I'm working on an erotic graphic novel project during the first quarter of 2019, and I thought it would be useful to share the options and structure of my project here on Newgrounds, so people are able to see what I'm doing and perhaps engage in a similar project themselves.





In order to keep this brief, I'm going to simply outline the basics, and then share some of the structure for my own project.





Make/100 - Make 100 is an art challenge currently happening on Kickstarter, during the month of January. I would suppose that #make100 or #100somethings are also useful hashtag trends.

- Make 100 is an art challenge currently happening on Kickstarter, during the month of January. I would suppose that #make100 or #100somethings are also useful hashtag trends. Valentines Day / Singles Awareness Day - These are opportunities for hashtag trends that are coming up in February.

- These are opportunities for hashtag trends that are coming up in February. #MarchofRobots / #MarchofRobots2019 - These two art trends are taking place in March. March of Robots is a 31 day art challenge, where you design robots, and then share them with people on Twitter / Instagram et.

These two art trends are taking place in March. March of Robots is a 31 day art challenge, where you design robots, and then share them with people on Twitter / Instagram et. Creators4Creators - This is an opportunity for artists who are capable of producing a 64 - 100 page graphic novel. The proposal needs to be submitted by March 18th. If you're interested in participating, you ought to visit the site, and see if you're up to the challenge.





These are the sorts of project structures that I'm aware of, that are happening during the first quarter of 2019.





For my project, I'm attempting to synthesize each of these components into a single project that is executed by the end of March. This means, in a minimal format -- my project needs to contain the following:





100 Panels

Valentines Day Portraits

Robots

A 64 Page Erotic Graphic Novel





In order to carry this project slightly further, and open up the project to a wider audience, I am also integrating an Erotic Fairy Tale theme. I decided to go with Frankenstein, because I felt like it went along well with #MarchofRobots.





Now, this is pretty complex even as it is, but if you wanted to break it down further, then you might want to use a project management system like Trello, to break down exactly what you need to do in order to make these deadlines. I have uploaded my project structure to Trello, and marked it as publically accessible.





One more component of executing a project like this is to have a Communications Plan:





A Communications Plan, is essentially a number of different locations where you are able to share your work, or engage with people in some regard. There are multiple objectives for this sort of outreach, but the primary objective is obviously to fund the project and your own life as you are executing the project.





It can be difficult to execute a 3 month project and retain funding for your bills while you are working on a project like this, and so it helps to not only have a distribution network, but also a plan for how you're going to engage with those communities.





Here are a number of places that might be useful to share erotic comics work:





Reddit

r/sex_comics

r/westernhentai

r/comics18_story

r/imaginaryboners

r/NSFW_comics





Newgrounds

Twitter

Instagram

Pillowfort.io

Ello.co

Vimeo

Hentai Foundry

Discord

Mailchimp





Now, you don't need to use all of these, and you might also need to use other platforms that are more relevant to your specific experiment. The objective here is to consider the following:





"What sort of work am I doing, and where are the people who would like to experience that work?"





After that point, I've found a lack of expectation to be something that is incredibly useful. Think of this outreach more like you're on stage, performing for a group of people. Whether or not people support your work, or engage, or provide feedback is not really the point. -- The point is that you need to share your work with people, and if you're generous about it, you might be able to execute your current project, and perhaps do another afterward. A suggestion for this sort of sharing could be a project development blog, or doing studies of pop-cultural corollaries to the project that you are trying to execute.





Considering #MarchofRobots is happening soon, one example of a pop-cultural corollary might be a few studies of Miyazaki robots, Samus's suit, or Guardians from Breath of the Wild. You could also do some kind of mash-up hybridization, such as Robot versions of the characters you loved from the last season of Game of Thrones, et.





Another point to consider is to evaluate the effectiveness of different platforms, based on the type of engagement that you get. If you reach out in one area, and you aren't getting a solid form of engagement, but on another platform, you are getting something more promising, then you might want to note those differences, and focus your attention on the area that is providing you with the best sort of response.





A good way to do this is to use tracking links, such as those that are provided through Kickstarter Campaigns, or Bit.ly.





In order to financially support yourself during this project, you'll need to find a way to tie it into:





Patreon [If you've got a group of devoted fans, this is a good option for them.]

Ko-Fi [If you've got a sketch tor stickers to send in the mail, this is a good option for them.]

Gumroad [This is capable of being a shop, but I suspect that it's better served as a Free High Value Digital Item Shop. The value here is to link your Mailchimp account to your Gumroad account using a service called Zapier.]

Kickstarter [Kickstarter appears to be useful for HUGE projects, and also small projects. It's a good idea to try out a campaign, because you will meet people who want to support your work, that you might not have been able to meet anywhere else. ]





Each of these sites goes to the trouble of breaking down the techniques they suggest for engagement in various educational blogs, videos and PDFs. I would recommend picking one, and learning how to do it well. If you can pull that off, then introduce another, and see how that integrates into your system.





I would suggest thinking of each project as having its own outreach campaign, and to focus your outreach campaigns on one platform at a time. It is possible to have multiple outlets, but if you split them up and are not focused in your outreach campaigns, I suspect that you aren't going to be able to pull off a meaningful audience conversion rate.





.:.





Supplemental information and Tools:





1000 True Fans [free article]

The Ship It Journal [free project dev. pdf]

Noah's Art Camp [$$$ Online Art School]

Seth Godin Startup School [Free Online Podcast Series]

Dirty Old Ladies Podcast [Free + Patreon Comics Podcast for NSFW Artists]





If you'd like to deconstruct my current project, or if you'd like to support my current project, you can take a look at my Make/100 campaign over at Kickstarter.





Feel free to reach out, or discuss my project, or brainstorm projects that you might be able to execute here in this thread.





I will continue to share my project updates on this thread.