Lenticular Covers Are So Hot Right Now!
At ComixTribe, we're always trying to keep our finger on the pulse and willing to experiment with new products for our fans!
One of my Kickstarter predictions for 2024 was that lenticular covers are going to be a very hot Kickstarter item this year.
Of course, I’m probably biased, because I was super keen to put together a lenticular (aka 3D moving image) cover for ComixTribe this year… and given that I host a prominent comic crowdfunding podcast, just mentioning that prediction puts a finger on the scale for it.
Nevertheless… I’m stoked that we’re finally able to share the cover we’ve been working on!
Kickstarter campaigns can be a bit of a slog, especially after the initial launch excitement fades. One of the strategies I like to use is to hold back a few cool items that might be unlocked or revealed throughout the campaign. For SINK: Monsters, that was the new Lenticular Cover… although part of the reason we held it back was because our vendor is overseas and they were shut down for the Chinese New Year and weren’t able to provide us a digital mock up until a few days ago! Thankfully, we got it in time for our final week!
One of the things I like to do during a launch is reward current backers with a bit of a discount on new products added during the campaign, which is why we made this new lenticular cover available at $10.00 off our intended retail price for the first 48 hours or so.
So far, the reaction has been strong! We’ve sold a bunch of these as add-ons and had a number of backers upgrade their pledge levels to snag the new pledge levels with the moving cover featuring art by Alex Cormack. It’s always good from a crowdfunding perspective to inject something new and exciting into the home stretch of a campaign.
The comics crowdfunding community definitely tends to be a copy-cat ecosystem, where creators are constantly looking for the next cool thing they can offer their audience… and if it works, many more will offer it on their campaigns, too. A few years ago it was METAL covers that suddenly blew up. Though lenticular printing is nothing new (in fact, I was chatting with a creator who was in charge of putting together lenticular covers for a major publisher back in the 90s the other day), this hasn’t been an item that many creators have offered on Kickstarter until somewhat recently.
The reason for that is that hardly any comic book printers offer this kind of printing as a cover option… and to produce these books, it usually involves sourcing multiple vendors.
This is also why the pricing on lenticulars in the indie space tends to be on the premium end. The reality is, the cost to develop and produce these covers is quite high for small print runs, though that cost does drop with volume.
TOP USE CASES FOR LENTICULAR COVERS
Some of the top use cases I’m seeing for lenticular covers are…
#1 Power On!
This cover from Brant Fowler’s recent campaign for The Last Ember: Hunted is a brilliant use of the lenticular moving image tech, with the main character’s pyrokinetic powers flaming on.
#2: Take it Off!
In the NSFW Kickstarter comic space, creators have been making a mint offering nice and naughty (aka clothed and unclothed) versions of their variant covers. Usually these covers are drawn digitally, and taking the clothes off is as simple as flipping off a layer.
The above nice/naughty set from Rob Multari’s Night Wolf series is an example of two similar images that make for a popular moving image for a certain audience. (Without the wolves over the naughty bits, of course.)
#3: Cool Transformation!
The third thing that really seems to work is showing off a cool transformation of your characters. In the case of SINK, we wanted to show off normal and vampire versions of SINK characters, and with the 3D effect, we’re thrilled that it will seem as if the vamps are jumping out of the page and right for our throats!
Another transformation I can really see working, say, for a super hero book would be secret identity to costumed hero.
HAVE YOU SEEN OTHER EXAMPLES OF LENTICULAR COVERS THAT WORK REALLY WELL?
I DO think there is a tendency to get a little too caught up in the covers and the gimmicks. For me, I’ve always been a story first and foremost guy. But the benefit of working with talent like John Lees and Alex Cormack… or any of the creators we’ve published over the past decade, is that our readers KNOW the story in between the covers is going to be amazing. So as publisher, I can really take some swings at some really cool covers that are just the icing on top!
-Tyler James
P.S. We’d love to have you join the SINK: Monsters campaign if you haven’t already! This book will be live on Kickstarter for just 3 more days, and we’re super close to unlocking another STRETCH GOAL!
VERY cool. Just curious… How many source images were needed for your cover? Was it two or did it require more to implement the “animation?”