It always helps to show the money.

By Moose

You’re an artist. You have a small group of people who follow your work on Hentai Foundry, Twitter, etc. you’re doing ok with commissions and getting people to pay you for your work. The problems is you don’t want “extra” money anymore, you want Hentai to be your primary source of income. You want to make money like the big boys do, and cross to the other side. How do you do it? There’s several things you can do but here’s one of the big ones: Stop drawing licensed characters that aren’t yours!

I know. It sucks. I have favorites and I love to see them naked. A topless Witchblade, Vampirella filled with cum, an ass gaping She Hulk… You can draw these characters (until you get a cease and desist from a respective attorney) but you don’t want to build and maintain and your fan base and career off of them.

This is what happens to the average general artist. In the beginning they post a few to a lot of sketches of licensed characters. If you love Princess Peach, why can’t you draw her being anally assaulted by a toad? Since you love Princess Peach you keep drawing her more and more until you become that “Princess Peach Guy”. You’ll get attention, commissions, and a bit of fame from gaming fans, but you may have a hard time consistently monetizing an adult pay site or a Patreon account without original content being your primary objective.

But Moose, other people are doing it, why can’t I? Well, you can. That’s the problem. Rest assure though, the crackdown is coming. Think of all the hundreds of artists you’ve seen at comic-cons selling prints of Marvel and DC characters. It’s so common in our comic culture, we tend to forget that shit is illegal. When Time Warner purchased DC and when Disney acquired Marvel, the size of their legal departments grew exponentially. Their attorneys won’t likely go after “everyone”, they’ll go after the people who aren’t paying to play–the people who are profiting from their characters (and making them bump uglies no less).

If you have a free business model and make your money off ads, you’re slightly better off. If you use a third party vendor like CCBill or Patreon, you’re screwed. Why? Because if Kevin Eastman (or whoever owns the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) gets sick of people making TMNT porn, he’ll just tell Patreon to clean house on anyone who uses his characters or he’ll sue them. Patreon will then clean house on the artists to stay out of court. If you’re that TMNT guy, you’re screwed. Don’t let this happen to you.

A few years ago Karmagik posted a request at the beginning of the year. He asked what would people like to see more of in his art. My feedback to him was I wanted to see more of his original characters. I think his parodies are great but he’s a brilliant creator and designer and I really wanted to see some of his original characters. Especially Darlene and the lovely ladies of Double D Ranch (pictured above).

If you want to go pro and be like some of the people in adult comics/hentai who do well financially, you need to approach your content like a business. Like an investor actually. What does a good investor do? Diversify. Don’t allow more than 20% of your content to be characters that you don’t own. So when The law cracks down on you, it won’t kill your business. Or stay away from them all together and never have that headache.

Think about it, many of the great adult artists in our field are known for their original content. JAB is known for Ay Papi, Melkor Mancin, Sidney, John Persons, interracial. Some artists start off doing licensed stuff but eventually cross over and start their own comics and stories. Plus once your character take off, that’s where the money is. Not that Coca-Cola is going to be beating down your door to license your porn character but you will have even more ways to monetize your art to your fans.

You need to realize the comic porn industry is not favored by the masses and they will do anything to bring us down. And it’s not just comics of course, it’s porn in general. We all want to make money and have lasting careers but it starts with having a great defense, not a great offense. So when the shit does hit the fan, you’re not totally screwed.