Getting Off the Ground (Artists/Collaborators Wanted)

[hustlertwo]

Hello all. I have been on the forums for some time, and while I did post in the Webcomics thread to pimp my own back when it existed, I haven't really done anything on this board before. But it seemed as good a place as any to start my search for collaborators. I wrote a couple children's books some time back, as part of an enterprise with my friend and longtime art collaborator where we would be working with the app company he worked at to put them out on the Apple store and whatnot. I would write, he would doodle, they played with bits and bytes to get it out there. Everyone would get a piece of the pie. Company folded, so nothing came of it. I still have the script for the two books with art notes, as well as some other concepts I had worked on that range from half-baked (intended to write up a Battlebots game back when the show had been off the air for years, figured the license could be purchased for a song. CBS revived it a couple years later, so nuts to that, unless it was done in a more generic fashion), to more fully baked (thousands of words of scripts, story chunks and one-liners for the novel and video game adaptations of my old webcomic, a sci-fi comedy bit called Nuclear Powered Toaster), to completely raw and unleavened. I'm looking to galvanize my income a little with our second child soon to be born (Emma is 2 and a half and lovably crazy, and this one we just found out will be Ava), and was specifically looking for any artists who want to talk about potential projects. I'm under no illusions of quitting my job or anything like that, but every little bit helps. If you're interested or want more information, just respond here or PM me.

[Artman77]

I can art, totally want to quit my job, and might be convinced to collaborate with someone if they have a good idea. Do you think any of your ideas would have concrete money making capabilities? I'm on a time crunch, so the work-to-payoff ratio might be a deciding factor...

[hustlertwo]

If you mean making a fortune, then I don't know. If you mean making some nice extra money, then I believe so. And hopefully we can build on small initial success to make it something bigger. I can't promise you can ever quit your job. But the likely achievable goal would be just to generate some additional revenue, help with something you're saving up for or just have mad money to blow on whatever. As for time to payoff, the nice thing about writing and illustrating books is that it's not deadline-centric. I do miss webcomicry sometimes, but the deadlines were what always ended up beating down my artists. Heck, even the overlord of our forums eventually succumbed and just updates whenever he feels like now. With this, the timeframe would be up to you. If you can illustrate one in a week, great. If it takes a month, or two, or three, there's no rush. Might be in the future if it takes off, but we should be so lucky as to have that problem, right? So you can fit it in whenever you have some free time.

[Artman77]

A webcomic seems more like a hobby than a job to me. The market is getting saturated, competition is fierce, and the ones that make money are few and far between. Unless you know of a site that will pay you upfront for submitting your comic?

[hustlertwo]

Oh yeah, it was a busy field even back when I did it from 2006-2010, and given that I never had an artist who stuck to regular updates for very long, we did pretty good. Had some merch, spoke at some conventions, did guest strips for some big comics, 'presented' a Web Cartoonists' Choice Award, had a top 10 streak on a webcomic battle website, ended up in the special features on the Snakes on a a Plane DVD...but never more than a few hundred dollars in total earnings. Much as I enjoyed it I don't intend to go back; my goal now is extra income for the family, and webcomics don't make much of nothin' for 99.9% of those in the industry. And from what I've seen, the people who do make a living with it, it's still a hard row to hoe. Traveling from con to con shilling overpriced T-shirts and signing autographs to stay relevant.

And no, no one pays upfront for comics that I know of. And very, very few comics have ever had success with charging people for their comic content directly.

So, you interested in looking further at illustrating one of my children's books, Artman? If so, PM me and we can go from there.