Hana Doki Kira Kickstarter Announcement

I'm really pleased to announce that the Kickstarter for the Hana Doki Kira anthology has gone live, and has nearly met its first goal!  I'd meant to post about this sooner, but the Kickstarter went live as I was travelling to Ohio, and shortly after my laptop broke while I was stranded in Winchester.  I apologize for those of you who may have missed out on the excellent early-backer rewards, but I think the stretch goals may be well worth the wait.

EDIT:  Hana Doki Kira's met it's initial goal, meaning the books will be published!  But let's not stop here!  For every additional $3000, the artists see more money, which is beautiful music to my ears.  If you enjoy this blog, you should know that every bit of extra money I make goes into buying new art supplies to test and attending new conventions to review, and you should DEFINITELY know Nekocon took a huge bite out of my savings.  Even a little extra pocket money would be really great, and you can help support me by supporting this Kickstarter!

Poster from the Kickstarter featuring art from all contributing artists

 A few months ago, I posted some shots from a mini comic I created Hana Doki Kira.  Hana Doki Kira is the brainchild of the The Year 85 Group.  These fabulous ladies all share a love of art and shoujo manga.  Patterned after the Year 24 Group, a revolutionary collection of genre defining shoujo artists, the Year 85 Group are six friends who organized the Hana Doki Kira project to share their love of the genre with an American audience.

This project features the art of 20 different artists, myself included, and all contributions (stories and illustrations) revolve around themes present of that in shoujo manga. In general, shoujo stories tend to focus on school aged girls, and may have themes of friendship, romance,love, family, school drama, self discovery, or magic.  For my contribution, I chose to do a story about Kara and her pet house gecko, Dusty, a story that struck me as a different sort of shoujo.  I opted to go this route because I assumed my fellow shoujo enthusiast contributors would stick to more traditional shoujo themes, and I wanted to offer something a little bit different.  As a contributor, I've been able to watch this project grow, and I'm really excited about the upcoming book.

I strongly suggest you guys check out the group's Tumblr, as it's constantly being updated with sample pages, new art, and featured artists.

Contributing Artists Include:

Annie Stoll
Elisa
Rebecca Mock
Lindsay
Kelly/Hkezza
enduro
Stefanie Morin / PK
Catherine
Janet Sung
Alex Bahena
Kaitlin Reid
Alice U.Cheong
Shelly Rodriguez
Catarina Yuugi
Sarah O’Donnell
Becca Hillburn
Megan Brennan
Sloane Leong
Anna Rose
Kris Mukai
Leslie Hung
Aimee Fleck
Carey Pietch
Tim Ferrara
Chelsie Sutherland
Alice Meichi Li 

For those of you who have contributed and shown support, I am extremely grateful.  My entire time at SCAD, I dreamed of meeting a group of like-minded artists intent on creating girl-friendly comics, and the Hana Doki Kira anthology has been one such opportunity.  It was a pleasure creating content for this book, and I am humbled by the fantastic company I have been accepted into.  This book has some beautiful, beautiful examples of non-Japanese shoujo art, and I can't wait to receive my copy.  It seems the founders have even been approached by bookstores looking to carry the book, which is even more exciting, since it means other aspiring artists may be inspired by this book the same way I was inspired by the Rising Stars of Manga winners years ago.  Even if you don't like manga, I urge you to at least check the Kickstarter out, since the art styles, while all INFLUENCED by shoujo, include a variety of aesthetics.