On Business: Customizing

By | Monday, February 01, 2016 Leave a Comment
So the frequently-surprising Boulet recently launched Le Bouletmaton, a "générateur d'avatars de qualité supérieure." If you're not up to snuff on your French, it's basically an avatar maker where the user can click through several options for each facial feature to create an illustration that bears some resemblance to them. (Or someone else.) What's unique about this one is that it's all done in Boulet's inimitable style. I found it to be impressively well-done, and is easy to figure out even if you don't know a lick of French. (Which I don't.)

So here's my thought. What if a company were do one of these, but for a full figure? And then, instead of spitting back an avatar that looked like it belonged on The Simpsons or The Peanuts Movie or something, what if it showed your creation in a comic as one of the characters? Maybe the main character? I talked about the basic idea of dropping someone's textual information into a story template to make a custom story a few years ago but you could go further and set up some layered art files, so that a custom figure could be dropped in as well. It would, of course, require a good amount of drawing to set up, doing different figure types and such. And you'd probably need to do several poses for each as well.

But think about the result: a complete comic story with YOU not only mentioned but actually participating in the story itself! I bet there'd be more than a few people interested in purchasing something like that!

You could have someone do all the customizing online, like Boulet's piece there, and then spit back maybe two or three sample pages on the screen. Then give them an option to buy the whole story, or a couple different stories. Maybe a 32-page book for $10 or $12, and a 64-page book for $20? (I'm just brainstorming here; I don't know exactly how the pricing would break down.)

I think that's a totally do-able idea for someone with a little seed money, and the ability to pull together some writers, artists, and programmers. Somebody make this happen!
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