New Project Announcement! (Patreon)

Alright, it's time for the SECOND big project announcement for the year. 

I'm so thrilled to announce that I'm going to start developing a new webcomic! I've been rolling the ideas around in my head for about two years now and I think I finally have enough pieces of the puzzle together that I can communicate it to someone else.

So, INTRODUCING............

Skuttleboat Cove: A Solarpunk Crone Romance

It's a comedy!

It's solarpunk!

Maybe it'll be a graphic novel someday!

It'll be like if Ranma 1/2 took place in the world of that fucking Yogurt commercial! 

A Webcomic!

Yeah! I'm excited!!! All I want to do in life is make the best damn comics I can.  I still haven't figured out its posting schedule but it will probably release in scenes or chapters. It will definitely have its own dedicated site and be crossposted elsewhere. It'll be designed to be book-first rather than phone-first a-la-webtoon. But most of all I want it to be FUNNY. 

I've been itching to get back to comedy and I think I finally feel ready to tell a joke again. I'm really excited to do comedy in a fictional world this time!! 

What in the world is a "Crone Romance"

So our "introductory*" character, Aspen, is going to be an older nonbinary person who is desperate to fall in love after a complicated life. This is really important to me!! There is very little media featuring older protagonists, ESPECIALLY non-men. Even fewer of those feature romance as a primary element. Howl's Moving Castle comes close to the vibe but it is actually about a young woman CURSED to be old and she only gets the guy when they become young again. The whole point of solarpunk is "optimistic future" and I feel strongly that "optimistic old age" fits well in that idea.

And honestly "a peaceful retirement" feels like the most radical thing I can imagine at this juncture.

Thinking about a solarpunk future can get complicated and detail-heavy and I wanted to bring the focus back into something very relateable and human. What's more human than a rom-com!!! 

I think of them as a "crone" because that word has connotations I'd rather explore/reclaim than "curmudgeon", and I don't know if there is yet a gender neutral term for the concept of a weird/cranky old person who lives alone.  I imagine them being in their mid-60s to which I can immediately hear people saying "60s isn't crone???" but it feels older than "spinster" and that's the life-stage I'm aiming for. It'll take place in about the mid-to-late 2040s.

*I use the term "Introductory" character because I want Skuttleboat Cove to employ a broad, diverse "ensemble" cast. Aspen's just the first hook character I've figured out, and their perspective and journey will weave throughout the work, even if they aren't always the focus.

Solarpunk.lol

I have SO much I want to explore and flesh-out on the way to creating a solarpunk comic. I also desperately want more solarpunk works to exist as soon as possible. 

I've come to realize that I tend to write in a very "bottom up" way. I write a ton of extraneous detail about my world that must necessarily be stripped out and pushed to background nuance for it to make any sense at all to the casual reader. There's no getting around this weird step - it's just the way I am. 

So I'm open-sourcing my research. I've created this (barebones) website where I will collect and organize all my solarpunk-related research and aesthetics building, and I will release it as a creative commons reference for ANYONE to use as a jumping-off point in their own fictional works. I will be adding pages to this site bit by bit (and sharing them here so you know!) and letting this website be a living-document for what solarpunk can be.

Goal for 2023: Create a "Pitch Deck" and Chapter 1 Thumbs.

What's a "pitch deck"?

In TV-land they often call this a "pitch bible/story bible". It's especially common to use for animated shows. But I don't want to call it a "Bible" so instead I'm using the term we use in tech-startup world. A Pitch Deck is the powerpoint you use to try and get investors to throw money at you.

A "pitch deck" is intended to quickly communicate the tone and hook of the story to potential buyers, with enough detail and structure to allow a full show to be developed from it if it's picked up. 

I don't intend to pitch it anywhere, Skuttleboat Cove is going to be an aggressively unmarketable webcomic. But I like this framework a lot! I feel like if I can put a pitch deck together I'll have everything I need to launch a webcomic website for this, and communicate it to new readers. The focus of my Art School studies will be towards creating this pitch deck as a final project :)

Thank you for your support! 

Making something this weird and specific would not be possible at all without your support here on Patreon. I am so excited to make all sorts of cool concepts and research pages and share them with you throughout this year! I'm also really excited for the space and time this Patreon has granted me to just flail around and figure out what I wanted to do.

I feel really READY to dig into this, and I'm REALLY excited about it. I hope you will be too!!