"cartooning-lessons" via sstwalley in Google Reader

Today’s Video Link (and Another Soup Can)

2012-05-25T07:18:30Z

I'm not back. It just looks that way. I'm still battling a deadline and you'll know when I finish because regular posting will resume. Or if you're in Southern California, maybe you'll hear me snoring.

People often ask me — in fact, I think I'm asked a version of it in the video below — how one deals with deadlines. The answer is to just do the work. Do it as quickly as you can without losing your perspective on what you're doing...and if you're a professional of any tenure, you should know how that feels. But you just have to do it and not, for example, spend a lot of time agonizing over how you can't do it or how impossible it will be to do it. If you have twelve hours to complete something, worrying for two hours is just going to leave with you ten hours to do what you feared you couldn't do in twelve.

It's also important to keep the importance in perspective: Don't trivialize it but don't overstate it, especially to yourself. My first agent used to say about almost anything I was writing, "Hey, it ain't the moon shot. Nobody dies if you screw up." That can be real comforting to remember.

But mainly, the most important thing to remember when you have an impossible deadline is that it helps to not spend time writing blog posts about how to meet deadlines. I think I'll try that.

This is the second part of my interview for the Animation Guild and it starts with a rerun of the last minute or two of the first part. I talk about all sorts of things but mostly myself...

Marketing Through Piracy

2012-05-25T03:00:43Z

(Actually, I loathe the use of the word "piracy" in the context of filesharing, but a good headline is supposed to be short and punchy, so.)

It came as no surprise to me that, about 24 hours after we posted the first installment of INSUFFERABLE over at Thrillbent, the pages had been downloaded, zipped into a .cbr or .cbz file, and uploaded to various torrent and filesharing sites. The only thing that startled me was that it took 24 hours. Sure enough, installments two and three were similarly webripped, converted and uploaded with increasing speed. By week three, they were available for download around the world within hours. Taken straight from the Thrillbent site.

THIS IS A GOOD THING.

I am not being the least bit sarcastic when I say that I WAS OVER THE MOON ABOUT THIS.

Your mileage may vary but, me, I'm okay with torrenters and "pirates" sharing INSUFFERABLE. Not just because, what the hell, it's free anyway, Mr. Cynic...my hand to God, even if we were charging for it, I'd still be happy because the exposure and promotion is worth more to me at this point than dollars and cents. But more than that...more than that...after having been hip-deep in the research for the past three years, I have seen zero conclusive evidence that, on the whole, "piracy" removes more money from the system than it adds to it. Are there readers who would be buying my print comics who download them for free instead? Sure. Are there, conversely, potential readers who download one of my print comics, sample it, and then become a paying customer if they have access to ensuing print copies? Absolutely, and I've personally sold books to hundreds of them at store signings and conventions. Do the latter outweigh the former? (a) I don't care, because I can't stop the former, and (b) I believe, if you build up enough of a loyal fanbase, that potential exists; certainly, every meaningful* study undertaken on how piracy affects CD sales, DVD sales, etc. shows repeatedly that "pirated" content of quality material can actually act as an effective marketing tool and lead to increased sales. (*meaningful = not bought and paid for by the MPAA or the RIAA. Listening to them talk about piracy is like getting your cancer statistics from Big Tobacco or nutrition info from McDonalds.)

I could be wrong about this. I don't think I am, but I don't know everything. So, that said, let's put my personal feelings away. Let's set aside the hypothesis that, on the whole, torrenting is as much a plus as a minus. Leave that out of the equation. Ignore EVERYTHING in the previous paragraph after the word "cents." Let's just look at the facts.

FACT: Within hours of INSUFFERABLE installments being posted, they're torrented.

FACT: There is no force on Earth that I can use to stop that from happening.

FACT: Being angry about it or trying to prevent it is like standing on the beach and trying to push back the incoming tide by yelling at it.

So why be mad, I decided? Why not turn file-sharing into a tool I can use and control more directly rather than yell at the ocean?

As you may have noticed, effective with yesterday's installment four and retroactive back to Week One, we elected to make pirating INSUFFERABLE easy. No longer do uploaders have to go to the trouble of downloading the screen images and packing them into a file they can then share. Now you can read the installments online, as you have been...OR you can download them as PDFs and as .cbz files that you can read offline, upload, share, whatever. The links are right there underneath the comics themselves. That's right, my pirating friends, I did the work FOR you. I didn't muck with the comic itself, I didn't DRM the images, I didn't add anything to the downloadables that made them different in any way from what we give you online...

...EXCEPT for a stylishly designed credits-and-copyright page at the end that says "if you liked this, visit Thrillbent.com for more free comics!"

I can't control the internet. I couldn't count on uploaders not to "simply" unpack the Installment Four file I provided, excise the referral page, repack the file and upload that.

Except they didn't. Judging by what I've seen around the web, the digital file that's most in circulation is the one I myself provided...the path of least resistance...which means that thousands upon thousands of new readers who might otherwise not have thought to go to the source are now exposed to the Thrillbent link and have been pointed right towards the site and have been invited to join the community.

This doesn't have to become a standard Thrillbent procedure; as other creators come aboard, I'll let them decide for themselves whether or not they want to follow suit. But for now, this is a marketing model that works for me on a technical and ethical level. If you're with me, I appreciate your support. If you think that all I'm doing is validating thievery and devaluing comics and, in general, contributing to the breakdown of civil society, I look forward to your enraged responses.

Must Read: Can you make a living creating manga in North America?

2012-05-24T21:00:10Z

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That’s the question Russo-Canadian cartoonist Svetlana Chmakova—by any standards, one of the most successful North American manga creators—posed to a bunch of us at breakfast during TCAF. And Deb Aoki has responded with a comprehensive five-part series examining the question. Four parts are up thus far. Aoki starts with examining the reasons why manga by non-Japanese creators—whether you call it OEL or Global Manga or Bruce— has a hard time in the market, listing nine reasons. Among them:

A smaller pie = fewer slices - Compared to Japan, fewer people per capita purchase and read comics on a regular basis, thus the North American comics publishing industry is much, much smaller / generates much less money.

Want to be published in manga magazine? Dream on – Unlike Japan, there are few North American anthology magazines that feature up-and-coming comics creators.

American manga readers tend to snub/ignore ‘fake’ manga - While North American manga readers love manga from Japan, they have have been reluctant to show the same level of support for homegrown content. This includes the artists’ alley scene at many anime cons where pin-ups and buttons featuring fan art of Japanese manga characters outsell original comics stories and characters.

Aoki goes on to quote the Twitter and email responses she received from a laundry list of the most knowledgable folks in NA manga, from Jason Thompson to Lea Hernandez. For instance, in part 2, Chris Butcher suggests part of the problem with selling global manga is the snobbery that manga in NA was launched with:

“One of Tokyopop’s greatest sins is creating an asshole generation of readers obsessed with ‘authenticity,’ hatefully pointing out ‘fake’ manga. There is an audience for work influenced by manga and Japan. It was at TCAF this weekend. We just gotta ignore the haters and press.”

This is echoed by this:

“Interestingly, I recently spoke to a high school class who asked me how they could break in to the industry. I asked them how many manga they bought by American artists and they told me ‘none.’ But they didn’t see the connection.”
- Erica Friedman (@Yuricon), Manga publisher, ALC Publishing and manga/anime blogger at Okazu

In part 3 the panel examines the lack of technique among the many manga aspirants:

A frequently heard complaint from pros in the comics publishing business is how many portfolios and proposals cross their desk from aspiring manga creators who simply lack the skill, polish and experience to produce professional-level work. Whether it’s a lack of basic drawing skills, sloppy paneling and pacing, or lackluster storytelling, or a combination of these things, many novice creators, even ones that have completed four years of art school seem ill-equipped to make their dreams of a career in comics into a paying reality.

For example, for the past two years, Yen Press has put out an open call for new creators to submit a sample short story for their Talent Search. But in 2012, as in 2011, no ‘winners’ were announced. In the May 2012 issue of Yen Plus magazine, Yen Press Editor JuYoun Lee described what she had received in the 2012 Talent Search and why she found many entries lacking.

Among the topics touched on—what art school doesn’t teach you:

“We all know art is super personal and largely insular. But like anyone else looking for jobs, you need the skills to sell it, not to mention basic accounting, public speaking, and other really important skills. Well, they never teach you that stuff in school, though they really should unless they’re gearing artists to work for companies. It should be the standard for every single art major who is going into art for application, not research. Can’t be ignorant with money. In general, the whole education system really needs a massive overhaul. Technology is changing the way we do everything. ”
- Audra Furuichi (@kyubikitsy), Webcomics creator, Nemu-Nemu

In Part 4, Aoki looks at the dark side of Tokyopop’s huge OEL movement:

From what I’ve heard, the company has never made back their investment from publishing these original stories. This is possibly why TokyoPop is holding on to the rights to these series — It’s money they may be hoping to recoup someday with movie or other publishing deals, even though TokyoPop shuttered their N. American publishing operations in June 2011. As one of the first to undertake publishing manga-style comics by non-Japanese creators on a large scale, TokyoPop ventured boldly into unknown territory. They gave a lot of talented creators their first shot, they had a few successes, and they made their share of mistakes. TokyoPop made many contributions to the growth of manga in America, so it’s too bad that their past efforts have left a long-lingering sour taste in the industry. Looking back on what they accomplished, what can we learn from TokyoPop’s manga publishing efforts?

and offers a rare critique of the Minx line that blames the content:

Well, speaking as a reader, I found most of the Minx titles to be… dreary, preachy, and so self-conscious about sending a politically correct message about ‘girl empowerment,’ they forgot to be fun, and (gasp) as trashy/romantic/silly/sexy and addictive as shojo manga, or even Twilight, for crap’s sake. Nice try, DC — but given how much you missed the mark, and how quickly you gave up, maybe you didn’t try hard enough.

It’s also noted that the dream of moving to Japan to make manga is impossible unless you speak Japanese, and even then there is so much homegrown talent you really need the ultimate in perseverance to break through. Finally, the webcomic model is examined with MegaTokyo’s Fred Gallagher (who you would think would be one of the most successful American manga-ka of all writing:

“I fantasize about drawing for a living too :( All the work put into the content for webcomics are loss leaders. #sadfact”

“After (the) manga presence in book stores went toes up, people once again went online to get their fix, except this time they aren’t wading through webcomics – the scantranslation sites all fill ever need a manga fan could want. We are competing against free content that isn’t just other creators — it’s like, the pro stuff. ^^;; I still think people are happy to support and buy stuff related to properties they really like. We just have to be that good.”

There’s much more—yet to come, Part 5, in which Aoki’s crew points the way forward. We’ll link to that as soon as it’s up!

WHERE ALL THIS KICKSTARTER MONEY IS GOING, by amanda fucking palmer

2012-05-22T19:31:00Z

my dear comrades,

this is a long blog, but i have something important i’d love for you to read first.
save it for later if you have to, but READ IT. (a lot of you, especially the music-biz types, probably already have.)

it’s a now-famous piece of writing from the early 90’s by producer steve albini, entitled “The Problem With Music.”
in it, he basically explains why a famous touring band on a label is still fundamentally FUCKED once you do the math.

click HERE to read it.

everything he says is true. i lived this reality on roadrunner records.

if you compare his numbers to my numbers (below), the similarities are striking, but that shouldn’t be surprising.
it COSTS REAL MONEY to manufacture and distribute a record, to have a staff and a publicist, to promote an artist and tour a band.
that will never truly change.
but now, because we can reach out fans directly without the machine, artists are empowered to call the shots and keep whatever’s leftover…not the labels.

…………………………….

lots of people have been asking LOTS OF QUESTIONS. why we set the goal where we did, and who the fuck do i think i am doing this anyway, blah blah blah.
i already answered a BUNCH of questions related to the nitty-gritty of the kickstarter HERE, in a backer update that’s open to the public.
and i’m working on answering A LOT of big life-altering questions for my next blog, including why my kickstarter is actually NOT a front for the church of scientology.

BUT

this question from @MaleahArvieux on twitter merits its own big-ass answer, and it’s one of things i’ve been asked CONSTANTLY.

QUESTION:

“so, are you loaded?”

ANSWER:

well, you tell me. depends on your definition of “loaded.”

let’s say this kickstarter hits a million dollars in pledges by may 31st.

TRULY? first i’ll run naked through the streets, yelling hallelujah.
because this WORKED.

but financially, realistically?
first i’ll pay off the lovely debt - stacks of bills and loans and the like - associated with readying all of the stuff that had to happen BEFORE i brought this project to kickstarter.
for the past 8 months or so, i wasn’t touring - and therefore wasn’t making much income - but every step of the way, there were expenses. so, during that time, i borrowed from various friends and family who i’d built up trust with over the years.

i had to pay my staff and crew to get this album ready as well as keep the ship afloat and headed in the right direction. i also needed to come up with the cost of the recording itself (which was pretty whopping), and any other expenses the band racked up in the meanwhile.
to put a number on all of that behind-the-scenes stuff which just got us to DAY ONE of kickstarter: $250,000.
terrifying? damn straight.
but to do this the way i knew it needed to be done, that was just a bet i had to take against myself.
i’m a truly lucky person to have been able to float myself without having to simultaneously tour and break my back.
i’ve also worked my ass off for years to build the kind of trust that built me that line of credit with people.

SO.
let’s subtract that from the $1,000,000 we theoretically make on kickstarter.
that takes us down to about $750k.

here’s some very back-of-the-napkin costs to manufacture the goods, with a rough estimate of about what we’d have sold if we got to a million.

7,000+ high-end CD-books & thank you cards cost about $15 a package to manufacture and ship. that’s $105,000.
1,500+ vinyls & cards, at about $20 to manufacture & ship…about $30,000
2,000+ art books (bearing in mind the shipping on those, every time they need to be shipped from the plant, to the distributor, to YOU, plus the signing, is killer) will cost us roughly $80,000.
PLUS we have to factor in about $15-20k to pay our design team to actually design all this stuff, and to make it super-duper amazing and worth your money. those of you who supported mine and Neil’s last Kickstarter know what i’m talking about here. this CD is gonna be a super-deluxxxxxe work of art.
the neil and kyle books are going to cost us a LOT of dough to create…(edited after speaking with kyle) let’s say about $300/copy for about 100 copies…that’s 30k.

if we sell about 100 turntable packages: ordering the tables, paying the artists to paint them, shipping all that stuff around: ballpark another $15k.
arts & crafts/7-inch packages, if we sell about 300 of them, adds about another $30k (we’re planning on spending roughly $100 each on the packaging for those, including not only the vinyl but the fun arts-and-crafts activities. oh, and postage/shipping x5)

to take the band on TOUR to six cities and install the art shows is probably going to break even, but if they don’t sell out (looks like some won’t) we might eat it a little bit on that art tour. let’s say we wind up not selling out berlin and LA. we still have to pay to fly the band, gear, art (carefully!!!) and crew to each city. that difference might sink us about $10k.

i’ll be able to wrap some of the house parties into a regular tour, but a lot of them i’m going to need to fly to or otherwise get to. 35 parties. let’s assume i crash on couches and with friends and don’t even stay in hotels…and let’s assume the flights are cheap and i only have to fly to 20 of the 35, with average airfare from place to place being $500. that’s $10k.

so.

now we’re down to $420,000.

i have to pay the VISUAL artists who joined this amazing art party. i commissioned them all to paint their art, they own it. i’m only BORROWING the art for the art gallery tour — and using the “likeness” (the digital copy) for the album/book/etc. packaging – and then returning the art to the artist to keep. still, i paid them all. add another $20-25k there. i feel very good about giving them all that money.

which puts us at $395,000.

this is a good time to talk about commissions (get ready to be bored):
me and my management team are doing this all 100% by ourselves (globally). because this IS the way it should be - putting control back into the artist’s hands - there’s a shit-ton of work involved. this is not a bad thing, i am not complaining, but it means a pretty big staff (including my lawyer) needs to be in place to DO THIS.
they’ll take about 15% of everything.
my business manager, who gets everyone paid and acts as the accountant for all my cashflow, also takes a 5% cut of everything i earn (which is very fair. hi patrick!!!).

for you business majors, since you’ll ask: some of this commission is after expense, i.e. on the net. some isn’t. good questions. let’s continue.

so do the % math: on a million dollars, give or take, that means that about $150,000 of the kickstarter money will go to the commission pile.

down to $245,000.

we had budgeted about $80k for four to five music videos, which are fun and we all love (and which also provide work for more of amazing artists). i might up that to $100k now that i know we can afford it.

that’d take us to $145k.

there’s expenses i’m not even TALKING about here…the cost of our new website designers, my full-time staff (i have two: superkate and sean), the tour equipment, band costumes, gear cases, stage backdrops, and gazillion other incidentals. the mind boggles. you should see my email inbox, as we try to sort all this stuff…it’s hilarious.

and wait, fuck….i forgot. kickstarter also takes 5%. and so does Amazon (who handle the credit card processing fees, turning pledges into actual moneys). so we have to lop off $75-100k for them.

(are you starting to get the idea here…?)

are we at under $100k yes? why, yes! how the fuck did THAT happen?

not by accident.

but:

all business choices. all art choices.

none of this is surprising to ME.

i can tell you two things for sure:

ONE…we are committed to doing amazing things for all of you who pledged. sure, it’s going to cost more to make things extra fancy (and for us to ship things for FREE all over the world), but making this stuff amazing IS THE POINT. if i skimped on making the packaging and actual products INCREDIBLE, i’d be an idiot.

and

TWO…a LOT of our income for the next year WON’T COME from this kickstarter. it’ll come gradually, over the following year: from the touring show, from the merchandise we sell on the road, from money we get in donations when i make the tracks available online, from the money i get from iTunes from the people who are sometimes lazy (like me), and so forth. it’ll be a slow burn, like it always is.

if we keep our expenses down, and keep the tour pretty practical and the video budget way down, i could probably put $100k of this in the bank personally. which would be great.

but i might just be close to zero as i head off on tour this fall.

and you know what?
seriously?

that’s FINE with me. it’s almost even THE PLAN.

if i break even on this project, i still see this as a massive win. do you see why?

first of all, this kickstarter and its success is going to open the door for a lot of other artists, especially major-label refugees like me.

i’ve never denied the value of getting a boost from the old label system. but that was then, this is now.

and we’re being shown PROOF POSITIVE that it’s just not necessary anymore. paying now for value later is what historically would’ve been a label’s primary purpose. now YOU are able to bankroll and finance and KEEP CONTROL WITH THE ARTISTS. showing that this WORKS…that’s simply great art-karma, and awesome for everybody, including me. and all my art-making friends.

and almost DEFINITELY: all the buzz around this kickstarter will mean the record itself will get more attention when it comes out for real, commercially.
and the record itself is AWESOME. it is. it is awesome. which means i have a feeling it’s going to do really well aside from this pre-order.
and that’ll make me real money when i hit the road in september.

don’t forget: i’m CHOOSING to spend all this money making the packages fancy as shit….and i’m CHOOSING to tour this way. EXPENSIVELY.

i could send you all cheap-ass jewel case CDs, fire my staff, make a cheap book on xerox paper, and tour just with a solo piano…with no crew, no band….and RAKE IN THE DOUGH.
i mean: i could potentially do that and walk with close to half a million dollars. but the products would suck and the tour would be a solo piano tour. and nobody would ever trust me again.

i’ve been running my life this way for years, bouncing up and down financially and just making sure i always had enough money to do WHAT I WANTED, and do it RIGHT.

it may be what makes me different, fundamentally, from a lot of pop artists. i’m almost never looking at the monetary bottom line, i’m always looking at the creative bottom line. the happiness index of my life and creative self, not the amount of dough i’ll have in the bank at the end of a project. (it can drive a manager crazy.)

so

to answer the question:

yes.
i’m loaded.
loaded with awesomeness.

and…no.
in no fucking case scenario do i get a check for $1,000,000 and laugh my way to the bank, then book a private jet to ibiza where a limo filled with hookers and blow will be waiting to escort me to a slamming nightclub called “la uno percento” where i then spend my time contemplating my handsome nose job in the darkened mirrored bathrooms (probably weeping).

and you know what else? if i wind up truly loaded someday, it means i’ll probably buy an abandoned church somewhere and turn it into a free 24-hour circus brunch bar for everybody. cross your fucking fingers. we’ll all win.

stay tuned.

this is just the beginning.

we’re all investing, dollar by dollar, pledge by pledge.

investing not just in the future of my little record and band, but in an idea whose time has come.

and this is a good thing.

LOVE,
afp

p.s. you can find the kickstarter at http://bit.ly/NewAFP

Webcomic Workshop #46

2012-05-23T04:01:20Z

Solving Webcomic Issues We All Face.

This podcast we discuss:

Byron: When should you, if at all, use colloquial terms or expressions? Or even cultural references? For example I’ve used the term “Free Clinic” and I had to explain it to my readers. They say if you have to explain it, then don’t use it. Is that really true? I know MST3K used a ton of movie references and it became hip to try and figure them out.

Dawn: Eventually, I will have to end my comic and move on to something else. With gag-strips it’s more like the sappy end of a sitcom, you bid farewell to the characters more than the storyline. Do you think it’s better to give fair warning, to prepare readers, or “surprise” them with the final comic? Obviously, hyping up “the end” could get more hits, but it seems inappropriate for some reason.

Drezz: Getting rid of the ads, getting rid of the clutter and delivering just the comic – making it a fully online reading experience without the distractions (Wormworld Saga, His Face all Red, Sarah and the Seed, etc) since ads don’t do much more than take up real estate, and I want the GN to be something to read and enjoy (and eventually integrate into a ‘studio’ site).

Chris: After Heroes Con, I’m going to try and launch a Kickstarter Campaign because I now have three books and it’s getting harder to print enough copies of all three books for all the conventions I go to. A Kickstarter campaign will go a LONG way to remedy that situation. Some of the Kickstarter money would go towards having a bigger advertising presence on the web as well. My Problem: The campaign goal was going to be between $1,500 – $2,000. I don’t know if I have a big enough fan base that would be able to make this campaign a success. I know a lot of it is not just relying on your fan base. You also have to promote, promote and promote. Still though, I still have that “What if I can’t reach my Kickstarter” goal feeling that’s making me have a little bit too much paralysis by analysis. What should I do?

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Mark Andrew Smith’s new manifesto on Kickstarter and Comics: THE CREATOR AS RETAILER

2012-05-23T14:15:56Z

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We quoted some of Mark Andrew Smith’s interview on Robot 6 about his successful SULLIVAN’S SLUGGERS Kickstarter campaign just a little while ago, but he’s made his thoughts on the new market for comics funding a little more explicit in a new essay. With his permission, we’re reprinting it here.

The A to B Manifesto. The creator as retailer. (Spread it)

By Mark Andrew Smith
We stand on the brink of a new Golden Age for comic books. Never before has there been such a diverse range of material and stories to choose from.
There is truly a comic book for every reader under the sun. In the next few years creator owned comics are going to spill into the mainstream of society in a big way.

In particular with this essay I am referring to ‘creator owned’ books and not applying these ideas to Marvel or DC.

This is not an essay where I will spell out or predict anyone’s doom. I believe there are infinite resources when it comes to reaching potential readers and infinite potential for growth. The success of one kind of distribution model doesn’t mean the detriment of another and indeed they can all benefit from each other and grow together.

The main message of this essay is ‘creators first’ which I will explain. This is the era of the creator.

CREATOR OWNED COMICS, THE UPSIDE DOWN PYRAMID:

A comic book creator I really respect often says that people focus on the negative things in comics but fail to provide solutions. For this essay I have to go over the bad to get to the solutions, so please be patient here. This essay is a jumping point for others to add to or subtract from, and I’ve given my piece here and after I don’t have anything to add or debate. Feel free to pick up the torch and run with it if you like.

I will also do this without any finger pointing or blame placed on anyone.

The state of comics now is no one’s fault.

The current distribution system of comics is failing the makers of creator owned comics and has been doing so for years. Comics are a place where people create something out of love painstakingly. They invest their time, money, and energies into creating their comics, and often it takes years before a series is ready to come out.

The creators put the book into the hands of the current comics distribution system and ‘roll the dice’ to see where they may fall. Most often the distribution system that exists fails those creators in many ways. I predict good health for comics in the next few years, but you’ll have to read the next sections of the A to B Manifesto for me to explain why.

The distribution system for comics as it stands is an upside down pyramid with the creators at the very bottom. In this upside down pyramid the creators are the last ones allowed to recoup from their work and they get the leftovers or scraps after everyone else is finished. (If there is anything left for them.)

The creators are the people who put in all of the time and energy into the very product that’s being sold. Even if you heavily promote your book, you’re doing it to make other people money.

The distributor makes their money, the printers get paid, the publishers, and the retailers before the artist gets to make anything or recoup money invested into a book. It’s easy to loose money even after everyone has been paid and very common.

Usually the rent is too high and it’s hard for creators to recoup unless their book has strong enough sales. Usually, it’s the exception that does, and not the rule. Or as Eric Powell puts it, “Making it big off creator owned work is like winning the lottery.”

The distribution system fails creator owned books again and again. If you work for years on a book and retailers don’t as a collective entity order enough copies of your book, then your book is dead, strangled in its infancy in its crib. It’s not the retailer’s fault. It’s the nature of the distribution system that’s in place.

If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s the creator’s fault for not doing more to put their futures in their own hands by being entrepreneurs.

There are so many books on the market to order and it’s difficult for retailers to take a risk with everything, because books are non-returnable if they don’t sell, and so they go with what’s safe and hedge their bets by ordering conservatively so as not to loose money. I would do the same in their shoes.

But rest easy, everything as we know it is about to change and we’re going to soon flip that pyramid right side up, and creators once again will be first and at the top of it in their rightful places. The shortest distance between to points is a straight line. This will also be the best thing for everyone involved and everyone will benefit from creators once again being at the top of the pyramid. I’ll explain this after I go over my second point.

NO MAN’S LAND:

To make comics grow we’ve got to stop beating each other senseless for a small piece of land. There are a lot of books that come out every month that have to fight it out for space on shelves to get noticed. They’re fighting for a small piece of land and space in comic shops. Creator owned comics are like being a minnow in a fish tank with two huge great white sharks (Marvel & DC).

The trick is just to get off that one piece of land where everyone is beating each other senseless and to make your own piece of land, that’s your own sovereign nation and reflects what you’re all about. The trick is to find your own audience and to sell directly to them, establishing a relationship with the reader and direct communication.

Even digital comic shops are full of clutter and the same with many creators battling for limited space and attention. With Marvel and DC taking the front and creator owned books in the back. If you’re not featured, your not there. Unless people go in looking for your book, they’re not going to find it in a digital comics shop that I feel is a shortcoming.

For many of us this consists of people that we already know and not subtracting from comic shops, but actually benefiting shops in the long run.

PIRACY:

We’ve got to lower the price of digital comics dollar an issue to make buying comics easier than pirating them. Also we need to make people aware that people create books, and depend on them for income. I think in the same way that Louis CK did recently. Because if they have a direct connection and interaction with a creator it becomes exponentially more harder to pirate from them.

I got the negative points out of the way and it’s all rainbows, sunshine, and unicorns up ahead in the next parts of this essay, I promise. This part was tricky to navigate and I’m sure I’ll come back to it after getting feedback from friends and give the beta version a second polish, but right now I’m just trying to get the main ideas of the essay out on paper so that I actually write and finish it, instead of it being a bunch of notes in a notebook.

SOLUTIONS:

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line and for comics to thrive and grow in the future comic books have got to go from point A (The Creator) to point B (The Reader). We live in an exciting time where creators once again will be at the top of the pyramid, with it right side up. Perhaps for the first time in history.

In order for comics to grow the creator has got to take the center stage as one of the retailers and we need to start cultivating a spirit of entrepreneurship among creators so that they take their own destiny in their hands. In 1988 a group of creators got together and came up with the ‘Creator’s Bill of Rights’, I think now with so many technological breakthroughs that it’s time to update that bill of rights to include a new right which is the right of the creator as retailer.

In order for comics to thrive I believe that the solution is to get comics out of comic shops. Well no, that’s not right. The solution is to keep comics in comic shops, AND to get comics out of comic shops and onto new soil. For creators to win they need to break away from the pack of other comics and find their own audience that they can communicate with directly.

The success of creators selling direct will not effect shops or take from their audience, in fact I believe that creators selling direct digital comics will help comic shops when readers want to pick up copies of the books in print and that the print run will be healthier because the creator established an audience for the book first.

I think that very soon, there will be a web template with paypal, where readers can go to a creator’s website and order digital copies of their books. The money will go directly to the creators. I also think that comics might take the form of webcomics, but with a monthly subscription model where there is a built in readership through places like, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Kickstarter.

I think this model will make it easy for creators to recoup and they’ll have no print costs. Print will also be an option, but I think it will be the second stage in the cycle after the creators take care of themselves. Everyone loves printed books myself included. But the trick to being successful is to establish and to build your fanbase in the same way that digital comics do. To do this creators need to promote their books like they would with actual physical comic books. Creators also need to rely on ‘older brother figures’ to bring in more traffic to their projects and to get the spotlight on them.

The creator will be first once again.

I know there are many myths about Kickstarter or that books on Kickstarter are books that were rejected by other publishers. But I feel that in the future Kickstarter is going to become the first choice of many creators as a distribution outlet. Another is that Kickstarter is begging for money or asking for a handout, but it’s really not, it’s a built in creator centered distribution system and you’re giving readers something of value that you made in exchange for their money and support.

I think we’ll actually see some millionaires on kickstarter who are big names in comics, that give digital comics a roll of the dice and try it out.

I think in the future the goal of creators should be to look out for themselves and it’s essential for them to grow their audience numbers and be in direct communication with them. The success of creators as a distributor is not to the detriment of the system already in place and will benefit it because everyone has their own unique audience and fan base in place. No two fan bases are alike and it’s really about growing the audience of comics.

The sky is the limit.

Double Barrel LAUNCH COUNTDOWN! [15 days left]

2012-05-22T14:00:00Z

Tuesday Cartooning Tips!

What's your computer setup?
Answered by Zander

Here at Kevin's and my studio, in 2012, we have a fairly modest computer setup:

Kevin

Mac Mini: Simple, reliable, fast. Used for coloring, touch-ups, and prepress.
23" Acer LCD monitor
MacBook Pro: For home projects and writing.
Epson Stylus 3-in-1 inkjet printer/scanner: For quick, small-format scans. Kevin tells me he ran out of ink on it but never bothered to get more.
Wacom Bamboo tablet: For digital painting and coloring.

Zander

Custom-built PC (running Windows 7): Used for scanning, coloring, touch-ups, and pre-press. I was a long-time Mac guy until I was stuck on a Windows XP machine for a couple years. I got used to it, and then realized when I was set to get a new one that it was going to be significantly cheaper to get a built machine than a Mac, not to mention it could be upgraded more easily. But of course I also have a:
MacBook Pro: This is an old laptop that I bought from Kevin's mom. Used for writing and desk-side Google Image Search.
Wacom 21" Cintiq: Incredibly enough, a gift from a client. I have drawn certain things on it, but have yet to make the leap to all-digital work. It has, however, made my line-art and lettering corrections much faster and much better, and made my coloring an entirely new experience.
23" Acer LCD monitor: High quality second monitor, for reference, email, or ftp while I draw.
19" Acer LCD monitor: Medium quality third monitor, entirely overkill (I put it on there because it was sitting around and there was an extra video-out port).
Microtek Scanmaker 9800XL (large format) scanner: An extremely useful tool-- high-resolution (1200dpi) large-format bitmap scans are primarily what we use this for, and we use it a LOT.
External HD: For backup in case of computer meltdown.

Printers

Canon i9900 (large format inkjet): For large, high-quality color printouts (for posters or blueline guides). It's nice to have only one inkjet printer in the studio, since because we use it for everything we print in color, we can focus exclusively on its array of its ink cartridges (and there are a lot).
Brother MFC 7800W (b&w laser 3-in-1): For letter-sized, large volume, crisp black-and-white printouts (for scripts, proofs or layout templates). I highly recommend having a black and white laser printer rather than a color inkjet. The toner cartridges last a long time (say, for printing out a hundred-page script) and the print quality is excellent (say, for printing out a file to be photocopied).

Perspective Police!: Bechdel

2012-05-17T16:11:14Z

I owe Alison Bechdel big time. The cartoonist responsible for the comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For and the graphic novels Fun Home and Are You My Mother? may be best known for The Bechdel Test, which she formulated to determine whether a movie is sexist or not. For a story to pass the test:

1.   It has to have at least two women in it,
2.   Who talk to each other,
3.   About something other than a man.

Some people amend the rules to require that both women have names.

David Chelsea is reading:
Manara Erotica Volume 1
by Milo Manara

Not Passing The Bechdel Test: Panel from The Girl With The Keyhole Eyes.

Even though Bechdel devised this test for movies (some notable ones that fail it: The Godfather, The Graduate, Citizen Kane and the original Star Wars Trilogy) there is no reason it can’t apply to comics; a story is a story. When I first heard about the test I mentally applied it to my own work and was embarrassed to discover that only two stories passed: my first graphic novel David Chelsea In Love, thanks to a single sequence taking up part of two pages (41 and 42 in the Reed Press edition), and the 24 Hour Comic ID, which you can read in its entirety here. I was therefore inspired to create Sandy & Mandy, a story I’m working on for Dark Horse Presents which features two named female friends who talk about everything under the sun as well as the occasional man (I couldn’t resist having a bit of fun with such a P.C. restriction- notice the convoluted way Sandy & Mandy manage to bring up men’s names without actually talking about a man).

Passing The Bechdel Test: Rough sketch for Sandy & Mandy

So hats off to you, Alison Bechdel, for opening my eyes to my own unconscious sexism. Now let me return the favor by showing you how to improve your perspective.

Alison Bechdel illustration for The New Yorker

Here is a recent New Yorker illustration in which Bechdel depicts herself multiply at work in her basement studio. It appears to be a simple one-point perspective view of the basement as seen from overhead, (a view we could only get if the upper floors were removed) but it is actually more complicated than that. It was obvious to me at first glance that the receding lines do not all meet at a single point, which in itself is not terribly surprising- cartoonists often take a loose approach to perspective- but once I began diagramming them out I noticed that the lines do roughly meet at four separate vanishing points- a different one for each side wall.

Bechdel diagrammed

The method of perspective Bechdel is using is known as vanishing axis or vanishing trace perspective, and it has a long history. Lawrence Wright in his 1983 book Perspective In Perspective gives a good description:

Diagram of Vanishing Axis Perspective

“If the artist wants to show more of both side walls, he can ‘open them out’ slightly without noticeably falsifying the proportions of the room. Each side wall now has its own separate vanishing point, both being on a common horizon. This discrepancy may not be noticeable, but a further problem arises if the orthogonals (receding parallels) of the floor, if they are to meet correctly, now need a third vanishing point, and those of the ceiling a fourth one. These last two fall on a common, vertical ‘vanishing axis’ or ‘vanishing trace’. Vanishing axis perspective often occurs in medieval drawings. It is a quite acceptable formula—if that word can be applied to an arbitrary device for which few rules can be laid down—when used with discretion. It has survived as an occasional remedy for the drawbacks of normal systems of construction.”

Bechdel revised

Whether Bechdel knew about vanishing axis perspective or reinvented the method on her own, it’s a clever solution to the visual problems set by her subject. Setting up the drawing the conventional way with one vanishing point at the center of the picture would mean that the walls to the right and left would be far more foreshortened than those at the top and bottom, an effect that would be even more exaggerated if the vanishing point were placed anywhere else. Using a different vanishing point for each wall enables Bechdel to foreshorten all of them equally (It does mean that the rectangle representing the floor is a different shape than the framing rectangle representing the ceiling, but I’m sure hardly anyone notices that).

While it is pointless to criticize any drawing in vanishing axis perspective for not having all its lines meeting at a central point, that does not mean there is no room for improvement. The method requires that objects and furniture attached to each wall should share the vanishing point of that wall, and Bechdel has not done this consistently. My revision brings wayward objects into line with their particular vanishing point, and I have in a few cases tilted or redrawn the human figures to better align them with the perspective of their particular part of the room. I believe my version improves on Bechdel’s inconsistent construction without destroying the charm of the original.

Thanks to Wilhelm Schroeder for bringing this piece to my attention.

Got an example of iffy perspective to show? Be a whistleblower! Send an e-mail to me at davidchelsea(at)comcast(dot)net and include Perspective Police! in the subject line.

The Raw magazine rejection form letter

2012-05-16T16:42:49Z

The Raw magazine rejection form letter

Tuesday Trending Topics: Awesome Inking

2012-05-16T06:17:49Z

This is a pretty good idea, and a lot of people on the internet seem to agree today: One of the highlights is the Awesome Inking Panel in which various comic professionals at the show are provided with penciled art copied on blue line paper, and asked to ink the penciled image in their style, which will then be used during the inking panel. See and read more about this Big Wow Comic Fest panel.

Speaking of comic con fun and panels, let me add that while you’re here you should go vote in the Bleeding Cool fan awards, which will be presented at the upcoming Phoenix Comicon.

And a final bit of business before we get onto today’s trending topic list — latenight BCers will have noticed some periodic scheduled maintenance over the past couple weeks, which is now concluded. Basically, we’ve done some much-needed hardware upgrades to carry us through some upcoming expansion plans. BC forum iconographer Rootfireember explains the technical details:

Most-Read Comic Stories Today:

Travis Charest, Frank Cho Ink Jim Lee At Big Wow

While I’m at Kapow this weekend, in the US they’ll be hosting the Big Wow Comic Fest. One of the highlights is the Awesome Inking Panel in which various comic professionals at the show are provided with penciled art copied on blue line paper, and asked to ink the penciled image in their style, which will then be used during the inking panel.

Agent Coulson, The Avengers And The Future

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE AVENGERS MOVIE.

An Ending Of Things At DC Comics

DC have not released all their August shipping details. To back up our thesis, we could do with a lot of books finishing arcs, or doing one shot stories, to clear the deck for September. Here’s some that support the zero issue story… and some that don’t.

Most-Read TV/Film Stories Today:

President Obama On The Avengers

We know President Obama used to read comics. Even when he was all grown up. Appearing on The View, he was asked about Kardashians, Fifty Shades Of Gray, Dancing With The Stars, Jessica Simpson, Modern Family and… The Avengers, asked to name three of them.

Man Calls Fire Brigade Over Avengers Captions

But a customer of the Regal Cinema in Abingdon, Baltimore, was rather annoyed to discover that the showing of The Avengers that he’d paid to see had captions.

Steamy Stills Of Noomi Rapace And Rachel McAdams In Brian De Palma’s Passion

These new stills from Brian De Palma‘s Passion only seem to confirm what we suspected when the first image arrived online: this is probably not a film you should sit down to watch with your elderly grandmother. No, not even if you have Orange Wednesdays and you can get her in for free.

3 Things I Learned When My Site’s Traffic Increased 25,000% in One Day

2012-05-15T07:18:31Z

Unique visitors per hour. The flat line at the bottom is how many I usually get.

For the past few months, my site has averaged maybe, oh, 75-125 visitors or so a day. Then for a 24-hour period beginning on May 10th at 9am CST, 48,342 people came to my site. That’s more unique visitors than my site had gotten in the past three years combined. Here’s what happened:

I released a couple new e-comics two weeks ago (yup, gotta get a plug in for them somewhere) so I’ve been looking for ways to promote them. I’d heard of Reddit, a social linking website, and had visited it a couple of times. I’ve always had a vaguely positive opinion of it, but never made it a part of my regular internet surfing routine and wasn’t intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the site.

But I figured I’d give them a shot, and submitted the first installment of the Kameoka Diaries to their comics section. I figured I’d get, oh, 100 visitors and maybe four or five comments.

So yeah. I got a few more than that.

The whole thing has been a real learning experience. Here are three things I took away from it:

1) Reddit commenters are much more kind & encouraging than I thought they would be.
When I saw how popular my submission was getting and saw that it was getting dozens (and then hundreds) of comments, I wasn’t really looking forward to reading them. Maybe I’m just a pessimist at heart, or maybe I’ve just read one too many articles about what a cesspool the internet is, but I figured I’d have to wade through a sea of comments telling me how much I sucked.

But much to my surprise and delight, the vast majority of the comments were really friendly and positive. I don’t know if Reddit’s comment sections are heavily moderated or if Redditors are just naturally sweet people, but it renewed my faith in humanity a bit and made me want to keep making these stupid little comics. You can take a look at the comment section (and my replies) here.

2) All that traffic helped e-comic sales, but not by much.
I once heard something to the effect that when you offer a free webcomic, you’re lucky if 1% of your readership buys something from you. Now, I’m paraphrasing so I might be getting the exact details wrong, but either way, it’s a just a sliver of the whole.

So when I saw all the people that visited my website, I wasn’t expecting any miracles. But still, I couldn’t help but run the numbers: if just half a percent of the visitors bought something, that’d mean hundreds of sales… it was hard not to get just a little excited.

But alas, the 48,342 people that visited my site resulted in an additional 23 e-comics sales compared to the previous day. So about 0.048% of the extra visitors made a purchase.

Hey, don’t get me wrong; an extra 23 books sold is better than a kick in the seat of the pants. And I’ll admit: out of all the hundreds of sites I personally visit, only very rarely do I buy anything from them. So it totally makes sense, it’s just a bit sobering to see the hard numbers.

3) There are super-important aspects of website administration that I’m completely clueless about.
When I saw that my submission was starting to get a bunch of hits, I panicked a bit. I was afraid I’d hit my monthly bandwidth limit and my site would go offline. So I hopped over to my web host’s website to see what my bandwidth limit was, and how close I was to it.

Apparently, “bandwidth limit” is an archaic concept, because my rinky-dink, $5-a-month account has unlimited bandwidth. Great, I thought, nothing to worry about. So I went to bed, and then to work the next day.

When I got home, I had an e-mail from my web host. They said my “CPU usage” was beyond what was allowed. I’m allowed “4.5% CPU average” per day, but had used 64.5%! They said if it didn’t come down to the acceptable average in the next 12 hours, they would block my account.

Long story short: the next day the average CPU usage was at 29.6%; a significant drop, but still way above 4.5%. They suspended my account, but put it back up again right away when I requested them to do so (the site was probably only down for like five minutes). The day after that, the CPU usage was at 2.7%, well within the acceptable range.

What I find fascinating about the whole thing is that there’s this critical limit that they’ll shut you down for exceeding, and I didn’t even know it existed. And this is after running a website for almost five years! I guess I’ve just never had enough simultaneous visitors for it to affect me.

Even now I don’t really know what “CPU usage” means in regards to website hosting. Like, yeah, I get that I can only have 4.5% a day, but 4.5% of what?

And if you decide to raise your CPU limit, it’s really expensive. Adding just one percent costs an extra four dollars a month, which would almost double my hosting bill. And bear in mind that on that one day I was SIXTY percent over my CPU limit! Yeesh!

I’ve done a bit of research since then, and have taken steps to try to optimize my site’s CPU usage. I’ve also read that simple, static html pages use almost no computing power, whereas WordPress blogs (i.e. this blog) tend to be CPU hogs. So I figure next time I submit to Reddit, I’ll make a special static html page for my submission and link to that, rather than linking directly to the WordPress blog. We’ll see if that helps.

*****
Reddit seems really awesome and I totally plan on submitting there again, and also try to get more involved in the community in general. Some of the people from the Reddit comics section recommended I also post about my comics on Reddit’s Japan section. The Japan section has like a tenth the subscribers as the comics section, so that would probably be a good place to test my static html page idea and see if that keeps my CPU usage within the acceptable range. I’m preparing those pages now and will probably put them up later this week, and submit them to Reddit Japan then.

Anyone have any other suggestions for lowering CPU usage levels? I’m all ears!

PROCLAMATION!

2011-10-21T08:00:00Z

I'm a cartoonist, but some of my published works are chapter books and picture books, so I also see myself as an illustrator, and lover of illustrated books. I strongly endorse this manifesto I signed and everything it says for the form of children's books, and every sentiment can be directly used on graphic novels for younger readers. I hope publishing companies all over the world have this framed on their wall someday, as a reminder of why we do this.

ADVENTURE TIME!

2012-02-08T08:00:00Z

So I was recently asked by Kaboom! Studios to do a short piece for the new Adventure Time comic book... based on Adventure Time... the cartoon on Cartoon Network. I started writing and doodling ideas as soon as I got the email. I was so excited... HONORED to be asked. Adventure Time is one of my all time favorite cartoons. EVER. I don’t know many people who would disagree themselves. Pen Ward and his team are pretty fantastic. All of the amazing characters! It is boundless in it’s ability to explore ideas... any ideas... piling weird on top of weird, and then chopping it in half to watch the weirdness ooze out.

The inaugural issue of Adventure Time is out in comic shops today! Wednesday February 8th! Go pick up a copy from your local comic shop! I just got a box of them in the mail, and I really couldn't be happier with how the whole thing turned out. Ryan North's story with Shelli Paroline's art is SO good. It was like READING a secret Adventure Time episode. I can't wait for issue#2.

And now that I have said that... phew! (Go buy it.) Here is a little more about my comic.

I was given 7 pages to work with... to focus on any side character... and told not to focus on Finn and Jake. So I picked Tree Trunks. I picked her because I have a fondness for elephants, and she’s so much fun to draw... like a toaster oven sized elephant with oven mitts for ears. This is what most of my rough drafts look like... really quick just trying to get the idea out:

When my story was finally approved I decided I wanted to do it in watercolor... because I wanted to get the bright colors I love about the show, but I also really wanted it to be clear that I wasn’t trying to mimic the art of the show. I wanted it to feel like my comic as well as a tribute to the program.

I did the line art first, so I could keep my lines pure.

And then painted my watercolors on another sheet at my light table. I had to turn the overhead lights on once in a while to see what I was doing... but I very much painted them in the dark.

If you want to read the reason I decided to do this, read on.

The reason I didn’t paint on the same paper is because of something called trapping. If you are an artist who works in print you know what I’m talking about... and if you’ve ever seen a color comic printed in a newspaper or a book and there are weird magenta or cyan or yellow shadow around the lines... that’s what I was trying to avoid. It has always confused me how other artists scan watercolors to print. To trap line art on a watercolor, to me is like recording music in mono, and then making it stereo. You just can’t do it. So maybe there was a way to do it that I just didn’t think of. The idea came to me after looking at a Richard Scarry book where they break down his process... and seeing that he painted on paper that didn’t contain the line art made SO much sense to me. So I wanted to try it.

I can say the process was a lot of fun... and when I finally put them into the computer, and laid the color on top of the lines... it was magical. Like watching a photo appear in a developer bath.

ADVENTURE TIME!

News of Yore: King Tells Where He Gets Ideas for "Gasoline Alley"

2012-05-03T13:00:00Z

Says There Are Loads of Ideas If You Can Tune in for Them

Real Characters

Artist Also Gives Some of His Own History

Winston-Salem Journal (North Carolina), 4/26/1926

Where do I get my ideas? I sit down and tune in and try to catch them as they go past. There are loads of ideas everywhere, but you must be tuned to receive them. Some come from real life direct. Most situations, however, are evolved by putting imaginary characters in possible situations and imagining what the result would be. By trying this over and over, if the wind is right, if the magnetic currents are favorable and the barometer O.K., a usable idea may be produced. If it has enough human nature in it, it is good—otherwise not.

The habit of observation is the important thing, both as regards ideas and drawing.

My Skeezix is five years too old. He is nine years of age and I have to remember back for material from that source. I also must remember a lot of things which didn't happen but which might have happened. That is one of the fortunate things about human interest stuff. You are not limited to what has happened, but you must not do things which would never happen.

Many ideas are sent in, but very few of them are usable. Many come in in some form of propaganda, which have to be weeded out carefully. A few ideas come from friends' children.

Yes, some of the characters are real people.

Skeezix is sort of a composite inspired by what I can remember of my own Skeezix, Robert Drew King. Skeezix is not a real doorstep baby, left on a bachelor's doorstep, though many stories come back to me from people who know somebody, who knows somebody else, who had a maid, who had worked for my wife's cousin, that such was the case. Or, that I have a baby just Skeezix's age, or have nine children to draw upon for ideas.

In speaking of stories, one which seemed to become almost simultaneously current in all parts of the country, arose from somewhere last summer. This explains the mystery of Skeezix's birth by asserting that Walt was shell shocked in the war and had married Mrs. Blossom, who was a war nurse. Skeezix, being the child of that union. Walt, however, losing his memory, forgot the whole affair and is still in ignorance of Skeezix's parentage. This I heard on both coasts and from many places between.

Walt is a real a character. He happens to be a long-suffering brother-in-law, and the original inspiration for Gasoline Alley.

He kept his car in a private garage, one of a string in the alley, back of his apartment near Sixty-third Street, Chicago. It was the bunch of car tinkerers who were garage neighbors that suggested the characters which have endured to the present time.

Walt (Walter Drew) was taken almost bodily and though he has suffered many fictions and slanders in the strip, still remains good natured and up to date has undertaken no reprisals.
Bill is another character kidnapped from the original alley bunch.

Avery is composite of a series of individuals I have come in contact with.

There are several claimants to Doc.

Mr. Wicker is pure fiction and Mrs. Blossom has been evolved from a suggestion a woman sent in. She said she was a widow and used to sit at home alone evenings and Sunday afternoon, until she got a "flivver" and kept it in a garage in the alley. Then she had numerous offers of help fixing and cleaning her car, plenty of company, and rides in bigger cars.

Hobbies? About everything but bridge and golf. I don't like cards and gave up golf because I would rather save up my days and half days and get out with a pack outfit on the Arizona desert, or load up the car and hit the road out through the mountains or make a canoe cruise.

My wife usually goes along and has ridden a mule hundreds of miles across the desert and hit mountain trails and many thousands of miles of auto roads. Son Robert has accompanied us on many trips and is comfortable and happy under any outdoor conditions.

As to biography—here goes. Birthplace, Cashton, Wis., but tired of the town and moved to Tomah one month later. High chair, measles and arithmetic there, also higher education culminating in learned essay at graduation from high school entitled "Newspaper Art" It embraced everything I had learned since and much more. Stuck type for Tomah Journal and spent four years in art department of Minneapolis Times. Left to go to art school in Chicago, and Minneapolis Times collapsed one month later. Three years with Hearst but he didn't know it. Then The Chicago Tribune, Motorcycle Mike, Bobby Make-Believe, Rectangle, Gasoline Alley, Walt and Skeezix.

Cartooning: Byrnes’ Complete Guide To Cartooning Part One

2012-05-01T17:39:00Z

Footage of Milton Caniff, Hal Foster, Bud Fisher, Chic Young, Al Capp and other cartoonists at work in their studios… "Passing Parade: People On Paper" (MGM/1945)(Quicktime 7 / 24 megs) REG’LAR FELLERS, LI’L ABNER, FLASH GORDON, TERRY & THE PIRATES, GAGS & GALS, STEVE CANYON… Meet The Men Behind The Comics Today, we began digitizing [...]

Animation: Nat Falk’s How To Make Animated Cartoons Part Three

2012-04-27T18:00:00Z

Here is the conclusion of Nat Falk’s "How To Make Animated Cartoons". This section contains lessons on how to draw animated cartoons and how to animate. HOW TO DRAW ANIMATED CARTOONS HOW TO ANIMATE Many thanks to the family of Carlo Vinci for sharing this important book with us. Stephen Worth Director Animation Resources This [...]

Guest Post: Jeremy Rock

2012-04-20T14:22:40Z

Jeremy Rock is a crazy-talented young artist I worked with at BOOM! Studios when I was EIC. His style is expressive but not unrealistic, he has storytelling chops, and he has that clean linestyle that I'm personally very fond of, like Steve Dillon and Dave Gibbons. When I decided to do "Luther" as a proof-of-concept, I reached out to him, and he's graciously volunteered to guest-blog here and take us through the steps of creation. Ladies and gentlemen, Jeremy Rock:

Hey everyone, Jeremy Rock here. I'm the illustrator that worked with Mark to develop "Luther." I'm going to take some time to explain how this digital comic was created. Scattered throughout this post will be links that lead to visual examples of the process.

A couple of years ago, I discovered Balak's digital comics on DeviantArt and his work completely changed my perspective on what a digital comic could be. I was inspired to create a digital comic of my own, but I wasn't really sure where I wanted to begin. Then something odd happened; in early 2011 Mark Waid asked if I was interested in working with him on…a digital comic. Mark wasn't aware that I was looking for an opportunity like this and I was surprised we had very similar opinions when it came to digital, a nice bit of luck for both of us.

So where do we even start? There are tons of different storytelling techniques to explore in digital and it's easy to feel overwhelmed by all of the options. After a few brief discussions with Mark, I decided that I needed to create some guidelines. I had to narrow things down and focus on the techniques we liked most. The first thing I created was a "Digital Comics Format Sheet". With this, I laid out some of the ideas I thought we should explore first. My goal was to keep everything very simple. The concepts I laid out on the DCFS are loose guidelines that I made for myself. They are not rules that I think every artist has to follow.

• The DIGITAL COMICS FORMAT SHEET

The first subject on the sheet is Landscape View. Mark and I both feel Landscape offers a more comfortable reading experience for digital comics on computer and tablet screens. At the time, we wanted to go full wide screen with our first experiment but there were some limitations with certain devices. Plus, I wanted to explore a way to convert the story to print and have it fit the traditional comic book format. It seemed that 4:3 was the best aspect ratio for the ideas we wanted to test out. Next, I began playing around with panels. I wanted to make sure everyone could follow the panels and not feel confused about which one to read next. Also, I tried to limit the number of panels on the screen so that each panel would be large enough for the reader to see clearly.

I started thinking about Print. Mark and I are not interested in replacing print comics with digital comics. We believe they can coexist and decided to explore a technique that involved stacking Screens. The basic idea, as shown on the DCFS, is to take two 4:3 Screens and stack them on top of each other to form a traditional comic book page. I took a piece of 11x17 comic art board, which I normally use for printed work, and measured out two 4:3 Screens on it. The two Screens fit on the board with each Screen measuring 9 inches wide and 6.75 inches high. Drawing within these windows makes it possible to work in both digital and print at the same time. Split the page in half and you have two digital comic Screens. Shrink the full page down and you have a traditional comic book page. Using the Screen stacking approach makes it possible to create a digital story in landscape view and later print out a collection for a trade paperback.

I sent this format guideline sheet to Mark, he liked what he saw and sent back a script.

• THE LUTHER SCRIPT (click to download)

The original script for LUTHER was six pages long and created for the BOOM! Studios comic ZOMBIE TALES. Mark sent me this script along with the message "Fuss with it. Obviously, don't feel beholden to page breaks, panel counts, etc--take it your own direction". I decided to not look at the artwork of the original LUTHER story that was printed in ZOMBIE TALES. I needed my mind to find its own way so I sat down at my drawing desk and started sketching out ideas.

• THE ROUGH SKETCHES

My rough sketches are always a mess and seem to make sense to no one else but me. After I finish a rough sketch phase, I clean up the scribbled ideas and draw them clearer so that others can understand them too. I normally like to draw a lot of concept art before creating the final line art for a story but this time I only drew some head shots for Murphy and Luther. Everything else was designed while I was drawing the final art.

I worked scene by scene and thought about what I wanted to show on each Screen. I changed a lot of shots around and even added in a few extra ones. Because of these adjustments LUTHER became a bit longer. I always focused on digital first and later looked at ways to make it fit comfortably to print. Some concepts would work great in digital but not convert well to print. That's fine for an exclusively digital comic, but I was trying to explore both formats. There was some tug of war between the two. When I felt that I had a pretty good idea about what I wanted to show on the Screens and the Pages, I cleaned up the ideas and created a Click Sheet.

• THE CLICK SHEET (rough)

I don't own Flash or other programs that some people use to create digital comics. All I have is pencil, paper, ink, a scanner, and an outdated version of Photoshop. I created the Click Sheet to show how every screen would look each time someone clicked through the digital comic. I used this tool to help keep track of the stories pacing. The design of the Click Sheet was inspired by film reels. The first LUTHER Click Sheet that I sent to Mark was very rough and filled with sketchy art. I mapped everything out because I needed to know if what I was doing was even making sense. I threw in the title Screen and toyed around with an idea for the credits. I even added in lettering because it was playing such a big role with figuring out the pacing of the Clicks.

This rough Click Sheet looks a bit different than the final version of LUTHER. Mark and I talked it over a few times and made some small adjustments to smooth things out. One of the biggest differences with this Click Sheet is on Screens 17 and 18. Mark emailed me, "the one extra beat I think we could use is a more shocking transition between screens 18 and 19, for instance, like (maybe) zombie eyes closed and then zombie eyes OPEN". I really liked the idea but I had no clue how to add it in. Throwing in a new panel midway would completely rearrange all of the following panels and throw off both the digital and printed versions of the story. I toyed around with a few ideas but nothing seemed to work. Then I considered overlapping panels. I cropped down panel 2 on Screen 18 and used the leftover space to create an extra panel. Now I had one smaller panel with the zombies' eyes closed and one larger panel with the zombies' eyes opened. Overlapped, they created the illusion of movement when clicking through the story and didn't offset the panels of the printed pages.

Once we were happy with the pacing I started creating the final line art and a final Click Sheet. There was one small pacing change on Screens 26 and 27 after this last Click Sheet was created.

• THE CLICK SHEET (final)

All of the sketchy layouts for the Screens were drawn on 11x17 copy paper and stacked two at a time on each piece of paper. I used a light box to transfer the layouts over to 11x17 comic art boards.

• THE PRINT PAGES (layouts)

I cleaned up the sketchy line work on the final boards with 2h lead and inked all of the pages with Pigma Micron pens.

• THE PRINT PAGES (final)

The inked art was sent off to the talented Robt Snyder to color. After that, Troy Peteri added some fantastic lettering. Last, but certainly not least, Phil Smith came in and did a great job assembling LUTHER into a PDF. I can't thank these guys enough for what they did with this little story. I'd also like to thank Mark for giving me the opportunity to work with him on such a fun project.

So that's pretty much it, LUTHER is a very small step on a very long path. There will be much bigger steps made in the future by many talented creators at Thrillbent.com. I hope that all of you will check out the site when it launches May 1st. Thanks for reading!

The Creator’s Life #2: Cameron Stewart on working for free

2012-04-20T14:00:32Z

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Yesterday Batman artist Cameron Stewart tweeted about a particularly awful “job” offer; we put job in scare quotes because “job” usually implies something you get paid for.

I just got offered a job drawing a comic for a national TV show, promoting the Avengers, for the princely sum of ZERO DOLLARS #wowsignmeup

“We can promote your work though!” Said the producer.

After refusing the job and being asked to recommend someone else, I wrote a polite-but-firm reply explaining why it’s an insulting offer.

@Ivan_Marcondes Having my name flashed onscreen for 2 seconds at the end of a celebrity interview for the Avengers won’t do anything for me

@Ivan_Marcondes The way to honour someone’s work is to PAY THEM FOR IT

The joke is, in order for seconds of TV “exposure” to be useful, I’d have to make something REALLY exceptional, which would take time

If I just hacked it out because it was a free job, then it would look like a cheap hack job and so tv exposure is useless.

Exposure! The best payment of all.

We all know this kind of thing is rampant, but when artists of Stewart’s calibre are being asked to draw for free, a feeling of gloom sets in.

The Creator’s Life #1: Chris Roberson

2012-04-20T13:30:54Z

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As was widely noted yesterday, writer Chris Roberson tweeted the end of his working relationship with DC Comics:

Having an afternoon cocktail to celebrate the end of my time at DC.
Aside from the Fairest arc I already committed to doing, iZombie will be the last time I’ll ever write for DC.
Sorry. In a better world, characters like the Legion would be owned by a more ethical company, but sadly not in this one.
The short version is, I don’t agree with the way they treat other creators and their general business practices.
I decided quite some time ago, but waited until after the cancellation of my book was announced to discuss it.

He elaborated in a statement to Comics Alliance and other websites:

Based on the reaction on Twitter, his move was met, by some fans, anyway, with a “Who does he think he is”? response. Well, he’s a guy who was a successful, award-nominated writer and publisher long before he started working at DC, so we imagine he’ll be just fine. But this entire cycle of fan depreciation of the creator is depressing. More after we’ve had our own cocktail.

C2E2: The Kickstarter Panel – Turning It Into A Living

2012-04-13T21:02:50Z

John Bailey writes for Bleeding Cool from C2E2 in Chicago.

The panel on the social networking fundraising system that has fuelled the hopes and dreams of many a comic creator got off to a shaky start, in that panelist Matt Forebeck wasn’t able to attend, but fellow panelists Will Hindmarch and Kenneth Hite tried to make up for his abscence.

Will Hindmarch tolds us about some of his past work which includes Dragon Age, that he’s edited several books and put out one through Kickstarter.

Kenneth then tells us some of Matt’s accolades and how he has Kickstarted six novels, with an additional six to follow (one a month for a year, funded by Kickstarter).

Will told us how Matt had several ideas for books but wasn’t sure how well they would be received. He used Kickstarter as an interest barometer and is now using Kickstarter for the Dinocalypse set of books, a pulp series about psychic dinosaurs (Brian Clevinger of Atomic-Robo fame is also a part of the series) ), as well as having others in the pipeline, one of which is similar to John Carter of Mars, and another of which features a talking gorilla.

Will then said that Kickstarter is just another option for freelancers, letting them see what interest there is in there work, and then producing the work if enough like their stuff. Kenneth says that it allows creators to determine if people are buying their stuff because it has Marvel in the title, or because it has the creators name attached.

Kenneth then stated that as a freelancer you should follow Asimov’s law: Don’t quit your day job, and the corollary, don’t let your wife quit her day job. Will talked about the impirtance of when you have sufficient work, being able to say no to offers. Of knowing your limits and how saying no is better than burning bridges by accepting offers and then doing terrible work or missing deadlines (Great advice).

On to the questions and answers!
How do you get started as a freelancer?

Kenneth: I knew a game publisher. He said that either you know a guy or you do good work and people notice. 3 principles: Don’t burn your bridges, do good work, and get stuff in on time.

Will: Use individual websites for publications and magazines, follow their submission guidelines. He talked about how he pitched to get in, but you need to learn how to pitch and what to pitch, for each individual company. Having an online presence where people can go to see your work is also important. The anxiety and stress of pitching is something that you’ll have to get used to and just keep going through it.

Any suggestions for improving your comics writing?

Kenneth : Write a lot of comics, even if just for yourself to get used to the form and flow. Also read comics to figure out how they work. Read both the finished project, but also the scripts.

Will: Ask someone if they can understand your comics scripts, your friend is good, but an artist is best in order to see if your scripts make sense. An individual voice comes over time, got to work at it.

What rewards have you done to make your Kickstarter successful and any suggestions?

Will: Set various reward levels, low to high. Reward was a handbound book for 11 donators. You can’t change reward levels afterward. Find demand, fill the demand. Be willing to talk to people about material, put up high level rewards. Be ready to deliver on rewards. Simple reward levels, people shouldn’t be having to take post-it notes on the levels. Will talks about the difference between backers levels, where a person donates a certain amount and they get a reward, and stretch levels, where if a certain number is met, everyone benefits.

Kenneth cut in with a funny joke about how if someone tries to get a trilogy published but only has money for two books to put the protagonist in carbonite and tell people, “this is your fault. No money, no ending.”

How do you break into regular comic shops?

Kenneth: You can get into retail by putting a backer level in that’s too expensive for an individual that a retailer can then purchase. Send the book to Diamond so they can see it’s merits on their own.

How do you deal with someone asking (yourself too) if writing is your hobby or career?

Will: I drink a lot. I go on Twitter and lament!

How do you protect your work?

Will: Short version, if your name is on it, that’s very easy to prove that you wrote it first. Very few people are willing to steal, fewer are willing to take credit for your work.

Kenneth : Career plagiarists are like astronauts. They exist but are rare. Publishers will rarely (if ever) steal from writers, because that means that the writers will not produce work for them again, which means that they will make less money in the long run.

Had to leave the panel early at 3: 26 in order to make it to Dark Horse. Onward!