product idea.” That plus very high goal/60-day campaign is a bad sign.

Tabletop Games

Pelted Primacy (Ends: 8/12/2013)
A Bicycle style card deck with anthro court cards and paw-print pips.
More of the artist’s work on DeviantArt.

Room Party: The Game (Ends: 8/15/2013)
A card game about building the MOST AWESOME room party at the con. Concept by the artists of BLOTCH (and stretch goal Furry Con expansion to be drawn by Blotch.)
Reminds me a bit of “Chez Geek,” silly people, silly situations, accumulating cool points.

Zoo Fu: Path of the Samurai Zookeeper (Ends: 8/17/2013)
A silly card game of fighting zoo animals, martial arts, and shouting.
I really want to play a game where you get points by shouting “Crouching Gecko Kick of DOOOOOOM!”

Ponies for Pathfinder Setting Handbook (Ends: 8/24/2013)
A MLP-inspired tabletop RPG setting handbook–inspired by, but not derivitive of.
You may want to look at the Ponies for Pathfinder Racebook first. The writer seems to have tried to create a legitimate stand-alone product, not a MLP mashup or comedy piece. So, points for a clear goal.

Toys

Gothitropolis Raven Action Figure (Ends: 8/12/2013)
Six action figures of 6-inch anthro birds in gothic fantasy inspired armor, with stretch goals for several more within reach.

Video Games

Laika Believes: The Sun at Night (Ends: 8/9/2013)
A 2d action platformer featuring Laika, the Soviet space dog. Check the trailer.
Laika’s such a tragic story, I can’t blaim anyone for creating an alternate reality to give her a happy ending…

Questria: Princess Destiny (Ends: 8/18/2013)
A life simulation game with very familiar characters, human versions of the “mane six” from My Little Pony.

Fable Kart (Ends: 9/1/2013)
Multiplayer kart game in which the hare, turtle, and lots of animal friends crash and zoom around as they try to rescue the pages from Aesop’s storybook.

Web

The Pandas Show (Ends: 8/9/2013)
Multimedia web/print/video game featuring…well, various pandas, and parodies involving pandas. It’s a lot of panda.
Trailer slide show here…I’m not sure it helps!

The World of Pokemon (Ends: 8/11/2013)
A rich look at the Pokemon universe, with artistic, scientific, architectural studies. Fascinating stuff! More images on DeviantArt

Adult

Pocket Pussies: The Legend of Seven Purity Seals (Ends: 8/9/2013)
Zelda/Pokemon hybrid exploration/battling seizure monsters game, loaded with cheesecake pokemon, cat girls, and assorted anime-esque hotness.

A Petgirl’s Story (Ends: 8/11/2013)
Petplay meets the children’s book format in a VERY adult and yet charmingly innocent story of a catgirl and her owner.
Okay, “charmingly innocent” is a stretch. Half the illustrations are online already. NSFW seriously. There’s a leather dogboy for canine fans.

Chimera Labs (Ends: 8/27/2013)
Lovingly–that’s the word–detailed adult toys by Kharnak
I would like to meet the fennec fox that had one of those. They don’t usually grow that big…

Erotic Werebeast (Offbeatr voting period)
For transformation/female bodybuilder fans: a group of women test a formula that turns them into monstrous werebeasts (and soft-core stars).

…Meh.

The Elemals Graphic Novel (Ends: 8/31/2013): A bit pokemon, a bit Dragonball Z, a bit long and rambling. I’m sure this comic is about…something…but mostly it follows a somewhat uninteresting main character around on some sort of investigative story. Maybe you can make better sense of it.
Amazon Rage: Curse of the She-Wolf (Ends: 9/6/2013): A Buffy-esque miniseries featuring a female werewolf, possibly from outer space. Mmm, mediocre CGI werewolves are so hot right now.

…Causes

Wildcats of the World (Ends: 8/25/2013): A web-based interactive resource to spread awareness of the remaining sildcat species.
Save Virachey Park (Ends: 9/10/2013): Campaign to install motion-trigger cameras in Virachey park, Cambodia, to show it’s a worthwhile preserve of endangerd species. Do it for the dholes!

…Just For Fun

Meme Plus Cats (Ends: 8/17/2013): Stuffed and cartoon anthro versions of a hoste of meme cats (a plush grumpy cat and friends…)
Mahou Shounen FIGHT! (Ends: 8/17/2013): A colorful, humorous, LGBT-friendly graphic novel and webcomic breaking open the Mahou Shounen–crime-fighting magical BOY–genre.
The Wonderful Musical Animals Book and Print (Ends: 8/19/2013): Charming, rhyming book filled with vampire mandolins, rinoccordians, and tuba squid, cobbled together from Victorian illustrations.

…Coming soon?

Fox, Wolf, and Cat Hoodies by Mermade (prelaunch): Artist Mermade launching a KS soon for her line of hats, hoodies, and tails.