Patrick the Wolf Boy is only one of the dozens of comicbook properties that Platinum Studios has in development around Hollywood. © Platinum Studios.

Many animators are looking toward alternative venues to introduce new properties, either as steppingstones to television or film, or as ends in themselves. Of course, alternative platforms, from online series and videogames to comic strips and storybooks, have long served as a starting point for properties later seen on TV or the big screen. But their value is growing. In particular, animators are increasingly looking at print publishing and mobile platforms as viable launch pads for new properties.

Story Development
Print publishing, encompassing comicbooks, comic strips, storybooks, novels and the like, offers animators a key benefit in that it allows them to develop and showcase their properties’ storylines and characters. “To publish something requires that the idea has been thought out,” says Nancy Cushing-Jones, a partner at Broadthink, an agency that has teamed with actor/author John Lithgow to extend his children’s book properties into other media platforms.

“You can create a really rich world around the characters,” adds Scott Rosenberg, chairman of Platinum Studios, which holds the rights to more than 2,500 comicbook characters from its own library and those of publishers around the world, and has developed several for film and television. “[Comics] are unique in that they allow for the reinvention of the characters as often as the writers want to do it.” That history helps fans accept new iterations — such as TV’s Smallville, an innovative twist on the Superman comicbook franchise — on the big and small screens. Platinum has a partnership with The Shop Productions to create 3D CG films based on some of its properties, including Bonesaw, Dylan Dog: The Fourth Kingdom and Patrick the Wolf Boy.

Comicbooks’ layered, complex storylines and characters even lead to entertainment vehicles inspired not by the main protagonists, but by interesting details or secondary characters. For Mal Chance, a film pitch tied to a Spanish comicbook, Platinum mined one paragraph at the end of the comic as the jumping-off point for an entire movie.

Publishing can provide similar benefits to creators of concepts originating in less story-driven media as it can to creators of first-time concepts. When Foundation 9 Entertainment was showing its property Death Jr. to game publishers — the Konami-published PSP game debuted in 2005 — it decided to self-publish a comicbook to use as a sales tool. “Someone suggested, since we referenced an underground comic vibe to the game, and the world, that we actually create a comic,” says Chris Charla, exec producer at Foundation 9.

“This was a brilliant idea,” Charla reports. “Not only did it enable us to flesh out more ideas about the game world, but it was a great marketing tool. Being able to give someone a comic lets them instantly become immersed in the world, without having to sit through a long-winded pitch or PowerPoint presentation. Early on, it was great to show potential game publishers, and after distributing it at ComicCon, we were able to see that tons of people dug the character — it wasn’t just us. And of course, as we worked through the comic, it helped us flesh out the world and the backstory of the game, and really added more depth.” The initial publication attracted the interest of Image Comics, which subsequently released a three-issue series that has been collected into a trade paperback.

Death Jr. is being developed for an anime-style TV series by Madhouse Studios. “The success of the comic and the game have definitely ‘proven’ the potential of the property a ton, and that has really helped on the animation side,” Charla says. “In fact, it’s caused us to widen the scope of what we’re planning, which is pretty cool!”