Where Monsters Dwell is a really neat show and has some really cool contests going on right now, so go check out their archives, or listen to them live every Wednesday at wheremonstersdwell.ca!
You’ve been working on that story for years–you’ve rewritten it, you’ve taken it to places for critique, you’ve rewritten it again. But something isn’t right. Maybe the people you asked for critique didn’t like it, or maybe you can’t figure out how to fill a particularly large plot-hole. Perhaps you’ve taken a step back and decided that your concept is all wrong or that your characters are unbelievable or unlikeable, or both, again. You feel like you’ve been working on this story forever, and yet you’re no closer to actually making it into a comic than you were on day one. So what can you do? The answer is simple:
Kill your baby. Or at least send it on a nice vacation.
When you work on a comic for a long time, you start to become attached. You love your characters like you’d love your children, and you become very set on the scenes, ideas and conflicts that you first imagined them in during character creation. The following statement may come as a shock, but, some of those initial ideas and scenes and conflicts will be bad. They will not work, no matter how hard you try and rework them, because as someone who is attached to their ‘baby,’ you can’t bear to cut something that you feel is the lifeblood of your character, or, if necessary, the character him/herself. You will almost always never even know it’s necessary, because the more attached you become, the less flaws look like flaws.
Often, when we find ourselves enthralled by a ‘baby’ project, there are plenty of signs that could but fail to alert us, because they don’t seem like signs. Here is a short list of some of the more common signs:
So what can you do? Well, you can change your scenery. Put that project on the back-burner, and work on something else. Change everything–change the genre, change the setting, new characters, new relationships, new everything. And start small–the last thing you want to do is end up enslaved to yet another baby project. Set deadlines for yourself, and get them done. If you can’t meet them, consider enlisting in a particularly motivated and like-minded friend who can keep you in check by working as your partner or editor.
And if you don’t? Welcome to Stagnationville, population: you and your baby.
Just letting you all know that a number of squids are moving to new houses or apartments. I have a giant pile of articles planned, and will have most of them ready to go by the time I have internet again (May 11th, ouch!).
I’ve also retired from my post as a Smackjeeves Administrator so I can devote the amount of time and attention to this place that it requires, as well as the time and dedication that our current project, METAL, needs to get off the ground.
Being serious about a webcomic requires a lot of attention, so I’ll be maing the necessary life changes over the next week. Hope to see you seeing us grow!
The pinup. Pretty, interesting, usually higher quality than your actual comic and one of the first things that gets teasingly tossed around when discussing bad webcomics. Pinups have a time and a place–bonus art, gift art, your personal gallery, and even your professional portfolio, provided that your portfolio does not consist entirely of them.
It’s been a month since you started your comic, and your front page boasts that you update twice a week. Your story is long format, not panelled, so that’s a slightly taller order than one page a week. However, the 31st rolls around and all you have to show for your ’schedule’ is two character profiles, a cover, two actual pages, a fanart, a pinup and yet another pinup thanking your darling fans for a hundred page views. Something is wrong here.
If this scenario is at all familiar to you as a webcomic artist, especially in relation to your own works, then you may just have a problem. Here is a list of commonly seen variants of pinups, the places that you will commonly see them, and whether or not they are appropriate:
The Character Profile: You’re new to the webcomic scene, an you’ve just signed up on a free host. You decided to sign up before you had any pages because you didn’t want someone else to steal your comicname.freehost.com, and also you wanted to build up a little hype and get your site design done.
You don’t have any real pages that are done because designing an appropriate web page is hard, but you do want your potential readers to know that you are hard at work, and give them a little preview of what that work includes. So, you post up a few pages, with a picture of each of your main characters as well as information that you think your readers might be interested to know about them, like their favourite food and blood type.
How to Use: I am a firm believer in the idea that all character information should be presented on one page, set aside specifically to showcase your characters. A page that is separate from the rest of your comic. If you make changes to that page and add new characters, let your readers know in your author comments or RSS feed.
However, if you absolutely must, use them before you start your actual pages and the second that you have a real comic up there, relocate that information to a ‘characters‘ page.
How Not to Use: Do not post a new profile instead of a comic page, even if you’ve just introduced a brand new character. If you really feel you need to post a character page up with the rest of your comic instead of on your characters page, do so only between chapters or story arcs, so as not to disrupt the flow of your story. Disrupting your story is a no–it will annoy readers, especially during tense or cliffhanger scenes, and more fickle readers may just stop reading.
The Splash Page: You didn’t have time to draw a comic this week, but you don’t want to not post. Instead, you decide that your readers will be pleased of you toss up a pretty splash art instead, whilst apologizing and making excuses in your author comment.
How to Use: Again, I’d say never, but since there will always be exceptions, I personally believe that splash pages are acceptable on major holidays (Christmas, Hallowe’en, St. Patrick’s Day, etc.), but only if they are not replacing a regular update. Only post them as extras, and if you can help it, keep them separate from your comic–let people know about them in your news or author’s comics.
How Not to Use: While some readers might say ‘awww, how cute, you made a pretty piece of art,’ a lot of them are going to be wondering why you had time to make a ‘pretty art’ and not an actual comic page. Make pages your priority. If you know you need to update Friday, make sure your page is the first piece of art you finish, and don’t sit down to do a full page, full colour picture until that promised page is done, scanned, uploaded and ready to go.
The Fan Art/Gift Art/Guest Comic: A fan sends you a neat piece of art and you decide that you’re feeling lazy this week and throw it up there instead of a regular update. You sweeten the deal by plugging their comic in the authors comments.
How to Use: Fan art and gift art shouldn’t be posted with your regular pages. Put them on their own sub-pages and show them off in your updates and authors notes. Again, anything that disrupts the flow of the comic could potentially lose you readers. Guest comics, on the other hand, are fine if you use them correctly. If you do a strip comic, inserting them into your updates is easy and not jarring, especially if you write a gag-a-day; nothing is being interrupted, and it isn’t as jarring for your audience. Guest comics are much harder to pull off with long format comics, because serial comics are often telling a story from update to update. Adding a guest comic disrupts the flow completely.
Example: A great example on how to properly use guest comics is Sinister Squid’s own Gibson Twist. Every time he finishes a graphic novel’s worth of pages (about 200 pages of dedicated, on time comic pages) for his comic, Pictures of You, he writes a bunch of neat side stories and has other artists draw them. He plans far in advance to the point where he can tell readers who might not be interested when the regular pages will be updating again, so that they can skip them if they want to. This gives him a chance to work on the next book and take a rest.
How Not to Use: Art–sparingly. Or never. Guest comic–don’t use these too often, and if you do use them, warn your readers in advance and let them know when regular comics will resume.
The News Item: You just hit a thousand page views and want the world to know! You make a a pinup with some of your characters and a bit block-letter ‘Thank you!’ message and post in in place of a comic. Or, you just put up a cool ‘donate’ button, and want people to notice it, so you draw a pinup with info on how your audience can help you and post it in place of a comic.
How to Use: Even if you don’t post these in place of a comic and treat them as extra, off schedule information, they look really tacky. Do not post up a splash page for anything that can be conveyed in a news post or author’s note. Use these only in times of emergency.
Example: I used to work on a comic called RAnSOM. I posted twice a week, and in November, a week from my 21st birthday, I got a call at work from my mother telling me that, that afternoon, I was getting my wisdom teeth out and that I’d got a last minute appointment before her insurance stopped covering me on my birthday. I had exactly one comic in my buffer, and ended up making a crude announcement image that everyone would see to let them know that I would be pumped full of Tylenol 3 and in no state to make a comic for the next little while.
How Not to Use: Do not use this to announce benchmarks like page views, donations, your position on top lists, new t-shirts in your store, etc.–again, it disrupts the flow of your comic and makes your readers annoyed and/or unhappy. It can also end up looking like you’re pandering. If it can be conveyed in your news posts and author’s notes, leave it alone.
I’m an avid listener to the webcomics podcast put out by the guys at Halfpixel, and since they’re constantly plugging their book, I decided to order a copy for myself at work.
After a few hiccups, including the fact that my boss forgot to tell the manager at the main store that it was a special order for me and I only found out it was in because I walked by the shelf it was on, that copy was in my hands as of yesterday, and was read completely as of today (note, I do nt recommend reading this book in one sitting. Details on why in the review!).
I was very excited to read this book for a number of reasons, the most prominent being that, as far as I was aware, there were no books like this. I was on the verge of writing one myself, but this book has said everything I could ever say and more. So, without further delay, a review!
How to Make Webcomics
The go-to guide for a new generation of cartoonists! For years, cartoonists of all stripes have dreamed about making a living from their comics. But until recently their only avenue of success was through a syndicate or publisher. Now, more and more cartoonists are doing it on their own and self-publishing their comic strips on the Web. This 200-page book from Image Comics takes you through everything you’ll need to take your idea from concept to strip…from strip to hobby…and from hobby to full-time job. Written by four pros who know the ins and outs of the Web — Dave Kellett (Sheldon), Scott Kurtz (PvP), Brad Guigar (Evil Inc.) and Kris Straub (Starslip Crisis) — “How To Make Webcomics” takes you on a step-by-step tour of everything you need to know to make, post and profit from your online comics.
The go-to guide for a new generation of cartoonists!
For years, cartoonists of all stripes have dreamed about making a living from their comics. But until recently their only avenue of success was through a syndicate or publisher. Now, more and more cartoonists are doing it on their own and self-publishing their comic strips on the Web. This 200-page book from Image Comics takes you through everything you’ll need to take your idea from concept to strip…from strip to hobby…and from hobby to full-time job.
Written by four pros who know the ins and outs of the Web — Dave Kellett (Sheldon), Scott Kurtz (PvP), Brad Guigar (Evil Inc.) and Kris Straub (Starslip Crisis) — “How To Make Webcomics” takes you on a step-by-step tour of everything you need to know to make, post and profit from your online comics.
Now, the most notable aspect of this book is that it is not at all about how to draw–it assumes that you already know how, and that you’ve already got a few ideas in terms of how you want your webcomic to be presented, or how you would like your project to pan out.
It is full of relevant resources, links included, and is written in four ‘voices’ that don’t always necessarily agree with each other all of the time. However, despite their different takes on webcomics and different processes in making them, the one thing they seem to all agree on is that you have to be dedicated, and that you have to love what you do. Webcomics are hard work, especially if you want to eventually use them as a legitimate source of income. Far too often do I hear or see kids these days starting gamer comics, BL manga, etc., not because they love them, but because they want to make money, sell t-shirts, get fans, and so on. They want to be like Penny Arcade or Looking for Group, but with instant fame and none of the work. This book serves as a reality check in that respect.
On top of that, for those talented webcomic artists who do update on time, who do have amazing art and something fresh to sell, well, this book could very well be a springboard for the kind of marketing you need to get into to make sure people are reading your comic, and to keep them reading.
I definitely recommend this book, and think all aspiring webcomic artists should pick up a copy.
