Amazing news! We have a new cover to reveal for our fourth issue, and it’s been drawn by my good friend Ray Friesen!

Me and Ray have known each other for over ten years, and I’ve worked on several of his projects, including the successfully funded Cats Committing Crimes.

Ray’s cover

Ray originally cited the inspiration for his cover as a format often used by Nickelodeon Magazine: a gag in which a character would run through a building with lots of chaos going on throughout.

Ray had this in mind as an opportunity to show Zip rushing through a big action scene.

I loved the idea because the perspective he envisioned reminded me of an old school side-scrolling video game. Then I remembered this iconic first level from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game, and suggested that we make the hazard that Zip was facing be a fire!

Ray took my comparison of his concept to video games literally, and his cover evolved from the earlier Nickelodeon Magazine premise to a stylish, pixel art love letter to vintage arcade games!

Wanna see it? Keep reading!

Mid-campaign slump? What mid-campaign slump?

“In the first few days, the pledges come rolling in. But then—it happens. The momentum slows, and you hit what many creators dread: the mid-campaign plateau.” – Kickstarter’s ‘Creator Tips’ blog.

The above quote is very true: the mid-campaign of any Kickstarter project tends to be a stressful time.

But at the risk of jinxing it, thanks to your incredible support, we’ve beaten the curse! Just look at this:

The quick rise we’ve been seeing in backers lately made me curious, and so I went back and checked. I can now tell you that this issue’s campaign has the fastest growing rate of backers since our very first one.

So, thank you and well done everyone!

Also: looking closely at our statistics, I discovered that if we maintain the same growth in backers that we’ve had in the past five days, this campaign will have the fastest growing rate of backers within the first 15 days of any Zip Kickstarter project to date.

We need 37 backers by day 15 to break that record. Can we do it?

Make it happen and share Zip with your friends!

Ray’s cover reveal

And now the moment you’ve been waiting for! Presenting Ray Friesen’s cover for Zip issue 4:

Get Ray’s cover with any digital or print reward tier or add on, and choose Ray as your pick for your cover when we send out our backer surveys at the end of the campaign!

Stay tuned for our next update, when we’ll have an exciting announcement about international postage for backers in certain countries!