Mobile animated story creator NARR8 preps furry offerings

Furs may enjoy the recently-announced mobile "motion comic" Subject #9, judging by its preview video. [tip: Lux/WeFurries]

NARR8 has its own introductory video, where it's breathlessly described as:

An entirely new way to experience dynamic and engrossing stories for free. [...] Unique layouts, animations, and visual effects, in regularly-updated episodes.

Essentially, they're creating original animated comic books and graphic novels.

Subject #9 follows a straightforward plot:

The adventure begins when eight young and vastly different prisoners unite to escape from a mysterious secret laboratory. Each one of them has unique abilities that they are yet to master. But first they have to learn team-work, understand the nature and goal of the laboratory experiments and find out who is behind all of it. The answers to these questions lead our heroes towards the grim truth...

Subject #9 combines sci-fi, adventure, and traditional superhero elements with colorful characters and an engrossing plot full of secrets and mysteries. We hope you'll enjoy reading Subject #9 as much as the team enjoyed creating it.

Two episodes have already been announced, which are to be available in Russian and English.

Another furry work on their slate is Prodigal Angel:

Max spent the last ten years in a coma. But one day, he discovered he could possess other people’s bodies. He was free to walk, eat ice cream, and watch movies. Life had meaning again! But with new power comes new responsibility... and new peril. The love of his life is in danger. To save her, Max and his friends must go toe-to-toe with the Mafia.
[...]
[Prodigal Angel is] a furry-style comic that doesn't focus on boring scientific research or medical terminology. Instead, this series is deeply character-driven, and focuses on a protagonist who, in his comatose state, discovers the ability to possess the bodies of other people! This is a series about melodrama with fantasy / supernatural overtones, a story of danger, adventure, unexpected twists and turns, and maybe even a comical situation or two.

NARR8 also plans to cover manga, fantasy, sci-fi, horror and non-fiction topics in its line of "interactive stories, article and motion comics". The service is to "launch on the iPad in Fall 2012"; web and Android versions are expected next year. They had a booth at this month's NYCC.

With "101 employees" at eight studios in Moscow and its San Francisco office, NARR8 may hit the ground running, but it's unclear whether it will become profitable before it burns through its recent $4 mil. investment. For now, their chief plan appears to be getting fans hooked:

[...] the company’s monetization strategy, however, is built around a comics aficionado’s natural inclination to watch his favorite series almost non-stop. Each part will end at a critical and gripping moment. To find out immediately what happens next, users will need to pay – or otherwise wait to weeks to see the continuation of the content free of charge.

Another way Narr8 makes money is through product placements to appear in short popular scientific stories.

The firm – founded by Astrium Online dev lead Alexander Vashchenko and backed by a former Mail.ru VP – also proposes syndicating its content.

Subject #9 samples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - Prodigal Angel character poster - promotional pages on Pintrest, Facebook and Twitter