UPDATE: We have launched a new fundraising campaign to fund Synfig development for next month. Please check it out here.

Short Summary

Hello, my name is Konstantin Dmitriev. I am running this campaign to fund the development of Synfig - the free and opensource animation software.

I am mentoring a full-time developer Ivan Mahonin, who is working on Synfig code. We have funded his work in previous months by running similar fundraising campaigns in September, October and November.

Thanks to success of those campaigns, Ivan have implemented following features for Synfig:

- Single-Window UI

- Bones tools

The success of this campaign will allow Ivan to work full-time for a whole month in January 2014.

Also, this campaign allows our users to directly influence the Synfig development by choosing development priorities. 

How?

Please read below.

"Choose Priority" perk

For a donation of fixed amount (see the perks on the right)  we offer to the donor an exceptional privilege to choose a priority of development.  So, we will spend next month working on the priority you defined. Of course, we can't promise any thing, so please select from the list below:

• Frame-by-frame animation support (bitmap only)
• Sound support
• Fix bugs and work towards releasing the stable version
  

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 earlier 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 would like to support our efforts by other means. 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, who was in charge for producing Synfig Training Package.
• Report sponsor. You can track the progress of the development by reading my weekly reports. If you claim this perk, then 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.
• Sponsor logo. Your logo displayed for one month at the front page of Synfig website.
  

How much do we need?

Our monthly funding amount is $1300, but the goal is set to $1245 because we have extra $55 collected from our previous campaign.

It could happen that the campaign will go beyond the target goal, so I would like to outline the important funding milestones:

• $1245 is enough to fund our work until February 1st, 2014
• $2545 - until March 1st, 2014.
• $3845 - until April 1st, 2014.
• $5145 - until May 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:

• Morevna Project: Demo
• “Persona” Tomato Paste commercial
• Morevna Project: Production Cuts

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 Adventures of Boris Munchausen
• Amazing Sentence

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.

The Impact

With this campaign we would like to 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 all 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.

You can track the results of our work by reading my weekly reports.

Also, we are open to consider other models of funding for Synfig. If you are would like to sponsor the implementation of particular feature - please contact us (see the comments tab at the top).

Thank you!