Hi folks,
The Supporters have known for the last 2 months or so about a pending format change coming up in the comic. Darcy and I have made the decision to move from the the comic from computer color to a black and white toned format.
We have our reasons, most of which revolve around time and money. (Yes, money. Don’t give me that dirty look.)
Hunter’s color pages took between 24 and 30 hours to create. Most of that is shading. This means an average week can see at most two new pages in color, with no time for anything else. Any other projects need to come out of the time it takes to do a comic.
If we were to slow the comic release pages to match the current color creation rate, we’d lose 2 issues of print comic a year. Hunter’s a slow paced comic, it has to be, as it’s mostly not an action/adventure. The slow pace is already frustrating to us (especially since we see the full story stretching out ahead of us), and slowing it down more would create an even bigger problem.
In the move to black and white, we’ll be freeing up a majority of that time, allowing her to produce enough pages to keep up with the weekly schedule and still be able to create and maintain a buffer. In addition, this will free up time to do other work, such as take commissions, produce concept art, or work on special projects for the comic.
This does not mean that all color comics will disappear. We plan on bringing back specials, like in “Tales From RCSI” and keeping them in color. This lets us keep the color around, but use it for special occasions, and higher impact.
The other major consideration is the cost. Hunter is primarily a print comic with a heavy presence on the web. With all the previous comics, we’ve printed in color, at a heavy premium and a _very_ slim profit margin. (In fact, so slim, that a change in post office prices one month meant we paid people to buy the comics.) To be honest, that needs to change. In a move to black and white, we can afford to charge less on the current cover prices, and still make more money off of each issue. People win on both sides.
Printing in black and white means that trades and collections suddenly become within reach again. The cost for a trade of Political Spell (250 pages) with our current printer in color would be around 50$ cover price, most of which is printing. The same book in black and white would be 18$ (With about the same profit). I can’t consider charging any of our readers even 40$ for a 250 page book. But 18$ puts us at the same price as, say, Usagi Yojimbo (Which, believe it or not, is also in black and white!), or any other indie-comic collection. Given the current economy in the US, lower prices are better for everyone.
I know many people are going to be upset over the pending change, but I will ask for patience. Hunter is an ongoing story, and the art, be in black and white, or color, is still being done to Darcy’s already high standards of quality. The art in any comic is supposed to support the story, and not supplant it. The story itself will remain the same.
As for someone suggesting we hire a colorist? It isn’t going to happen. Hunter has approximately 10,000 monthly readers, and of those 10k people, only a little over a hundred are active supporters. This is not meant as a guilt trip to get people to become supporters, rather it’s a wake up call to explain why we can’t afford to hire someone. Before we can afford to pay anyone else, we need to be able to pay ourselves. And that’s not happening. However, what people don’t see is us whining about finances, or running non-stop-donation meters or holding the comic hostage if we don’t make our quotas. And you won’t see that. But we do have hard choices to make when it comes to finances when they are tight, and financially speaking, it’s smart business for us to move to black and white.
As always, people can contact me at: rcsi@rcsitravel.net
Page 15 is now finished. Hopefully it turned out okay - I’m not too sure on the perspective and proportions. I’m trying to do things outside of my comfort zone so I can maybe improve a bit. I’m hoping the fact that I’m trying something new is worth things not being “perfect”. I don’t understand why some people insist that comics - especially ones not done by professionals - must be without flaws. It’s like… whatever. I guess some people just have a bug up their butt. 
