Hi, I’m Wayne, and this is my Kickstarter campaign to print the first book in the series, DANIEL DREAMGAZER. This is a story about the prophet Daniel from the Bible, who is captured by a tyrant King named Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel and his friends are brought to a strange land called Babylon, where they will have to decide between survival or staying loyal to their God.
This series will be comprised of 12 books when complete. One for each chapter in the book of Daniel.
My brother, Andrew has created such unique and stunning images that I decided I did not want to cover up any of it with word bubbles. Instead the words are on the bottom of the illustrations as well as on their own separate pages. So each image has a full page to itself.
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Shipping outside of the USA is too expensive. For that reason the rewards below $100 are not available outside the country. Rewards $100 or more are available, as well as the $10 digital copy. Sorry for the inconvenience. If you are aware of an inexpensive shipping option to your country please let me know.
We set the kickstarter campaign goal at $500. We set the bar low, because that’s what I feel is worth the time and effort to put together a kickstarter. I have personally funded the production of this book by commissioning my brother to do the art work. If I were to go an outside source, this could easily cost $100-$200 just for the inking, not including the coloring, per page. So my brother truly gave me the family discount by charging me under $14 a page. That is under minimum wage considering the hours he spends on this project. So my brother and I made a deal that we would split the profits once I recoup the money that I lost. So if we can reach the $500 mark, then I would have made a negative $450 profit. Haha I know it sounds terrible. But that’s what I am willing to do in order to get this made and to get the message out there. As for my brother, he has already been paid (although not much considering the work) so he will be fine.
Now let’s say that this campaign raises $1,500. Then that means I have broken even. I will have made a $0 profit. That would be awesome. Because that means in order to have brought this project to life, all I had to put in was time.
Now this is what I am praying for. If we raise $5,000 then I will be able to go to a big printing company which will allow me to print in bulk for this book, and this will cover the cost of what was already spent producing the next book.
So please help us to reach these goals. We have some good ideas for rewards that we can give when we hit these stretch goals.
After we break even with $1,500 then any extra that we make we will subtract:
It would be nice to make at least some profit for all the time we spent working on this.
The Bible says, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain, and, The laborer is worthy of his wages.” -1 Timothy 5:18. We have been laboring hard to produce this. Hopefully we can benefit from this project that we are working on. We are praying and trusting in God to make this happen. So if you feel it in your heart that God is leading you to participate in this cause, then it would be greatly appreciated.
It all started two year ago when I was brainstorming ideas for church and I thought that I should really do a sermon series on Daniel where I go through each chapter in the book of Daniel. A lot of people do sermon series on Daniel, but rarely do people actually go through each chapter and each verse. Sometimes they do random topics in the Bible that are barely connected to Daniel. I wanted to be thorough. So when I thought about preaching a series on Daniel I felt more and more that I needed to use pictures, because Daniel is such a visual book. The problem is that most times when I see Daniel series the pictures are out dated, and again some chapters are missing. Some are even inaccurate.
That’s when the creative juices started flowing. As I mentioned in the bio, before I wanted to become a pastor I wanted to be an animator, because I loved drawing, telling stories, and doing voices. So back in college I thought ‘how cool would it be to tell stories of the Bible, but combine it with illustrations.’ So I started mapping out a plan.
Well some years ago, I decided to release my first attempt at this concept of illustrated storytelling. I told the story of Jesus’ birth using voices and about 50 fully colored illustrations. As a full time pastor I don’t have the time to do all those drawing, so I decided to hire my brother Andrew Jamel. Plus, he is a way better artist than me. I simply wrote the story, drew the storyboard, and asked my brother to draw it out for me. He was so kind to give me that super-duper family discount haha. It was a big hit at the church. I have done it a couple of times since then in other churches and people loved it, and most importantly the story came out clear and the message came through to people of all ages.
But now I want to get more ambitious. I want to do illustrated storytelling for the book of Daniel. So my brother and I are teaming up again to work on this project. With the story of Jesus birth we used a cartoonish style that targeted a child audience. But for Daniel we want to target a teenage and young adult demographic. Therefore, we are using a comic book style of artwork. This type of art style is more labor intensive, but the final product will be worth it.
The age bracket we are targeting is hugely missing in churches today. Not many ministry endeavors are geared towards reaching them. My brother and I truly believe that this medium can attract this audience.
I thought to myself, ‘what would be the most effective way to tell the story and visions of Daniel?’ This is what came to mind. A book like this can reach someone who may have never stepped into a church before. Maybe they never even read the Bible before, but with this modern look it can have a wide appeal.
It’s going to be epic, so we need your help. I am asking for you to consider joining our funding campaign and also spread the word that this is happening. Share it on your social media accounts and by word of mouth. Every little bit helps. And please pray for us that God will continue to lead.
Kickstarter is a crowdfunding website. It is a place where creatives can post fundraising projects. It’s sort of like taking pre-orders, but with the warm feeling of supporting a fundraiser. You can donate any amount that you wish and depending on the level of your contribution, you’d be entitled to certain rewards. It’s our way of saying thank you for believing in us and supporting us on the ground floor.
Good new! Unlike most kickstarter campaigns, our book is ready for print once the campaign is over and the money is in the account. All I have to do is to add the names on the acknowledgement and special thanks pages. Then it’s off to the printers. That means you won’t have to wait for months on end. My hope is that we can raise enough money ($5,000) so we can take advantage of using a big printing company. That will cut the printing cost significantly. However, if we do not reach that amount, there is a printing company that I have used before that is literally walking distance from where I live and we have already spoken in person about the printing cost. So there is no delay. We are just waiting on Kickstarter to give us the green light so we can print, ship, and email the rewards.