How much does your comic cost?

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 9:26 pm

I added it up recently. (I was bored.) My comic has cost me around $250 over the last year and this is just because of materials I have gathered to make the comic with (and some neat hardware to print my own minicomics).

My biggest expenses have been the heavy duty paper trimmer ($100) and the long reach stapler ($40) for the minicomics. I haven't tried to buy a printer yet because the price of the printer would make the first like 2500 mini comics ridiculously expensive.

The rest of the materials boiled down to around $100 of just stuff. Erasers, pens, paper, brushes, ink, anything I picked up to try out.

The most expensive items were the micron drawing pens. I've burned through 5 of those already and at $2.50 each they're not cheap. (I paid a little more than $3 each but then Michaels is expensive.) Compare that with a refillable Rapidiograph pen I bought for $18. The rapidiograph makes a better line and it's refillable so it will last FAR longer than the microns. I wouldn't say it's worth getting every size of rapidiograph, though. I rarely use my .5 micron for anything more than panel borders so I'm still using my first one.

The clic erasers (the ones that look like pens but they're all eraser) are another big expense but there's just nothing like them. I've gone through seven already when I never tried them before I started my comic. At ~$1.50 each....

Sharpies are great things but they run dry quickly. I haven't found anything quite as good and as portable for making flat black. I SHOULD be using the bottle of India ink I bought just for this purpose but it's a liquid medium and horribly not portable. They're $0.75 a piece. I've used up two already and I'm into my third.

Expenses for paper and such don't really amount to much in comparison to pens and erasers so spending $0.50 a page for bristol board isn't as expensive as it sounds and it gives you a much wider area to draw on.

Basically, my point is:
- Buy an expensive technical pen if you use a lot of drawing pens of one type or the other. In the end it will be cheaper but don't bother getting a technical pen if you don't use a particular size of pen very often.

- Computer paper is very accessible and comfortable to draw on but if you do full size comic pages you need to draw LARGE. Go out and buy an 11x14 or better yet a 14x17 pad of bristol board. The expense may seem like a lot but you will be amazed at how freely you can draw.

- Erasers are expensive, but I don't see a way around that.

How much of your own money have you put into your comic? Was it worth it?

Luprand · Post by **Luprand** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 9:50 pm

Lessee ... five sketchbooks at about $5 apiece (and a couple of those were presents) ...

About a hundred mechanical pencils, costing $3 for 10 ...

Something like 20 Pilot pens at about $2 apiece ...

A printerscanner on sale for $75 ...

The only really big cost was a Zip drive and four disks, one of which turned out to be defunct.

So ... now that I think about it, NeTrek has cost me something like 500 dollars. Holy crap.

I'm starting to understand why my parents don't seem to like this hobby of mine very much ...

--Sij

Taiwanimation · Post by **Taiwanimation** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 9:56 pm

Hard to give an exact estimate as I use the same supplies for architecture classes.

A rough estimate per comic

EXPENSES
Paper: 9x12 80lb, $0.10
Ink (1 bottle good for about 100 comics), $0.03
Domain registration (for ~100/year), $0.10
Hard disk space (avg. 1 MB each), $0.01

CAPITAL EXPENDITURES
Pen nibs and holder (for ~1000 comics), $0.02
Scanner (as fraction of usage, for ~1000), $0.10
Misc. tools (also amortized over ~1000), $0.10
--------------------------------------------------
sum: $0.46 /comic

so far so good...

UNREPORTED EXPENDITURES
Artist time @ CA minimum wage $6.75 /hour, $20.00

Pockybot · Post by **Pockybot** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 10:26 pm

$1 in pencils
$4 in ballpoint pens
$15 in paper
$1 ruler
$60 scanner
zero to host the site
$140 in paid advertising >___<

For everythign else, there's tumbleweeds.

Dr.Otto · Post by **Dr.Otto** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 10:34 pm

---About $850 in Federal taxes last year (all donations are required by law to be reported as taxable income), and this year I had to buy a laptop ($1400) to keep the site going on a timely basis.

Taiwanimation · Post by **Taiwanimation** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 10:41 pm

About $850 in Federal taxes last year (all donations are required by law to be reported as taxable income)

That implies some income... what's the full balance sheet?

Toxic · Post by **Toxic** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 10:54 pm

Paper/Sketchbooks: $20
Pens: $10
Pencils and lead: $5
Ruler: $1
Scanner: $80
Advertising: $75
Hosting: $0

Total: $191
Divided by 38 comics thus far: $5.02 per comic. Jeez, I'm way overbudget...

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 11:06 pm

3 A4 Visual Diaries, 120 pp - $5 each (although if I was crooked I could get them for $2.50 through my classroom budget) = $15.

Still using the H Derwent Graphic pencil from the set Mum bought me when I was 10. I didn't use it much then...it's about a third of the way down now... - $0.

Ruler (40cm, found about the house years ago, somehow ended up with me when I moved out a few years back) - $0.

Squishy eraser thingy - $2

Pilot Fineliners (onto about my sixth) - $0 cos I AM crooked enough to get them through my classroom budget...don't tell) = $0.

Scanner...permanent loan from Dad, who comes and nicks it back every now and then until I tell him to return his scanner to me - $0.

I could go into Internet connection fees, but that's just silly.

Therefore, grand total of $15 so far, divided between 65 cartoons finished and on the site (or soon to be released), and I get the grand average of...

$0.23 per comic, but it's actually less cos I still have about 100 pages left in this third book to be used.

Also, that's in Australian dollars, so it's worth even less than that for you Americans...

Dr.Otto · Post by **Dr.Otto** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 11:19 pm

Taiwanimation wrote:
About $850 in Federal taxes last year (all donations are required by law to be reported as taxable income)
That implies some income... what's the full balance sheet?

---I pulled in about $6000 from donations last year (about a third of my gross income), much of which were desktop sales. Monthly broadband access costs me $660 annually, and annual pencil/paper costs run about $10. That's about it, as my archive hosting has been generously donated by a reader in the UK, and my frontpage hosting is on my webmaster's server in Phoenix.

---This year, my expenses should come out to around $2700 if some year-end advertising comes into play. It's amazing, you know...everybody wants ad dollars, but nobody wants to answer their e-mails asking about ad space.

Jim North · Post by **Jim North** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 1:08 am

Approximately five bucks for my pen set (which is still going after nearly a year . . . but will sadly need to be replaced sometime soon, I'm afraid), ten bucks overall for all the erasers and lead and other such supplies for my mechanical pencil, probably about another ten or twenty for the paper (though not even a tenth of it has gone towards the comic), a buck or two for a ruler, and . . . um . . . and . . .

And the rest of it was pretty much free, if I remember correctly. Got the scanner from Kat's dad during one of her birthdays. Hosting from Keenspace is free, of course. The computer and my 'net connection are expensive, but I had both of those long before I started the comic and it's not the primary reason for having them.

So RotD is pretty low rent at just under $50 a year so far.

Of course, if I counted in my "research" for the strip (RPG rulebooks, dice, graph paper, junk food to eat during games, etc.), then it starts getting pretty dang expensive.

Sippan · Post by **Sippan** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 2:48 am

Since I use my computer for so much other stuff, I guess I can't add that to the cost. That means Sipppans Serie has cost me....let's see...::mumble mumble:: .........$0!

Birdie · Post by **Birdie** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 2:56 am

I don't really use any pencils or paper for SFF, except when I'm doodling and writing out stuff on notebook paper, so my comic hasn't really cost me a dime yet, unless you count manhours put into writing and creating and such, and the fact I'm wasting my classtime writing jokes. But I still think it's worth it everytime I find that someone read a big chunk of the archives and no one has emailed me to tell me I suck.

RPin · Post by **RPin** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 3:08 am

I think of it as investment.

RandomActs · Post by **RandomActs** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 3:18 am

Since I just hit the one year mark last month, lemme think what I've spent in that 12 month period on my web comic...

Expenses (in no particular order other than how they come to mind)

Drawing Table $129 (marked down to $89 2 months later)
Scanner $99 (only because my wife lost the old one)
Pencil Carousel $13
5 boxes of different brands of color pencils $25 (guesstimate)
2 pack set of .5 and .7 drafting pencils $2.50
3 Boxes of Yellow, #2, Cedar, Mirado Brand Pencils ~$9.00
3 Bottles of Higgins India Ink $3.00
Cartooning Set of dip pens $6.50
Various and assorted nibs $15.00
Sharpies (color and black) $20.00
9x12 bristol I forget
11x bristol I forget
17x bristol I forget
19x24 Bristol (what I actually use) $21 for a 20 sheet pad.
Kinko's (to cut the 19x24 pad into 8x19 strips) ~$6.00
3 drawer thing to hold strips and supplies $30.00
3 sketch pads $12-15 bucks not sure lost track
Erasers (gum, kneaded, white) $20.00
"How to Draw" type books - 1 stack of 7 ~$150.00
Enrollment in Art Instruction School - $120+/month

Wow, now I'm seriously depressed about this one. Looks like I'm gonna have to take a day this weekend and review my spending habits. I didn't realize so much had gone to the strip until I started actually write it down.

Evil Jamie! · Post by **Evil Jamie!** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 3:21 am

Beats the hell outta me.

Phact0rri · Post by **Phact0rri** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 3:29 am

my comic is low rent... actually I just started doing rough sketches of my comic on paper before then it was just electricty and sleep deprivation....

now I use a few various lead pencils ehh I'd assume something like seven dollars US...

The paper I use is printer paper so its really cheap I don't even think I've used much more a dollars worth.

my non comic art hobby is a diffrent story all together and we will not talk about that.

War · Post by **War** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 3:56 am

I buy

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 4:25 am

Supplies: $20 (for those rare actually hand-drawn comics)

TIME: 1 hour per comic x 3 comics per week x 52 weeks per year = 156 comic hours at $20/hour (what I could make if not doing the comic) = $3120.

Total for this year: $3140.

Ti-Phil · Post by **Ti-Phil** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 4:41 am

Hum...
2 big 500 sheets of paper pack : 10$
8 pilot V5 pen : 20$
1 scanner : 100$ (it was on sale though)

Total : 130 dollars

Per episode with specials : 0,55 cent
Not bad ^^

Soap Soaperson · Post by **Soap Soaperson** » Thu Sep 30, 2004 4:47 am

I had all the supplies to begin with, except for the cardstock. I have the same micron pens that I've used all through the comic, and before it.

So, I guess, like 10 bucks.

But time-wise, that's a different story.