I Fight Dragons - Project Atma

[sandbox-wars]

 

Fellow Flayer of Fearsome Fanged Flyers,

Hold on to your proverbial helmet, because I've got big news:

I Fight Dragons is making a new album.  

Not an "album" like a CD though, we mean an actual LP Vinyl record. (which also comes with a high quality digital download)

It's going to include a 20-minute-long story-based song suite with an oversized companion graphic novel.  

That story involves a kid who gets superpowers, a parallel dimension, a love story, and some epic battles.

Plus, the vinyl itself might be ​flourescent blue.  Or even glow in the dark.

Basically we're going to make the most epic album we can possibly conceive of.  

We want to create an artifact for the ages, a glowing slab of vinyl wrapped in a gorgeous piece of artwork, steeped in the mists of the future.

The kind of album that would never in a million years get approved by any major label A&R department.

...But we can only create it if you'll join us.  

Thus we present, for your consideration, I Fight Dragons first-ever Kickstarter campaign:

Project Atma.

Everyone who joins us at any level will get exclusive new IFD music throughout the campaign, the first piece of which is an immediate download of a new IFD song called "Burnadette." 

There are also rewards aplenty, from the gorgeous physical album itself to getting your name in the credits to getting your voice on the album, signed gameboys, goggles, guitars, shields, flags, controllers, and even crazier stuff beyond that.

Many of the top-tier rewards are quite limited though, so if you want to stake something out be sure to get it before it gets snagged by someone else:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1899688657/project-atma-i-fight-dragons-creates-an-epic-new-a

Whatever happens, we're honored to have you with us on this journey, standing by our side as we take this flying leap from the ridiculously high cliff that is Kickstarter and hope that we learn to fly before we hit the ground.  Or at least that we maybe invent jet packs.

Here goes nothing

Your friendly neighborhood Dragon Fighters,

Brian, Chad, Bill, Packy, and Hari

 

[taylo234]

Saw these guys on Warped Tour last year..pretty good and entertaining band.

[jonnyshotgun]

this pressing has hit some of the stretch goals already in less than 24 hours. as of right now, it will be on 180-gram translucent blue as a triple gatefold with companion graphic novel and poster. next stretch goal will be a bonus 7' picture disc if they can hit it.

[sandbox-wars]

They just broke the 40k mark, fireball 7" confirmed

[steviex2shoes]

Yeah these stretch goals and this band are too difficult to pass up.  I've backed it now.

[TheMoosen]

So this has been up for what, a day...,maybe 2? They are already at 60,000+. Impressive. First heard this group when they came to my college and played. Definitely backing this.

[One Hundred Fifty-Two]

Call me old fashioned, but I don't get it.

[searos]

Kaboom was awesome. They sound like a chip tune rock version of sugarcult. Hope this is a successful. Pledged 20. If everything comes in than 20 is a great deal for a 180g colored Lp, comic, 7" shaped like a 8-bit fireball, poster, digital deluxe, and other extras thrown in.

[scottheisel]

Also backed for $20. It is a freaking steal now with all the bonuses they're agreeing to throw in.

[sandbox-wars]

Holy crap. They're at 60k as of this morning. This will be the craziest $20 LP I'll have ever seen...

 

 

Project Update #4: $50,000 in 36 hours - Your Project Atma Flexi-Record (and beyond!) Posted by Brian Mazzaferri

This.  is.  insane.

I don't know how else to put it.

I'm going to tell you a secret.  Even in the most basic version, this album was always going to cost us at least $40,000 to make.

I wanted to make it no matter what though, so I set our basic goal at $20,000, knowing that if we could raise that much, I'd have to go into personal debt to fund the rest of the album budget.

If that's what had happened, I would have done it with a smile, knowing that I was making an album I believed in, and that our amazing fans had pitched in just as much as I had personally.

But that was 36 hours ago.  

Now, as we've hit stretch goals and upgraded the album the costs obviously go up as well, everything from increased shipping to specialty vinyl upgrades to picture disc manufacturing to the fact that we're going to have to make MORE of these babies, and ultimately in the current maxed-out configuration our production costs are going to be more like $50,000.

Which you just took us past.

In 36 hours.

Holy. Crap.

This means a couple of things:

First of all, I'm announcing our $50,000 stretch reward:

Everyone the $20 Voltron level and above will receive a special Project Atma flexi-disc in the mail soon after the campaign ends - these are amazingly cool little artifacts and they'll have an audio thank you message from us as well as a secret piece of music.  

Second of all, we've begun some next-level scheming about where we can go from here.  At this point you've made it so that we can do everything we dreamed of doing with this album, and we're going to make sure that every dollar you have donated is spent wisely, effectively, and epically.  More announcements on this front soon.

Third of all, this whole thing just started!  There's still WEEKS of kickstarter exclusives coming your way, and believe you me we've got some awesome stuff planned.

(On that note, if you didn't already download "Burnadette" be sure to get it here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1899688657/project-atma-i-fight-dragons-creates-an-epic-new-a/posts/467600)

GUYS.  This is so fun

-Brian

[cwhitmuzik]

I wish i liked their music more, I'd love to back this, this sounds awesome.

[alz230]

I backed this yesterday as well, this is going to be great!

[sergeantscruffy]

Had never listened to this band before today. KABOOM! is pretty great. With everything you get for $20, I went for it.

[sandbox-wars]

As of now they're at just over 90k, but I have a feeling we'll see another jump with all this new added information. This is such a devoted band and they're turning every penny we donate into pure gold for the fans, so spread the word or preorder a second album so we can hit the 1.1k mark! I'm also excited to see Kaboom! and their other EPs pressed as well - and I'm willing to bet any money we can raise over 1.1k will go towards voltron-upgrading those releases as well.

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Fellow Skewerer of Sky-bound Salamanders,

Having been completely blown away by the blinding beams of your earth-rending generosity from the very first nanosecond of this campaign, we here at IFD have undertaken a great effort in these past weeks and have made a firmware upgrade to our project.

Today we're rolling out Project Atma 2.0.

So what does this entail exactly?  You know, I'm glad you asked, since I have a five-part answer prepared.

1. Mega Stretch Goal - IFD Documentary

First of all, you completely obliterated all of our stretch goals within the first 36 hours of the campaign.  We literally had no plan for this situation, and we were frankly dumbstruck with joy.  I'm happy to say that we now have a grand plan for this situation, and we are smartstruck (that's the opposite of dumbstruck right?) with elation to be able to share it with you:

If we are are able to reach $110,000, we will have raised enough to shoot a full-scale documentary throughout the creation and release of the album.  This will be a documentary about the current state of the music industry, the geek culture explosion, crowdfunding, and IFD in general, but it will be centered around this year of our lives and the album itself.

And best of all - we're keeping it Voltron Style.  Every donor at the $15 level and above will receive a free digital download of the documentary when it's finished, their name in the credits of the movie, and the OPPORTUNITY TO BE IN THE MOVIE.  This is a documentary about crowdfunding after all - we're envisioning a short scene in which everyone gets to submit a video of themselves (a little like 

) and we combine them all together.

$110,000 may seem like a lot, but it will actually be just enough for us to confidently say we can make a documentary - as we mentioned before our album production budget has ratcheted up now that we'll be making at least 3000 of these epic vinyl slabs, and documentaries are also expensive to do well.  We want to make one, but we want to be able to do it right.  Thus, if we are able to reach this goal, any extra money raised will go toward expanding the documentary budget.

2. New Bonuses Unlocked

These aren't proper 'stretch goals,'  but your support has allowed us to throw the switch on all of these projects that might not have happened otherwise:

- Music Video - We're going to be making a bombastic music video for "Burnadette" with Digital Skylight (the folks who made the cRaZie$ video) and CourtoonXIII - look for this in fall 2013.

- More Vinyl - We're going to explore the Vinyl Frontier even further and release all of our back-catalog on good 'ol vinyl -  KABOOM! will be its own 12" and 'Cool Is Just A Number' and 'Welcome To The Breakdown' will be a combined 12" record (one EP on each side!) - look for these fall 2013 as well.

- Expanded Recording Budget - we're expanding our recording budget, which means we'll be able to have deluxe treats like actual grand pianos, real string players, and more crazy things we would've otherwise had to use synths for.

- Signing Every Record - we will sign every record before we send it to you, as well as every Flexi-Disc.  As it currently stands there are over 2000 of you that will be receiving these, so it will be a pretty herculean effort, but one we're happy to undertake.

- New IFD T-shirt - This shirt won't be a part of the kickstarter rewards but we haven't been able to release a new t-shirt in over a year due to lack of fundage - a problem which you have solved handily.  Look for these on our web store as early as next month.
Sneak Preview:

3. New Reward Tiers Added

In order to help us reach this new mega-stretch goal, and because many of you have asked for these specifically, we've added some new reward tiers! 

-$75 June 1st Kickstarter Event at Uncommon Ground in Chicago (10 more tickets added)(if you'd like to add a ticket to your donation of $100 or over, just add $25 and message me)

-$175 Framed IFD Lyric (limit 10) - Brian will hand write and sign any lyric you want from any currently-released IFD song (not including the forthcoming album), frame it, and mail it to you.

-$300 Hari's Hat - the dashing fedora Hari has worn on stage since 2009, it's his signature hat and the only Hari-centric item in the kickstarter.  See a pic here.

-$450 Custom Chiptones - IFD will create a gameboy version of the chorus of any song you'd like, (like 

).  This can be any song, IFD or otherwise, and you can use this as a ringtone or for any other creative purpose you might envision.

-$500 IFD Writes And Records Your Personal 30-Second Theme Song (2014 version) - this is the same as the sold-out theme-song reward, but it will happen in 2014, after the new album is released.

4. Add-On Records

Many of you have been asking about the ability to add on extra records to your existing pledge - well we have heard your pleas and we've decided on the following simple system:

1. Add $20 to your pledge for each record with US shipping, or $30 for each record with international shipping (limit 10 records total per Kickstarter backer - this is a Kickstarter policy).

2. Send me a message to make sure we have your extra album(s) noted!  This part is very important since we aren't notified specifically otherwise.

5. PayPal 

Finally, there have also been a lot of you that have asked about using PayPal - Kickstarter doesn't accept PayPal officially, but we're happy to announce that we've added a PayPal payment page on our website for all of the non-limited reward tiers:

http://www.ifightdragons.com/paypal

So that's it!  We're officially up and running with new firmware.  Project Atma 2.0 yo.  In all seriousness thank you, as always, for being the only real reason that all of this adventure is happening.  And I have to say it's been a pretty kickass one so far

Your friendly neighborhood Dragon Fighters,
Brian, Bill, Chad, Hari, and Packy

UPGRADE COMPLETE.