CREATING WORKSHOPS AND SETTING UP A NETWORK FOR A HEALTHY COMIC BUSINESSS
The Moscow Comic School wants to bring artists and publishers together to teach and learn form each other. We are about how to make a business out of a passion where artists, publishers and the readers have more fun.
Hundreds of illustrators, writers or story boarders who fell in love with comics often need some more help or advice from people who are working in the comic world and make a living from it. And as soon as publishers understand that there are readers who want to get good stories with great images they will no longer be afraid.
Hundreds of illustrators, writers or story boarders who fell in love with comics often need some more help or advice from people who are working in the comic world and make a living from it. And as soon as publishers understand that there are readers who want to get good stories with great images they will no longer be afraid.
HOW THE WHOLE IDEA CAME UP
While coloring Inhabited Island, I thought a lot about comics
and the comic market in Russia and asked myself theses questions:
The wicked circle’s bottleneck:
Marketing and “education” can turn the lack of acceptance into a demand.
So sales and production become less risky and the market need increases automatically. In a living and stable comic–market everybody profits, the artists, the fans, the publishers and the resellers. It also increases a country’s cultural level and makes it more compatible and respected on a global market.
The Market elsewhere
In the U.S, Europe and especially in Japan people and companies exist on comics for decades already. They deliver, advertise, draw, produce and sell comics day by day.
Beside the superhero and mass-market, there is a huge range of quality comics or graphic-novels, that sell worldwide. Akira, Maus, Persepolis, The Photographer, Palestine, Sin City, Watchmen, just to name a few. And along these, are local heroes in each country, region or period, integrated into their reader’s cultural circles.
Colors, genres or drawing styles seem not to have an influence on sales, but a touching or relevant story with believable characters and dialogues, which carry their readers away, do have.
As Russia has a lot of extraordinary artist as well as great sales people, I thought it’s time to bring them all together to sharpen the knives to get some deals out of it.
—Dominik Heilig
and the comic market in Russia and asked myself theses questions:
- Why are there so little Comics in the land of great storytellers?
- Could there be a profitable market in the actual infrastructure?
- What sells and is still maintains a cultural value?
- How much has to be sold to make a living?
- What’s the problem?
The wicked circle’s bottleneck:
- Yes, in Russia comics have little acceptance or known history as in other countries.
- Thus, import and translating or domestic production becomes a financial risk.
- Because of reason 1+2 it seems risky to create and publish comics.
- Because of reason 1–3 bookstores have not much to sell.
- So it's hard to make the first step
Marketing and “education” can turn the lack of acceptance into a demand.
So sales and production become less risky and the market need increases automatically. In a living and stable comic–market everybody profits, the artists, the fans, the publishers and the resellers. It also increases a country’s cultural level and makes it more compatible and respected on a global market.
The Market elsewhere
In the U.S, Europe and especially in Japan people and companies exist on comics for decades already. They deliver, advertise, draw, produce and sell comics day by day.
Beside the superhero and mass-market, there is a huge range of quality comics or graphic-novels, that sell worldwide. Akira, Maus, Persepolis, The Photographer, Palestine, Sin City, Watchmen, just to name a few. And along these, are local heroes in each country, region or period, integrated into their reader’s cultural circles.
Colors, genres or drawing styles seem not to have an influence on sales, but a touching or relevant story with believable characters and dialogues, which carry their readers away, do have.
As Russia has a lot of extraordinary artist as well as great sales people, I thought it’s time to bring them all together to sharpen the knives to get some deals out of it.
—Dominik Heilig
