The Honeycomb Hideout Episode 40: Back to the Melee: SHUT UP, INTERNET!!!

Well, 'Combies. It's that time again. Of course, it's another episode of the Honeycomb Hideout, but it's more than that. It's a Melee episode! For those uninitiated, a "melee" is a confused scuffle or struggle. That is a pretty accurate description of what these episodes are; they are unplanned, unbridled streams of consciousness of your boys jump from topic to topic. Whether it's politics, fan entitlement, video games, extremely random references... Well... more random references than usual... and so much more! So if you want to get swept up into the melee, come on down and hold on tight, 'cuz it's gonna be a bumpy ride!!

Download this episode (right click and save)

For the video "Couch Commander" featuring President Barack Obama referenced by Paul, watch THIS!

For the interview that the guys inadvertently gape at William Fichtner over, watch THIS!

For the non-butchered original image that Joe is referencing from the Marvel series "Siege", look at THIS!

And because awesomeness, for the Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite teaser, WATCH THIS!

Also, feel free to hit up your boys on the social media!

Joe: Twitter and Instagram

Drew: Twitter and Instagram

Paul the Engineer: Twitter and Instagram

Imaginos Plus: On Sale Now!

It's been a long road, folks (and it's still going by the way) but our totally original comic book "Imaginos Plus" is now officially FOR SALE. Our wonderful Kickstarter backers have been able to download their free copy for a couple weeks now, but now everyone can get in on the fun. All you need to do is head over to DriveThruComics and purchase our inaugural issue for an easy $0.99. 

We would again like to thank all the friends, family, funders and peers that have helped us get this off the ground. But this is just the beginning! We have big plans to keep this going in bigger and better ways. As always, sharing this with your geeky friends will do a HUGE part in keeping this ball rolling! We hope you enjoy the book.

Kickstarter Update: New Artwork, Prizes Coming Very Soon!

No professional and creative endeavor that's worth a damn ever goes off exactly according to plan. While we were thrilled to have our Imaginos Plus comic book fully funded on Kickstarter, that was just the beginning of one helluva process. Despite some bumps in the road and production changes, we are moving forward nicely.

Custom-designed Juda Fist and Imaginos Team T-Shirt prizes will be shipping out to backers as soon as the end of next week, and we have more prizes (sketchbooks, posters) in the pipeline after that. We've said it before and we can't say it enough: thank you again to everyone that has supported us, financially and otherwise, during this process. We are thrilled to be in a position to produce something real and awesome - hopefully something that we ourselves would want to experience as fans of the medium.

Here's a sneak peak of the superhero action-comedy Candy Coated, which will appear in Imaginos Plus. Hopefully you like the results we're getting as much as we do. Don't forget to click on the link at the bottom of this post: our Kickstarter Update will give even more details and sneak peaks of the colored pages!

Imaginos Plus: Kickstarter Update #20

Crowdsourcing Comics: A Trial By Fire

In October of last year, we cancelled our first Kickstarter campaign before its deadline was up. Our "Imaginos Plus" comic book project received generous contributions from some friends, family and supporters, but it wasn't enough to meet our financial goal. After an encouraging opening push, the donations to our comic book anthology slowed to an ever-decreasing trickle. The campaign stalled at just over $2,000, not nearly close enough to our $8,300 goal. Our first attempt at crowdsourcing our artistic ventures was time-consuming, emotional and ultimately disappointing.

It was also a learning experience; it forced us to take stock of our own work and think practically about what it meant to produce a creative, collaborative project. It forced us to explain the value of our work to other people - a surprisingly challenging and rewarding task. There wasn't a clear-cut reason why our first attempt at crowdsourcing failed. Were we explaining our project well enough? Was our financial goal too high? Did we offer the right kinds of incentives to potential backers? Did we fail to market ourselves properly? Maybe it was just timing. Most likely it was some combination of these factors. And while no one wants to fall short, we learned a lot through the process.

Fast forward to November 2013: our fledgling company Imaginos Workshop is now a registered LLC, and new artists and writers have been brought into the fold. We have a couple extra conventions under the belt, and we've made real progress on our comics. Our new Kickstarter campaign has a financial goal of $5,800 (well under our original asking price from the year before), without sacrificing any of the content. 

This time, the contributions didn't stop after the initial opening volley. People watched our Kickstarter video over 500 times and pledged an average of $46. They shared our project on Facebook, Twitter, Palladium Books and other websites. Veteran writer and columnist Bill Baker interviewed Mark Dudley on The Morton Report, and we provided our own Kickstarter updates every step of the way.

In the end, we finished at 114% of our goal. Our second try at crowdsourcing was an unequivocal success, made possible by the wonderfully generous contributions of all our backers. Perhaps it was important that we fell short on our first Kickstarter. It reminded us that some amount of failure and rejection is an inevitability in this business, and that it does not necessarily mean you're doing the wrong things. We were also reminded of the inspiring generosity of others ... an important lesson during the holidays. Our backers gave us the best Christmas gift we could have asked for. It means more work for us in the new year, but we wouldn't have it any other way. Thank you.

Jon

Kickstarter Update: Proposal Delayed, Work Continues

As you probably know, we have recently been promoting our Kickstarter bid as a way to help fund our comic book Imaginos Plus. As of last week however we have decided to cancel our Kickstarter bid for now. We were not on track to meet our financial goal, and we decided to postpone the crowd-sourcing project so we could retool our proposal, as well as continue working on our project. Just because we have postponed our Kickstarter bid does not mean we've stopped working on the project itself. On the contrary, we are working harder than ever on our comic book and the artwork is coming along great. While we're disappointed that our first Kickstarter bid didn't make it, we feel confident in our work and we will definitely try again in the future. In the meantime, we keep working.

Thank you so much to those of you who donated and shared our project while we were promoting it. You people are amazing, and we're going to need your encouragement and support while we keep doing our thing. The cool thing about Kickstarter is all the money is automatically returned - so nobody lost anything except a little bit of time and effort. We are sincerely grateful for those of you that showed your belief in us and our work. Stay tuned, because we haven't slowed down and we haven't given up on crowd-sourcing our projects. Despite not making the goal, it was a great learning experience.

And just so you know, we are going to be at this year's Youmacon 2012 in Detroit! Look for our table there where we will be selling copies of The Door and showing off some of Mark's awesome artwork! The event is this Thursday-Sunday, Nov. 1-4. Find out more info at their official site. Thank you, hopefully we will see you there.

Jon