The Best of reMINDblog – The First 6 Months
on April 29, 2010 at 6:00 amPosted In: Blog, Making Graphic Novels
Nearly 6 months ago I started reMINDblog.com and I’ve seen many new comments and I want to welcome you all and thank you for partaking in this journey with me. In hitting the six month milestone, I’ll leave you with a list of my 10 favorite Thursday posts to date.
My Top 10 Favorite reMINDblog Articles…so far.
- Before You Start Your Graphic Novel – This was the first real article I made to try and convey something I learned about the GN creative process. It started as an answer to a question that someone asked me in a forum. I didn’t feel like I was qualified to answer but once I started writing it, it was clear to me that I had some important things I wanted to say and warn people about. I’ve updated it since it’s inception so check it out again.
- Outsourcing Comic Pages (Specifically Flats) – What I learned in this series of posts on Outsourcing really changed everything for me. I was able to color my last 2 pages in an a hour and a half last night, and it was largely because I learned about flatting and outsourcing. This article has a few parts to it so keep clicking.
- Interview with Ian Hannin (a professional comic colorist) – It’s not everyday that I get to interview someone working on Batman. Plus it’s very informative of the creative process of coloring comics.
- Making Your Own Comic Font – When I first started my graphic novel, I didn’t seem to care about my fonts or anything to do with Lettering. After showing some pages on forums, my eyes were opened and I realized that the Lettering is just as important as any other aspect of my comic. I tried to find the right font but had trouble getting one I was happy with that matched my style. Shortly after, I learned how to create my own font and never looked back.
- Blogger Vs. WordPress – I started out using Google’s Blogger for reMIND but once I starting getting serious about blogging I learned about WordPress and the ComicPress theme. What I discovered completely revolutionized the direction I took with reMINDblog.
- RGB Vs. CMYK in Photoshop – This has been a tricky learning curve for me because there are so many opinions of the right way to do things. Even so, I never understood the real working difference in Photoshop until I made this video comparing the two modes. Decide for yourself which mode you want to work in but only after you see what the difference really is.
- 1000 Ture Fans – This is an encouraging article about making a living off your comics or graphic novels. The linking article by Kevin Kelly is a must read and can really change the way artists think about their work.
- 7 Reasons to NOT use Comic Sans MS in Your Comic – This is by far my most trafficked and controversial article to date. Some hate it and some love it. Before just plopping the first comic font you find into your artwork, check out this article.
- Easy Word Balloons – I made a quick tutorial a while back about word balloons. I’ve made them many ways over the years and this is the easiest and best way I’ve discovered.
- Unnatural Talent – I know this is a new article but I think it’s one of my most heart felt posts I’ve written so it definitely deserves to be on this list.
Thank you for all your support and comments over the last 6 months. If it wasn’t for all your warm encouragement I’d still be trying to finish the first Chapter.
Thanks for the great comic and the great, interesting articles. I look forward to more and more. :)
Thanks man. It’s been great having you along for the ride. Your help has been greatly appreciated.
I enjoyed reading the comic. I really like the distinctive way you use color.
On that subject, I had only just a few days ago learned the term “flatting” for the first time reading Nate Simpson’s Project Waldo blog, and I was interested to run across the subject of outsourcing flatting yet again. I have often thought as I slogged through flatting a page (even though I didn’t know that’s what it’s called), “someday it sure would be nice to have an assistant to do this crud.” But the notion of outsourcing it to some random person on the internet gives me pause, on two main points:
First: flatting is tedious, but it only takes an hour or two (or three) per page. Getting your page artwork tidy for transfer, uploading ~20-40 MB and making sure the freelancer got it, then waiting and downloading it back and having to check it over… these tasks take time and effort, too, in addition to the ten or twenty bucks you’re paying the freelancer. I’m not sure the bang for the buck in terms of time saved is really there.
The second issue is more one of peace of mind: I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of giving my full-resolution source artwork to some anonymous freelancer (who is more than likely working from an impoverished country with dubious respect for copyrights) and being able to trust that he or she is not going to attempt to use that artwork for his or her own ends.
I can fully understand where you are coming from. I flatted for years without knowing what it was and I learned about the term from Project Waldo too.
I can understand your concern. To me the 1 to 3 hours a page is huge! As you can see my pages are grouped together as a spread so that ends up being 2 to 6 hours a spread. I also send about 2 to 5 spreads to my flatter at a time and it only takes me 10 minutes to prepare the black and white images and compress it into a folder (if needed). My flatter then takes anywhere up to a week to get them back to me but I tell him to take his time. In the mean time I’m working on other pages so there’s really no waiting around. Most of the time the files are under 5 mgs when in gray scale so I can send them in an email without any compression.
I also am not too worried about your second point because I’m sending my flats to guys who also work for others professional publishers. If these guys wanted to rip off anyone it would probably be a real publisher, not me. If these people wanted to steal something, and they had no care for copyright then why wouldn’t they steal the finished pages we post online instead of just line art. The line art would still need to have major work done to finish it and it would never come close to what you envisioned when you drew the lines. Plus I never send files with word balloons and dialogue so it would have to be completely written too. I doubt anyone would want to put in that kind of time on a project they completely ripped off and risk being sued. Not to mention, they wouldn’t be hired anymore to do flats.
This last week I was able to finish coloring almost 6 pages (3 spreads) in my off hours ONLY because I had them flatted first. It ended up taking me about an hour a page instead of 3 or 4 hours. That’s huge to me.
Your comic looks great by the way. I’m gonna have to spend some time checking it out! Thanks for the comment.
P.S. Make sure to check out the second article on finding a flatter. http://www.remindblog.com/2009/12/07/outsourcing-to-professional-flatters/
Your articles mentioned that you were investigating flatting outsourcing, but I didn't see anything indicating you had gone ahead and done it. That would be an interesting subject for an article — how you found your flatter, what steps if any were needed to "teach" him or her to give you what you need, and your experiences with the process thus far.
Good point. That would be a great additional post. At this point I'm so set in using my flatter that I hardly thought about it further. I'll try to get something together in the near future to continue this subject to the next steps.
Jason,
All these recourses and articles are great. Besides your awesome comic, the articles are invaluable for someone like me who's just starting on this process and are a pretty smart way to generate more traffic and interest. I mean that Comic Sans article got you hits on mainstream design snob blogs.
As we talked about earlier. You seem to have a decent fanbase. If someone were to steal your work, your fans would have your back and ruin the thief and whoever was dumb enough to publish stolen work.
As for who would want to spend the time and effort….not to make you paranoid, but have you seen Woody Allen's first movie (Whats up Tiger Lily?)? He redubbed an already finished Japanese Spy movie with new dialogue and had a film! But he did it legitimately.
Thanks ck! And thanks for your informative email about good places to go in LA for paper and stuff. I think that method is going to be what I end up doing for my prints.
Hey, have you heard about that comic by Nick Simmons (Gene Simmons son) called Incarnate? Lots of people are accusing him of tracing over a bunch of other artists, specifically the “Bleach” Manga and his three part comic got pulled for claims of plagiarism. He even ripped off some art from DeviantArt. It’s pretty amazing that someone would even try to do something like that and think that nobody would notice. Here’s a link with some similarities. http://community.livejournal.com/bleachness/446299.html
I can’t really judge what he did though because I was paid at design studios to do that sort of thing all the time for clients. In fact, it got frustrating when I was handed reference and told it had to look exactly the same but different. This was part of the reason I started this GN is so I could finally produce something that was my own style and my own concepts. I’m not taking sides with Nick though, it just goes to show how even tracing or being overly inspired by someones work can get you in trouble with fans and could lead to your book being canceled and your name stomped into the mud. Giving someone credit where credit is due is soooo important.
Wow, that post took a different direction then I thought it would. I need to write a post about this some day. hehe
The plagiarism thing just came on my radar screen this morning, and here it is already! Ahead of the curve as always, Jason. Just goes to show you what a fine line it is between “learning from the masters” and “blatant, unregenerate duplication of others’ work.” Frankly, the fact that you still draw on actual paper is your best defense – you have actual bristol board with original drawings on it. That goes a long way in proving a copyright. Imitation may be the greatest form of flattery, but duplication is the biggest form of jackassery.
–M