I just watched this presentation by Seth Godin to the publishing industry:
http://toc.oreilly.com/2009/10/video-seth-...-new-media.html

I think that everything that he has to say about books is relevant to animation (as a product). Listen to what he has to say about how he marketed "The Idea Virus", "Purple Cow", etc and think about his idea of books as souvenirs. If the same idea applies to animated content--then YouTube may be the BEST place to publish animated content. So that it gets shared, passed-on, linked to, and SPREAD!
And then you sell the DVD,T-shirt,etc. to those fans as a souvenir.

What are your thoughts?

To be souvenir-worthy something would have to pass a certain threshold of mass awareness AND have some staying power. The bigger one factor is the less the other needs to be.

Sarah Boyle was brief but HUGE enough to drive some CD sales.

On the other side there are many bands that will never have a fraction of her fame but by slogging it out for a long time they've built up a fan base.

I think that's the model that works right now. Put your stuff out there for free, so they can be entertained and hopefully enough of them will like it well enough to purchase better quality hard copies of them. I've heard some folks actually put out the 10% percentage for "super fans." I don't know whether or not that is accurate. (I should say, I don't *believe* that is accurate.) The idea is that 1 in 10 will become a big enough fan to buy your stuff.

Will, for your stuff, I'd definitely add a hardcover art book to the things to make to sell list. You've already got pre-existing artwork related to your characters (plus pre-production art). I think there are folks who would go for a coffeetable book of your stuff!

Will already has one of his sketchbooks for sale. He is an incredible artist. Don't know how well it is doing. Robcat's take might be something to consider.
http://www.cafepress.com/zandoria.274238247

One thing's for sure....Having a solid Marketing strategy no matter what the product is ....is just as important as the creation of the product. Several really good animation products over the past few years were released only to remain at the starting gate.... The problem was that all the creative efforts went into the product.

so true, and how many bad products made lots of money because they had good strategies? tons, wal-mart is an example of that philosophy to some degree

And that's one of the drawbacks I see with doing animation for the web. The process is so involved and time-consuming that it would be hard to put out enough content on a regular enough schedule to foster that audience.

That's what originally led me to the idea of supplementing the animation with the webcomic. It was definitely not my plan to have the webcomic become the whole thing, but the initial thought was that the webcomic could fill in the gaps of production time for the animation.

Having "Seasons" might be a way to handle this. Do all of your production up front and then release episodes in a regular release schedule for a few months. Then go back into production and repeat. This would definitely show more consistency than a sporadic release schedule based on how long each individual episode took to create.

There is a balance you have to find weighing how much work it takes against what reward you receive. Animation is definitely heavy on the first part of that scale. Even most of the classic Disney animated films didn't make their money back on their first release.

Another idea might be to try to pitch it to a company that has a big audience for their other productions. I'm thinking of a company like Revision3. They have a slew of video podcasts with large audiences. There would definitely be an income involved if they were to add your animated series to their show list. However, then you add some gatekeepers to your project and do you really want to cater to what they want to release rather than what you want to produce.

This may just me seeing the world through the filter of my own craziness, but it's almost the case that you have to be crazy enough to do all of this work, without there being the promise of getting anything back ...and then hope success happens.

I remember the silly notion of the flying spaghetti monster started out as a letter to the Kansas city school board on teaching religion to the class. Now there is a website for the flying spaghetti monster creationist theory, and which spawn off to sales of cups, and t-shirts.

I do think maybe with all the pirating of video that selling souvenir may be the best way to go. I have consider selling 3D stereo render picture on a cd and selling 3d stereo glasses for this. Bulk order of the 3D stereo can be purchase at
http://www.loreo.com/pages/products/loreo_..._3d_viewer.html
works out to be something like a $1.60 per viewer at bulk prices of a hundred unit

I find that most people don't know how to look at cross eye stereo, and really need these glasses to look at parallel picture. This was the cheapest solution that I have found. We are going to go into the 3D stereo technology very soon. Last year Zalmon 3D stereo LCD monitor were selling for $700, and this year they drop to $270. Thanks to a weak economy, these are now affordable, if you still have a job. My thinking is to start thinking 3D stereo product now, and I would suggest instead of submitting free 3D glasses, to swap them for the parallel glasses instead with the box version of Hash Animation master. The sooner you master 3D stereo animation, the bigger avenue you'll have in entering the next phase of CGI animation.

I think that the idea, the story, has to be strong enough. As long as the concept is good, you'll not only get yourself a fanbase, but you might also get volunteers to help create your vision.

Largento, I'm already a fan of your webcomic, and I'd gladly volunteer time to help you get your animation going. It's a strong concept, and with enough momentum I could easily see it going somewhere. I'd be glad to be a part of getting it started, even if all I get out of it is something to put on my demo reel.

Will, the same goes for you. Tar of Zandoria is a project I want to see come to fruition. I want to see where that story is going to go, enough so that I'd be willing to offer my time and effort to get it there.

The thing about this business is: it's ALWAYS a sales pitch. Before you can sell it to the masses, you have to sell it to the people who can make it happen. The easier you can do that, the easier it will be to make money from it.

The question I have about youtube is: is there a way to make money from it? No matter what the video is, even if it's cats sleeping or a six year old picking his nose during his school play, THEY make money from it. Is there a point where you get enough hits that they start sharing that with you?

I been doing YouTube about a year now and I deffinantly am gaining a fanbase.
nothing huge but it grows monthly.
New subscribers joining lately.

Thanks, Brainmuffin! Right now the animation is on hold just because I'm struggling to get the webcomic finished on time. :-) I'm hoping that will change as I gather up more experience doing it.

As to the YouTube/Merchandise business model, here's an example of that I found earlier this week: Spook House Dave! It's a puppet show and he also sells merchandise. It doesn't seem like it's very current, which could mean the steam has run out of it. I confess that I didn't really take the time to watch any of the actual episodes, I was more interested in seeing the character designs of the puppets, which weren't as cool as I would have liked to see. I do like the design of his website, though.

I noticed that he's been keeping it alive by also releasing clips on YouTube, highlighting parts of episodes.

Hey I offered the same! But I think Will wants to go it alone.

it's funny the timing of this topic, because this is something I'm trying to grapple with for if I make my mini-series or not. Do I sell it, if so, how? You know, those kinds of things, so this topic is interesting to see where it goes

My Heavy Push gets enough views that Youtube sent me an email (automated I'm sure) :



I'm doubtful that the money will ever reach the 100 dollar threshold you need to reach to get paid, and if it's an ad on top of my video I won't like it, but I'm curious so I'll try it.

The two models for generating income I like are what Homestarrunner and LotsOfRobots have done.

Andy Murdock isn't making enough money with LotsOfRobots to stop working on other things, but it appears it's doing good things for him. The Homestarrunner guys appear to be making a living.

The "Tar of Zandoria" project is something that I will need help with, for voices,music, etc... But I'm trying to set my expectations and vision on what I can do solo.... Thanks for cheers and encouragement, though

I was fortunate with my own project. With 500 or so fellow employees, I had people with various skills coming to me to volunteer to do voice and music once they heard what I was planning to do.

Cheers

speaking of which, how is the project about the island coming?