Business Plan?!

The past 6 or so months, I've been working at March as a Flash animator. That tenure is coming to an end, thank the gods. I've been stuck in Sudbury this whole time, and been through quite a bit of drama. I'm so excited to be done here and going back to Toronto. I'll be moving in with my friends, the same guys who I was with during my 4th year in school. That'll be good, I can't wait.

Sad part is that I'll be out of a job. So now I have to worry about finding a source of income to pay for rent and other living expenses. The animation job market is pretty dry right now, sadly.

But I've been thinking lately. I know I just started out my career, and maybe I'm jumping the gun by saying this, but I'm really sick of animating, especially for someone else. The reason I got into art and animation was so that I could tell my stories. I'm also getting old (turning 27 in a couple of months... *snicker*), and I just feel I wasted a lot of my time in previous years. I could've spent that time really being productive with my own work.

Well, I'm looking at this employment lull as an opportunity. I've recently been seriously researching generating revenue through online advertising, especially for webcomics. Now, my goal is in producing White Currents content through my Etherwing webspace, with free online flash episodes of Saphiel short stories and trying to gain a readership so that I can get money off of advertising. I've been looking into what kind of money I can make off of advertising online. The most popular webcomic registered with Project Wonderful seems to be able to pull in roughly $30/day for their advertising space. That roughly equates to about $840/month for that adspace. And these sites usually have two or more adspaces available for purchase, meaning they can easily earn about $1600/month just on advertising (I'm assuming these are USD rates). I know it's not a lot of money, but I'm not looking to get rich off of this. I just want to make a comfortable living doing what I love. Hell, I'll be happy if I can make $600/month. I can survive off of that.

Now, I'm not in any way, shape or form deluded enough to think that I'll be able to gain that kind of readership right away. If anything, it'll probably take several years to get to a point where I might potentially be able to rely on this project to sustain myself, a year in a best case scenario. I will have to rely on another source of income in the meantime. I'm looking into part time jobs, mainly. Something that'll give me enough money to pay the bills, but also give me enough free time to work on my new project seriously.

In any case, though, I'm pretty excited about all this, and I'm sure I'll be able to make a show that's one of the better webshows out there. I don't even really know if there's a market or community for the kind of thing I'm planning on making. Best thing I can think of is flash animations you can find on newgrounds or something like that. A friend of mine mentioned Xombie, and that's about the only thing I can think of which would be akin to what I'm thinking of doing.

Basically, I'm thinking of doing a webcomic, but in a semi-animated form. It's hard labeling it as anything. It's not a comic, it's not an animated show; it's something in between. It's a storyreel, polished and presented with a sort of RPG sensibility. I really don't want to describe it too much right now. I think the best thing for me to do is just ... do it! And show what I have in mind.

So, the plan as it stands now is this: I'm too busy to work on anything with this right now. I've been doing a lot of writing, specifically backstory for the actual content. I've also been going through a lot of website design ideas. A big source of inspiration for me right now is the Final Fantasy XIII site. Very simple, but it conveys the mood they're going for in the game. And it's a similar mood to what I want conveyed in my storyworld too. And yes, the site will be designed primarily with flash. The whole show is flash produced, in any case, yes?

Next week, once I move into my new home and get settled, I'll begin the actual design process for the site. I hope to get that online within a couple of days after I start the project. Then I'll be working on 2 main content projects: The first episode of the Saphiel short stories, and a trailer, with priority being placed on the Saphiel episode. The trailer will be a collage trailer, meant to be presented as a showreel for what White Currents is all about. It's sort of like the FMV demo opening you'd see in a video game. It's supposed to convey the mood, the flow and the look of the show. The reason I'm doing this is because I feel the Saphiel stories will be very slow and as such, might not pick up readers as well. I need something that'll hook people. Something that'll show people that THAT is what I want to do with the series.

The trailer will be done in 3D. I've been studying Blender, and I hope I can get used to it enough that I'll be able to use it as a full production software. The interface is very different from what I'm used to, so I'm finding it hard to adjust. But I'm sure with practice it'll become better.

So yea... website first, then scripts/sketches and full production of the first episode of Saphiel's story next, then the trailer. And then... we'll see where we go from there. I'll continue doing Saphiel's shorts for a while. Great thing about those is that they're self contained short stories, so it'll give me good practice with getting the hang of the workflow, and also with keeping up with self-imposed deadlines. Eventually I want to tell longer serial stories. The meat of the story world, if you will. But that'll come much later, after I get the practice I need for now.

On a semi-related note, I used to listen to the 1UP network's podcasts and their video review show, but I learned today that 1UP was actually taken over by a new owner, and about 2/3rds of the entire staff was laid off. The review show was dropped, along with most of the podcasts. But I also learned that the ex-staff from that company got together and decided to launch a new, independent online review show called Area5, and trying to turn it into a business. They managed to get donations from sympathetic fans and raised over $11,000, which they're planning on using as starting capital to buy new equipment and such. Wow... that is such an inspiring tale. These guys are pretty much in the same position I'm in right now and they're making things happen because they love to do what they do. I hope I have as much will as these guys to get my stuff off the ground.

Well, that's about all I have to say. Wow, what a long rant. Good thing no one reads this thing. Haha.

Developments as they come.