Drawing Life with George Booth: The Kickstarter Animation Art Reward

Now that the short documentary "Drawing Life with George Booth" (2021) has been released, the filmmakers have gotten around to shipping the last of the rewards promised in their Kickstarter campaign. You may recall that in April of 2019 I became a supporter of the film, pledging $150. I was rewarded with the promise of an original piece of animation artwork from the production with an estimated delivery date of August 2019. 

The reward was further described as an "original drawing" and illustrated with a promotional photograph showing a hand-drawn cat in the manner of New Yorker cartoonist George Booth, presumably created by animator Emily Collins, nicely matted and framed.

On Instagram and Twitter, the filmmakers thanked their backers graciously, posting their gratitude for each successive wave of support:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwXLvdgBPhI/?utm_content=bufferc8158&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Later, with only ten hours remaining in the campaign, the filmmakers thanked their many supporters en masse:

https://twitter.com/DrawingLifeDoc/status/1119438636838207489/photo/1

As I noted here at the time, the promised animation art failed to arrive in August of 2019. As I further noted a year later, it did not arrive by August of 2020 either. Ditto for August 2021. In fact, it arrived in the mailbox just yesterday.

The first sign that something was wrong was the flimsiness of the mailing envelope. Never mind that the art was unframed and therefore not quite as advertised; the mailer contained little more than a thin sheet of paper without even the benefit of cardboard backing! I have never seen a single sheet of artwork sent through the mail in this cavalier way and I take it as a sign either of the filmmakers' carelessness or of their lack of regard for the art they created and its intended recipients. The only thing protecting the delicate enclosure was the directive "do not bend" taped to the outside. Not surprisingly, the envelope had been creased at some point in transit; it would have been miraculous if it had been otherwise.

Inside was a printed or photocopied thank-you note.

Finally, the envelope held the Kickstarter reward, the promised "original drawing" with an original estimated delivery of August 2019, unframed, we now know, and already slightly creased. But what of the animation art? The artwork, I believe, speaks for itself:

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