On November 20th, the online cartoonist Blue published an essay on the light blog platform note entitled “The Survival Strategy of Animated Cartoonist Not Selled”.
Blue started from the online comic magazine “GANMA!” in 2013 with the idol house theme comic “Million Doll”. The manga was once released through Earth Star Entertainment and was adapted into a 5-minute TV animation.
However, the animation has become a marketing blog because of the so-called “painting collapse”. At that time, although the number of issuances was large, it did not achieve the expected sales volume of the publisher.
Blue Although she can’t sell her own book, she is not capable enough, but during that time, she really experienced a lot of things. As a writer, she can’t handle it.
Blue said that at that time, the people behind the stage were shirking their responsibilities, and they were traumatized and unable to believe others. However, she also added that there are also relevant people who have been helping her since then. These people silently support the blue, want to re-publish the comics that are not included in the single-line book, or do a second expansion.
However, Blue and “Million Doll” have been labeled as “a work that once had an accident” and “a writer who could not sell it.” She wants to publish a book, even harder than a newcomer.
Despite this, these people still do not give up on her, have been cheering for her, running around, looking for new opportunities.
Although the experience made “Million Doll” swayed and unable to continue, Blue also deeply felt the existence of the adults who thought about her works. Even the animations that were identified as “failed” have created many excellent songs, and they have performed in the event until now.
It is also said that they liked the work of “Million Doll” because of animation. Lan believes that he can no longer negate the past and pose a victim’s posture.
This year, she started serializing “Million Doll citybeat”, a sequel to “Million Doll” on the “Manga Library Z” website. Because it is a personally published work, she will not get a contribution fee from it, but will share the profit through the advertising fee of “Manga Library Z”.
(https://www.mangaz.com/book/detail/160701).
The result of this challenge is not ideal. She has to face many problems she has never seen before: she doesn’t have the imaginary browsing environment; she can’t see the comics’ faults with her mobile phone; she has a hard-to-grow share of revenue… she even wonders if her strategy is wrong. It was not until she took everything, she realized how important the publishing house was.
Although “selling out” is hard to go to the sky, she hopes to inject the vitality of “Million Doll” once again, accept the past and strive to move forward.
As a part of the challenge, she also launched a new edition of “Million Doll” in the form of a doujinshi, which was announced by the original peer exchange COMITIA and online store service Booth.
(https://note.mu/isandenki726/n/n04694e381633).
Network Media Fami Nico Gamer introduces another story of a cartoonist who can’t live with his own comics.
This cartoonist is called Jupiter. He was originally in the same person, but his work “Mechanical Naina” was seen by the publisher. He spent a year talking to the publisher, including the correction, and drew a 600-page split. However, the work was not published at the end.
He felt wasted and made this work freely available on the Internet. Instead, he got a comic book submission website and published a three-volume one-page book.
(http://mokusei2.blog46.fc2.com/).
In order to promote his own comics, Jupiter has taken a new attempt at living: developing games.
He formed a three-person team and developed a horizontal version of the beautiful girl zombie action game called Dead or School. In addition to Jupiter, who was originally a freelancer, the other two members resigned to participate in the development, supplementing living expenses and development costs through part-time work.
To compensate for the development costs, Jupiter did not know why, and thought of opening a bar at the Tokyo Plateau Temple. It took him a year to finish the renovation of the “Bar365” by painting 3 tons of concrete.
Even with the income of the bar, it still can’t meet the goal of developing games. He started crowdfunding on two platforms and raised development costs.
Under all efforts, game development has finally been carried out. In July of this year, “Dead or School” began to experience the Steam platform. The turnover on the day of the line reached 1 million yen, and about 10,000 copies were sold in one week.
The Steam “Black Five” promotion, the national service is currently only 40 yuan.
(https://store.steampowered.com/app/789760/Dead_or_School/).
In the interview with Fami Nico Gamer, Jupiter is living in frankness. Although “Mechanical Naina” has already produced three volumes of singles, but with his strength, there is no way to earn enough to earn a living income by comics. He didn’t want to give up creating comics, so he came up with this solution:
Free public comics, people who like it can read it. For readers who like to read this work after reading, there is also a game based on this work, I hope everyone buys this game.
That is, he advertises free-to-read comics, creates their own fans, and lets them buy games to support themselves.
Jupiter explained that when selling a comic book, a single book can only bring him 60 yen (about RMB 3.68). But for an independent game, selling a game of 1,500 yen (about 91.91 yuan), his team can get 1200 (about 73.53 yuan) yen.
Entity books that are circulated through general channels, need to use a lot of manpower and resources of many companies, and digital games that only need to be distributed to Steam in proportion, the unit price is such a big difference.
And the reason is to open a bar, the same is true. He originally wanted to earn the development funds for the game through the bar, but now he will read 30,000 to 50,000 people in a comic book, and several of them will think, “I want to see this reader and go to his store. Look at it, become his customer.
So, comics have also become advertisements for bars.
In addition, opening a bar has another meaning: whether it is painting a comic book or an independent game, because he does not work in a company, the people who deal with it are very limited. Because he is now playing in a team of 3 people, so to be extreme, it is very likely that only three people will be seen in a year.
Because there are too few people to contact, their personal relationships and experience may be biased. This gave Jupiter a sense of crisis in living. By running a bar, he only needs to work in the bar once or twice a week, and he can talk to dozens of people. He wants to create an environment where he can grow as a human being.
Jupiter still lives and says that his next goal is to make a movie.
According to Jupiter’s goal of living, they will make three new games at the rhythm of the year. The total benefit is expected to reach 200 million yen (about 12.25 million yuan). He will put the money into the film and release it in 2024.
(http://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/interview/181121a)