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Rising Sun: charity anthology for Japan
I'm interested, but I'd like more details on what you envision. Would there be any overarching theme, or a collection of random short comics?
A little of both. Each comic would tell whatever story it wants, in whatever genre it wants; but has to take place in a specific era of Japanese history, or be otherwise ingrained with Japanese culture. Ideally I'd like it to be an anthology of Feudal Japan comics: samurai fiction, mythological tales, historical dramatizations, tragedies, etc. But I would accept World War II and other periods. I'm contributing a comic myself, inspired by a piece of ninja lore. The idea is to give back to the culture that has inspired and fascinated us (it has me, anyway, for many years: I have a library of books on the Feudal era).
I wouldn't start anything just yet, until I make an official announcement that the project is underway with enough artists behind it. For now, though, feel free to do sketches and such when you're not working on other things, just to think about what you'd want to contribute.
And do post here to keep the thread alive!
EDIT: Do keep in mind, however, that I'm not compiling every comic I get. I'm approaching the project as professionally as possible, so critiques and rejections will probably be involved. But I would be accepting all submissions, provided they aren't offensive or lazily done.
IndyPlanet got back to me! They say I would basically have to accept the profits like normal, and then just donate it all myself. So it's an extra step, but I guess it wouldn't be much hassle if I keep track of weekly or monthly sales and donate the exact amount like clockwork.
That's assuming the anthology sells any copies.
And that's assuming the anthology gets off the ground.
So far there's four of us on board, and I don't know how long my comic would be. I generally draw my comics until they're done. So even with only a handful of people we could still do it, if everyone did a lengthier piece or contributed more than one comic.
I'll let this stew a while longer and see if more people bite.
Right now I'm just pitching the idea to see who would be interested before I post guidelines and deadlines, the latter which I haven't decided on. I have guidelines written down but I haven't finished researching IndyPlanet's specs yet so they may change. Last I checked they take PDF's, so the page file format may not matter as long as it's something common and compressed.
I'm hoping for an anthology that totals at least 48 pages. I'll probably say 11 by 14 inch pages, black and white, in jpg format. Pages would have to be 300 dpi.
The specs for Ka-Blam (that then prints up orders for indyplanet) are
page size (including bleed) 7x10.5 inches, 300dpi, RGB files. They won't accept pdf, they have to be loose pages, and they have to be TIFF files.
You can find out more, here.
http://ka-blam.com/printing/index.php?page=Specs
They are very strict about these specs, they can't be different in any way or they'll charge you a setup fee
You might have been mistaking Ka-Blam with Comixpress… I believe they want pdf files. Ka-Blam are good people, and you can publish the book without actually buying any copies at all and just have it go directly to Indyplanet. They're also cheaper than anyone else for printed copies which, even if you're not buying copies for yourself, it means you can have a lower cover price for the book.
Well, Time Girls issue one goes to Ka-Blam next month.
If this anthology doesn't work out, we should still get a few artists together and do an anthology to be printed there. I used to draw a lot of stories for Antarctic Press and it's always fun seeing your work in print.
BTW, the artist who does House Of The Muses here on DD first published her work through Ka-Blam and Indyplanet, so she probably knows more about the specifics than I do
http://www.drunkduck.com/House_of_the_Muses_1/index.php
I would also like to encourage you to drop a line to skoolmunkee to get an annoucement out there.
It would encourage more people to visit the thread.
I also wish you luck on this. I'm afraid I lack the art skills necessary to really contribute.
If I were able to, I would probably do something Shinto-esque or maybe a light hearted story about the seven Kami that reside in each rice grain.
I also wish you luck on this. I'm afraid I lack the art skills necessary to really contribute.
You could always write something and pair up with an artist!
Also I sent skoolmonkey a message earlier today. Or yesterday. I forget when.
If the charity project goes nowhere we could still do something for fun on Ka-Blam maybe. I've been meaning to do the ninja comic for a long time (and others with the same cast) and this just seemed like a really good opportunity to get it done, and do it for a good cause too.
hey 1337: re artistry and time line, I feel your pain. But as long as we're allowing a couple of months (or more?), I don't think I need to campaign for an artist, altho this will definitely be a stretch for me.
One last format question: we should probably have a consistent layout among the contributors. Since this anthology is for Japan, and about that-which-is-Japanese, but maybe marketed mostly to Westerners (? if that's true) — would we have a left-to-right reading comic? or the Manga-style right-to-left?
The format will be left-to-right, if only to minimize the chances I'll confuse myself during the editing process. That'll be clarified in the submission guidelines.
So far it looks like we'd have four contributors (or five if one of the initial four draws for 1337). Here's what I'll do: I'll post the guidelines in the original post, and if I don't get enough content for an anthology, y'all can post your contributions wherever you like.
So now I need everyone who is definitely contributing to PM me. If you already know what you wanna do for your comic, go ahead and give me a brief description.
Only problem is I don't know what a good submission deadline would be. So for now I'm setting it for June 1st. I'll push it back if it becomes necessary.
Hey, I saw this post and thought I'd point you to http://togetherweheart.wordpress.com/. Feel free to look around and see how we did our charity project. You could make a wordpress blog about your project to keep everything more organized. There were a lot of good tools we were able to utilize, like stats and how easy it was to make a page and link new information. I don't how much of a difference there would really be from what we did to what you're doing, but for me it was pretty easy.
Also if you use eBay's "Giving Works" auction, they'll pay you back the insertion fees and then you can set a percentage of the money to go straight to the charity which offers a bit of assurance to those buying it.
I wish you good luck! Feel free to PQ me if you have questions about anything.
Well, I've been thinking about it. I think I'll just finish drawing it and then Mike can give either a Yay or Nay on it… I won't change it or redo anything… but really, isn't that being an easily offended prima donna? :-) It's actually 10 pages (that's as slim as I could get it) so it might be rejected on that alone.
It's actually a retelling of the feudal ghost story, 'Botan Doro', so I think it would fit in well, but I do have plans of drawing an entire anthology of these old folktale horror tales from Japan, so it's not time wasted…
A sample penciled page (man, they had big hair back then! And there was no cat girl loli in the original)
http://www.drunkduck.com/Time_Girls/gfx/botandoro-page2-pencils-sm.jpg
It's actually 10 pages (that's as slim as I could get it) so it might be rejected on that alone.
The comic can be as long as you want! I just included a page count to feel professional – changed it to just 1 page minimum. And the prima-donna warning is just my way of saying "don't be a douche". Ultimately I was hoping for a lot of people to take interest, but since it's basically just a small group project now, I'll accept anything.
The sample looks really good, mang. I've got ten pages of mine storyboarded out of probably 16-24 total. Picture Mission: Impossible in Feudal Japan.
BTW, this *is* black and white, right? You can't mix pages at Ka-Blam… if you have any color pages apart from the covers, you have to pay the price for a complete color book (which is about twice as much). For a 48 page B&W comic, with color covers (and inside covers) the price is just $2.76 (it's less if you place their ad on the back cover, $2.16 a copy, but it's usually hit-or-miss whether they'll choose to give you the ad and discount or not). So, a book with a cover price of $3.99 has potential to make a little money.
Everyone remember, you HAVE to work at 300dpi, 7x10.5 inch pages. You can't draw something at 72dpi (like in mspaint) and then scale it up. And Ka-Blam won't accept 72dpi artwork at all.
Mike, I'd suggest on the next anthology you do, request contributors to pay for a few copies (at cost, not cover price)… that way, everyone can get a few printed copies a lot cheaper than they could by buying them off Indyplanet. I'd suggest contributors should buy one book for every page they submit (so, a 10 page story would mean the contributor has to also purchase 10 books at cost).
There's room for a good manga anthology so you should look into continuing beyond this first one… after the first one they could simply be 'for profit' (not giving proceeds to Japan).
Another thing to think about to drum up more publicity, you could have a contest for cover art (and back cover, and inside covers, all of which are color).
I've thought about starting a manga anthology myself for a long time, so I'm full of ideas… or full of something :-)
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