There are many ideas and many companies that announce projects, but how do our ideas move through the pipeline to you? How can you think about doing something similar if you’re a creative or an artist? How can you stay updated, or even get involved? This is why I wanted to write this article.
Ideation
Ideation is simply the stage where we play around with story ideas. Throwing together different plot points, characters, character development, settings, plots, etc., can really be exhilarating! However, there comes a point where ideas have to become reality. More on that later. How does an idea reach the next stage and go into writing? We typically ask 3 simple questions. (1) Is this a good story? We want to create quality stories, and at the end of the day, whether someone is Christian or not, we want our readers and customers to say that our stories are great! (2) What’s the visual medium of the story? From the beginning, we want to have a strong idea of the visual process that this story would go through. For instance, do we see this becoming a game, live action movie/show, cartoon, or anime? Is it a combination? Would it make sense for it to be a comic book or a manga? We may not have all of the answers, but we try to think of the end from the beginning. (3) Lastly, and most importantly, does this glorify Christ? This doesn’t mean that it has to be explicitly Christian and quoting Scripture, but in terms of the values of Jesus, the Gospel, morality, etc., can they be interpreted and felt throughout the story, whether implicitly or explicitly? Once these 3 questions are answered confidently, the story moves on to the next phase.
Writing
By writing, I don’t mean just writing down ideas or outlines, which happen in the first step. I mean that there is a laser focus on turning an outline into a fully fleshed-out book. It’s where a concept in the mind truly meets reality. If you’re an aspiring writer, artist, designer, mangaka, game developer, or whatever, let me encourage you with this: you can never move the needle until you turn fantasy into reality. It’s fine to have as much fun as you want in the ideation stage, where you’re playing around with ideas, concepts, and so on. But the difference between an aspiring creator and an actual creator is that only one of them actually finished the project! My first book, before the Stratos Saga series, was horrible, but guess what? It was done! Just as a writer, of all the millions of people who start writing a book, very few actually finish it. Here’s the thing: this stage is probably the most important one because, whether we’re making a movie, anime, or video game, all of these visual mediums have to have at least one core thing: a story. The story may not be exactly copied and pasted into every visual medium, but it will become the bedrock, foundation, and source material for all of the other steps. Seraph’s Sword is currently in this stage.
Book Publishing
This is where we get into the editing and publishing phase to actually get the book out to the public. Though it would be nice for every book to be a New York Times bestseller, the goal is not necessarily to sell a lot of books initially. The goal is to have an entry point for the project — a place for people to start diving into the world, and for people who become more interested after experiencing the other visual mediums to dive into. For example, The Witcher books became way more popular after the creation of the Witcher games. This makes each world and project more full, fleshed out, and thoughtfully crafted.
Comic/Manga Publishing
It’s at this step where written creativity becomes visual. During this time, we will be developing concept art, a visual bible, character designs, etc. Depending on the audience and visual intentions, this step will either be a comic book/hybrid or a manga. If it’s a comic book, then the goal would be to mainly turn it into a live action film or a video game, and if it’s a manga, the obvious next step would be an anime. It’s at this stage where we’ll be testing the waters of the visual presentation and building the world. This is a great time to essentially ‘storyboard’ the project and its scenes in order to prepare for motion pictures. The Stratos Saga is in this stage.
Film/Cartoon/Anime Creation
Motion pictures (live action films/anime/cartoons) are where our projects come alive! Depending on the production of step 4, we will determine whether the motion picture will be a movie or a TV show, and which avenue we’ll be going. Furthermore, the goal is to have distribution already worked out before production.
Video Game (if applicable)
Though we don’t have any announced plans for a video game, we actually do have 3 in the late ideation stages that are ready to go into the writing stage once some more books are completed. The catch here is that, if a story is planned for gaming, the overall process will start much earlier at step 2 for production, even though it may still go through steps 3–5. Regardless, there are at least 3 strong concepts in ideation, and one should move into the pipeline soon!
Reinvestment
I truly believe that this is where 35:31 Studios grows exponentially and becomes incredibly self-sustainable. Here’s the thing: the reason why many studios, whether anime, film, or gaming, fail is that they either (1) take out a bunch of loans and bank it all on one big project to succeed or fail, or (2) rely heavily on investors who will take the majority of the profit and leave studios with breadcrumbs. Not that either one of these paths can’t work — it’s just not how we want to operate. In the famous words of Dave Ramsey, “you become the bank.” That’s why we really want to emphasize step 7, which is to reinvest our money back into the studio. Now, obviously, people have to get paid, make money, retire, provide for their families, etc. But the idea is that a big portion of all of our net revenue is reinvested back into the company for future projects. For instance, say Seraph’s Sword, the anime, (hopefully) makes $10 million in profit. Theoretically, if we took $5 million out and reinvested that back into 35:31 Studios, we become the bank. Now our next anime has $2 million to create the manga and start animation, and our gaming department has $3 million to start production. Then, when these 2 new projects come out, they’ll also reinvest and help create more projects. Meanwhile, the remaining net profit gets invested into the employees and the future longevity of the company. Again, it’s just an idea, but I think this is what will keep the company growing and thriving!
Now I know what you might be thinking. Isn’t this a little too ambitious? Don’t you think you could fail? Do you honestly think you could build a comic book, manga, anime, film, and video game studio from scratch? Yes, yes, and… yes!! I know that this is crazy and a wild idea, but here are two things that I’ve learned about writing: all novels are written one word at a time, and you start with the end goal in mind and work your way backwards. Nobody accidentally finishes a book. A film director doesn’t accidentally shoot a film. Not only that, but nobody expects everything to be done in a day — it’s one step at a time. Regardless, I know it’ll be difficult and I know I’ll run into problems (heck, we’re running into them now!), but here’s the thing: without problems there won’t be progress, products, or profits in this endeavor. More importantly, it’s worth doing something hard if it glorifies Christ through the gifts and talents that He has given us. The question is, are you doing that? Would you like to join us? If so, please join the studio and let’s get in touch! Until then, I hope you’ve learned something from this that even you can implement today and start glorifying Christ through your creativity!
Godspeed!
A Weak Fool