Jul 11, 2013

Little Witch Academia" reaches its Kickstarter goal in less than six hours.

Crowdfunding has not yet proven to be a reliable source of funding for new concept animation, but filmmakers with established styles and those looking to fund existing productions continue to find success. The latest major beneficiary of the Kickstarter campaign is Trigger, a young Japanese animation studio. Trigger is using Kickstarter to fund the next production of "Little Witch Academia," an anime film produced and directed by Yoh Yoshinari. This spring, they released the first Little Witch Academia short with English subtitles on YouTube, garnering about 800,000 views:

The second Little Witch Academia was supposed to be 20 minutes long, but they raised $150,000 on Kickstarter to expand the episode by 15 minutes. They reached that goal in less than six hours; as of three days later, $348,789 had been raised from 4,487 backers, and the campaign still has 27 days left. If the new stretch goal of $500,000 is reached, an audio commentary, making-of documentary, soundtrack, and art book will be released.