Why I'm Creating From the Dust and Who It Serves

Let Latter-day Saints Decide If They Want High-Quality Family Media

A couple of weeks ago I launched the From the Dust Kickstarter Crowdfunding Campaign. The campaign is all-or-nothing. If I do not reach $14,000 by Christmas Day I will get none of the money that has been pledged and From the Dust may not be able to accomplish its ambitious goals.

For a broad view of what I am trying to accomplish, please read this interview by Ben Crowder of MormonArtist.net. The nutshell of the interview says that the LDS industry doesn’t create family media, but rather creates targeted media for independent demographics (teen books for teens, Mom books for mom, dad books for dad, kids books for kids, virtually nothing that we can share together like a Disney film.) It also states that I am capable of providing that family media and that it is needed now more than ever - especially internationally. My work is different, it’s innovative, and it requires the opening of the minds of Latter-day Saints to a new medium for family media besides TV series and movies. This “new” medium is the comic book series, reinvented for the next generation of Latter-day Saints. 

Why Comic Books are the Answer

The comic book allows me to provide Disney-quality entertainment at a fraction of the cost. In addition, unlike TV and movies, this entertainment can be translated inexpensively and distributed to families all over the world via the Internet. Comics are the most effective medium to accomplish this. I already have my first issue in Spanish and Portuguese, which covers 85% of LDS Church membership. It will be published for free online in January as a service to the 8.5 million Latter-day Saints that don’t speak English and the over 18,000 international fans of my Facebook page.

From the Dust is Self-Sustaining and Financially Viable

Aside from the artwork, the project is founded upon sound and sustainable business practices, but I do not have the funds in its early stages to get it off the ground. Ultimately, I will need about 4-6 issues published before it become self-sustaining. Until then, I have to get creative to make the project a reality.

International Latter-day Saints Need Media in their Own Language

In the words of Monalisa Cavalcante Buarque of Brazil, who has opened this impressive LDS retail store (the second one in Brazil) just last month:

"We needed LDS media in our own language yesterday. Not in two years. Not in one year. We need it NOW! We're starving out here for quality material and America isn't producing anything that we can use!"