Madefire and deviantART To Launch "Motion Books" to Worldwide Audience

Digital comics makers Madefire and the art-focused social network deviantART have announced they have formed a strategic partnership to provide unprecedented access through deviantART’s creators and audience to the making and distribution of digital Motion Books ™ published with Madefire’s highly respected publishing platform.

The companies involved say the new partnership formed between deviantART and Madefire, will turbocharge a next generation of dynamic storytelling.

Founded in 2011 by Ben Wolstenholme, Liam Sharp (who DTT readers will recall as the artist on British comics such as 2000AD, Death's Head II and more) and Eugene Walden, Madefire provides artists and writers a publishing solution for iOS and the web, allowing creators to build their stories in a new format called Motion Books.

Madefire is backed by Toni Schneider, Partner at True Ventures and CEO of Automattic, the makers of the wildy popular blogging platform Wordpress, with angel investors including Sina Tamaddon, former Senior Vice President of Applications for Apple Inc. The Advisory Board also includes industry leaders Mike McCue, CEO and Founder of Flipboard, Dave Gibbons, co-creator of Watchmen, the bestselling graphic novel of all time, and Bill Sienkiewicz, widely recognized as one of the greatest innovators of sequential art.

The alliance between the 5-star App Store-rated sensation Madefire and the massive creative community of deviantART brings together the toolset and delivery system to reach a global audience.

"The walls of the traditional comic book world, limiting artistic access to the tools of production and distribution, have now fallen," claimed a spokesperson.

"Madefire and deviantART have seized the power of the digital space to introduce the next generation's shared cultural mythos with stories and characters that will move across the screen of imagination with incredible sound and fury.

“DeviantART and Madefire will provide the ultimate story engine, by bringing creators and readers together,” said Ben Wolstenholme, co-founder of Madefire. “The Madefire app for iOS has had a storming response, and now we are moving to the web with deviantART and enabling a new generation of storytellers.

The deal consists of a creative partnership where the entire deviantART creator community is given unlimited access to Madefire’s revolutionary, browser-based publishing platform to create and distribute content while individually controlling the price point. Using deviantART’s Premium Content Platform, the content will reach an enormous worldwide audience while taking advantage of the Platform’s built-in payment and royalty systems fuelled by deviantART’s virtual currency. The content will also then be available on mobile through the Madefire App.

“Madefire and deviantART share in the creator-first mission of empowering artists, writers and visionaries to liberate their narratives,” said Angelo Sotira, CEO and Co-Founder of deviantART. “It just looks so fantastic, exploding cells off the ‘page’ with the pop vibrancy that the comics style had always suggested, but never achieved until now.”

As a special introduction, the first flight of Madefire books will be made available on the Web through deviantART for 10 cents a piece - the same price at which the world first thrilled to Batman and Superman in the 1930s. The books will remain free on the Madefire App for iOS devices for a limited time.

As part of the agreement, Madefire will be the very first native motion-book reader on the deviantART platform. Madefire’s previously iOS app-only experience will now be available for web reading through madefire.com and deviantart.com. Top line publishers now will be able to distribute through to deviantART’s huge community with Madefire.

Several Motion Books are now available on your desktop by some of the top creators in the world working with Madefire, like Dave Gibbons, Liam Sharp, Bill Sienkiewicz, and now you can keep an eye out for radical content by some of deviantART’s amazing community of storytellers from every corner of the art world.

DeviantART - the seventh largest social network on the web – was created to entertain, inspire, and empower the artist and art lover in all of us. Founded in August 2000, deviantART is home to over 26 million registered members worldwide and features an extensive platform used to exhibit, promote and discover works and other members within a peer community. As the largest aggregator of creative talent on the Internet fuelled by over 150,000 daily submissions and an audience reaching 76 million monthly unique visitors, deviantART is one of the world’s largest websites enabling participation in the arts at a scale never imagined in the traditional art world.
• The Motion Books are available at http://browse.deviantart.com/motionbooks

• For more information go to madefire.com

Madefire extends its digital comics app to iPhone and iPad

Digital comics publishing house Madefire - co-created by British comic creator Liam Sharp - has announced a major update to its revolutionary comics app, bringing it to iPhone and iPod touch for the first time.

The Madefire app, which delivers a fully-immersive, episodic comics reading experience, is now optimized for the four-inch Retina display on iPhone 5 and supports Facebook single sign-on in iOS 6. The app is also available for iPhones 3GS, 4, 4S, and for third and fourth generation iPod touch.

Madefire's distinctive format features episodic, 'short-burst' (10-15 minute) reading, and utilizes sound, music and motion - as well as special effects, like parallax and panorama, to transport readers deep into story worlds.

Madefire says it is also growing its catalogue of free titles and weekly releases of new episodes, giving readers even more opportunities to explore 'short-burst' reading.

We've downloaded a couple of stories here at DownTheTubes and it's looking slicker than earlier versions, although we're still not convinced by the size of lettering on the iPhone screen or some of the storytelling decisions when it comes to presenting speech balloons, for example - but there's no doubting the art is gorgeous and we're intrigued by the upcoming beta testing of its Motion Book Tool, which has apparently been heavily oversubscribed in terms of creator interest.

As part of Madefire's commitment to democratizing digital publishing within the visual storytelling space, the company is making this browser-based Tool -- on which all Madefire titles are built -- available to creators through a phased release.

The app includes a new 'Feed' feature, which gives readers an inside look into Madefire titles and creators, with special features such as 'The Making of' and sneak peeks of upcoming releases.

"We received a tremendous response for Madefire on iPad and wanted to bring this amazing content to millions of iPhone or iPod touch users around the world," said Madefire co-founder Ben Wolstenholme. "Plus, with iPhone 5, users will now be able to experience their favorite episodes and stories on the beautiful, four-inch Retina display."

The Madefire app currently features seven titles:

• "Captain Stone is Missing... " Chapter 1
• "The Engine" Episode 1
• "Houses of the Holy" Episode 1
• "The Irons" Episode 1
• "MONO" Episode 1
• "Treatment: Toko" Episode 1
• "Treatment: Mexico City" Episode 1

"Feedback about Madefire has been extraordinary," said Dave Gibbons, Watchmen co-creator and author of the original Madefire series 'Treatment.' "As a content creator, I am excited to bring my new stories and characters to iPhone and iPod touch users around the world via the Madefire app."

Madefire says it is currently the only publisher offering episodic, digital stories in an immersive Motion Books format. Content creators include world-renowned comic and graphic novel artists, as well as up-and-coming artists.

Founded in 2011 by Ben Wolstenholme, Liam Sharp and Eugene Walden, Madefire is backed by True Ventures, with angel investors including Sina Tamaddon, former Senior Vice President of Applications for Apple Inc -- who sits on Madefire's Board of Advisors.

The Board of Advisors also includes industry leaders like: Toni Schneider, CEO of Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com); Mike McCue, CEO and Founder of Flipboard; Dave Gibbons, co-creator of Watchmen, the bestselling graphic novel of all time; and Bill Sienkiewicz , widely recognized as one of the greatest innovators of sequential art.

• For more information go to madefire.com, or download the Madefire App for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch from www.madefire.com/iOS

Madefire seeks monster makers

Ground-breaking digital publisher Madefire, whose creator roster includes Brian Bolland and Dave Gibbons, has just launched its first talent hunt.

"Here’s a chance to get a paid gig alongside some of the greatest names in the imaginative arts industry," enthuses Madefire’s Chief Creative Officer and creator of Captain Stone is Missing… Liam Sharp.

"Madefire is looking for a horror illustrator for a story that will go live on our 5-star rated app at Hallowe'en. The creature in the story is a Metawhal Alpha." (Drawn by Liam, above).

Go and check out the rest of their website and/or iPad app to get a feel for what they’re creating. To be considered, don't send Liam direct messages, including via DeviantArt: submit your work to Madefire at: contactATmadefire.com.

The portfolio submission period won’t last for more than a few weeks, as they want to select an illustrator in time for a finished title to go live end of October 2012.

"We can’t reply to everybody, so would appreciate it if you didn’t chase us up," says Liam. "If you’re the lucky chosen artist we'll be contacting you. However, even if we don’t contact you this time, it doesn’t mean we don’t love your work, and you may well find yourself being contacted for other projects in the future — we have a lot of material lining up over the coming weeks and months."

Launched earlier this year for iPad, Madefire's aim is to give creators a strong platform for their own storytelling and revolutionize how stories are told, read and shared, transforming a once static medium into an "interactive experience" that unfolds dynamically on mobile devices, and evolves with each new episode.

The company has developed a Motion Book Tool to make all this possible and to give new creative freedom to the world’s most visionary creators and storytellers.

- For full details of what Madefire are looking for, check out this blog post

Liam Sharp announces new digital comic project

Treatment by and ©
Dave Gibbons

(with thanks to Matt Badham for the spot): Comic creator Liam Sharp and Ben Wolstenholme, founding member and CEO of Moving Brands, are teaming up with creators such as Dave Gibbons and to launch Madefire, a new digital comics company.

Debuting at the San Diego Comic Convention next week, Liam says Madefire was initially almost a digital and PoD version of Mam Tor Publishing, with new work created by top names at the highest level.

"What I found with Mam Tor was that the costs were prohibitive when it came to small runs printed traditionally," he notes on his web site. "Unfortunately for small companies there are no concessions and you don't get the same benefits. Print runs, advertising, distribution, etc. cost the full amount. Bigger companies with huge runs get all the discounts as incentives.

"It's the way of the world that wealth and success is rewarded with gifts, discounts and free promotion - you can see and clearly understand the economical model and thinking behind that, but it makes it extremely hard for start-ups. So Mam Tor lost a lot of money, but I still felt it mattered and remained an important platform.

When Ben, a talented artist who attended Liam's school, was finally reunited with his old friend, they soon set about putting the world to rights and looking at ways to work together.

Dead Apes in the Snow
by Liam Sharp

"Ben was desperate to exercise his creative side again and showed me some brilliant developmental work he had been doing on various characters - for films, books and comics. I told him our experience with Mam Tor, he told me his at Moving Brands, and we started throwing ideas around for projects we could jointly be involved with... Ultimately what we both knew we wanted out of a collaboration between us was simple - the chance to publish our own work under our own terms. So then it became a question about how do we do that?

"The answer was - create a digital comic. Create an app.

"The great thing about the current situation of digital publishing is that it's wide open," Liam argues. "There are no rules yet, and nothing is truly dominating in the same way the big companies dominate printed matter. We can get our work out to anybody. And it can also be collated and printed to order for anybody who loves printed matter.

"For me, the internet is the new corner shop - the more comics are seen in digital format the more people will get interested in them and find their way back to the stores. At the moment kids no longer see comics in the shops. In day to day life you barely see them at all! When I was young you saw them in every newsagent and street corner store. On holiday they were bagged in multiple copies and sold cheap. That was the thing - it was cheap, accessible entertainment. I didn't even know there were specialist outlets until I was about 19! So for me it was the wider visibility of the material that hooked me in, and later took me to the stores where you could really indulge your interest. One led to the other. So after that it was about building a fantastic platform and getting some great talent on board - and that's where we're at now."

Captain Stone is Missing
by Liam and Chris Sharp

Stories planned for release later this year so far are Captain Stone is Missing... by Liam and his wife Christina; and Dave Gibbons is writing and drawing a story featuring his creator-owned characters called 'Treatment'.

"Ben is debuting in comics and showcasing his character 'Mono'," Liam reveals. "We have other stories in development too, from Mike Carey and Dave Kendall, called 'Houses of the Holy', and Edmund Bagwell, called 'Ricky the Boy Machine'. And there will be opportunities for established talent and new creators to get involved as we progress.

"Ben and I have been working on this for a couple of years now, and San Diego Comic Con just seemed the perfect place to raise our heads above the parapets and announce our arrival - which we're celebrating with my books Dead Apes in the Snow and The Shed, as well as Ben's Mono sketchbook, all published traditionally by Madefire."

• Dave Gibbons, Ben and Liam will be signing and answering questions on the Madefire stand (4902 in SDCC) on the Saturday afternoon at 4.00pm, and they'll have other bits and bobs to give away, too. More info: www.liam-sharp.com/madefire.htm