Proof of Concept...Open Source Comics?

[OSComic]

I had this crazy idea last night and wanted some other comic lovers to weigh in on the idea...

What about creating a community of writers, cartoonists, comic book/graphic novel lovers, etc that joined together to create print quality comic books for the masses? The books that the community produced will then be licensed under either Creative Commons, GPL, LGPL, etc. We would then be able to offer downloadable copies of these books for a small donation. All the proceeds received from these donations would then be given back out to other projects, charities, and organizations that help our local and global communities.

The community would follow a basic democratic formula of free form suggestions, voted on by the community. This would include everything from individual book themes, the manner in which they are created, and the locations where their proceeds are donated.

Would this fly?

~matt

[Sir Tim Drake]

No it wouldn't. Who's going to pay the artists for their labor?

[Expletive Deleted]

Who's going to pay the artists for their labor?I'm not really current on the state of webcomics, but I don't think many of them make much (or any) money directly. It's all advertising, print collections of free-on-the-web material, merch, and so on.

It's not going to be a real popular business model and I can't imagine you'll get too many takers, but if some cartoonists are willing to put out their work for free with a Creative Commons license and hope for donations . . . hey, more power to 'em.

[Kees_L]

Well, if any pay or donations would be kept out of the equation, the problem to me would seem getting anything done in a fully democratic community-thing.
Maybe a divided-up, tight follow-up system could work?
Like if you could appoint a small team of writers for creating like 2 pages worth (like winners of a CBR-writing-thread, no more than 4 in total). They would post-wise create storyboard-type of stuff, for anyone to be commenting upon.
Maybe they'd base their stuff upon characters made especially for this purpose by one of the many CBR-artists? One getting appointed by means of poll? And do the same for the comic artists?

Maybe a construction like this could work. But some form of CBR-seniority would be of use, for decision-makin' and all. Maybe the pages or strip could be 'published' on the CBR main page, three, four or two times a year?

[J. Robb]

Reddit has an Open Source Comic website (http://opensourcecomic.com/). It's just getting started, though.

[mgs]

No it wouldn't. Who's going to pay the artists for their labor?

I'm not really current on the state of webcomics, but I don't think many of them make much (or any) money directly. It's all advertising, print collections of free-on-the-web material, merch, and so on.

It's not going to be a real popular business model and I can't imagine you'll get too many takers, but if some cartoonists are willing to put out their work for free with a Creative Commons license and hope for donations . . . hey, more power to 'em.
plus, with all the pictures and such, will the creators still be the owners of their material or will this new site try and claim them, etc.

AND, unless I'm wrong, doesn't all this require bandwith and disc space and such, and maintaining all that is certainly not free, so I doubt much, if any will be left for various charities and such..

Like any starting business, this needs a functional and structurally sound operating model before starting, otherwise, it will fail quickly.

[Tadhg]

plus, with all the pictures and such, will the creators still be the owners of their material or will this new site try and claim them, etc.


That's the easiest part of it all. Such an endeavor is perfect for Creative Commons licensing.

[Crowforge]

I don't know many talented people with not ideas of what they want to do with that talent.

[OSComic]

The web site is already setup and funded with unlimited bandwidth and storage...so those items won't be an issue...

The comics themselves would only carry over the rights granted by the artists so that the writers and artists would own the rights to their own work.

Donations would merely be an option...there would be no cost to view the web comic, but if we chose to make any print editions, or downloadable PDF/CBR/CBZ type versions, there could be a cost to the end user to cover print costs etc...all other donations would go toward a charity of choice of the writer/artist of each item

...and remember...this is just an idea...no one has sunk any money into this project other than myself...so if it fails, no big deal...

just thought it might be a fun endeavour

~matt

[Brandon Hanvey]

I'm not really current on the state of webcomics, but I don't think many of them make much (or any) money directly. It's all advertising, print collections of free-on-the-web material, merch, and so on.

Yeap. Ad-supported and merch-supported are the two big money making models for webcomics.



It's not going to be a real popular business model and I can't imagine you'll get too many takers, but if some cartoonists are willing to put out their work for free with a Creative Commons license and hope for donations . . . hey, more power to 'em.

Some already do such as http://xkcd.com/