Namara: The Comic
My nerd roots run deep; like REALLY deep. I had a folder at my local comic shop that I would come and get new issues of every month, and I’m old enough to remember when it wasn’t really possible to buy manga anywhere by online. (Oh yeah - I remember when Strangers in Paradise ended).
When a friend of mine challenged me to make something (instead of being this guy), I decided to literally put my money where my mouth was and hunt down an artist and hire them to help me create the Namara story - in comic form.
I used an old freelancing network that I have relied on over the years (Upwork), and found someone that was not only interested in my story, but is AMAZINGLY talented. We’re about 6 pages in and I feel like the energy is amazing. To be fair, my artist is extremely professional and very intuitive. I genuinely and very honestly appriciate how talented he is and how professional and knowledgeable he’s been the entire process.
For anyone that’s interested in something like this, the process has been pretty straight forward. I provided him a script, and we work page for page. It helps that I have an hours worth of ‘sample footage’ to give him an idea or to explain a concept and (hopefully) make it easier to give him ideas on what to draw when he gets to that part in the story.
As for money, the costs came down to a ‘per page’ deal. My eventual goal is to create traditional comics for print of the story (that I hope to be able to release in addition to the machinima episodes that come out). For something like what he’s giving me (detailed black and white drawings with words and ‘inked out’ with shadows and definition), you should expect to pay somewhere between $60 - $100 USD per page. That means for a standard comic of about 25 - 30 pages (standard comic, not a huge manga), and will cost somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000 to create digitally.
I haven’t decided if I’m going to do a ‘run’ with color - my mother is an artist, and I thought about sending her a copy of all of the pages and letting her ‘play’ with her painting abilities - just to see how it wouuld turn out. I’ve got plenty of time to figure that out.
He’s pretty light sought after right now, so I’m lucky to be in a position where he can produce 5 pages a month. That means that the creation of the comic is slow, but as you can see from his work below, every second I have to wait is worth it. As we’re only about 6 pages in, I don’t want to start posting pages ‘web comic style’ just yet. That is something we will do as we have more of the story written drawn out. For now, I hope you enjoy this little sneak peek.
I love how he draws Romy - she’s so beautiful. :)
