Whenever I've had the time to spare the past few years I've been working on a project for a comic idea that essentially came from a bunch of more scattered ideas I've had throughout my life that all started to click together some time after Homestuck ended. I got together with some friends and we ended up shelling out a lot of money for concept art commissions over a span of about two or so years, but I think I'd like to go from conceptualisation to actualisation soon to create that all important buffer of updates.
Very early on, it was decided that this would not be done in the style of traditional western or eastern comics but would instead be; like Homestuck, something made to be read on the internet. I.E, a single panel per page format, periodic or even frequent usage of gifs, occasional usage of animations/music/interactive files, and dropping the speech bubble in favour of below panel text. And in a similar vein, I decided that the art style for most panels should be simple, stylised, and quick to do.
The art is meant to be distinctive of course, but when it comes to internet comics getting your stuff out fast is king, and I think that in order to get this comic project done in the ten year or so plan I have; I'd need an average of about 5 panels (not traditional nine panel comic pages, just panels) per day. If I went for a more text heavy illustrated novel approach, I could probably shave that requirement down, but it'd still require an art style that can be done quickly. As such, the art style is probably going to lean much more to the scott pilgrim end of the scale than anything else, and I'm expecting to make fairly substantial usage of sprites or perhaps even go all in with pixel art.
Now that I'm done with my semester at university I have a lot of time to dedicate purely to the project and would like to make the best possible usage of the four or so months I have to myself before I have any other commitments of significance.
Below is some background on the project. Feel free to overlook it if you're not interested.
While admittedly the concept is somewhat similar (kids, rather abstract elemental powers, the multiverse, and things kids should not be expected to handle) at the surface level, I'm neither intending to just be Hussie 2.0 nor am I keen on following the exact same beats. The internet and the world itself is hugely different from what it was in the 13th of April 2009. Ads and merchandise now coexist with or are sometimes outright overshadowed by Patreon and subreddits have very often displaced the traditional forum that served as the home of the communities of many older comics like Order of the Stick and Homestuck.
The general tone of things is more cynical, more untrusting of those in power and dissatisfaction with the way things are is widespread and rather recently we've been told that barring a miracle the planet itself isn't going to be an awesome place to live in in a few decades time.
Kind of like how the worldview present when Warhammer 40,000 first found its feet was very different from what Star Wars was born in; or the difference between what was going on when Metal music started to get big versus when Rock became a thing.
Instead of a story about the beginning as told through a somewhat RPGish framing of a creation myth featuring four kids playing a game of destiny; it's a story about the end as told through the experiences of a bunch of kids being thrust into fate's arm as the proverbial Fimbulwinter begins to give way to Ragnarok.
Here are good places to start getting read up on it:
https://imgur.com/a/FaRC2
https://pastebin.com/QhhUN8cE
Below is more business oriented stuff for those who might be interested.
I make no secrets about this being a work sympathetic to revolutionary leftism of the LeftCom variety (Stalinists sod off), while I'm not in the business of completely spelling it out in the text as I feel that themes like that are best discussed in a subtle manner that respects the reader's ability to figure things out; I feel it would be unfair to not discuss this with any potential partners. Anyone working with me on this would probably be working with me for quite a long time, and I think I have to be open about things like that.
I will also not lie and say I'm some mega-wealthy millionaire. However I believe in giving people their due. Anyone who accepts the project will be compensated to the best of my ability. We can discuss things like advance payments, regular payments, per panel payments, taking in a percentage of the ad revenue and patreon payout or some combination of the above; and for starting out I'm fine with sticking to advance payment until we're steadier on our feet. (I quite frankly don't even want the majority of revenue as I believe that in a visual work like this, my role is secondary to the artist. Without the artist it would be nothing but a script gathering dust.) And I will try to scrounge up what I can out of what resources I am able to access. If money problems come up, I'll try to ensure you get paid even if I have to start eating nothing but pasta for a week.
It's also worth noting that I'm probably going to need to work with more than one artist over the course of the project. While I think just one should be able to suffice over the course of the earlier acts, later on I think it would be fair to have other people on board in case the artist has personal issues, wants to take a break, or is inaccessible. I'm not going to ask you to work 24/7. And of course, given that this is definitely going to involve animation, having more than one person to help out would probably be for the best. Or perhaps having one person to do things like backgrounds and another doing character work. I'm flexible with arrangements like that.
If you're more interested in being a co-writer, coder/web-designer, or musician I'm also in the market for that sort of talent. Just another set of eyes or a sounding board willing to hear me blather on at length or help me stay focused on the project via feedback would be highly appreciated. Hell I'll even take "ideas guys".
We do need to figure out a singular art style though. As you might have guessed from the concept art we're not exactly sure on what that art style ought to be and I've heard plenty of ideas for it from friends. The concept art looks the way it does because the people I have scrounging around the internet for concept art just make the commissions in the artist's preferred style and fish around the internet for whichever artists are available and not overly expensive.
My requirements for artists though is this: Able to draw children as children, able to draw armour and mechanical objects, able to draw skeletons and mild gore (the body count of this story is going to be pretty high, limbs will be lost, heads will splatter, torsos shall be flung), able to draw characters fighting, able to draw nonhumanoids and monsters, and/or able to draw surrealistic/fantastical environments. That being said I recognise that the visual arts are broken up into specialities, which lead to my conclusion that I'll need more than one artist in all likelihood.
The large number of action scenes planned with large numbers of characters also convinced me that a sprite or keyframe based art style that allows for asset re-usage with some more traditionally drawn panels for certain scenes would be the most efficient. Something taken from Homestuck. And when I say animation I don't mean super fluid disney stuff, or long sprawling movies. It's in all likelihood going to be mostly animatics and limited animation sprite work unless/until I somehow get lucky enough to go a bit farther budget wise in which case it's...still mostly going to be sprite work but it'd be more high octane sprite work like you see on youtube channels that have sprite characters fighting to the death.
I've done long term and ambitious writing projects before, though it's mostly fanfiction or roleplay stuff I'd never be able to put on a resume. So long as I have enough feedback I'm able to continue on a project more or less indefinitely. In my years of prose writing I've found that I don't really burn out, rather I stop projects when people stop talking about them. So I'm fairly confident that I can keep this going for the required decade or so without suffering major hiatuses. I've kept role plays I felt much less strongly about and when I had far less time to spare with multiple updates a day going for more than two years before. So I think I'm up for the challenge. Balancing massive character casts is also something that's an old hat for me.
I also have access to a few social media influencers of note whose viewerbases overlap rather strongly with my intended demographic who'd be willing to namedrop the work to build an immediate reader base and already have some interest built among a good number of people from several fandoms. It's not quite already having a readership more than a hundred thousand strong like Hussie had from Problem Sleuth going into Homestuck, but I can definitely nab a decent readership immediately. To quote a colleague "you've already grown a symbiont in the Homestuck and Undertale fandoms and in Left!Twitter."