ROK announces major prize for new comics talent

Fri, Jun 29, 2007

John Freeman has been in touch to say that ROK, set up to facilitate comics adapted for the mobile phone market, is offering a pretty good opportunity for comics creators, backed up with the incentive of a very tasty £5, 000 (around $10, 000 US) prize. ROK are actively looking for more comics creators to sign up with them, both new creators and established ones; as part of this they are running the Hot Talent competition – the creator who enters the best original comic strip or cartoon before the end of July will win this substantial prize as well as having their work put front-and-centre on the new Hot Talent section of the ROK site so they can use it as a springboard to generate awareness of their comics.

I know from previous discussions we’ve had about the new field of mobile comics that not everyone is convinced by them, but then it wasn’t that long ago most of us thought downloading music tracks would never replace physically buying albums, was it? And with the huge number of phones out there and various different types of media from film to music trying to find ways to tap that market it would be foolish for comics not to try and explore it too and since they have a good mix of work on there, from independents like Broken Voice to Doonesbury it is clearly a very serious effort to create a mobile comics market. Besides, it could also offer a chance for some independent creators to make some money from their work and to add another potential method of making audiences aware of their titles, which isn’t a bad thing. For full details or to take part, check out ROK’s main site.