29-FEB-2012 By the power of Twitter and user @incogvito, we learned that March 1st is CREATOR OWNED DAY in the comics community. The founder STEPHEN DOWNEY answered some questions for us.

Details were announced on Stephen Downey’s website:

Create a sketch of an original character or concept and and post it on your blog Thurday 1st March. It should be a concept completely owned by the artist (or co-owned with the writer/collaborators permission to post).

HOW DID THIS BEGIN?
SD: With the recent BEFORE WATCHMEN announcements, and creator controversies around Gary Friedman/Marvel and THE WALKING DEAD there’s been a lot of buzz circulating online about owning your own work, with a few artists vowing not to sketch company characters. I thought it would be nice to have a day that artists posted their own characters/concepts and were able to bring a little attention to new ideas, so came up with Creator Owned Day.

HOW CAN A WRITER PARTICIPATE?
SD: Writers can team up with an artist and decide on an ownership deal with them (a nice trial run for further collaboration perhaps). Alternatively, there’s no reason why a writer couldn’t come up with a unique concept and post it as a character bio.

WHICH COMIC CONVENTIONS ARE BEST FOR PRESENTING CREATOR OWNED WORK?
SD: I’ve only ever been to Irish and UK cons, but there are certainly a number of publishers willing to look at creator-owned material, either for short anthologies or graphic novels. In terms of sales, I think the audience here is definitely willing to try something new as long as it looks good.

The point is to highlight your imaginative products that fall outside corporate copyright. No Wolverine redux. No steampunk Batman. Your own creation deserves to be introduced to the comics world. Share your post using the Twitter hashtag #CreatorOwnedDay.

http://www.stephendowneygallery.com/2012/02/creator-owned-day-march-1st.html

 

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Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.