I think you'll find most people here are doing a solo project, including myself.
After all, this is mostly just an unpaid hobby for most. A thing we do out of passion, not for monetary gain.
It’s me and my editor, who’s actually just my mom. In exchange for calling her regularly, she corrects all of my mistakes, gives me a second opinion on creative decisions, and makes sure what I write makes sense.
I don´t believe in comic collabs without payment.
It´s hard for me to imagine people working for free on one person´s vision.
Or to find 2 or more people who develop exactly the same creative vision.
That´s the reason why I work on my vision alone.
I work in creative teams as a musician since 35 years and it´s always a
struggle
Totally fair — full control can be a huge advantage, and yeah, asking for free work is always tricky.
Really admire your dedication!
Have you ever thought about doing a short collab just for fun, or are you more into keeping things fully solo?
Haha, that was awesome! True Solo Leveling energy 
Honestly, it’s clear you’re handling everything like a pro.
Ever thought about doing a mini project just for fun, or are you fully immersed in your own universe?
Really cool stuff — I followed your world!
If you’re interested, feel free to check out what we’re working on. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
https://www.instagram.com/joyfulnib
Totally agree. In our team, I’m both the creator and the producer, and I also write the scripts — it’s a lot, but it’s a deeply inspiring experience.Finding a true creative soulmate is rare, and I get why you'd rather build your vision solo.That short collab you mentioned sounds like a great experience too — sometimes even a small project with the right person can leave a strong impression.Do you think you’d ever consider doing something like that again, or are you fully focused on your solo projects now?
That’s super insightful — thanks for breaking it all down so clearly! Your experience with both solo and team work really shows. Totally feel you on the promo side — it’s hard to juggle making the art and getting it seen.
And yeah, managing a team really becomes its own job. We’ve got a small crew — just 4 people:
I’m the worldbuilder, producer, scriptwriter… and the one who pays for everything, haha.
Our artist does all the visuals.
A second writer shorts comic strips and the story bible.
And someone helps us with Instagram and promo.
We’ve made solid progress in the last 4 months, and there’s a lot planned ahead — expanding the universe and hopefully doing crowdfunding soon too.
Have you found anything that helps make promo or crowdfunding less overwhelming?
If you're curious, feel free to check out what we’re working on — we’d love to hear your thoughts!
https://www.instagram.com/joyfulnib
This is me.
I've done them back in the day because I really liked the work of the writer. But you need to be on the same page for it to work and they all fell through because we weren't.
That having been said: If someone isn't willing to let their partners have control over the final product, they don't have a partner, they have an employee. Then they better pony up some cash.
Do everything myself.
My stories are ones I hand wrote back in highschool in the 90s during boring classes. XD
Now I break it down to raw storyboards, then line art then full colour rendering.
Then plop it into a premade template I made which covers the volume, episode, page plus logo info. I do that extra part for online postings.
For me its a way to help with brain injury recovery (relearn hand, vision and cordination skills) + a hobby to learn how to improve and develop that style. After doing it for about 5 years now. Ive noticed a big change.
Later on if I ever get fianances, I plan to hire someone to redraw it all.
As for animated shorts. I do have a friend who has had multiple voice acting gigs on many anime shorts. Willing to voice one of my characters as a collab to build his portfolio and exposure.
Thanks ^^
I've had a look over what you've put up, the artstyle's pretty cute and gives me Charlie and Lola nostalgia, and I like the episodic format of it where you can kind of hop through the episodes to get little snapshots of the character's lives.
For the crowdfunding the thing that really helped me sounds obvious but:
- having a fanbase. I'm not huge online, but the people who like and read the comic are pretty invested and were willing to give some money to get the book and perks. That's in part thanks to having been publishing the comic online for 2 years at that point PLUS I'd been talking about it to people around me and at conventions, some people who use social media but don't like reading on screens for example.
- Preparing A LOT. I wasn't just selling the book, I was also selling extra goodies with the higher tier donos and personnalised illustrations inside the book to a quality that I won't ever do outside of the crowdfunding campaign (full colour portraits). That got a few people to up their pledge to get the extras. In general planning to have a good amount of time to make the goodies and the promo material is a good idea, I rushed everything in 50 days and I do not recommend for anyone's mental health, I was exhausted during and after the campaign even though it went as smoothly as humanly possible.
- Knowing why your comic should be in paper format. My entire comic was, and still is available online for free and I have no intention of taking it down because I don't want to lock this story behind a paywall, so I had to know WHY it would be worth it to buy the physical copy. In my case the answer is simple: I do really detailed pages with a bunch of details that just don't pick up on such a small jpeg on the screen, and that's not even my choice, it's a limitaiton of online webcomic hosting platforms. I also work in A4 page format so vertical scroll isn't the ideal format to view my comic, so all round it's better and nicer to read Petrichor on paper. Plus of course all the people who were interested but don't read on screens.
If you want to see what my crowdfunding page looked like, you can see it archived here as it was, the main difference being that the "buy stuff" buttons don't work anymore. It's in french but even if you don't speak it you can get the gist with the visuals.
I hope this helps!
I have a co-creator who created the story with me and designed some characters, but all af the practical work, writing, storyboarding, illustrating, editing, publishing and marketing, is done by me.
Creative partnership is a tricky thing.
Before jumping into one, ask yourself: why do you need a partner?
To share the load? Get a fresh perspective? Go further together than you could alone?
Cool.
But if you're expecting your partner to make all the decisions —
or cover the expenses you can’t afford yourself —
that’s not a partner. That’s a sponsor. Or a babysitter.
And those tend to burn out fast.
I’ve tried building partnerships many times — it just didn’t work.
Eventually, I chose a different path: working with a hired team, but building real synergy.
With people who made my project our project.
And that drives things forward way better than any “equal” partnership full of power struggles.
Really cool that you’re doing everything yourself — it shows how much heart and meaning you put into it.
Your story of healing through creativity is genuinely touching 
The comic is impressive: strong atmosphere, emotional style, and Lily is a powerful, layered character. You’re clearly giving it your all.
If you ever feel like checking out our stories and sharing feedback — we’d love to hear your thoughts!
https://www.instagram.com/joyfulnib1
Thanks so much for sharing your experience — super helpful and really resonates!
We're also publishing our comic online right now and went with short-strip format — it helps introduce the characters more easily and fits the rhythm of social media (especially Instagram and Threads). It's a good way to build recognition and engagement step by step.
What you said about having a fanbase is spot on. We're still building ours, trying to interact through the characters, adding memes and polls. We know it's too early for crowdfunding without an active community.
The personalized illustrations you did are such a great idea — definitely something to keep in mind! We're currently figuring out how to balance cool bonuses without burning out 
Totally agree that the print version should be something special. We want it to feel like an artifact from the universe — not just a copy.
Also, I followed you on Instagram!
And if you're curious to check out our project, here’s a link to our socials:
Would love to hear what you think!