Hmm..Carlton I applaud your energy and enthusiasm but there at the surface seemed to be some glaring concerns when accounting for Artist's time, effort, compensation, risk factor.

I'm still working my way through your pdf.

Maybe altering the proposal of established mainstream characters into a Creator's Club like an art club that does renditions of the characters written and artwise?

that way there's no pigeon holing into one company but maybe able to take on several themes throughout the year? That way you avoid creator fatigue.

Btw, I'm not one to piss on someone else's dream so I'm printing as much of it out as my printer/ink will let me and will give it a serious read. I love the amount of work you actually put into it so far.

I'm also curious what everyone else in our lil' art club here on commie has to say?

I'll go ahead and piss on someone else's dream. This dream is dumb.

Carlton, you wrote a 200 page proposal for a company that doesn't take blind proposals. For christ's sake man, just come up with your own damn characters, write a damn script, and hire a damn artist. With half the effort you put into this nonsense you'd have your first graphic novel out the door.

Sigh. I was gonna suggest something similar but w/o the piss and frustration, hahahah.

Carlton this effort would be awesome with original concepts dude.

or better yet, Public Domain or Pulp inspired characters from the artists.

That I think would've perked peoples attention around here.

I was just reading some stuff about that...

Why aren't you using more public Domain characters?
http://www.fuelyourwriting.com/why-arent-you-using-more-public-domain-characters/

“Elementary, my dear Hamlet!” – Copyright, Public Domain & You | Fuel Your Writing
http://bit.ly/nF0AgN

Sigh.

Okay, I'm talking to Americans again.

Geez... am I this way?!

Anyway, since everyone knows better and the limits of my intelligence and ingenuity are what you fellows are placing on them for me, I don't know if it would be worth your time to talk about what really is going on here.

I'm getting some great responses from this, and we're already discussing original material. The artists and I are using the Marvel and Saturday morning cartoon proposals as a springboard to create our own works.

Artists are reading the stuff I posted, digging it, and realizing I understand the term "all ages."

Using the Marvel and Hanna-Barbera stuff-- material that me and almost anyone on the planet both know in common-- we can discuss story structure, characterization, pacing, all the fun stuff.

However, as I said earlier, this is all being done with artists from overseas. Two artists are from Germany, one from Spain, one from France, and one from Malaysia. The only artists who've responded from America-- and I'm excluding everyone from this board here-- have been smug, prickly, entitled, and totally unrealistic in their expectations. They are arrogant and condescending, and frankly just not very pleasant to deal with. They have been closed minded and unimaginative. I've found the entire experience dealing with American artists, all of them still at the amateur level, regardless of their talent and experience.

Besides, I consider Marvel characters public domain characters. Those rat bastards really don't have any more claim over these characters they've stolen than they do the moon. We might live in a country where Disney can enforce their will over me, but I don't have to kneel and say that's right.

For me, writing the Marvel gig was like showing you I know how to play the songs you like, even while putting my own interpretation on it. You can tell that I'm playing "Stairway to Heaven" or "Farmer John," and you can see what I'm doing with it.

These guys who are responding to my posts, they are actually reading the material. That got them excited, that got them in the door.

Still, I don't know how it's going to work out. Of the original material that could possibly come out of this is a painted comic. The artist has got this wild style, nothing at all like you'd see in a Marvel or DC Comic. Just plain old weirdness. I love it. At first I wasn't sure, but after he pulled out the good stuff, I knew I had to work on something with this dude.

So sure, guys, talk all you want. And Cece, because of the respect I have for you, let me tell you directly-- the experience I'm having is putting me in a position to see that, here, you're just are speaking of things of which you have no real knowledge. Busted!

REal talk. Why not just go to the original stuff in your proposal to american artists/creators like us?

On a different note, maybe a 20 page proposal if wanting to show off artists to the big two like Marvel and D.C. rather than 20 pages from each artists plus production work etc. 2 pages to tell your spin each plus your set up pitch in one page, cover letter etc.

Like you, that's different. Email me. I'll show you what we're doing. But I warn you-- I'm still going to try and talk you into drawing Atom Ant or Frankenstein Jr. first.

You know, I have a couple of friends who are working their way towards being successful-- one's getting his MBA and one's a lawyer.

A while back, when we were renting, they couldn't get over the fact that, just for fun, I had told the landlord that, while we were staying there, I wanted to redo his back yard.

I don't mean plant a few rose-bushes, I mean basically take a shovel (I didn't even use a wheelbarrow!) and change the topography of the yard. I took down huge piles of dirt some guy just used a backhoe to pile up, ripped out trees, dug out roots, all with hand-tools. My friends were just confounded. They honestly couldn't understand why I'd do something when there was nothing in it for me.

They didn't notice I dropped ten pounds, but my wife did.

I've attended a lot of corporate conferences, and places like GM and EDS (if Perot's old place still exists) spend a lot of money training their employees with team-building exercises. They'd never throw a group together on a project without first ensuring they were properly prepared.

And I've worked as one of these corporate training professionals in human resources. I don't know what you guys do for a living, but did it ever cross your mind that I might really know something you don't about how to go about this?

Even if I paid these goddam Americans the up-front page rates they keep crying for, I already know that's not going to guarantee a single thing. It really is not the be-all and the end-all of putting together a successful team.

Yes, what I am relying on is finding people who see the wisdom in doing a training exercise first. In the same way they'd contribute a few pages-- knowing the effort will cost them dearly in time they could be spending either with their families or looking for paying work (which they wouldn't already have if they were answering my ad, see?)-- these artists understand that there is a real value in getting to know your partners before you work on something original. You build a relationship. You build trust.

Yeah, if I were independently wealthy, I'd put my ideas into motion and finance them simultaneously. Not being able to do that, I decided to reach out and see if there were others who felt the way I did, and understood the wisdom of what I was trying to do.