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Not Another Dime! is dedicated to documenting the assorted, and sometimes wild, details of Mr. Ken Whitman's business dealings within the Role Playing Game (RPG) industry. This place is NOT intended to be a medium of discussion about Mr. Whitman, pro or con, but instead be a "jumping off" point to enable the reader to make their own informed decision about Mr. Whitman's history and business character. (Editor's Note: After years of this documentation, we simply cannot be anything BUT "con" when it comes to Mr. Whitman)

Whenever possible, links to the original source material will be provided, but in many cases that information may have been deleted or secured behind restricted-access (like a private Facebook page) accounts.

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Thursday, August 20, 2015

2015.04.02 Yet Another Ken Whitman Kickstarter

Yet Another Ken Whitman Kickstarter
I have a small confession to make.....I don't post Ken Whitman stories as they become available. Usually I have a few I'm working on and I've been able to share some tips anonymously with some like-minded individuals...who I suspect have been doing the same thing and sharing what they get with even more like-minded individuals.

This means that stuff I'm researching, or even have partially written up, gets posted on the likes of Facebook or the Don't Fund Ken Whitman blog.

This is not a bad thing.....

Case in point, the interesting news about Ken Whitman's other (or more appropriately, yet another) Kickstarter project of the Cthulhu Dice Tower, recently reported on by Don't Fund Ken Whitman. My sources tell me that this Kickstarter was already on Ken Whitman's "to-do" list, as in he was planning on doing this in-house before Kickstarter yanked his crowd-funding privileges (finally, several campaigns too late by their own rules).
Another page to nowhere...
Now I can imagine some folks going....."but where is the proof?"

1st off is the fact that Ken Whitman's fictitious company d20 Entertainment has an uncompleted web-page devoted to the Cthulhu Dice Tower. Funny, he doesn't have any other web-pages to products/projects that aren't his.....

This webpage is also listed on the Kickstarter campaign itself.
Why would this be a link?
Well, we know that Ken Whitman did the videos for the project as well. Now only the initial sculpting video, the one on the Kickstarter campaign page, is publicly listed as being a d20 Entertainment video, but if you watch the rest of them it is completely obvious.
The devil's mark on any good project
All the videos (here is part 1 and here is part 2) have the same shitty lighting and sound issues that are a hallmark of Ken Whitman's camera work. You can see some of this in the KoDT:LAS film as well.

Lastly, the 11th Update states, "The "assembly and painting" video is not up yet. The guy that is editing the vid is running behind. He told me that it will be up sometime on Saturday."

...and the video went up three days late and on the 1st two parts of four....sound familiar?

I'm reasonably confident that this was originally one of Ken Whitman's Kickstarters that began under his "expert tutelage" and when Kickstarter shut off the crowd-funding tap he got his artist to move over from just creating the sculpt to being the front-man for the campaign. Undoubtedly Ken Whitman took a healthy cut of the proceeds for his "expert advice" and I will posit that it is Ken Whitman actually pouring the resin for the 34 models "sold" during the campaign.

Why do I think this?

Well 1st off, we know from the Don't Fund Ken Whitman blog post that he has been casting resin for sale products and we know that the Cthulu casts have bee atrocious. I've watched Venger's video and that isn't a small amount of mold flash that needs to be cleaned up, that is a shitty cast. If that was available as-is for sale in a shop you'd find it on the clearance rack eventually and only purchased by a sucker. Anyone with the level of skill to accurately clean up those bad pours would undoubtedly have the skill to say "fuck it" and just sculpt their own damn model.
Sloppy product placement
Something else pointed out to me from yesterday's "Quality Art Books & Print"  post is that the supply box in the picture...that is a box from Smooth On.

Finally, if you have any doubt, which you probably should, about Ken Whitman's involvement with this Kickstarter project I think you should take a look at how the adding this project to the timeline just snaps into place with the pattern of Kickstarters that was starting to emerge before they shut off this cash-grab for Ken Whitman.

Updated Ken Whitman Cash Grab Timeline


The Cthulu Dice Tower snaps right into place like a well-designed puzzle piece.

2015.08.25 Edit
I discovered this little gem over on the Pencil Dice Kickstarter....buried in an otherwise unimportant update. The link is dead, but it does tell us that this was definitely a Ken Whitman Kickstarter:
"And now for a sneak peak of an upcoming KICKSTARTER...  Are you ready?   It's a DICE TOWER... and its EVIL! https://www.dropbox.com/s/cc8rd8xdz9w937z/Cthulu.mov?dl=0

Take Care!!!"



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