In early 2013, comics writer Greg Pak and internet superstar musician Jonathan Coulton launched a Kickstarter for "Code Monkey Save World," a graphic novel written by Pak, drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa, and and based on Coulton's songs. The campaign hit its initial goal of $39,000 within eight hours and went on to become the highest grossing original graphic novel project in the history of Kickstarter.
In this panel, Pak and Coulton will discuss how the project came together, the strategies they used to plan for the Kickstarter and adjust on the fly, and how they might build for the future beyond this single project. Topics include the creative challenges and joys behind this cross-media project, incredibly specific and practical pointers for crowdfunding projects, and musings about the potentially earth-shattering impact of crowdfunding and other revolutionary digital tools on genuinely independent creative projects.