Let's Get Rich and Famous
(and have fun doing it)
I'm a writer looking for an artist to collaborate with me on a web comic. There are a lot of writers doing that, I gather.
Where I am different and hopefully better than other writers seeking artists is this: I have great story to tell about a fascinating character, a story that's sexy and funny and intriguing.
I'm sure every writer will make that claim, but I can back mine up: I've written the story in prose form and posted it online to my website so you can read it and decide for yourself if I've actually got the goods or am just puffing myself up. (I'll make it easy for you: I've actually got the goods.)
I'm going into some detail in this precis because it's important that you understand that Monica isn't a generic fangirl, or a generic hottie. Her relationships with her family and friends are an important part of the story. The way her character evolves in important to the story. She's not just a mechanism by which the Next Sexy Thing is made to happen. Sexy Things are gonna happen, but within the context of the story.
When we first meet Monica, she's a 5'0" tall, 40 pounds overweight, bright high school student who enjoys cosplay, i.e., dressing up in the costumes worn by her favorite comic book, manga, movie, TV, etc., character and going to cons and, well, showing off her costume(s) and having a great time. A fangirl, in short. Her best friend Joanie is even more into cosplay than she is, and they always go to cons together, often with other friends who enjoy cosplay.
One day while attending SciFiFunCon in Atlanta, Monica sees a trio of Slave Leias (women dressed as Princess Leia during the time when she was the captive of Jabba the Hutt and enslaved in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi) doing some belly dancing, and she was captivated by their grace and beauty, and suddenly had a vision of herself dancing like that, and decided on the spot that she wanted to learn to belly dance.
Monica has had a history of enthusiasms like this, which generally wear off quickly because the source of the enthusiasm is intellectual curiosity, which is satisfied once she learns how to do whatever it is she's interested in. Mentally, Monica is a nerd like her father. She is oblivious to the opinions of those around her and tends to get very, very interested in things and ignore all other things while she's so interested. Belly dancing is such an interest, for her. She is interested in the grace and beauty of it, and wants to learn to emulate the beauty she saw at the Con. She is not interested in any other aspect of it.
Monica's parents are quite happy to pay for belly dancing lessons for her, hoping the exercise will do her some good, but they're not all that hopeful because they know from past experience that Monica typically loses interest in a form of exercise once she learns how to do it well, which means she stops doing it at all. What they don't realize is that to Monica, the exercise aspect is incidental, uninteresting. She understands that belly dancing might constitute a form of exercise, but she does not think of it as that, and would never have become interested in it for that reason.
Monica sticks to the belly dancing for the whole six months of classes and beyond. What's more, she not only attends the classes but practices her lessons every night, practices that go from about an hour to two or three hours during the course of the lessons.
The reason for this is that the eroticism of the belly dancing techniques she practices have brought out a streak of latent exhibitionism in Monica's character -- not the generic "likes to be the center of attention" exhibitionism, but the specific, "likes to be the center of attention while naked, or nearly naked." Each night she imagines herself dancing before a wildly cheering crowd of fanboys who can't believe how beautiful and talented she is, except -- she is, in her fantasies.
Because she spends two or three hours a night practicing and dancing, which is pretty much nonstop exercise, Monica begins to lose weight. After three months she'd lost 20 pounds, after six months she'd lost 40 pounds, because her diet hadn't changed. Monica hadn't expected this.
Monica's parents had hoped for but hadn't really expected her to lose weight so successfully, and they become alarmed at the effect her greatly heightened beauty will have on her. They also hadn't expected that she would decide she wanted to dress as a web comics character whose outfit made the women who wore Slave Leia outfits to cons seem dowdy and overdressed, when she attended SciFiFunCon -- Monica's exhibitionist streak manifesting itself again. This REALLY pushes their buttons, leaving them fighting the impulse to ground Monica forever, but still striving to keep her interested in going to college in the fall, and very aware that she has recently turned 18 and can do as she pleases.
What's more, Monica's best friend Joanie has made an interesting confession and told her of a secret code that cosplayers use to hook up and have sex during cons, without fear of rejection or embarrassment (an important point to both fanboys and fangirls).
What effect does Monica's dramatic weight loss and dramatic gain in grace and beauty have on her? How does it affect her relationships with her friends and the other kids at school? How does it affect her relationship with her parents? How does her running around nearly naked at a con and smooging on guys for four days (did I mention that there are a whole lot of guys who bring cameras to cons and post their photos to the Web?) have on her relationship with her parents? Will Monica use the secret cosplay code to hook up with a guy or guys at SciFiFunCon? What does all this portend for Monica's future (for as an academically successful fangirl, but also a great beauty who had caught the eye of publishers and moviemakers, she has some options)?
These are the sorts of questions the web comic I envision will seek to answer. As you can tell, there will be a lot of near nudity and sexual content in the story because it is in a sense a coming of age story. But I hope I have convinced you that Monica isn't just a generic hottie, she's a real character, with a real story that will hook readers. This is not porn about sex-obsessed people doing whatever is needed to lead to the next sex scene. It's a story about decent people who are striving to keep their relationships going despite some serious differences of opinion.
I think the audience for this story will include fanboys, cosplayers and Con attendees, because of those aspects of the story, and guys generally because of the sexual aspects, and women because of the characterization as well as the sexual aspects.
I'm looking for an artist who can draw the naked and the sexy and who'll enjoy doing so, but who can also draw nicely nuanced facial expressions to convey much of the emotional interactions that I've been using words to describe.
I'm looking for an artist who is much better than me at conceptualizing scenes and putting them in panel form -- I hope to be just a text and scene provider and let the artist create the imagery to bring the story to life.
I'm thinking the best way to handle this economically would be as a 50-50 partnership. I know how to set up a website, so I can handle getting the website set up. I can also handle getting advertisers for the site, though I'm open to new ideas on that front.
My thought is, build the website, develop the story, try to market it to potential readers on the Web, develop advertising revenues and whatever other revenues we can, and keep our options open for developing the comic as a print publication as well.
Of course if any big name publishers want to develop the story as a comic, feel free to make an offer, I'm open to that, too.
So read the story, see if it hooks you, and if it does, drop me a line. I've also included some panels I've developed in my effort to see if the story would translate well to a comic, and some supporting materials that I've used to help visualize the story. Maybe we can do some biz together.
See Index below for text version of story, storyboards, and supporting materials.
A Little Bit O' Monica -- Text Version
Index of Support Materials for Artists -- TK