Picking up from where we left off yesterday, my plans for Sunnyville and its expanded universe are as follows.
One of the goals over the summer months for me is to create some more picture book “dummies” (that’s publishing lingo for a rough draft complete with art and text) for Hilda and Richie. I have two ideas I have been wanting to draw with them. I aim to shop this work around to picture book publishers in the future. Oh, Hilda and Richie do exist in the Sunnyville universe; I’ll have to see about a crossover one day.
More importantly, I need to prepare better for the next Kickstarter with Dominic & Claire. That will launch in September and I’ll eventually share more details once they are worked out.
After careful thinking, I came to two conclusions about what went wrong with that Kickstarter. The first problem was that I asked my backers out of the blue to back a creation of mine mostly unfamiliar to them. In spite of declaring it a spin-off and part of the Sunnyville universe, they didn’t have much exposure. The only comics I’ve done so far with them (other than the incomplete Kickstarter comic “Dominic & Claire Return”) is the 24 hour comic and the Dominic & Claire Funnies. My backers and fans have not had time to connect with Dominic & Claire as they have with Rusty, Sam and the Sunnyville gang.
Do you remember how I shared whole comics stories here with Rusty and friends? Plus I posted up profiles and artwork of the characters. I have NOT done with that with Dominic, Claire or Rusty’s relatives in Dominic’s hometown of New Gestad.
Over the next few months, I aim to share artwork and profiles of the characters to this Sunnyville spin-off. There’ll also be a few short vignettes with Dominic and Claire; this will feed into another strategy of mine for the next Kickstarter. A free sample comic will be offered to potential backers. I made the first episode of Sunnyville free; this strategy will be used with Dominic & Claire too.
The second problem: the adage “show, don’t tell” applies here. I declared that Dominic was Rusty’s cousin and Dominic’s hometown of New Gestad was part of the Sunnyville universe. But I didn’t show that. Some of the art and comics I’ll share will involve Rusty with his cousin Dominic; Rusty will actually state in-universe he is visiting. Plus the newer Dominic & Claire comic for the Kickstarter will contain a story or two with Rusty. The logic behind this is to help bridge these two settings and clearly establish to readers that Dominic’s world is indeed part of the Sunnyville canon.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned to this blog as I’ll have more news on the Kickstarter in the future. Plus there’ll be more material with Dominic and friends soon so keep an eye out for it!
