Expanding Horizons Kickstarter!

So wow I decided to hold of posting this everywhere at once for fear of spamming everyone! But in the time I waited we have already blasted past our first two Stretch Goals. To say I am humbled by the outpouring of support would be an understatement as I personally was not at all expecting the amount of enthusiasm and support this project has received! If you were one of those folks that supported us, please leave a comment so I can thank you in person (so to speak!!!). Grateful for all the shares, retweets and just wonderful words of encouragement. You guys rock!

Though we have already met our goal, please know that every additional dollar raised will go a long way not only to help the artists, myself included, buffer the cost of this expensive trip but will also enrich the book that we will be making in the process. We hope this book will truly capture the essence of this fantastic once in a lifetime journey we are embarking on so the folks that so generously supported our sojourn could experience our excitement, inspiration and adventures as well!

Also maybe I should mention I am offering an exclusive 16x20(MAYBE BIGGER) pledge tier that comes with a jumbo print, the full resolution file, the book..and anything else I can cram into the package =D! I don't offer very many full color commissions as my daytime work schedule keeps my time pretty booked up. If you are interested and have any questions, please feel free to ask.

For my part I also wanted to take a moment and share a little insight into what this trip means to me personally.



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So sometime around October I found myself stumbling into the opportunity of a lifetime. Those of you that know me well already know that I have dreamed of seeing Africa's wild places since I was about 12 years old. Since then this personal preoccupation has matured and been channeled into specific directions.

The more I explored Africa through stories, documentaries, books, art and the animals that inhabit this variegated environ, I found my attention hyper-focused on a very specific place in the vastness of the African continent: Botswana. One of my earliest works of fiction(its a pretty awful but emotionally honest work of fiction from the mind of a teenager) told of visiting the parched grasslands of Botswana's Kalahari Desert and later, discovering the incredibly moving documentaries of Dereck and Beverly Joubert, I stumbled upon a calling of sorts. These documentaries coalesced the many ideas, philosophies, accrued knowledge, and deeply rooted sentiments I held towards animals into a single unified climactic vision, a story. Savuti.

I have worked on this story over the course of several years now and in truth it was a story I had searched to tell for many more years before that. But there was something missing, something persistent and nagging that I knew only one thing could address. I needed to know the place in which the protagonist, a lioness named Savuti, was born and came of age. This was the place that shaped her, that made her who she would become and set her upon the journey she would embark upon. More than that I felt I needed to see and experience the world in which she lived so I may give the story the integrity of reality for the viewer to feel the story as poignantly as I intend it to be told. Savuti is meant to be a visual philosophy, a narrative with the viewer that explores the landscapes of morality, free will, and the meaning of humanity as we now define it.

It is my most earnest hope to make this visual treatise a visceral experience, one that moves the mind as well as the heart. This is a story that I feel may be one of the most important I will tell in my lifetime and so it is incredibly important for the foundation to be sound.

I genuinely did not believe I would be visiting Africa so soon and though it is an incredible financial drain on me as a freelance illustrator, it was also made possible and more affordable through the efforts of some incredible friends ( Foxfeather Zenkova and Roman Ženka whom spent years arranging this Safari at a fraction of the cost it would take to make the sojourn alone!). I will always remember how I felt when Foxfeather graciously and unexpectedly extended me an invitation. I sat in a stupor of roiling anxious euphoria before I tried to pretend I would just think about it and weigh real life considerations before giving an answer. From the second she asked I knew I wanted, needed, longed to go and whatever I needed to do, would be done, so I could go. Not only this but the group of people going are some of the most inspiring creative people I know and I had not even begun to dream that when I went it would be spent in the company of so many esteemed fellow creatives!

While discussing the cost of the trip, some of the folks going hatched an idea to do a Kickstarter to help, even slightly, offset the cost of going. While I have not a single regret about this decision to go, it is an incredible financial burden on me and I will be returning with at least 2k of debt to pay back to my incredible mom ( Ivory Mastiffs who made it possible for me to afford the deposit and airline tickets). But beyond financial considerations, the creative folks being who they are, wanted to make something unique and creative that could serve as a keepsake for this phenomenal adventure. So the idea for a travel journal was hatched and after much hard work and hair pulling, the kickstarter was born and launched.

We feel humbled to have blown not only past our initial 3500$ target but also our very first stretch goal of 5000$. WOW!! Thank you to all that have already sponsored this endeavor! Though we are already funded, every extra bit will help those going buffer the financial burden just a wee bit more...and also make the keepsake even more profound. Every little and large bit helps!!!

So if you want to be part of our journey and my own personal journey of finding the heartbeat of Savuti, please feel free to join us by sponsoring this Kickstarter. I'm certain with the crew that is going this book will be jam packed with more than a few zany antics, close ---too close?-- encounters with alligators and other friendly Botswana fauna as well as heaps of gorgeous artwork and stories fueled to atomic proportions of inspiration by this once-in-a-lifetime trek into the hinterlands of Botswana.

Please join us on our Sojourn!

Also to those that made it this far....an extra thank you for reading. I appreciate each and every one of you!