Pepper&Carrot
Logo of Pepper&Carrot
Author(s)David Revoy
Websitewww.peppercarrot.com
Current status/scheduleActive; irregular publication schedule
Launch date10 May 2014
Genre(s)Fantasy, Magical girl, Coming-of-age
A page from the first episode, with a different design of the main character Pepper than in later episodes.
Episode 36 page 2 of Pepper&Carrot

Pepper&Carrot is a free and open source webcomic series by French artist David Revoy.[1][2][3][4] It is also published by Glénat Editions, Ar Gripi, Popcom, Prikazka-Igra, and Outland Forlag.

The series consists of small episodes about teenage witch Pepper and her cat Carrot, and with stories without violence it aims to be accessible for everyone.[1][2][5]

The free license permits the work to be remixed and reused, even for commercial purposes,[1] which has led to derivative works such as animated short films, cosplay, fanart, a card game, a boardgame, several video games, and the work being used in research.[6][7]

The webcomic is completely, or almost completely, translated into 27 different languages, and to an additional 39 languages with a lower degree of coverage.[8]

Revoy creates the series entirely with free software, such as Krita and Inkscape,[3][9] making the Krita source files for each image available for download.[10]

Plot

Pepper is a young orphan witch disciple at Chaosah, the smallest of the six schools of magic on the magical planet Hereva. She is aided by her cat Carrot, and lives with her mentors Thyme, Cayenne, and Cumin in a house in the forest of Squirrel's End. Her peers are Saffron, Shichimi, Coriander, and Camomile.

Humans and various humanoids live alongside dragons and other mystical animals. After years of war between the schools of magic, there is a grudging peace. Pepper navigates the vicissitudes of growing up in a changing world and works hard to find her own place in it, but does so with a sense of humor. But there are happenings between the nations elsewhere in Hereva that may put a wrench in her plans.

Revoy aims for each episode to contain a small story arc where a character evolves and learns.[11]: 27m17s  The story bible is available on the website.[12]

List of episodes

Pepper&Carrot creator David Revoy in December 2017.

Since the first episode, around 0.344 episodes per month have been published (or 2.91 months between each episode).[lower-alpha 1] Episodes 6-24 were first drafted in French.

No. English title French title Dialog Release date Patrons[13]
1 The Potion of Flight yes 2014-05-10 0
2 Rainbow Potions no 2014-07-25 21
3 The Secret Ingredients yes 2014-10-03 93
4 Stroke of Genius yes 2014-11-21 156
5 Special holiday episode no 2014-12-19 170
6 The Potion Contest Le concours de potion yes 2015-03-28 245
7 The Wish Le souhait yes 2015-04-30 245
8 Pepper's Birthday Party L'anniversaire de Pepper yes 2015-06-28 354
9 The Remedy Le remède yes 2015-07-31 406
10 Summer Special Spécial été no 2015-08-29 422
11 The Witches of Chaosah Les sorcières de Chaosah yes 2015-09-30 502
12 Autumn Clearout Rangement d'Automne yes 2015-10-31 575
13 The Pyjama Party La Soirée Pyjama yes 2015-12-08 602
14 The Dragon's Tooth La Dent de Dragon yes 2016-01-29 671
15 The Crystal Ball La Boule de Cristal no 2016-03-25 686
16 The Sage of the Mountain Le Sage de la Montagne yes 2016-04-30 671
17 A Fresh Start Un Nouveau Départ yes 2016-06-30 719
18 The Encounter La Rencontre yes 2016-08-05 720
19 Pollution Pollution yes 2016-10-26 755
20 The Picnic Le Pique-nique no 2016-12-17 825
21 The Magic Contest Le Concours de Magie yes 2017-02-23 816
22 The Voting System Le système de vote yes 2017-05-30 864
23 Take a Chance Saisir la chance yes 2017-08-10 879
24 The Unity Tree L'Arbre de l'unité yes 2017-12-15 810
25 There Are No Shortcuts no 2018-05-17 909
26 Books Are Great yes 2018-07-28 1,098
27 Coriander's Invention yes 2018-10-31 1,060
28 The Festivities yes 2019-01-24 960
29 Destroyer of Worlds yes 2019-04-25 960
30 Need a Hug no 2019-09-03 973
31 The Fight yes 2019-12-20 971
32 The Battlefield yes 2020-03-31 1,121
33 Spell of War yes 2020-06-29 1,190
34 The Knighting of Shichimi yes 2021-03-31 1,096
35 The Reflection yes 2021-06-18 1,054
36 The Surprise Attack yes 2021-12-15 1,036
37 The Tears of Phoenix yes 2022-08-03 1,058
38 The Healer yes 2023-04-26 1,084


Funding

The character Carrot in an illustration of content behind paywalls. Revoy said that "Pepper&Carrot will never ask you to pay anything or to get a subscription to get access to new content."[1]
Pepper&Carrot is crowdfunded via several platforms. The publisher Glénat became the top donor but Revoy retained the copyright and creative control.

Revoy aims to change the comic book industry by eliminating intermediate steps in the production process. Though Pepper&Carrot is free, he encourages people to support him via crowdfunding in the form a small amount of money per episode that is released.

Patreon takes a commission of 5%, in addition to any credit card fees.[14] This is significantly less than a traditional chain where the publisher, distributors and retailers each claim a part of the profit. People donating monthly some amount on Patreon to Pepper&Carrot – are named on the bottom of the comics. As of May 2019, 816 people donate a total of US$2,939 per month, allowing David Revoy to work full time on Pepper&Carrot.[15]

In 2018, Pepper&Carrot was believed to be one of the more successful creative projects on Liberapay,[16] a platform for recurrent donations. In February 2023, Revoy made €62.11 per week from 79 patrons and with the top public patron giving €8.23 per week.[17] About starting an account on Liberapay despite already receiving funding via Patreon, Revoy said it provided "a stronger focus on privacy for the Pepper&Carrot audience"[17] and offered lower transaction fees.[18] Since 2022, also patrons on Liberapay can get their name in the credit written at the end of the webcomic.[17]

Other methods of payment to support Revoy are Tipeee, PayPal, and wire transfer (which works worldwide and is free of charge within Europe)[18]

Revoy suggests the business model allows the comic to stay independent and doesn't have to resort to advertising.[1] On the webcomic's webpage he extensively explains his philosophy, the reasons for wanting to cut out intermediaries between artist and audience, and why he does not put any content behind a paywall.[1]

When the publisher Glénat reached out to Revoy about publishing Pepper&Carrot, he declined their offer of a traditional contract with royalty payments in favor of keeping the Creative Commons attribution license, something that caused confusion in the legal and financial departments of the publisher. Glénat then offered to be the top patron of the webcomic, and Revoy retained the copyright and creative control over it. He considers Glénat's published books as just one of many other derivative works of the webcomic.[11]: 27m3s 

About working on the webcomic, Revoy said in 2015 that it was a dream come true and that "Every artist I know would love to make their own comics. Would love to get paid for making it, and to keep the control of it".[19]

Origin and production

David Revoy explained the origin of Pepper&Carrot and the world of Hereva in 2014:

And while recovering [from Blender open movie GooseBerry Project, I had just a luck: a sunday afternoon I started a random concept-art about a small cute witch and her cat. That was far from Astral-0 project but that was just to relax. I duplicated the concept-art and modified it a bit slightly, added a speechballoon and then repeated until I had a comic strip. I put it online and it became viral over big website Reddit/Imgur/DeviantArt daily, etc... A big luck!

— email from David Revoy (2020.02.12)

He uses the iteration method to create new episodes:

That give you context of the chemistry of 2014... Hereva and the Pepper&Carrot episode were created episode after episode. I still use this process. I'm building the story, the episodes as the metaphor The Cathedral and the Bazaar because I learned that my monolythic project Astral-0 never made a single comic page. With this method of incremental addition/removal of scenario along the production, I can guide Pepper&Carrot to evolve with what interest me and not follow a railway I wrote previously. Its very organic. The world of Hereva was shaped this way, and now I start to see it mixes things I liked from my childhood: Secret of Mana colored fantasy, Ghibli movies, Dr Slump type of humor and a parodie in general of Fantasy as on DiscWorlds book of Terry Pratchett.

— email from David Revoy (2020.02.12)

Revoy aims for each episode to contain a small story arc where a character evolves and learns.[11]: 27m17s 

Reviews of the text in the speech balloons, and the translations, are performed in GitLab using Markdown.[11]: 41m49s 

Translations

As of the end of July 2023, the webcomic is translated into the following 27 languages with a coverage of 90 percent or higher:[8]

For another 39 languages, the coverage is less than 90 percent.[8]

The web page has an open invitation to contribute to translations, and detailed instructions on how to do it.[20]

License and derivative works

The character Carrot in an illustration of derivative works being created from a source work. Revoy said that "I'll never regret making Pepper&Carrot so open."[21] and that he is happy to see other people making money from it.[22]

All artwork is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY[22]).[4] The free license permits the work to be remixed and reused, even for commercial purposes,[1] which has led to derivative works such as animated short films, cosplay, fanart, a card game, a boardgame, several video games, and research.[6][7]

Revoy often publishes links from his blog to derivative works[23] and has expressed excitement that his work is re-used, saying "I'll never regret making Pepper&Carrot so open."[21] and that he is happy to see other people making money from it.[22][1]

He attributes some of the success of the webcomic to the release of its source, and highlighted the many translations into other languages.[11]: 24m42s 

In 2022, one derivative (a publication) had removed content (a panel) and added dialog to episodes that originally had no dialog. The publisher had been very honest to the audience about the changes by publishing preview files of the content of the books. Revoy saw it as a good opportunity to question his decision to choose a free license for his work, but in the end he affirmed his decision, concluded that it was part of publishing his work under such a free license, and also that part of the work of a publisher is to adapt the content to its audience.[24] He hoped that the derivative publication would help that audience discover his original work. Revoy congratulated the publisher on their successful crowd-funding campaign and welcomed the financial support that the derivative work would bring to his own project of producing future episodes of the webcomic.[24]

Publication

Revoy in front of Glénat publications of Pepper&Carrot in September 2017. Revoy considers the Glénat publications one of many derivative works of the webcomic.

In 2016 French publisher Glénat added a bundle with episodes 1 through 11 to their catalog, to print and distribute the comic in France. Revoy was consulted to ensure the colours and quality of the print are as he envisioned it. The publication has no effect on the license of the webcomic.[25][26] In April 2017 the second volume of the book, including the episodes 12 to 21, was published by Glénat.[27] There is also a printed version of the Bretonic version of the first ten episodes by publisher Ar Gripi,[28] as well as a German printed version by publisher Popcom,[29] and a Bulgarian version by Prikazka-Igra.[24]

In 2023, Revoy particularly highlighted the nynorsk publication of episodes 1 to 29 by the Norwegian publisher Outland Forlag,[30] who also sponsors Revoy's work.[31]

Animated films

In 2016, the Morevna team started a crowdfunding campaign for a motion comic version of episode 6. The animation was done based on the original source files with free software like Krita, Blender, Papagayo-NG and RenderChan. The film was released in June 2017 under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Revoy was not associated with the production, but appreciated the project.[32]

Video games

Pepper is a playable character in the free kart racing game SuperTuxKart. Here the character is shown in version 1.3 and the race track "Hacienda".

In 2021, Pepper was made a playable character in the free kart racing game SuperTuxKart 1.3.[33]

There are at least four different video games based on Pepper&Carrot in development.[34][35][36][37]

Board game

Loyalist Games created a board game based on episode 6 of the comic. Just like the webcomic the game is available under a free license,[38] and its rulebook has instructions in English, Dutch, French and Spanish.

Role-playing game

In October 2019, Witchcraft: Magic of Hereva was released. The Role-playing game used the Dungeons & Dragons rule system.[39]

Footnotes

Notes

  1. ↑ (38 - 1 episodes) / (2014-05-10 to 2023-04-26 which is about 107.5 months)

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 David Revoy. "About", peppercarrot.com, retrieved 5 February 2023.
  2. 1 2 "Pepper & Carrot - red tabula". red tabula. Archived from the original on 10 October 2015. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
  3. 1 2 Brown, Paul (28 May 2016). "Free Software Artists and their Tools — Part I: David Revoy & Krita". OCS Mag. Archived from the original on 29 May 2016. Retrieved 6 June 2016.
  4. 1 2 Moeller, Erik (17 July 2015). "The case of the witch and her cat: crowdfunding free culture - Creative Commons blog". Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
  5. ↑ Revoy, David. "How to add a translation or a correction - Pepper&Carrot". Archived from the original on 10 October 2015. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
  6. 1 2 Edgar Simo-Serra, Satoshi Iizuka, Hiroshi Ishikawa at Waseda University."Mastering Sketching:Adversarial Augmentation for Structured Prediction", arxiv.org, 27 March 2017.
  7. 1 2 "Scientific Paper: Sketch to Line-art by Waseda University", davidrevoy.com, 2 July 2018.
  8. 1 2 3 "peppercarrot.com" (button "All 63 languages"), peppercarrot.com.
  9. ↑ Revoy, David. "The Witches of Chaosah - Pepper&Carrot". Retrieved 10 October 2015.
  10. ↑ "Sources - Pepper&Carrot". Pepper&Carrot. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 "36: David Revoy on Pepper & Carrot and Free Culture" (mp3), Libre Lounge, 17 April 2020.
  12. ↑ "Pepper&Carrot Wiki", peppercarrot.com, retrieved 6 February 2023.
  13. ↑ The respective comic pages on www.peppercarrot.com
  14. ↑ "Patreon Help Center". Patreon. Retrieved 19 August 2015.
  15. ↑ "David Revoy is creating Pepper&Carrot, an open-source webcomic". Patreon. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
  16. ↑ Jason van Gumster. "Liberapay: How creators of open content get funded", opensource.com, 7 May 2018.
  17. 1 2 3 "davidrevoy" (archived), liberapay.com, retrieved 5 February 2023.
  18. 1 2 "Patronage:", davidrevoy.com, retrieved 5 February 2023.
  19. ↑ "Passionate Voices Episode 2 - David Revoy" (at 27m48s), Passionate Voices on YouTube, 2 June 2015.
  20. ↑ "Translate the webcomic", peppercarrot.com.
  21. 1 2 Paul Brown. "Free Software Artists and their Tools — Part I: David Revoy & Krita" (archived), Open Content & Software Magazine, 28 May 2016.
  22. 1 2 3 Erik Moeller (via Ryan Merkley). "The case of the witch and her cat: crowdfunding free culture", creativecommons.org, 17 July 2015.
  23. ↑ "Tag: derivation", davidrevoy.com, retreieved 8 February 2023.
  24. 1 2 3 "Pepper&Carrot (heavy) derivation: the case of the succesful [sic] Bulgarian book publishing by Prikazka-Igra", davidrevoy.com, 7 October 2022.
  25. ↑ Revoy, David. "Derivation: publishing by Glénat - Pepper&Carrot". Retrieved 7 July 2016.
  26. ↑ Glénat Éditions. "Pepper et Carrot - Tome 1". Retrieved 7 July 2016.
  27. ↑ Revoy, David. "Second book printed by Glénat". Pepper&Carrot. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  28. ↑ Revoy, David. "Breton publishing by Ar Gripi". Pepper&Carrot. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  29. ↑ "PEPPER & CARROT – Kleine Hexe mit frecher Katze! – Comic.de". www.comic.de (in German). Archived from the original on 9 July 2018. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  30. ↑ "Pepar og Gulrot", outland.no.
  31. ↑ "Derivation: the Norwegian Nynorsk book of Outland Forlag", davidrevoy.com, 22 June 2023.
  32. ↑ David, Revoy. "Motion Comic project". peppercarrot.com. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  33. ↑ "SuperTuxKart 1.3 release candiate [sic] available!", blog.supertuxkart.net, 31 August 2021.
  34. ↑ Revoy, David. "Endless Runner Game by WinterLicht". Pepper&Carrot. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  35. ↑ Revoy, David. "Video Game Chaosah Balls by Xuan Minh PHAM". Pepper&Carrot. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  36. ↑ Revoy, David. "Shoot-em-up by Akari (WIP)". Pepper&Carrot. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  37. ↑ Revoy, David. "Retro platformer by Surt (WIP)". Pepper&Carrot. Retrieved 18 June 2017.
  38. ↑ Revoy, David (7 July 2017). "Pepper&Carrot derivation: a Board Game by Loyalist Games". David Revoy. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  39. ↑ "Witchcraft: Magic of Hereva (5e)", drivethrurpg.com.
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