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Starting A Comic
NobilityRevelation
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Hello everyone, I have been working with a close friend of mine on a comic. My friend and I are committed to this project, and we are curious what we would need to buy or pay for to be able to do this. We have decided to start a Kickstarter for our comic, and neither of us are sure how much we will need. We don't want to set a goal too high nor too low, so I would appreciate some help on this matter.
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Is this a web comic? A print comic? Both?
What have you done in the past? Do you have an established fan base that might hop on board a kickstarter?
You say you've been working on the comic, how much do you have? How much is actually finished, how much is in progress, and how much is just you and your buddy sitting around going "this would be cool"?
Then, once you have a solid backlog of content for readers to look through, start advertising or try to get into a comic consortium like Hiveworks.
At the point in which you are at right now there isn't a single thing that money will help you in creating a strip, nor is there any reason for folks to donate to your strip without some sort of content. Kickstarters for comic artists who have developed a loyal following who they think will be willing to pay some more to get more content weekly by supporting the authors. Folks rarely pay for startup comics unless the artist is already well known.
You may want to look at Comic Genesis to get a feel for other creators starting with their content, but ultimately the best thing you can do is draw 100 comics or more and take the time to make each one better than the previous. As far as equipment goes, all you need is paper, a pen, and a scanning machine or camera phone. Everything else comes later.
Draw as many strips as you can, but work really hard at the writing. Today, you can generally get away with sub-par art if the writing is good enough. And this goes for most strips. Questionable Content had horrible artwork until about it's fifth year and the cartoonist was able to support himself off of strip revenue after year one. XKCD and Explosm use stick figures.
Are you going to be able to continue churning out ideas for this comic, day after day? Can you be consistently funny/interesting? Do you have a basic command of spelling and grammar rules, or know how to use a computer to fake that knowledge like I do? Those are going to be determining factors when it comes to a successful comic.
You could do a kickstarter for pen & paper costs I guess, but as kids (I assume) with no track record, you'd be looking about $100 from mom, dad, and grandma.