Animation alumni Jenna Woldenga raises $2.5 million (US!) in two hours for her creative project ‘Fool’s Gold’.

College for Arts and Technology is no stranger to the talented digital artist and storyteller Jenna Woldenga, who is an alumni of CAT’s 2D Animation and Design program. Indeed, in Issue Thirteen of interFACE (our quarterly magazine) we sat down and had a chat with her about her YouTube channel ‘Dingo Doodles’.

Since then Jenna has gone from strength to strength, and was recently featured in news articles in both The Daily Courier and the Vancouver Sun.

Why? With her Dingo Doodles channel standing at 718,000 subscribers, she took the project to Kickstarter with the goal of raising $10,000 US to create a book based on her characters.

Fast forward TWO HOURS, and Jenna had raised pledges of $2.5 million US. Yes, you read that correctly!

“To be honest, it was hard to process it all,” Woldenga told Castanet. “The numbers kept getting bigger and bigger, so my brain had a hard time picturing how much money it really was.”

Jenna is a 2015 graduate of the College for Arts and Technology, and originally from Summerland. She launched ‘Dingo Doodles’ in April 2018 on YouTube and some of the videos have been viewed more than four million times.

Those who pledged funds to the Kickstarter campaign are supporting Woldenga’s effort to produce a book, ‘Fool’s Gold – Into the Bellowing Winds’, a game and other digital and real-world products based on her creations.

In the Vancouver Sun, Jenna advised perseverance as the best advice she could give other artists who want to establish themselves on YouTube.

“Keep at it,” she said. “People fail simply because they give up. It’s a hard road and it takes work, but it’s worth it in the end. Passion, persistence and patience are tools you use.”

You can read the full stories here:

Kelowna Daily Courier

Vancouver Sun