Youthful Dreams Made Real:Net Fans Revive an Animation Franchise

» tomreedtoon - Voltron and fan experience

The editor of TOON Magazine, Michael Swanagan, was credited on the Voltron CGI series. As an example of fan devotion, he publishes TOON on a quarterly basis for little or no profit. There is no money in writing ABOUT animation, and there are no advertisers of any worth willing to buy ad space in an animation magazine. (The late, lamented ANIMATO!, whose name and assets are now up for sale, tried to get "cel dealers" to advertise and didn't get much out of them.)

Legal issues aside, web pages are cheap to get if you're willing to tolerate some ad space, and most people get a web site with their standard dial-up ISP account. However, to put out a magazine that promotes animation series - without official ties to the industry, and certainly without much support - now that's dedication.

-- posted by tomreedtoon

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» shannonmuir - Re: Voltron and fan experience

In response to message posted by tomreedtoon:

Tom, been busy with my latest job so haven't had time to respond.

I certainty admire Michael Swaningan's efforts with TOON magazine. Especially because he's willing to keep at it when there's little or no profit involved.

I'm not certain exactly what the point of your latter paragraph is though in regards to web pages. Personally, why I'm here is that I see very little about animation targeted to the non-artist who wants to get in the field, but I don't have the resources to do something on the scale of TOON Magazine. Suite101 provides me a structured portal to try and do my part to get more information out there, but I certainly don't presume to compete with any larger effort. I'm just doing the best I can for now, taking advantage of what resources I can to increase exposure versus just building my own web site offering the same information.

Best,
Shan

-- posted by shannonmuir

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