The crowdfunder for the Draw The Line book is up and running. If you haven’t already pledged for your copy, please do go and take a look. For just £20 you can be in line for a hardback first edition of what promises to be a beautiful full-colour high quality volume — plus as a supporter, you get your name printed inside!
In this post I just want to take some time to explain where profits are going, and also, delve into some of the more exciting pledge rewards.
All artists offering commissions, original artwork and comics
All artists offering workshops and talks
Where the money goes
Something I didn’t mention in my last post, because it wasn’t quite arranged at that time, is that all the creator profits will be going to the charity Help Refugees.
This charity was chosen in a vote by all the Draw The Line artists. I was really pleased when I counted up the results, because although all the charity contenders were worthy, Help Refugees in particular reflects the project in a few important ways. First, it operates right across Europe, within many of the countries that our artists come from. Secondly, it’s a non-political, non-partisan charity which gives help to those who need it most. And thirdly, of course, the Draw The Line project contains several practical actions specifically aimed to help refugees and displaced people, including the lovely image by Karrie Fransman that we’ve used across so much of our press coverage and social media.
What do I mean when I say ‘all creator profits’ go to this charity? Well, just like any publishing house, Unbound divide profits between their authors and themselves. In the case of Draw The Line, it’s the author’s portion that will be going to Help Refugees.
So that’s all great — but I think it’s worth pointing out that when you pledge, you can also get something nice for yourself! There’s so much information to convey on the Unbound page that I thought I’d lay out a bit more about the rewards here. Some of them haven’t even been added there yet, in the interests of keeping the page comprehensible, but hopefully this post can act as a reference point.
Rewards
So first there’s the book. Unbound pride themselves on high-quality hardback first editions, so I have no doubt that the Draw The Line book will be a thing of beauty. You can choose to receive just the book, or the book with artist-designed bookplates, or if you’re short of space on your bookshelves, you can opt for the digital edition. All backers get their name included in the back of the book as someone who made the project come to fruition.
If you love the artwork of Draw The Line then you might like the ‘3 actions’ edition or the A4 print. With both of these options you get to choose the images you like the best, either in a pack of 3 small prints (details to be confirmed but I think A6), or as a single high-quality A4 print that you can frame up.
The easiest way to see all the images (so you can pick which ones you like, although I believe you won’t be asked to select them until just before we go into production) is here – just click to see any image at a larger size.
Next, we come onto the (not so) secret strength of Draw The Line: with so many artists in our cohorts, it makes sense for us to offer original artwork as a reward! At the moment we’ve only listed two of the opportunities here: the original A3 artwork from Roger Langridge’s contribution (which would look amazing in any home or public place) and a still life commission by master of ink and wash, Joe Decie.
Loads more of the artists have donated or offered artwork though: you can see them all listed here. But for now, on to the most unique rewards of all…
Artist talks and workshops
To my mind, these are the most exciting pledge rewards that we’re able to offer. If you select a talk or a workshop, a Draw The Line artist will come and give you and your friends/group/school/club/party all the benefit of their expertise.
Artists offering this reward include some really prestigious practitioners, like Woodrow Phoenix, Emily Haworth-Booth, Rachael Ball and David Blumenstein, (to name but a few) and they stretch up and down the UK as well as locations as far afield as Melbourne, Australia; Helsinki, Finland; and New Jersey USA.
There’s also me! My own talk will be about how to run a big, geographically-dispersed comics project like Draw The Line, but will be applicable to any large online project.
You can see all the various workshop and talk opportunities on one page here.
To make your pledge, go to the funding page on the Unbound website and choose ‘artist workshop’ or ‘artist talk’.
You’ll be contacted when the fundraising is complete, at which point we’ll nail down the details of which artist you’d like, and all the other practical details. As with all pledges on Draw The Line, the profits will go to Help Refugees, but in these cases the pledge also includes a small fee for the artist.
Happy pledging!
Myfanwy Tristram 
