Short Summary
Hello! My name is Konstantin Dmitriev. I am animator and developer with a special interest to free software.
In May 2013 I have received Shuttleworth Foundation grant, which I decided to put into development of Synfig
- free and open-source animation software. Thanks to that, since August
2013 we have a full-time developer (Ivan Mahonin), who works on the
code, and grant money go to pay for his work. Since then, me and Ivan
collaborate to make Synfig better and you can track our progress by
reading my weekly reports.
The grant money are enough to fund our work until November 1st, 2013, and we also collected some additional funds with our previous fundraising campaign, which partially covers our work in November. My goal is to continue intensive development of Synfig as long as
possible, that's why I'm running this campaign to complete our funding for November of 2013.
This campaign allows our users to directly influence the Synfig development by choosing development priorities.
How?
Please read below.
"Choose Priority" perk
We will spend next month working on the priority you defined.
Generally, the development priorities in our work defined by me. It is possible not everyone is happy with my decisions and someone
might want particular feature done sooner. So, for a fixed donation (see perks on the right) we
offer to the donor an exceptional privilege to choose a priority for
the next month. Of course, we can't promise any thing, so please select from the list below:
- Frame-by-frame animation support (bitmap only)
- Improve tools for cut-out animation
- Bones tools
- Sound support
This is a "Choose priority" perk and of course only one such claim available.
NOTE: We don't guarantee the feature from a selected priority to be completely finished
within a month. Such promises are not compatible with development
realities. What we promise is to dedicate no less than 85% of our
working time to developing this priority for a full month. Though, one
month is a significant period and such dedication would lead to
significant changes in selected direction. Many our users are aware that
we used to publish development snapshots regularly, so you will be able to benefit from development results as soon as possible.
EXAMPLE: As result of our previous fundraising campaign, we got sold the "Choose priority" perk for October. The priority chosen by donor was "Single-window UI". You can see results in this video.
"Development OS" perk
By default we use Linux operation system (OS) for daily development
(because we love Linux). As result, the Linux version of Synfig is the
most polished, because it goes through daily proof.
But, for a fixed-amount donation (see the perks on the right) you can make us shift to other OS
for next month. So, if we will use the OS of your choice in our daily
development, then obviously the Synfig version will be especially
polished to work on it: daily proof => more testing => less bugs
=> better stability.
No worries, this perk doesn't mean we drop support for other
operation systems. It's just a question of choosing the OS for daily
development.
At the moment the only OS available for choice is Windows.
Other perks
We understand that there are people who just like what we do and want
to give us support to continue sustainable development of Synfig.
Specially for them we prepared other perks to express our gratitude:
-
Tutorial video. A tutorial video about Synfig for ANY given
theme. Length is limited to 5 minutes. Languages can be English or
Russian. Video will be publicly available for everyone. The tutorial
video will be produced by Nikolai Mamashev - he is working on the Synfig
Training Package at the moment.
-
Report sponsor. One of my weekly reports will be indicated as
sponsored by you with an (optional) link to your website. The mention
will look as "This report is sponsored by: ..." text at the top of the
report text.
The Impact
With this campaign we provide a way to control the direction of
development and support vitality of Synfig development at the same
time. Users can choose the priorities and collected funds will go to support further sustainable development of Synfig. It's fair and benefit is for everyone - we all get better free animation software.
Stretching goal
It could happen that the campaign will go beyond the target goal. Considering the required monthly amount for us is $1300 and we already have $850 collected from our previous campaign, I will outline the important funding milestones so you
will get the idea about the impact of your contribution:
- $450 is enough to fund our full-time work until December 1st, 2013 (the campaign goal is set to $500 because it's the lowest possible value according to the Indiegogo rules).
- $1750 - until January 1st, 2014.
- $3050 - until February 1st, 2014.
- $4350 - until March 1st, 2014.
Who is behind this campaign
Konstantin Dmitriev. This is me. I am the person who is
responsible for distributing collected funds and mentoring the
development process. I am an open-source activist with a special profile
for animation. The range of my activities include expertize,
development and popularization of free software animation solutions.
You can see following my works made as animator purely with free software:
Also I have a profile in education by teaching animation to kids
using libre and opensource tools. Here are some of the works made by my
students:
The sources
for many of the works above are freely available under the Creative Commons license.
Ivan Mahonin. He is a professional C/C++ developer, hired to work on Synfig code. You can track current Ivan's contributions to Synfig on this page.
Nikolai Mamashev. He is a "wizard of Synfig", awesome artist
who use free software only. If you are user Synfig, then you know at
least one his work - the current splash screen is created by him. He is known as lead artist in Morevna Project: Demo, also it worths to look at his portfolio. Nikolai is in charge for providing artistic support for us, proof testing and tutorials production.
Other Perspectives
The target of this campaign is to find people or companies interested
to invest into Synfig. You can help us by spreading a word about it.
Maybe you know someone who might get interested? Tell them!
We are also open to consider other models of funding for Synfig. If
you are interested for a long-term investment - please talk to us.
Although we have only one full-time developer at the moment and the
situation with the funding is far from stable, we always looking for a
chance to expand our resources if such opportunity will occur.
Personally, I strongly believe in the future of Synfig as free
animation tool. I use it in my daily work since 2007 and always amazed by its
potential. Maybe Synfig is not that mature as commercial solutions yet,
but I'm sure the competent people can see it's potential as well. I
strongly believe that under proper guidance Synfig could grow into
awesome. And my goal is to make that happen.
So, this campaign is not about the usual "get much money at once".
It's about searching the ways of establishing intensive and sustainable
Synfig development. And something tells me I'm not the only one who
wants Synfig to grow fast.
