advice Archives - Being Me, Myself.

Kickstarting a Dream

By Ife J. Ibitayo

Having found the illustrator I’d been so desperately searching for, I was back in action! I was setting milestones, approving drawings, and spending money—lots of it. As my bank account plunged toward zero, I knew my next order of business was finding a way to pay for this massive project I was undertaking. But few appealing options presented themselves.

The Road Not Taken

I could try to find a traditional publisher like Simon & Schuster. But the thought of trying to convince a literary agent to try to persuade a traditional publisher to potentially pay me a reasonable advance seemed both daunting and time consuming. Months would pass before I even had the opportunity to begin The Biballical Chronicles in earnest, and that’s assuming one of the few gatekeepers was willing to take a chance on a green comic book creator like me.

Or I could try to find a comic book publisher like Image. But that felt like a nightmare wrapped in a fool’s errand trapped inside a moonshot. Not only was it incredibly difficult, the number of horror stories I’d heard about comic book deals made my skin crawl. Somehow, I had to launch out on my own and find a way to convince people to pay me money to do so.

Kickstarter’s Well Known Logo.
Source: Kickstarter; Credit: Kickstarter

Convincing a Skeptic

The premise of Kickstarter is brilliant in its simplicity. You create a project, set a time-bound monetary goal, and anyone with a credit card can fund you in exchange for cool rewards.

However, in practice, Kickstarter seemed to be a place where many naive creators had their dreams crushed and many gullible consumers had their money stolen. I’d never really viewed Kickstarter as a viable business model until I attended a panel on it at Los Angeles Comic Con. I heard Brittany Chapman-Holman (“Mother of Frankenstein”), Sean Persaud (“Shipwrecked Comedy”), and Anjali Bhimani (“I am Fun Size, and So Are YOU!”) describe their own Kickstarter experiences. They had raised tens of thousands of dollars, delivered rewards to hundreds of paying customers, and somehow lived to tell the tale.

After taking a copious amount of notes from these seasoned veterans, my three main takeaways were: First, there are nearly infinite ways to ruin a Kickstarter. From unreachable goals to unrealistic timelines, you didn’t need to look far to find a graveyard littered with the carcasses of Kickstarters gone awry.

Second, even when executed correctly, a successful Kickstarter requires a tremendous amount of work and forethought. Planning one of these was not for the faint of heart.

Third, despite the risk and toil, it can be a win-win for both the creator who’s raising the money and the community that pays for it.

Conclusion

That last point shattered my preconceived notions like a bat to a fine china collection. The knowledge that a dedicated, passionate creator like me could form an audience of passionate, paying followers renewed my hope that I could transform my dream into a reality. Now all I had to do was convince hundreds of people that I was making something worth buying.

Finding Milo

By Ife J. Ibitayo

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, I was clinically diagnosable by March 1^st of 2023. Out of options and out of time, I decided to give Upwork one final chance to help me find an illustrator before I went back to the drawing board. I created a new job listing, paid to have my post featured, and waited.

Within days, even more job applications began to flood in—dozens of them. I spent hours scrolling through portfolios and setting up Zoom interviews until an Upwork “Talent Specialist” connected me with one particular artist named Milo.

The Sample

From the first time I laid eyes on his portfolio, I knew there was something promising there. We jumped on a phone call together and quickly hit it off. As I discussed my vision for telling “meaning-filled” stories, he said he’d especially resonated with that line because as an LGBTQ+ creator, diversity of representation was very important to him.

And so we hammered out a timeline, and I anxiously waited for the sample that would determine our future together, or apart.

We started working together early in the week and set the first milestone for Friday. But Friday came and went without an update. As I stewed over the weekend, I began to have second thoughts. Would this initial communication snafu be indicative of the rest of our relationship?

And secondly, I’d been hoping to work with someone who shared the same faith as I did on The Biballical Chronicles because of…well, the subject matter. But Milo possessed a wildly different way of looking at the world than I did.

When the following week rolled around, I was about ready to throw in the towel. But then I saw the preliminary colored sketch Milo had drawn, and I was blown away. I viscerally felt like I was seeing the visible manifestation of my idea even at that stage of development. To put it simply, he got it.

Milo Sample — Milo’s First Colored Sketch for *Let My People Ball*

The “Break”

Conflicted, I called Milo up and told him that I’d need a couple of weeks to think about it. A few days later, I flew home for Spring Break from my graduate school program. Though, to call it a “break” might be a bit of a stretch. I spent many afternoons deep in prayer, wrestling with this decision. I phoned friends and family members as I weighed the pros and cons. Months, even years, of my future were contingent on this partnership and so were thousands of dollars in my bank account.

As endless doubts wrapped around me like choking tendrils, the drawing Milo had sent me was like a north star—a lighthouse in the middle of a sea of uncertainty. Somehow we’d bridged the chasm between our vastly different worldviews, and I saw the potential to make something beautiful together.

The Call

As my Spring “Break” wound down, I gave Milo a call. Hopeful yet tentative, I asked him if he was still willing and available to work on my project. And so, on March 27^th, 2023, I finally found my illustrator for The Biballical Chronicles.

Upwork Didn’t Work

By Ife J. Ibitayo

“That’s great and all,” he said, waving his hand in the air as if he was dispelling a bad odor. “But I’ve been in the comic book industry a long time, and there are three things people need.”

I was sitting across from a man I’ll call Ahmed who I’d been talking to about my vision of starting a company in the comic book industry. Fingering his palm with each idea he listed, Ahmed said, “One, they access to money because well…” And I nodded along, not needing him to explain why “starving artists” needed more cash.

“Two,” he continued, “they need access to publishers. Three, they need access to one another.” And he went on to describe how easy it was for him as an industry insider to find an illustrator for one of his projects but how difficult it was for everyone else. And something of that last idea remained with me as I struggled to find an illustrator for my own comic book project.

Working through Upwork

February had already rolled around, and I was beginning to grow discouraged. But I created an Upwork account, published a job post, and waited for the applications to start flowing in.

Within a few weeks, I’d received a number of proposals, and most of them were underwhelming. I ran into the same issues I’d encountered on Instagram, illustrators without the right style, the right experience, or the right attention to detail (you’d be amazed how many applicants apply to jobs without reading the job description!).

But there were two promising leads. The first was from a man I’ll call James. Talking to him felt like interacting with an alternate reality version of myself. He was a fellow engineer who’d quit his job to pursue his dream of telling “meaning-filled” stories. We even graduated from the same university within a couple years of each other!

The first sample I ever received for *Let My People Ball*.
Source: Ife J. Ibitayo.

Our chemistry was palpable, and the process of obtaining a sample page from him was seamless. But when I saw the final result, I was underwhelmed. The page was beautifully colored, but it just did not fit my vision for my comic book. So with much regret, I asked if I could reach out to him as a potential colorist and kept on searching.

The second artist, who I’ll call Alejandro, was the opposite. The quality of his drawings were unmistakable, but his sample page was simply confusing. I held up my script, compared it to his drawing, and struggled to reconcile the two. So, with great disappointment, I let him go as well.

Let My People Ball Sample 2 — The second sample I received for *Let My People Ball*. Even today, I can’t quite make sense of everything going on in each of these scenes. Source: Ife J. Ibitayo.

Conclusion

So after burning a month of time and a molehill of cash, Upwork hadn’t worked for me. And I was beginning to doubt whether or not I’d be able to make this comic book vision of mine into a reality any time soon.

Entering the World of Comic Books in 80 Days

Ife J. Ibitayo

With an idea marinating in my head and hope germinating in my heart, I flew out to Los Angeles. And my first order of business was finding some people in animation to talk to. Well, besides moving into my new apartment, getting situated to a new city, and renewing my mindset as a student. But less than 80 days later, I was sitting across from a man I’ll call Tobi. He was a foul-mouthed, clean-shaven, middle-aged Nigerian who’d successfully launched his own animation studio. Feeling like I’d just hit the interviewee jackpot, I excitedly explained to him my vision of telling “meaning-filled stories”.

Coming Down to Earth

But he rubbed the back of his neck and said, “You know how expensive animation is? I’ve been in the business a long time, and even twelve minutes of quality video is going to run you hundreds of thousands of dollars. You’re going to have to find someone to pay you to do it.”

He scrolled through the work he’d completed for some of the biggest entertainment companies in the business until he finally arrived at an original project. It was a paranormal romance he’d crowdfunded as a comic book, even though he ran an animation company. He explained, “Original work is tough to get out there, even for someone like me. But you may just be able to get your project off the ground if you start with a comic.”

Skyward Volume 1 by Image Comics — This book pretty much singlehandedly changed my view of the narrative power of comic books.
Source: Amazon; Credit: Image Comics

Preparing for Liftoff

I didn’t grow up reading comics. My older brother ate up comic books while I kept my head buried in prose fiction. It wasn’t until adulthood that I rediscovered comic books anew. In late 2020, I purchased a comic book bundle off the internet that included the science fiction graphic novel, Skyward: My Low G Life, about a teenager growing up on an earth with a fraction of the gravity that our planet currently has.

Up until that day, I had never appreciated comic books as a serious medium for storytelling. I was familiar with superhero tales and other well-known IP like Star Trek and G.I. Joe, but I’d never read an original story that so gracefully leveraged the power of comic books as a means of visual storytelling. And that was when my eyes were opened to the great potential of that medium.

Reaching for the Sky (Again)

Initially, I was hesitant. I’d hoped to transition from the literary world into TV & Films, not cross back into it. But I realized that as a science fiction writer myself, a comic book might be the perfect medium to explore the intersection of writing and visual art.

As Tobi finished showing me his own graphic novel, he said, “It wasn’t hard. All I had to do was find a ghostwriter and an illustrator. I hit them up on social media, and a few months later, I had my comic book.”

And with that encouragement, I embarked on what was supposed to be one of the “easiest” creative projects of my life.