1412 Log Pose.

Carol seems to have inherited some of my pun making skills. XD

I made one of my typical off handed puns the other day on twitter and instead of just begrudging laughs and groans I got messages that people actually wanted to read the story.

I want to write a comic about a pregnant knight on a quest to kill the one who killed the baby’s father, called Bump In The Knight.

When I say junk like that I often do actually have story ideas, but I know I don’t have time to actually make them happen. I can barely draw the stuff I have to draw just to keep the comic going. It occurred to me, however, that I could pay someone to work for me on this. So what I want to know is what is it going to take to pay someone to draw this? Let’s just say it’s a standard comic format 23 or so pages for the first issue. What is the standard per page payment for an artist and what are you actually willing to be paid for something that may come to nothing?

I’m willing to entertain any art style, but I like manga. Clean, black and white. It needs to be digital, or of a high enough quality that it could be digitally colored later if one would choose so to do. In my mind I’d like something along the lines of Vinland Saga, but would tolerate something like Attack On Titan, even though I think the style is sloppy and a bit shit. Like I said though, I’m willing to entertain any style that could tell the story.

The story would be relatively serious but there will be some humor, as in life there is humor even in the face of the abhorrent. Basic idea: After her husband to be is killed the woman sets out for revenge in spite of her pregnancy. She eventually meets a younger boy who convinces her to let him be her squire. They then hunt the assassin together while trying to find out why he was hired at all.

Anyone who wants to take up this job would need to be capable of drawing convincing fights with various types of weapons. Also scenery, interior and exterior backgrounds, ect. If no one appears who can accomplish this task we can all just forget about it and chalk it up to dreaming bigger than we can achieve.

Once I have an idea of what this will cost maybe I’ll do a kickstarter, or something.

I’m going to answer these questions in the blog instead of hiding them in the comments.

1. You mentioned “issues”; is this going to be published solely on paper, or will it be posted to the web, with each “issue” being a single storyline of set length? The latter, but a print option is not off the table

Do you have a ballpark idea of how many issues you want to do, and how frequently you want to release those issues? (A bi-monthly published comic? A weekly comic on the web?) Anything else we should know about deadlines? No, I just wanted to see if there was enough interest to try anything at all. If it does happen I would expect a relatively fast turn around.

2. How much of the comic’s focus do you expect to be on action? Character development? Humor? If you could compare the tone of this comic to another webcomic, tv show, or movie, what would be the closest, to give a rough idea? (I hope you don’t cut back on the humor too much with such a delightfully punny name for a title!) I put examples in the original post. Typical manga style seriousness and drama with comedy mixed in as seems appropriate.

3. How much blood/gore in these action scenes on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being “Disney Movie”, 10 being “Game of Thrones”)? 11

4. How historically accurate do you want this? Ren Faire accurate or by-the-history-book? If it’s the former, will there be magic in this universe? Historical accuracy is not important. The world will function basically by RPG rules.

5. Do you have an idea of how you want your characters to look, in terms of age, hair color, height, etc.? Not at this point. Only nebulous ideas.

6. Are you looking to hire only one artist, or will you divide up duties between more than one artist (A penciler and an inker, or a background artist and a character artist)? If they come as a well functioning team I’ll hire as many as it takes, if the money is there to make it work.

7. Will the artist(s) also do work for banner ads or merchandise? There will be no merch. Any advertising will likely come from the already produced work, but if more is needed I would go to the artist.

8. What’s the best way to contact you if we’re interested? E-mail? Twitter? This forum?
The site’s email betweenfailures (at) Hotmail (dot) com