Afro space opera comic

So I've come here before to talk about this book, but I'd like to make it a bit more fun every time I come here.

So the gist of it is that i'm launching a digital space opera comic for 1$ starting next month. It's about a duo of young cousins who survive by accomplishing all kinds of missions for all kinds of clients, even the shadiest of them. You can find more info here :
juniba.wixsite.com/juniba/kayin-and-abeni

I will post some art, answer questions etc, but I'd also like to invite you anons to tell me about your current comic/cartoon projects, and see where they're going, or if you abandonned them, why.

Other urls found in this thread:

gumroad.com/l/WfLmL
juniba.wixsite.com/juniba/the-unlikely-story-of-felix-macabbe
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

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I really like the look of it. Especially the way you mix different influences.

gumroad.com/l/WfLmL

I actually have a book for sale up on gumroad. It's pay-what-you-want (including zero dollars). Check it out if you're interested. (I'm the writer, not the artist)

Issue 2 should be done within a couple of weeks, we're just finalizing the cover.

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This actually looks really fucking cool. I can sense some capullo in there. Whats it about? I'll give it a look later today.

>shilling
>like 100% shilling
>however the comic looks very good

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I'm trying to get other people to shill their stuff too, so I don't feel too guilty...

>Whats it about?
Its about a Greek warrior that, out of excessive pride and vanity, falls in with a destructive God of War, and his attempts to keep his sanity and his vanity both intact while forced o do the god's bidding.

Very much a blood pumping pulp story.

Matej's pretty heavily influenced by guys like Kev Walker, Mike Mignola and the guys from the old Warhammer/Games Workshop art studios. I'm sure Capullo is an influence in there too. I kind of forced him to look at a lot of Osprey and specifically Angus McBride art for this specific project as reference material. It's a fantasy book, but we both wanted to ground it in (mostly) realistic designs (though we cherry pick from every Greek era).

I wish people would shill this much quality more on this board.

Kinda sounds like a more controlled God of War with very kinetic art. I can dig it.

Well not God of War really, Kratos didnt give a fuck. SOunds more like a Hercules story. Which I love.

this. Yeah it's shilling, but goddamn this art. It's amazing. Loving the Mignola tinge over it all. Better than 95% Big Two (or even three) comics.

Were you to turn this into a webcomic and open a patreon, with some luck and the right marketing you'd make a lot of dosh.

We're definitely going for that 'classic Greek hero' thing. Not necessarily a good guy, just capable of extraordinary acts.

Its funny that a bunch of people think God of War when I pitch it to them, but its really not. I've never actually played a God of War game.

It draws as much from the kind of black and white sword and sandal pulp era of comics as any kind of history book though, from 'Savage Sword of Conan' and stuff like that. The comic is kept in black and white as a deliberate homage to that period of comics.

Have some concept art of some of the cast.

It looks fucking sick mate, I can't hate you for it. The guys behind K6BD and Strip Panel Naked did the same thing here too.

I hope this takes off for you in a big way. It deserves to. I like all of what you've posted but I think that top panel is my fave. I have to echo just in the two covers you've thrown up there's so much going on but it's been made your own thing overall. Basically, I think it looks great.

Bought this too and I'll give it a read.

looks fantastic so far OP

>Bought this too and I'll give it a read.
Cheers

That's very nice guys. Much appreciated. I must say I'm very happy with the recent reactions.

>tfw your favorite artists manifest interest on twitter to tell you how cool they think your stuff is

It's like a dream.

I saw that, you're blowing up pretty fast. Its not surprising since you've got some pretty great art.

Ashley Cope used to post on /tg/

>Strip Panel Naked
I remember that. I ended up contacting Hass and now we're working together on a monster comic.

juniba.wixsite.com/juniba/the-unlikely-story-of-felix-macabbe

I feel you. I sometimes hear people say I took this or that from an artist and I'm like "who?"

Anyway, your book looks too far from GoW to be even called a rip off or even similar, so you have no worries to have.

His art is so fucking good, holy shit. Where di you find him?

I still say you should consider Patreon/webcomics as a business model if this ends up not working out. Seems, to me, the most reliable. Used by a lot of other webcomics, too.

But you've probably thought about that a lot more than I have. Best of luck mate.

Yeah, I was going for a simple gumroad thing. Maybe Amazon and comixology too.

The thing was supposed to be a simple fun comic I make to git gud and train, and have fun.

Then for some reason people started sharing it and asking for prints and such. A patreon page seems very much possible now.

>Where di you find him?
Tumblr. My girlfriend scouted him a couple years back when I decided to get serious about making comics. I shot him a message, we talked shop, and started making shorts together. This is mutually our first project bigger than a ten page story.

I really want him to jump on twitter or something so more people can see his stuff.

Pic is the first page of #2

Do it, maximize your income. Comics is a rough game, get cash where you can.

Ha, clearly you think too little of yourself.

Thanks for linking this too. I ended up not liking Panel x Panel too much but I'm into this.

And concept art of the 'bad guys'.

Not that there's really villains so much as heroic figures getting in each other's way.

This guy is making me hate myself for not having a more detailed and realistic art style.

Tell him to go on twitter. It is indeed super awesome. I know it has a reputation of being full of drama and bullshit, but if you don't follow the wrong people you're mostly safe.

My main argument though, is that in less than a week I got noticed by Ronald Wimberly, Tonci Zonjic, Brandon Graham followed me and Jordie Bellaire boosted my post by sharing it.

Shit is cash.

Carmaron vaguely looks like me...

I was kinda overwhelmed by the OP but this was way better than I was expected; I really enjoyed it. Thank you for sharing.

>not liking Panel x Panel too much
What didn't you like about it?

I think you're coming along at the perfect time too, what with stuff like Black Panther and the afro-futurism scene starting to get big.

The name's actually misspelled, it's Carmanor. I wanted to put in a Memnon figure somewhere, the Ethiopian demi-god from the Iliad, who fought for the Trojans.

Because I'm the writer and have too much time on my hands, the backstory for even the most minor characters and where they come from is stupidly fleshed out.

Cheers.

>I think you're coming along at the perfect time too, what with stuff like Black Panther and the afro-futurism scene starting to get big.
I thought so as well. The Panther movie should help make it more "hip" to like this type of stuff.

Aw I don't want to be too negative, it just wasn't really what I expected.

>The name's actually misspelled, it's Carmanor. I wanted to put in a Memnon figure somewhere, the Ethiopian demi-god from the Iliad, who fought for the Trojans.
I feel like I can see the Osprey influence in that armor design. Are you intentionally going to mirror certain Greek heroes? The big guy seems more Lesser Ajax/Hercules than Greater Ajax.

I feel like, to compliment you as the writer, you almost immediately nailed the dichotomy of Ancient Greek attitudes to war (and really, almost every culture that's ennobled war). Which is pretty interesting! It's, you know, I don't feel this story is going anywhere happy but I'm down to see where it is going.

I've been looking into where else to promote this book, but I have no new ideas. Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter are already covered. I can't into Reddit.

>Are you intentionally going to mirror certain Greek heroes?
Only broad strokes. I don't want to be too derivative.

>The big guy seems more Lesser Ajax/Hercules than Greater Ajax.
That was the intention, though with a lot of Sea Peoples raider mixed in.

There's not a lot of places left for indie creators to spruik their work. Most of the good comic forums shut down, so we're left with cesspools like CBR.

I never used CBR's forum. I don't visit the site much. Too much clickbait. How is the forum?

>How is the forum?
Awful, don't go near it.

Oh. Welp.

Bump. I'll be looking forward to seeing this next month.

I can't wait for people to see it too. Kind fo scared in fact.

Nothing wrong with an individual shilling their own work, especially when it comes to indie stuff since its heavily reliant on word of mouth. It only becomes a problem when it's done by the bigger corporations.

Isn'tthat a double standard? Not that I'm complaining.

Not really. An indie creator depends on getting people to know their work, most don't have the financial backing to do much else. Not to mention it's usually a more personal thing where the creator is the one initiating the discussion and interacts with other people as this thread demonstrates.

Shilling on the other hand is when some 3rd party is paid by a company to promote a product they don't really care about. They usually try to disguise themselves as just a normal user for whatever platform they're using.

True true. Well as long as Sup Forums lets me continue doing those, I shall.

Hey OP,do you have any fav comic book artist or writer?

Oh dear.
Wes Craig, Mignola, Jack Kirby, Yoann Vehlmann, Franquin, Hiromu Arakawa, Ronald Wimberly, Jaimie Hewlett, Ghostshrimp, Chris Bachalo, Bruce Timm, Alex Alice, Enrique Fernandez, Don Rosa, Jakub Rebelka, Ashley Wood, Chris Samnee, Jordie Bellaire, Darwyn Cooke...
And many more !

It might be intrusive, but if people you admire in the industry are following your work why not ask them for advice?

Precisely because I don't want to be intrusive and bother them. it's not a bad idea though.

Ashley Cope is literally living to publish the one story she really wants to tell. Highest level of respect to her as a creator.

Fair enough. I guess I'm thinking, if Ron Wimberly asks if you have a publisher and retweets your stuff to a couple of them, saying "Hey I'm a young guy this took off more than I thought I don't know where to go with this, any advice?" probably isn't going to go that badly.

At the same time I 1000% get that if senpai notices you you don't wanna be like HEY HELP ME OUT and be irritating or fuck that up.

Exactly.

I will probably try that at some point if I have absolutely no ideas. At this point though I'm already getting way more than i expected so I'm not starving for exposure yet. The first issue isn't even out !

This was meant as a "put your toe in the water" type of endeavour, I don't want to end up pushing it just because my role models took notice. Gotta keep myself in check.

Sorry for the stupid question, but is this digital only or are you planning on printing it?

It was going to be digital only, plus a print version of the story in a magazine curating african comics, called Kugali, for which I already did two covers.

But looking at the reception of the art, if this keeps on going I'll eventually look into financing a paper version.

>paper version

sign me up

Well I invite to follow the link and sign up ! Your email will be included in the newsletter.

bump

Sup Forums seems slow tonight. Shameless bump, and asking you guys what y'all doing.

pretty badly tbqh

cool stuff OP really interested in your content but my question is

how does one plan in writing a comic book? or rather how's the developing stage for something like this?

i bought bendis' how to write comic book and it was pretty interesting read.

Originally the concept came from someone else, but he decided to be hand's off on this. He still brings ideas and such for some stories.

So he wrote the first story, and I put some corrections to it to fit the format because there was a lot going on.

Starting with issue 2 though, it'll be all me. What I do is I often start with an idea. A theme, a type of layout, a design, anything that sparks a desire to work. because ultimately that's what matters : the desire to work.

Now depending on what the original thought was, I always then try to figure out a story tto go along with it. For example I wrote the second story based on the phrase "you're not a man until your father dies" which echoes a lot of my personal experience as a young boy in an african country. Always in the shadow of my father, to the point of not being called by my first name. Always the name of the father instead.

The trick is the story has to work, it has to be interesting and convey something, and not just be an excuse to do something you wanted to do. Hopefully I succeeded. I had a few people read my (very loose) scripts and they like the stories so far. i have around 6 already planned. Each to focus on the main characters, and also play with the universe they're in. See new creatures, see new places.

My own scripts are very loose. Almost always panel by panel and written like greentext, because I'm the only one meant to read them and use them. They're just a written reminder while my brain imagines the panels and does the early story boards.
Then I move to my tablet to draw the actual story boards, switch stuff aorund until I'm satisfied. Then paper and ink, then back to computer to color.

Whats up?