The initial story for Anema Online
was written in 1990, when I was just ten. Over
the years, updated versions of it were drawn,
along with other stories too.
In the year 2000, I decided to publish Anema.
Unfortunately, I soon realized that local publishers
looked upon the country’s own authors with
scorn, and comics had even worse treatment.
Since no one wanted to publish Anema, I thought
of doing it myself instead, thereby learning all
the legal and operational issues of running a
business alone.
One grueling year later, Anema was a success,
and Book 1 outsold many debut titles in the market,
though it was just a 30-page black & white
magazine-format comic. I even got a good deal
of press mentions!
However, I wanted to showcase Anema at a faster
pace, and to more people. The internet seemed
to be a great solution.
At first, I tried writing to arts councils and
foundations for sponsorship, but as usual they
thought comics were frivolous pursuits. I thought
it was impossible to do this on my own- you needed
4-5 people to run a dot.com like this!
It was a case of survival then- either did the
impossible, or it was all over. So in 2 months
I crashed through various books, learning how
to use the relevant programs, market a dot.com,
and actually creating this site.
On February 2004 Anema Online was born.
The series ran to 18 chapters by 2007. I decided
to stop working on Anema for an indefinite time
and leave the strips online for posterity.
As of October 2007, I am producing a new title
that is as different from Anema just as Anema
is different from other comics.
|
