Pink Dollar Comics at Flame Con

Hello!

My name is Deven and I am a part of a comics studio known as Pink Dollar Comics.  We are a spectrum of creative individuals who are working to make great comics that happen to have LGBT protagonists and heroes.

It's been a year since we first reached out through GoFundMe to ask for support to help us gather the funds needed to exhibit at our very first convention. 

The amount we asked for then was modest but as you can see from this campaign's photo, the impact your support had was phenomenal!  That positive first experience helped propel us into an exciting year full of creativity and community.

You may have heard of an exciting new LGBT comics convention coming up in June called Flame-Con.  This will be the first major LGBT-centric comic convention to take place on the east coast and is featuring a glittering assemblage of guests and exhibitors... and we want in!

Nay, we need in.  After a year spent wetting our feet and learning the idiosyncrasies of exhibiting at conventions we are ready to take the next step and share our story with a national audience. 

The opportunities we've had this past year have helped us to hatch from our introverted artistic shells and now we need your help to spread our wings.

If you've followed us through this past year you know that we've been able to make some pretty incredible things happen with a bare bones budget.  If I'm anything folks claim me to be, it's frugal. 

We have self funded the existing pages of our first comic primarily out of donations given from the two minimum wage paychecks of the story's authors.  This is no vanity project however. We strongly believe that the world needs more and better LGBT representation in comics and we are willing to do what we can to make it happen.

Because our story's authors are often not the story's illustrators, any budget that would traditionally be used for marketing and conventions is instead used to facilitate the creation of the comic.

Some might see this as a fatal flaw for such a small enterprise, but our passion and resolve tells us better.  We have made up for what we lacked in an advertising budget by using grassroots and guerilla efforts that take full advantage of our addictions to social media.

Thus far we have cut corners to make do with conventions but we need your help getting to the finish line.  We anticipate exhibiting at Nijicon this year entirely out of our own pockets but to make it to the first ever Flame-Con we need your support.

-The Breakdown-

$500 seems like an awfully lot to ask of anyone, or at least we feel that way.  So here is how we have come to this particular price tag for our experience at Flame-Con.

According to fueleconomy.gov it will cost us $134 in gas to take us on a round trip of 1167.6 miles with an average fuel price of $2.41 and an MPG of 21.

Statistica.gov tells us that the daily average rate for a hotel room in 2015 is $121.37

The listed price for an artist table for Flame-Con via flamecon.ticketbud.com is $150 with a processing fee of $3.99

We would like to ask for $50 for incidentals or to make up for any differences in prices that occur between our estimates and what we might actually have to pay.

And lastly we would like to ask for $50.00 to assist us with preparing some printed promotional materials such as postcards, and buttons.

In total that comes up to be just shy of $510 but I'm a little neurotic and I think a clean $500 sounds better.  Will this amount completely cover all of the cost associated with us going to Flame-Con? Probably not, but being able to take care of the things listed above will make this trip possible.

-Update- 4/12/15

I was just asked:
What will the funds go to if you do not raise enough to go to Flame-Con?

The ladies from Nijicon, who will be at Flame-Con, have offered to share tablespace with me if I am able to attend. So if push comes to shove that may be an option.

Alternatively if we are not able to raise enough to even cover transportation and hotel costs, then we will use the funds to pay for promotional materials that I will be sending with Nijicon to display at Flame-Con.

So no matter how much we raise it will all go to helping spread awareness of our work at Flame-Con. The more we can raise however, the better our presence at the event. By being there in person it ensures we can make a maximum impact.