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Crypto Comics

DCR Comic - Season 2 Proposal

The first DCR Comic proposal enabled us to create and publish the first nine DCR comics, a set of visual explainers the covered some of the main technical topics surrounding the Decred ecosystem, it's chain and key developments.

DCR Comic - Season 2 Proposal
DCR Comic - Season 2 Proposal

The first DCR Comic proposal enabled us to create and publish the first nine DCR comics, a set of visual explainers the covered some of the main technical topics surrounding the Decred ecosystem, it's chain and key developments. With this new proposal, we want to keep on building on top of what we have already achieved and cover those areas we lacked during the first one. We learned a lot making the first season, we would love to create a second one.

This proposal has three parts:

  • A report that covers what we achieved with the first proposal
  • An outline of the second season
  • The offer

Just like with the first proposal, you can see an illustrated version of this proposal on GitHub, because we can't live without images.

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Busy Ticket Holder's Summary

The DCR Comic proposal centers on the development of visual explainers that translate Decred's technical documentation and developments to a compelling and catchy narrative. While we call them 'comics' the product of this proposal is a whole repository of classified open-source content, including scripts and a whole lot of ready to use assets.

For Season 2, we intent to produce 12 more comics, this time focusing not only on specific Decred technology but also on the broader problems Decred aims to solve. We are targeting larger audience, and we intent to keep expanding our public as the project evolves.

Every asset can be found at GitHub and anyone can read all the comics at the DCR Comic website.

This time we want to double up the hours spent on creating content for Social Media platforms, specially Twitter and Instagram. This drives the cost of each comic from $1200 to $1350, adding 5 more hours to the mix for a total of 45 work hours.

Total budget: $16200 for 12 new comics and SM management

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Season 1 Report

By approving the first proposal, the Decred stakeholder community funded the first nine comics at a cost of $1200 each (a total of $10800). This budget included development and publishing of these comics, with 4 hours per comic (36 hours total) dedicated to social media management.

DCR Comic - Season 1:

Aside from what was included in the proposal, the funding of the project by the Decred community allowed us to pursue extra developments:

It wasn't a smooth ride, the first proposal established detailed deadlines to create two comics per month, but some scripts demanded more work and we were invited to a few events by the LATAM Marketing team, which made us fall behind with the comics. It took us one extra month to finish the first nine comics.

Translations

Translations of the comics has been one of our main side goal during these first months working with the Decred community. At first, only a few contractors approached us and decided to work on the comics. We are really thankful for their interest and hard work that made ours to be accessible by a broader audience. But we haven't seen considerable results from this work.

While some comics are available in more than six languages, we haven't seen local community leads post them in their native language or make use of the extensive asset repository we have built over time. We still think the creation of reusable content is one of the main strengths of the DCR Comic project, but without a community leveraging it, it doesn't have the impact it could.

SM Accounts

DCR Comic began distributing the content through several Social Media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram and Medium. While Instagram seemed like best place to go, Decred's Twitter community was the one that most leveraged the content. With limited time to work on distribution, we decided to focus on this account. Medium was replaced with the new website. Instagram could prove useful in LATAM, Brazil and other countries, but we need to collaborate closely with contractors in those regions and more time to work on it.

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DCR Comic - Season 2

We are ba-- Oh, wait, we never left. After contributing to Decred since mid 2019 and having the first DCR Comic proposal approved by stakeholders, we want to keep the ball rolling and further expand this visual guide to Decred.

Why?

Among the main goals of DCR Comic, we highlight the need to bring new contributors to the project and educate more people about it's technology. We maintain our position of using visual content to drive engagement among the younger audience who use visual centered platforms like Instagram, YouTube and the several messaging apps.

Who?

@nachito is the lead designer. He has more than 10 years of experience in Graphic Design. He entered the crypto space worried about user experience and ended up doing much more, from illustrations to logo design. He will be in charge of creating catchy visuals that earn us the reader's attention and making sure every comic fits into Decred's visual system.

@pablito is the writer. He covered technology and business issues for two of Argentina's major newspapers but decided to dive deeper into the crypto industry. He is not a programmer but has experience with web development and loves crafting python hacks during the weekend. He is in charge of researching new topics, writing scripts, and making sure the message is clear at every step of the comic's development.

What does the community get?

This season we would like to split our work between Decred centered comics and broader explainers for topics that help understand Decred's goals and value. Given the current global economic situation we will focus on the following topics (could change if required/opportunity arises) to produce 12 more comics:

Money:

  • Accessible money, how anyone can own crypto;
  • Global money, how p2p cash works like email and can be sent to anyone;
  • Hard money, what is hard money and how does Decred fit in.

Decred Software:

  • User Activated Hard-Forks, how does this enable better CC software;
  • Sustainable development, the Treasury and how does it shape/align developments;
  • Collaborators and Contractors, project roundup and how to collaborate;
  • DEX #02, we will revisit the DEX and explain further why and how it was designed to counter undesired market behavior;
  • Simple Payment Verification, explain how Decred lightweight wallets work now that the new Header Commitments are live;
  • Mine, stake and chill, why did Decred smooth out the issuance schedule curve.

Decred Basics:

  • Stakey's anatomy, what is a ticket and why do we need them;
  • Wallets, how to safely store our CC and how does the software work (keys, addresses, seeds, etc.);
  • What is Decred, quick intro (secure, adaptable, self-funding, superior SoV).

We will continue to manage the multiple Social Media platforms and the DCR Comic website, expanding as much as possible, and spending as little as possible.

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The offer

Each comic involves research, scripting, pen and paper storyboarding, digital design and polishing, and distribution. While the workload differs from comic to comic, it could be rounded to:

  1. Research: 3h
  2. Scripting: 3h
  3. Storyboarding: 6h
  4. Digital design: 15h (+Polishing)
  5. Feedback & discussion: 3h
  6. Polishing: 5h

Posting on/adapting to social networks: 9h (added 5 more hours)

Total: 45 hours

We would get paid after delivering each issue of the comic ($1350 per comic). The total cost of this second DCR Comic season would be $16200 and would produce 12 new visual explainers. We estimate it will take us between 6 and 8 months to finish this second season.

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