There exists in places like Newgrounds a strange entity that I've never found anywhere else. Its teams of people, working for free towards a singular vision of animation and sound, and you could very well take advantage of that.
I've had issues gathering support for my own joint projects in the past, but I'll tell you that if your story speaks for its self, if it sells its self, drawing in the right people should be possible. It helps to have something that really sells the story. I think I got close when I was trying to gather animators for Evangelion: Con Gran Delore. I took everything my team of two had done over the last year and put it together in a last ditch effort to draw the support needed. It was very close, but just not quite enough. Enough for portal awards, thousands of views and a 4. something score, but still not there. Had I done it again, I'd push even harder.
Its very hard to sell someone else on YOUR vision as I'm sure you know. Especially when you're asking them to help simply for the joy of bringing it to life, but there are people out there who will buy into a good story.
I'm about as proud of an American as you'll find (Heck, look at my occupation), but I'm growing more and more disappointed with the American audience. It seems my interests are more commonly found in Japan when it comes to story telling, as I've seen but a VERY few works of American animation that are worth a damn. Sure, American animation has a lot of frames, and big budgets, but the people behind them don't give two shits beyond the cash flow, and it shows. Even the simplest Anime seem to have some heart behind them, but best of all, they don't tailor to an expectation that their audience has a 5 minute attention span.
As for your animation, I agree with everyone else that the finished scenes look fantastic. I also agree with you that keeping up with that level of quality would be impossible on your own. Had your chosen story taken place anywhere else, I could suggest the aid of CGI to help cut down on the grunt-work, but you've chosen the single most challenging environment for CGI; open natural vegetative places. I can get away with a LOT in my animation, because its a hell of a lot easier to render a 7 mile long space ship then even something as simple as a field of grass.
As for your hardware situation, I'm sure its hopeless to try to turn your from the dark side, but you could slice a few GRAND off of that total if you'd switch away from iCrap Mac. You are getting ripped off. When my hardware begins to show age, I buy just what I need - more ram, a new vid card, whatever - not a whole new system, and I actually have my choice of hundreds of brands, not Apple's hand picked overpriced crap.
I'll stop there. I could go on for days on these subjects, as I can relate to your situation a little.
falarinx
Do you want to get recognized so that you can get Kanook funded? Or would your prefer to have more of Kanook to show to people who might fund it? Or do you just want it to become something more? It seems like a toss-up to me. Having to choose comes down to what your end-goal is with the whole idea. I would suggest having a list of pros and cons for each thing you want to do. Maybe even rate each pro and con because some things are more important than others.
larkinheather
Hmm ... it's true .. what is my end goal? I guess, I really want to work on and manage collaboratively making the Kanook project (and other projects). I enjoy working on projects. What I want is someone to give me money to keep doing that so it feels more legitimate. Anyway, I need to think more about my goals ... thanks for commenting!