AXED
Case study · 2018 – 2020
A WEBTOON Original that reached 40M+ reads, then closed an IP rights deal.
Solo-created comic series at WEBTOON, published twice weekly and backed by a homegrown Python + OpenCV image-processing and consistency-check pipeline. An IP rights deal with Wattpad WEBTOON Studios spans two formats: book publication and a 2-season animated television adaptation.
By the numbers
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- 40M+reads, lifetime across the run
- 492K+subscribers
- 2M+monthly views at peak
- 2×per week, ship cadence sustained
What AXED was
2018 – 2020
A serialized comic on WEBTOON's official roster, June 2018 to December 2020.
- Platform
- WEBTOON Original — selected/promoted serial on the official catalog
- Format
- Vertically-scrolling serialized comic; twice-weekly ship cadence at peak
- Active publishing
- Jun 2018 — Dec 2020 (2.5 years live; peak audience sustained across the run)
- Production stack
- Python + OpenCV image-processing and consistency-check pipeline · operator workflow tooling · Git-based review and ship
What it became
Audience at scale, then an IP rights deal across two formats.
The IP rights deal
- Counterparty
- Wattpad WEBTOON Studios — the merged publishing + animation arm spanning book and screen adaptation
- Scope
- Multi-year, multi-format rights deal: book publication + 2-season animated television adaptation
- Structure
- Negotiated solo, on the creator side, from sourcing through close
What this proves
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AXED is the single clearest demonstration of the builder-operator-closer combination — and the reason the engineering work that came next at CentrOS isn't a one-dimensional pitch.
-
Builder
- Wrote and drew a serialized comic that survived audience selection on a competitive platform
- Built the Python + OpenCV pipeline that kept consistency and ship cadence viable at twice-weekly
- Designed the queue → tooling → review → ship workflow that prefigured today's HITL agent systems at CentrOS
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Operator
- Ran a 2.5-year content business with a small ops team and external collaborators
- Held ship cadence through audience growth from 0 to 492K+ subscribers
- Maintained the production pipeline end-to-end — no platform team underneath
-
Closer
- Sourced and negotiated a multi-format IP rights deal with Wattpad WEBTOON Studios
- Structured book + 2-season animated television deal terms across multiple years
- Carried the commercial close solo — same muscle now applied to CentrOS design-partner conversations
For an engineering hire, AXED proves a decade of shipping doesn't stop at code. For a commercial hire, it proves a builder can take a multi-format rights deal from sourcing to close. Read on at CentrOS for how this practice was formalized into a production runtime, or back to the portfolio for the full timeline.
Contact
Happy to talk through AXED, the IP rights deal, or what came next at CentrOS.