About
Goal is 20,000$
This is a fundraising campaign for my indie comic book project, DRAGONMAN. The goal is to finish and publish the comic, fund its marketing, and build an app where DRAGONMAN — and all my future comics — will be released 100 % free for everyone to read. Ultimately, it’s about finally bringing these stories to life and building a real fanbase around them. I’d much rather earn your support through merch sales than straight donations, but honestly, any help at all means the world to me and is truly appreciated.
[Note:Fourthwall currently does not offer a built-in feature for displaying real-time fundraising goals on the site. I am actively discussing potential solutions with the Fourthwall team while also exploring alternative implementations."]
Dragonman comic - issue #1
Fundraising campaign
$0 raised out of $20,000 goal
42 backers
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So, ever since I was a teenager, I’ve wanted to launch my own animation/game studio and comic book company. It all started with my deep passion for comics — as I grew up watching ’90s and 2000s animated shows and movies, especially the ones based on comics. Plus, I have always been imagining and creating stories and characters in my head since my childhood — way before my teenage years. While not every idea was a hit, I kept working on the ones that I liked the most, passionately carrying them forward and letting them evolve into the characters and storylines that I have been wanting to write comic books about for quite some time now.
For those of you who might think this is a scam, let me be clear: this isn’t my first project. But it is the first time I’m asking for fan support. I’ve released a few projects over the years—very few, to be honest—but they never really gained traction. I wasn’t expecting millions of downloads or anything like that. I just hoped they would be a good starting point, maybe earn a little money, and help me learn how to properly run and manage projects.
But in reality, they barely got any downloads. Only one of them got a couple of downloads and even less actual usage. What I didn’t understand at the time was that I needed a strong marketing campaign and a fan base for these projects to have a chance. I assumed simply posting about them would get me a handful of downloads—just enough to get things moving—but it didn’t work that way.
You must be thinking that I didn’t know any better — but the truth is, by that time, social media and Google Play Store algorithms had already changed. I can’t forget the day I first joined social media spaces and communities; things were so different that I felt like I was in a completely different world. Anything I posted online would get interactions — even if it was just a few: 8 comments, 4 likes, 100 views. I once created a Facebook group just for fun — nothing special — and I can’t forget how people started joining and asking me about it.
This is what I expect the least.
One might say I took it for granted, but I think not — at least not in a way that I didn’t value it. I just didn’t think it would ever change, and I didn’t know that this was a golden opportunity. Instead of hyperfocusing solely on learning the art(CG art), I should have been building a decent-sized fanbase and establishing a social media presence for my brand — while carrying the learning process alongside it. One way or another, that was the best course of action, even if the algorithm itself wasn’t going to ever change.
If we assume that this is not true, let’s talk about one of my early projects. It was about Dragonman — a game I canceled due to some criticism about the art and gameplay (it wasn’t smart of me to do that). But when I started working on it, it was my early days of using social media platforms, back when social media algorithms were still largely organic. When I decided to create a simple 2D side-scrolling game for the character, I wanted to develop the character in an official capacity, so there was a need for a character concept and a logo. I had a strong idea for the character, but I only roughly knew what the symbol or emblem should look like — so, naturally, I went on the internet.
This is poster for game and the logo.
At that time, I was mostly on DeviantArt for art-related stuff and was using it heavily for that purpose. It felt like the best social platform for artists — and for all intents and purposes, it really was. I was getting interactions from people online, no matter what I posted.I quickly grabbed a piece of paper and sketched all the concepts for the character’s logo and symbol using a green pencil, then posted them online for people’s opinions. I selected the final design based on what most people — both around me and online — liked collectively. Once one was chosen, I quickly finished the logo digitally and posted it online. People again shared their thoughts on what they liked and didn’t like. There wasn’t much to change, but the feedback made a meaningful difference — it improved the logo for sure. They suggested making the circle slightly smaller so it would overlap the logo a bit. That actually looked great, I think the suggestion was meant to match the concept more closely. Though the circle in the original concept was intended to highlight the logo, from what I remember.
This is the pic of concept art for the logo and on the right is first digital finished version.
Nonetheless, this was my impression of online communities — something I didn’t think would change. So when it did, I couldn’t make any sense of it. It never dawned on me that the algorithms had changed, until someone online mentioned it recently — especially after I had spent plenty of time posting great projects as a 3D artist, hoping to get work, only to see very little engagement. And whenever I went online anywhere for advice, I kept seeing the same thing: you need a prebuilt fanbase to get engagement, which feels ridiculous. But then the question becomes: how do you build a fanbase? By posting a lot — make sense of that!
Anyhow… So what happened next? I completed some other projects and posted them online. Nothing much — one of these projects got a couple of downloads, and that was it. It was a chess clock, called “G-Chessclock.”
And the very last project was called “Ninja And The Magic Crystals.” I posted a short clip on a YouTube channel, and it got thousands of views in the first hour — but then, all of a sudden, the views just stopped. That felt extremely suspicious, to say the least.
Now, after seeing all of this, I didn’t want to release the first issue of my comic book without a fanbase — so I’m putting all my effort into building one and I also need funds for this project. To help with that, I created this Fourthwall website and shop, where I’m selling Dragonman merchandise. This will provide funds to invest in marketing for the comic — though that’s not the only reason I’m seeking support. Most of the funds will go into marketing, but the rest will help me create an app where I can release this comic and all future comics completely free for everyone to read. I plan to monetize the app and comics through ads, but don’t worry — these ads won’t be annoying like on other apps. I will place them thoughtfully, so they complement the experience.
About the DRAGONMAN character, the story, and why you should be interested: first and foremost, there are screenshots of some of the art from the comic’s panels while I was still in the creation process. By that time, I had realized I should be posting some of the screenshots of the “creation process” to get people interested, so you can check those screenshots here.And if you want to know a bit about the character, I had written a small novel-style book. I’m not that good at that format — I’m more of a visual artist — and honestly, I should have taken more time with it or gone through several iterations before calling it finished. Still, the book is online and is called Dragonman, and I think you can find it on webnovel and Tapas, though I couldn’t find it on Tapas myself (even though I remember posting it there). It will give you a rough idea of the character’s story.
These are some screenshots of some panels from my comic book, there are more.
Now, there’s a lot more to this story. Since I’m not a novel-style writer and more of a visual storyteller, I didn’t find it very interesting to express everything purely through writing — which is why the novel wasn’t that great. But the moment I started creating the story visually, I began expressing things in ways that I genuinely loved. It also improved my storytelling, and I kept adding details that were absolutely necessary, details I had previously left out in the written version.
Lastly, where my stories truly shine is in how I handle both villains and the hero’s origin story. In most comics, heroes face villains who are either exact opposites or strikingly similar — sometimes even clones — and origin stories often follow familiar patterns. DRAGONMAN is different. His villain isn’t a mirror or foil; he’s a dark, black magic sorcerer who could almost feel like a character from a horror movie, with motives and powers that feel entirely unique. I’ve worked to make the worlds of hero and villain distinct, so it feels like two separate stories colliding rather than a typical hero-villain clash. At the same time, the hero’s origin story is layered and complex, full of nuances that set it apart from typical comic narratives. For now, I’ve called the villain Raven, though that might change, but that’s really all you need to know for now.
Now All I want from you is “To Be A Part Of This”.