Grants:Project/TheNEBstudio/WikiMillennials/Timeline

This project is funded by a Project Grant

Timeline for TheNEBstudio

Timeline	Date
Launching session with the whole team to align on the project's artistic and concrete outlines.	September 2020
Created the synopsis of the webcomic	October 2020
Created a sample introduction for the podcast	October 2020
Held a listening session in French to connect with the Wikimedia Community	November 2020
Comic book's script completed	February 2021
Artists create the 1st half of the comic	April 2021
Sprint session : artists continue drawing	October 2022
Sprint session : artists finish the art	April 2023
Expected launch date	25th May 2023

Monthly updates

Please prepare a brief project update each month, in a format of your choice, to share progress and learnings with the community along the way. Submit the link below as you complete each update.

September 2020

We held a team meeting to launch the project
Working groups inside the team agreed on timelines for each sub-project (webcomic, podcast, workshop)

October 2020

The Webcomic Team

wrote the synopsis for the webcomic
created moodboards to lead the artist's work

The Podcast Team

created the framework for the podcast
wrote and recorded a sample introduction

The Workshop Team

analyzed the needs of our core audience
are mostly waiting due to COVID circumstances, to see whether the events will be offline or online.

November 2020

Created our 1st visual for Wikimedians to use as communication.
Held a listening session in French with the francophone Wikimedia community
- 12 wikimedians attended, from 6 countries (Belgium, Benin, France, Guinea, Switzerland, Tunisia), working in particular on wiki-projects related to comic-books, Africa, women and LGBT topics.

December 2020

Recruited an Afrofeminist, afro-descendent podcaster as consultant for the webcomic's script.
Created the WikiMillennials Commons category.

January 2021

Webcomic Team

Wrote the 1st draft of the full script
Held several meetings with our consultant to align story elements with congolese culture
Finalized the 1st half of the script
Started drawing the storyboard

February 2021

Completed the script
Completed half of the storyboard

March 2021

Line-art for half the comicbook

April 2021

Half of the comic has been fully drawn and colored

May 2021 to September 2022

The project was put on hold due to personal and professional events

October 2022

The art-team gathered for a 2 weeks sprint session in Grenoble to advance the production of the drawings

November 2022 to March 2023

Project on hold
Research was made about the webcomic platform we intended to use

April 2023

The art-team gathered again for a 3 weeks sprint session in Grenoble to advance the drawing.
Support team worked on
- slicing the comic into episodes for publication
- communications plan and launching

May 2023

The art team
- completed the full comic!
- created communication visuals
Support team
- started communicating on social media
- started communicating towards Wikimedia communities
Visuals from the comics were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons
First few episodes to be launched on May 25th on the platform Webtoons

Is your final report due but you need more time?

Extension request

New end date

We would like to postpone the end date up to the end of March 2022.

Rationale

We apologize for not handling the grant in time and we realize this is a long extension we are requesting. Here are our reasons:

the comic book is longer than we first thought it would be, and thus takes longer to storyboard and draw (that's somehow on us, we should have made the script shorter, but we also think it's great that the story has enough time to unfold and really mix pop culture with more didactic elements about wikipedia)
when we applied for the grant, the NEB studio had no other ongoing project. But in the meantime (before we got the answer for the grant), the studio was solicited to work on the comic adaptation of a bestselling SciFi novel. It's an opportunity the studio couldn't miss out, and thus we ended up juggling between the two projects (+dayjobs).
the pandemic also added difficulties to everyone's schedules and personal lives.

As a result, we had to stop working on WikiMillennials in early May, leaving the comic half-way finished. The studio is now stuck on its other project up until December. We will be able to restart the production of the last part of the comic in early 2022.

We hope you will understand these circumstances and allow for this additional time. We are really looking forward to finishing and publishing this comic, which we believe is an exciting story about roots and knowledge.

On the side are a few excerpts from the first half of the comic, so you can enjoy these first visuals :)