Michel Gagné is the author of the beautiful Saga of Rex series most widely known from the Flight Comics by Kazu Kubuishi as well as the very well known short Prelude to Eden. I met Michel this last weekend at CTNx2012 and was really pleased to learn that he's set the goal of making The Saga of Rex into a Feature-Length film based on the episodes published in Flight. If he succeeds, this will be the first academy-recognized animated feature created by a single individual. The test footage he showed is gorgeous.
I am a fan of Kickstarter. There are some great projects getting made thanks to what they're doing. Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other crowd-funding sites are terrific for getting seed money to produce projects that might otherwise languish. The Saga of Rex is a TERRIFIC example of this. Ownership is a HUGE deal in the creative arts. Michel tried to get this made through other avenues, but everywhere he turned, production companies wanted to own the farm. Enter KS: Michel will ultimately need about a million dollars to produce what would be a 60 million dollar film produced through normal (big studio) channels. But, doing so, requires relinquishing IP rights and giving up a LOT of creative control (ask Brenda Chapman of Brave fame is this is true!). His plan is to get as much cash as he can through Kickstarter (hopefully about $60k) and produce the first 4 minutes of film. Once that's done, completely free of ANY strings, he can use that to find investors to produce the other 41 minutes of film. Can he do it? Well, take a look at the test footage he cranked out over a period of about 3 weeks.
I found Michel to be inspiring on a lot of levels and I really, really hope this goes through. I'm a backer, I wish I could be a bigger one than I am, but each does what they can. You should too. Go now, there's only about 40 hours left until the opportunity expires and no one should miss out.