Ever since I was a kid with a crappy office pen, I have always wanted to write a comic book hoping that it would become a TV show and maybe even a movie. I would write little comic strips and try to create characters and construct a story, but I never was any good at it. So I decided I needed to learn thru study and practice. I watched my favorite movies and renowned movies and shows to glean all I could about good storytelling. I paid extra attention in English class to understand words and how they are constructed and wrote a little poetry to enhance my understanding of word usage. While teaching myself, I collected inspiration to decide what kind of story I wanted to tell. I found that of all genres that I liked, my favorite was mecha, or robots. I realized this because my favorite movies and TV shows all share that same theme. Transformers, Real Steel, Pacific Rim, Iron Giant, and others like that. I also grew up with shows like Pokémon and Digimon, so I liked the concept surrounding those shows. So I decided to merge the two concepts to create something I called “Mechamon”, so now I finally had a base idea. After getting recommendations on the direction I should take, I found that I preferred the format and style of manga the most. American comics never stick to a singular storyline and rebirth characters repeatedly and have different versions, and it’s just convoluted for no reason. I also don’t want my characters to be rewritten with lore that I disapprove of. So manga is the best format to go with. By this time, I am in middle school, and Michael Bay’s Transformers recently dropped and reaffirmed my love of mechs but being bullied for it caused me to suppress it. All the while, I was slowly developing a story and laying the foundations. Once I got to high school, I started fleshing out the story because Pacific Rim had just dropped and reminded me about what I love and why. Unfortunately, bullying didn’t stop and eventually led to me having to move out of state to receive safer schooling. It was there where I found that the school environment was more conducive for me to openly work on and express my passion. There was a small problem, no one really shared my passion or my drive, so when I sought to get help with this project as it was hard for me to do so alone since my spirit to draw was waning unbeknownst to me. After suffering further mental and even a few physical abuses during my time there, I graduated with nothing to show for my dream aside from having refined the story in my head. I went back to my home state and I noticed something was off, my ability to draw had almost rotted away entirely. I knew how to draw but my ability to sit and focus on a singular piece and finish it in a timely manner had been pretty much completely lost. I tried to start drawing my manga but I just couldn’t. First attempt, I managed to finish a crappy attempt of a first chapter and it was poorly made. Second attempt, I couldn’t even finish sketching out the first chapter properly and I couldn’t get far with inking. Third attempt, I couldn’t even properly sketch past a few pages. I realized that my fire had went out, and without it, my story would be trapped in my mind. I had to find a solution, so I started hunting for an artist. My hope was that I could find an artist that was looking for a story to draw for who would be willing to work with me and just split any money we earned. I realized that I can’t ask an artist to invest time and labor on a project with no promise of seeing the work they put in actually pay off. So I needed money to pay an artist. It took years but I managed to get SSI, but that wasn’t enough to pay an artist regularly as I needed money to feed and support myself. Then I managed to land a part-time job, then I was able to hire an artist and pay him for his services. Of course bad things happened and both of our lives started experiencing hardships. My job started making changes that might cause me to have to look for another job and my artist has his own issues where he needs every bit of income he can get. We have both worked very hard to get where we are now. We are 50 pages into my story and it has never felt more real to me than now. I still plan to work as hard as I can to earn money so I can keep paying him but I need help. I already pay $45 a page and we are still in the first chapter. My goal is to reach 20 chapters and then start advertising to draw traffic to my story with them having 20 chapters to indulge in. If you feel inclined to help fund my dream and support my hard work, I deeply appreciate it. Any little bit helps, even sharing this to people who find interest in these kinds of things. I have an Instagram where I post panels to tease the story (https://www.instagram.com/kessaku_manga/) and a patreon where all currently finished pages are uploaded (https://www.patreon.com/masterworks). The story will be posted on TheNinth as well once the time comes (https://theninth.art/author/483/bio). I hope you find my project and myself to be worthy of your support and sense my unyielding gratitude for your generosity and kindness.