Hey everyone,
We are a small, 100% independent creative team from Europe, and we are currently working on our very first comic project, Neurocode 22e: a gritty, atmospheric cyber-noir story set in a future "Tech Feudalist" world.
Because this is our first time launching a franchise, we are learning on the ground floor and completely relying on friends and the independent community to help us get the best results. We don't have studio backing, corporate cash, or a greedy publisher, just our own hard work and a deep obsession with old-school sci-fi storytelling.
Right now, we are running our first Kickstarter to fund the printing, and while we are incredibly grateful to be 157% funded with 57 backers, we’ve hit a massive technical hurdle in our production workflow. We desperately need some veteran community advice.
Our Challenge: Translating Vertical Scroll to Traditional Print
Our artist originally designed and built all of our comic panels from scratch in a vertical scroll format specifically optimized for webcomics/Webtoons. However, because our community stepped up to fund a physical release, we are now building a traditional print Graphic Novel format alongside it.
Sometimes the transitions are great, others we are struggling.
If you have successfully transitioned a comic from vertical to print, we would love your tips on:
- Pacing & Flow: In a vertical scroll, the beat is faster, and negative space builds tension. On a physical page, you the empty gutters are some times uncorfortable, them we are putting 2 or 3 panels per page to keep the beat. But this will make the Graphic Novel very big (120+ pages). Do someone have a solution?
- Panel Composition: Are there clever ways to crop, stack, or frame tight vertical panels into standard horizontal tiers, or is it almost always necessary to completely re-compose and redraw the background elements?
We are entering our final 2 weeks on Kickstarter and pushing for a 100-backer milestone to unlock our community stretch goals (including an original soundtrack). To keep our story accessible to other indie creators and backers on a tight budget, we even launched a strictly digital "Street-Level Operative" tier for just €8.
We want to build this universe the right way, with the community, from the ground up. If you want to check out our art style or read Chapter 1 Webcomic format completely for free to see exactly what we're working with, the link is right here:
👉 neurocode-en.carrd.co/
Hugs,
The Neurocode Team