Can Komiks be crowdsourced? A primer

You may have heard of a new crowdsourcing tool called Kickstarter. Recently, comics creators worldwide have been flocking to it to get their comics projects made. For the unaware, some of these projects have been successfully funded and released, which begs the question, can it be done for komiks in the Philippines?

We won't be entering a full discussion on crowdsourcing yet. Instead, as a primer, I'm sharing a few links to some relevant articles about Kickstarter and other crowdsourcing intitiatives. More on crowdsourcing later.

First, the wikipedia articles on crowdsourcing, and in particular, crowdfunding (using crowdsourcing to pool funds)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding

An introduction to Kickstarter by one of its founders, Perry Chen

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2010/10/crowd-funding_art

Johanna Draper Carlson of Comics Worth Reading explains here thoughts on Kickstarter. However, even more noteworthy than her article are the comments that follow

http://comicsworthreading.com/2010/06/22/why-i-wont-be-giving-to-kickstarter-projects/

Johanna's partial retraction, 2 days later.

http://comicsworthreading.com/2010/06/24/more-on-kickstarter-i-was-wrong/

A short discussion of crowdsourced webcomic intiatives Buzzcomix and DC's Zuda Comics Web Portal

http://www.comicbookbin.com/Crowdsourcing_Web_Comics001.html

And finally, how Ed Chavez of Vertical Inc. uses crowdsourcing to pick manga licenses for their company to publish

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/06/crowdsourcing-manga-licenses/

NB Edited because I got some factual information wrong. In 2006 Warren Ellis planned a webcomic initiative called Project Rocket, which seems to have never gotten off the ground. Will be talking about that when I find out why.