I thought that, since What You Believe is ending, I may as well bring up the jam issue I proposed and drew six pages for. The idea is such: each contributor follows up on the story from the previous one, writing and art. Nobody tells the others what they're doing and only know what the pages are like when they are sent them. This can provide a story that goes in many different directions, or has specific focus. It's the beauty of such an endeavor.

Rules to maintain are: do not disregard a previous artist's contribution in order to do whatever you want to do–it has to flow as naturally as possible from the narrative–and always have a solution handy to get characters out of any predicament they face, in case a subsequent artist is at a loss and must contact you about your intentions. Actually, there's always the obligatory rule to have fun. And treat every person's character you use with respect.

With that said, I wonder who would be signing up. Though I don't care how many pages each person would be doing, some people would want to know, and so I do require you mention that.

Pages: 30 (tentatively)
Cover - ShastaB24
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I think this is something you have to be careful of when it comes to not knowing what is to come etc as this could make the issue very, very long or very confusing and it could lose it's way. I think if this was to work, there'd have to be a rough layout of the story going on so that people could work with that and know when the ending is. It's just something to be careful of, if you can pull it off though I'm looking forward to seeing it.

I was thinking it could be done along the lines of the DC Challenge. In that, each issue was released without the subsequent creators knowing how it was going to go. As far as I know, the first issue was done without anybody knowing how it would be set up. This one would just have the interesting addition that previous contributors won't know how the subsequent pieces go, either, until the story is posted online. In fact, that makes me think that if Abt gets involved in this, that he should be the last one to contribute.

I will also say that I did my pages as something I intend to be pretty open-ended. The pages introduce a character, really. But I don't want to give too much away, so the next contributor can get it fresh. I don't even want to say which characters I've included, because of that.

But I can open this up to everyone else: what do people think? Should there be more transparency in plot? Do people want me to mention where I've already taken it, so they have an idea where things might go? I can do that if people want, I guess.

And I would have no idea when this issue might be put up. I'd hope it can fit in anywhere, and I know it would be after the ninja issue, and maybe the JOD issue, as well, since it would take a bit of time due to varying artist speed.

It would be cool seeing this - but I'd say put restrictions on it also. Perhaps write which characters appear (and possibly make a rule that only these are used so that there isn't an overcrowdment of character introduction) etc. - then leave it down to everyone to go from there. If this is the case, then you can definitely sign me up for a few pages. This would go on the backburner for now, though - I have other commitments in my ninja issue, another project and also anotherproject - I could squeeze it in though whenever this is a concrete idea and plan.

So, I'm finally responding to this. While I understand your sentiments and can agree, I am also stubborn. I like the idea of being able to throw in whatever characters we want. In fact how about this: background and walkthrough cameos are fair game for the HA members. It's the core group that moves on to the following issue that shouldn't balloon to unreasonable proportions. I say this, in part, because there are a lot of cameos that I drew, but niftily, I focused my pages on just two characters:
Bombshell
and the new character, Buns, whose pertinent information is in those pages

That sounds good but one thing we need to be aware of is how many pages this will be. I suggest perhaps setting up a 30 page issue where the writers/artists then just jump in whenever they want - but that way they know when they should be wrapping the story up. If that's the case then sure, sign me up for 4 pages.

I guess we could give the 30 page limit. Still, it should be more of a guideline, in case an artist decides to do less or more pages than they volunteered for, based on how they react to what came before. I'll update the initial post about the 30-page limit, though I won't put you on any pages yet, ironhand, until we get some other people, since you expressed desire to not have it be so immediate. I just know I'm not giving you the ones right after me or the final pages.

I also wanted to say that I intend to give out the cover in both my colors and the original lineart, in case somebody gets inspiration to color it better than I did. And I'll also try to send an in-progress credits page, in psd format, for each person to add their information as it comes along. I'd want to send it in xcf format, but I can't assume everybody is using GIMP.

And these suggestions for the issue are great. It helps me work things out better and for everybody to have a better experience with it.

Yeah, the 30 page thing can be a rough guideline, at least. If it goes over slightly due to a persons change in pages idea, that's fine - I just think it needs to be clear for those working on this that there should be an ending soon. Yeah, feel free to sign me up whenever and wherever you want - when you tell me this will depend on how many pages I can do as I me working on more/less projects at the time.
Glad to be of help - this should be good with the right guidance.

Huh, could've sworn I'd already commented on this.

It's a cool idea.

IMO, it'd be best to do this as a non-canon story - almost like a fan fiction or “What If?”. That would give us absolute freedom to jam without having to worry about being consistent with current continuity or about committing HA to stick to something we made up on the fly. It should also eliminate the need to check with creators about doing stuff with their characters because it's ‘just’ fanart.


Shastab24, I assume those first six pages are you establishing the premise. What happens after that? Is it each artist does one page then passes it to the next one?

I'm not actually familiar with the DC Challenge. Are you able to explain how that works?

I just prefer a canon thing, myself. People can give guidelines on how their character should be treated, or if their character would be allowed in the thing, I guess. Now, considering the only primary character included in the pages I'd be doing (as I want to redraw the pages I did) who would need consultation about anything would be Bombshell, then it could just as easily be that ideas could be run by Abt before being done. Or, on another note, one could introduce the idea thatthere is some sort of villain/device/whatever that may have screwed with some people's heads, causing them to act a little different than usual (that's always a perfectly acceptable excuse in comics).
Anyways, the idea would be that somebody does their bit and passes it on, and whoever the next person is builds upon that their own way, taking the story wherever they want to take it, keeping it as a logical progression from what came before. This is whether they do just one page or a whole slew. I'd just advise nobody end their bit with anything that would require the next artist to do too much in the way of art (no leaving it so that there are a hundred characters fighting that many other characters, because that's a headache to draw) and that nobody come up with a hopeless scenario that the next person can't get out of. It would be that the final person involved would bring the story to a close, so I would also think that it would be good to have a way to make sure that whatever conflict the last person has the characters in can feasibly be wrapped up in a single page (and that way, I guess, it's good to know how many pages the people towards the end think they'd be doing, so people don't make it too difficult on them).
Anyways, the DC Challenge was a situation where several creative teams got involved, each doing a different issue. None of them were involved in the creative decisions of the other issues (barring the final issue, which was done by six of the writers who were involved in the previous issues), but they did continue the story. They were allowed to use any character they wanted from DC's history to that point (but not the characters they were writing in DC's regular books). Each ended their issue in a seemingly impossible cliffhanger, but the caveat was that they had to have an explanation at hand as to how the characterscould getout of said cliffhanger if the next writer was too stumped and had to ask them. Wikipedia has a page on it (as does TV Tropes, if you want to brave that site and possibly waste your day on it as a result). I know I have the comic files on my computer, and I have the physical copy of one of the issues. It's a fun ride, for sure.
Now the jam issue could be out of canon, I guess, but I want the character introduced (Buns) to be in canon. Maybe a loose canon situation could be implemented if my suggestion at the top of this post isn't good enough: it's canon for Buns, but maybe not for everybody else. Maybe some sort of universal flux, or something.

The DC Challenge approach sounds a lot of fun.

I'd be happy to sign up for that with the caveat that, if a situation takes multiple pages, I'll be a bit slow. I think I'm faster than I used to be, but it's still a long way short of ‘fast’.

Your call on the canonicity. It's just been my experience that getting permissions can be really slow - and there are a number of creators who seem to be outright AWOL like Tempest and MonkeyMafia. This project seems like it's intended to be loose and free-form and requiring multiple clearances for each bit is going to seriously bottleneck that.

Blanket permissions up front will help a lot though.

People can feel free to use any of my characters for this (which I think at the moment is just Chaos and Ballista). There's currently a moratorium on use of Nth, though.

Well, I should remember that the DC Challenge was non-canon, which helped its ability to do just about anything. Granted, it was also kind of canon, as well. It was started before Crisis and was another last hurrah for the pre-Crisis DC, though its nature made the issues come out slowly and by the end the post-Crisis universe had been quite well established. Apparently, people actually were upset that it wasn't canon, but this was a story in the pre-Crisis timeline–of course it wasn't canon anymore.
Canonicity can be purposely muddled in the story. I do personally like alternate universes (one might be able to tell from my work I've done already) and having alternate timelines can work. Really, one has to see the pages of mine to see how there's a possibility. I don't want to give too much about them away, as I do want whenever this happens for the artist after me to be seeing a lot of the stuff for the first time.
Anyways, I am personally giving an opening for much of my characters to be involved. Sparkle and Astral, surely, but also the Herculean, Technica, Noggin, Purple Power, and Locomotive from the HUniverse, possibly appearances from some of my other-dimensional characters (Eiderdown, Fractal, the Swimmer, the Runner, etc.), not to mention my villains. I won't get all my characters into my pages, but I know there will be some.
Though, I guess one should really see what Abt thinks about usage of Bombshell–that's an important one.

Oh, I'm pretty much happy with any use of my characters which is somewhat true to who they are. Using the characters in a fun or interesting way is much more important to me than continuity.

There are also a few characters that have been identified by their owners as having “auto” permissions, which means they can be used without asking.


Characterised as Auto are:
Azumorph
HUB
Kaine
Roof Rat
Solarcell
Dark Beauty
The Oz Stars (Azumorph and HUB's old team)




Plus the permissions granted in this thread for this specific story. So far: All my characters except Nth, any of Abt_Nihil's characters, any of Shastab24's characters who would be in the HUniverse.


Incidentally, I'm not sure I agree with Ironhand about having a set number of pages. This story has the potential to snowball as each contributer builds on everything that comes before and could be a ton of fun. It seems a shame to constrain it. Why not just keep it going for as long as it continues to be fun? (I'm assuming here that it will be under its own title ala HU Adventures).

PS. I don't have a problem with introducing new characters. It may even be necessary depending on what perms we do and don't get. And we have a number of characters in the queue to be introduced - thus seems as good a place for that as any…

Oh, it would definitely be great to introduce characters who haven't made it into the comic proper. Also, I'm not sure, but I think literacysuks1 gave us permission some time ago to use the Acrobat characters.
Doing it as a separate comic would be awesome, but I also don't know if it would be something everybody would be for. I know Abt has expressed reticence at creating separate comics for Heroes Alliance things in the past. I can understand that they can easily become abandoned, too. Still, I know I would prefer it this way.
But one thing with a jam thing is that there might beb a possibility to get some creators involved who might not have been really drawn to it before, as when one has the reigns they do have control over where the story goes for that bit, which some people might prefer over drawing somebody else's script. And on that note, it's also a chance for people to experiment in their own ways at telling a comic story, as they don't have to fit it to somebody else's script. Different paneling, alternate forms of art, fourth wall breaks where appropriate, etc.

If it's a (potentially) open-ended thing, it needs to be its own comic. If there's a chance we can organize it much like we organize HA chapters, the benefits on posting it on the main HA site would be greater. HA has a front-page link, and both HU Adventures as well as Monthly Mayhem have considerably less exposure. But we'd trade exposure for artistic freedom, and the latter might be more important in this case. So the jam issue having its own site is definitely something I'd consider. Also, in that case it needn't be a jam “issue”, but could be ongoing. (In that case we need to make sure it doesn't siphon off contributions that could go to main HA chapters though.)

Another argument for publishing as a separate comic is that the jam issue will presumably update less frequently than HA.

HA starts with a completed script well in advance and artists are able to work on their pages simultaneously (HA #10 is 1/3rd done already and it's still a couple of months away). Conversely, the Jam issue is all about creators responding to what other creators have posted, and that almost certainly means longer turnarounds.

That same reason means that the siphon effect from HA shouldn't be too extreme.

I'm probably biased because HAMM was my first baby steps into the HA pool, but I'd love to see both HAMM and Jam (ohey, rhyme. :D)increasethe pool of HA contributors, not just dilute the existing one.

All that said, I think I may have coopted Shastab24's idea here - I'm envisioning it as a big, open, free-for-all ongoing thing. The original idea seems to have been more along the lines of figure out up front who's doing it, take turns emailing (or whatevering) it around and then publishing it as an issue when it's done. So it really does all depend…

Hey, an ongoing one is a great idea, too. I'd still want there to be issues, but that can be simply based on where the story is going, where an issue break would be appropriate. Part of this is that I would want to still be able to put it in print.
But an ongoing thing would also have another thing we would need in a more steadfast way: a list of rules for contributors to remember to follow, so that there's better reference than people sending back and forth vague things–things can get off track easily the longer such a thing goes on. I'd think rules like respecting those you're following and not derailing the story already set up, making sure contributors ahead of you aren't stuck for something to do (don't destroy the universe unless the next contributor has a basis for it to be rebuilt, for instance), respecting the characters (don't make Shell suddenly an evil mastermind who infiltrated Heroes Alliance to kill all the heroes–unless you're talking about some evil mastermind impersonating Shell and this isn't Masao himself), and such. Each hero really might even have their own list of rules, based on limitations of the character's aspects as well as the creator's permissions (X can't be mind-controlled, Y isn't allowed to be in a relationship, etc.).

This is an interesting forum. Now, this jam I believe should be an ongoing thing, but not take away from the main HA comic. I would love to throw my two cents in on this but for right now I can't. Maybe in two months I will ask to draw a few pages for this Jam issues. I want to at least make Solarcell and Darkbeauty enter the universe first.



On that note, when exactly will this start? This way, I can hurry along SolarCell's story just for this jam session. How are we suppose to know what the previous edit artist/writer has done? Will it be published first and then the next artist/writer takes over?

It'll start when it seems I actually have enough interest and commitment in it to think it warrants to be started. At the moment, it's still just being discussed.

And I would think it would be that we would have a list of contributors and each person sends their files to the next person involved. Granted, that can get difficult if people aren't available, especially since some people sometimes drop off the map, so the alternative could be to post up the pages when they're done and have the next artist draw from there. Which do people think is best? The first allows for more consistent updates, as one can build a buffer, but the other does help if someone unexpectedly isn't available.

Also, Solarcell could conceivably be in the story and not in the HUniverse in her comic–either the jam takes place in an alternate timeline or ahead of Solarcell.

It's hard to commit to a specific number of pages when I don't yet know the situation I'll be writing to or the number of pages I'll need. I guess put me down for four, but be warned it'll probably take me a month or so to produce those pages. In fact, if you want to, put me down for four towards the beginning and another four towards the end.

Honestly, given the nature of this thing, I suspect we're probably better just getting it rolling now and build up the list of contributors as we go. We've been in the ‘drumming up interest’ stage for two years now. Maybe the best way to drum up interest at this point is to start and let people see what they'd be signing on for. In that spirit, publish-as-we-go seems best, though there would almost certainly be some hiatus periods.

As a matter of interest, the characters that have been cleared for use in this so far (including ones already identified as ‘auto’ permissions by their creators) are:
Azumorph
HUB
Kaine the White Tiger
Roof Rat
Solarcell
Dark Beauty
The Oz Stars (Azu's team from Australia)
Bombshell
Archangel
Fury
UNCA SAM
Change
Thanatos
Chaos
Ballista
Sparkle
Astral
Herculean
Technica
Noggin
Purple Power
Locomotive
Eiderdown
Fractal
the Swimmer
the Runner

Hopefully we can get some more perms. It might even be worth PQing or DevArt msging around…

Well, I should probably get around to re-drawing the intro pages, then. Honestly, I'd use the old files, but I know I can make them look nicer. You know, anyone looking back at their old artwork must cringe a bit, and I know I can do it better now (though, just because I'm a perfectionist doesn't mean other people have to be–I just like the new character so much, I want them to be introduced more properly).

shastab24 wrote: It'll start when it seems I actually have enough interest and commitment in it to think it warrants to be started. At the moment, it's still just being discussed.And I would think it would be that we would have a list of contributors and each person sends their files to the next person involved. Granted, that can get difficult if people aren't available, especially since some people sometimes drop off the map, so the alternative could be to post up the pages when they're done and have the next artist draw from there. Which do people think is best? The first allows for more consistent updates, as one can build a buffer, but the other does help if someone unexpectedly isn't available.Also, Solarcell could conceivably be in the story and not in the HUniverse in her comic–either the jam takes place in an alternate timeline or ahead of Solarcell.

E

At this point in time SolarCell and DarkBeauty is in the HA/HU universe. I can help out a bit for this now since the main story is on hold for now. Also free to use is “Samantha the Purple Machete”. Not to be confused with “Purple Power”. Remember she is a villain and an assassin.

I love the “What If” comics idea for us. That is complete freedom for each of us to use. I might even do a What if issue of the opposite sex HA. Yup. That would mean bombshell is a Dude and Relik is a gal and so forth with every member. That would be fun. To