Hello, all. This is Mike Cooper, staffer for the Books and Comics sections here on TheForce.Net. Getting right to the point, I'm a big fan of the daily webstrips Starwars.com is running on Hyperspace, and I've decided that I'd like to try one on TFN, in conjunction with our Fan Comics section. There's a story more or less ready to go, but there's a problem: I can't draw worth monkeys. That's where you lovely readers come in.

I'm looking for an artist. An artist who, most importantly, is capable of committing to a large project. A single black-and-white strip (yes, it will be b/w) isn't an unbearable amount of work, but the entire story, as it's looking now, could take as many as eighty to finish. Having had lots of experience with volunteer projects like this in the past, I won't even think about setting schedules until the work is at least 50% done, so there wouldn't really be any deadlines to speak of. As long as you're capable of working at a steady and reliable pace, I don't mind if it's a slow one.

As far as style is concerned, stylized characters would generally be preferable to realistic ones; I'm thinking of somewhere between Dennis Budd and Grant Gould. A little Tom Hodges thrown in wouldn't hurt, of course. =) If you can do clean b/w work at this level, I'm especially looking for you. Strip art can work in many different ways, however, so even if your stuff looks nothing like these guys', if you think you're up to the task, I'd still like to hear from you. Just remember; we may not be the official site, but TheForce.Net's no slouch either - readership could be quite high by fan standards.

While I'm on the subject, I'd be remiss not to point out that TFN has consistently been a step on the path to official careers for many Star Wars artists - Jeff Carlisle, Joe Corroney, and Matt Busch among them. Without overselling anything, if you've dreamed of doing official Star Wars art, a big project like this could be a great way of getting noticed by the big-leaguers. Interested applicants should drop me a line at the e-mail address above. Thanks for reading!

Update! Okay, it's been a crazy couple days, but I think I've seen all I need to see. I'll be contacting a lot of artists shortly, and further announcements will appear on the site soon, but in the meantime, my sincere and overly enthusiastic thanks to every last one of the dozens of people who sent me their stuff. I expected going in that an Open Call would net me a great deal of responses; what I didn't expect was how talented you'd all be.