Interview/Giveaway: kaBOOMbox – Brand New Nostalgia’s Kickstarter

By Andrew Leslie
Posted on September 26, 2012

Brand New Nostalgia is the ‘net’s best damn artistic conglomerate blog site featuring artists who contribute different themed pieces. Who makes up this veritable cornucopia of artistic badasses? We’re talkin’ Logan Faerber, Brian Churilla, Alessandro Micelli, Scott Wegener, João Carlos Vieira, Felipe Andrade, Joe DellaGatta, Joe Querio, Mateus Santolouco, Jorge Coelho, Andrew R MacLean, Ricardo Venancio, Tradd Moore, Alexis Ziritt and Giannis Milonogiannis. These guys – what more could you want? I’ll tell you what more you could want – a physical representation of their artistic efforts in the form of a trade paperback featuring pieces from the site and original, creator-owned comic shorts from members of the collective. That’s what the kaBOOMbox Kickstarter endeavor is all about. You can help Kickstart this assuredly divine piece of comic art by pledging as much as you feel comfortable with and in exchange you’ll get tiered incentives ranging from ‘thanks’ in the book to commissioned sketches all the way to original BNN art and comic pages.

Andrew MacLean (@Andrew_MacLean) is BNN’s resident curator and he was good enough to answer a few questions about how BNN got started and what they hope to achieve with this crazy Kickstarter. Read all the way to the end of the interview and you can find out how to enter to win a BNN comic book grab bag just for using Twitter.

#1) The mantra of BNN is “a place where artists could be free to work on illustrations without the constraints of budget, time, or rules.” Why is it important for you (and other artists) to have a place to work on your craft, unencumbered? 
ANDREW MACLEAN:  There are so many art jobs out there that, while you may be grateful to have one, it may not make you happy. I think it’s good practice to remind yourself regularly how fun it is to create art; to take away some of the rules a gig may place on you (like style or tools) and create from a place of freedom. After all, so many BIG ideas can come from the smallest doodle if that doodle came from an exciting place.

#2) What made you pursue a Kickstarter project like KaBOOMBox which incorporates aspects of traditional art books and comic books?
ANDREW MACLEAN:   From the beginning we had said it would be really fun to put out an art book. There was no talk of comics. Before long we had more than enough content for an art book and that became the plan: no new content, only BNN themed pieces from the blog. Then while talking about it with Alexis Ziritt at Heroes Con this past summer, he suggested we have comics in it as well. It seemed like such an obvious thing to include I didn’t know why we hadn’t always planned it that way.

Where so much of our philosophy is based on freedom, we decided to give each artist a chunk of pages to whatever they want. If they want each page to be a stand alone work of art, so be it. If they want all comic pages, that’s fine too. Some I’m sure will do a little of both.

#3) You worked closely with Brandon Clarke (@brando432) in starting and maintaining the BNN blog. It’ may be hard for people to understand his role in the BNN family as he’s not a contributing artist – could you elaborate a little on what he does for the site?
ANDREW MACLEAN:   Brandon is my right-hand man. He deserves credit above any of us, he certainly works the hardest but gets the least “face-time.” Brandon is a great comic writer, plus he knows his way around technology, including but not limited to graphic/website design and video editing.

I have worked with Brandon on some comics in the past (and future) and he encouraged me to get deeper into social media. He was insistent to the point that he went and just created a twitter and tumblr account for me and basically just said, “here, use these.” Shortly after that I decided to form BNN and it seemed the obvious choice to ask for his assistance in maintaining the websites. I honestly didn’t realize his skills were as broad as they are.

It has certainly been a beneficial relationship, more so for me than him no doubt haha!

#4) The BNN collective boasts some impressive talent – pretty much every name on the list is immensely talented and either already made a strong impression in the comic world or is on the verge of doing so. How did you recruit these gents into the fold? Was it mainly through word of mouth/social networking? Did you seek them out or did some seek out BNN?
ANDREW MACLEAN:  For the most part the BNN artists were invited by myself, and mostly through DeviantArt. They were artists who I was a fan of and who I thought might benefit from a little extra exposure. The hope was that everyone could bring some of their fans with them and these other amazing style-strong artists would benefit by sharing a mutual meeting ground. Much to my pleasant surprise, almost everyone I invited joined up.

As part of my invitation I further invited each artist to feel free to make their own invitations. I try to keep the group pretty democratic and didn’t want it to just be a list of Andrew’s Favorite Artists. I wanted everyone to have a say. We don’t take votes on those invitations though, I didn’t run my initial invitations by anyone so I really didn’t want to have a “power” that no one else had. We’ve made a few more invitations since the group got off it’s feet. Sometimes the idea of adding someone new is just too exciting to deny!

#5) The KaBOOMBox Kickstarter video is pretty crazy. It’s wildly creative and quite funny (especially the unending parade of nightmare fuel), but it’s not exactly the standard “Talk into the camera, plea for support” videos common to the site. What made you (and the BNN crew) go with such a unconventional video?
ANDREW MACLEAN: Brandon has a lot of experience and talent in video creation/editing. When the time came to talk about the video he already had the idea pretty well formed. It was such a fun idea that we riffed and laughed on it for awhile. He recruited his wife, Ella, for the voice-over, and then he went to town! I had nothing to do with the copy writing or images. It was one of the areas of BNN where Brandon gets to be creative himself. He’s an artist, he just doesn’t draw.

 

#6) The project is titled “kaBOOMbox: Volume One.” Does that imply you’d like to continue Kickstarting kaBOOMboxes as BNN’s catalog grows?
ANDREW MACLEAN: Yeah it does. Forming and running Brand New Nostalgia has been rewarding enough that it’s made me want to expand into other areas. We’d love to do another book down the road. We are currently playing with the idea of doing a Comic Writer’s branch of BNN that Brandon would run, and I’m currently looking into doing a Brand New Nostalgia podcast.

It certainly wasn’t the plan, but the idea of turning Brand New Nostalgia into a small multi-media company sounds enticing. We have some other ideas but it is WAY to far off to entertain them in any way other than a pipe dream.

#7) How would you pitch kaBOOMbox to those who may not be familiar with the staggering breadth of talent showcased on the BNN blog?
ANDREW MACLEAN: Although it’s not “official” (whatever that means), I’ve been tagging kaBOOMbox Volume One with “LICENSE TO KREATE.” Meaning we’re giving the cartoonist the chance to be an artist; we’re giving them a published place to express themselves, be it a story or image. Sounds kind of artsy-fartsy but really we’re just giving these awesome talents, (who usually draw someone else’s words) a chance to create from whatever place that gets them excited. For that reason, it’s a special book.

#8) Finally we’ll be doing a Re-Tweet Giveaway, to help promote kaBOOMBox and this interview. We’re giving away a mini-BNN grab bag featuring all five issues of Brian Churilla’s The Secret History of DB Cooper; Issue #1 of Dial H (drawn by Mateus Santolouco) and a FLASHBACCA print by Ming Doyle. What super cool #hashtag would you like us to use to track those who participate in the Re-Tweet Giveaway?
ANDREW MACLEAN: hmmmmmmm…… well I just checked, and no one seems to really be using #brandnewnostalgia . I don’t think it would be to confusing to use it. Does that work for you or do we need something less broad?

————————————————- END INTERVIEW————————————————-

GIVEAWAY DETAILS…
prizes:
1) Issues #1-5 of Brian Churilla’s THE SECRET HISTORY OF D.B. COOPER
2) Issue #1 of the Mateus Santolouco drawn DIAL H
3) The internet famous print of Ming Doyle’s FLASHBACCA

rules:
This is the easiest possible giveaway you’ll ever take part in. All you have to do is tweet out the following phrase and kaBOOMbox! You’re entered in the giveaway. Also, unfortunately, due to shipping costs, only residents of the continental US are eligible to win. Giveaway ends October 3rd, 2012.

tweet the following:
My mind just got blown by this interview about the #brandnewnostalgia Kickstarter which you should definitely back! http://is.gd/kaboombox

That’s it – easy as apple pie.

relevant links:
kaBOOMbox Kickstarter Page
Brand New Nostalgia
Brand New Nostalgia Twitter

You can follow me on Twitter @dethfilm and do us all a favor and use those handy social media buttons to tweet, facebook, tumbl, reddit or whatever to all your peoples to spread the word about Freakin Awesome stuff like this!