Archive for ‘Blog’

212 results.

Some New Awesomeness!

by Jason Brubaker on September 30, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Posted In: Blog

Remember way back in the day when I was raving about Christian Schellewald’s book, LA / SF, and how it was one of the biggest inspirations for how I designed reMIND? Well, it just so happens that Christian is in the office next to me at Dreamworks so I brought him a copy of reMIND as a thank-you-for-inspiring-me-so-much type of gift. We chatted about publishing and then he told me he just released a new book too! WHAT!? A NEW BOOK AND I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT IT!? HOW COULD THIS BE????!!!!???!?!?

So I calmly memorized the website and ran to my computer to look it up. He’s going to bring in a copy for me to see on Monday but what I’ve seen online already shows me that I MUST get this book. Check it out for yourself. This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to publish books. Here’s the website where I believe you can order a copy for yourself.

http://diekolonie.org/

Here are some images from the book too:

Mind BLOWN!

_________________________________________

This week I also stumbled on a new webcomic while digging through InkOutbreak called Powernap. Wow! I don’t know anything about these guys but I LOVE this webcomic! It has really solid art/design/acting/story/humor/action/monsters. I was completely sucked in and I can’t wait to see where this goes and I really want this artist/writer team to have huge success because they are killing it! Check it out when you have a second.

Mind BLOWN again!

 

12 Comments

A New Story!

by Jason Brubaker on October 10, 2011 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Here is a little Story. Literally. Let me elaborate on that sentence.

Last Saturday (the 1st of October) my wife and I went to sleep knowing that our second child was just around the corner from being born with his due date on the 5th. My wife, after having a long and hospitalized labor for our first child, decided she was going to have our second child as natural as possible with as short of a stay in the hospital as possible. She went to bed with the early warning signs that she was going into labor. She went to sleep for most of the night and was woken by a few contractions around 3 to 5 AM. Around 6AM we starting noticing that her contractions were getting closer together and more intense. (apparently when they are about 3 minutes apart, you need to get to the hospital!) Her’s were about 6 minutes apart if I had to guess. Then suddenly at 6:30 AM she says, “Jason! My water broke!”.

I shot out of bed and said to call the babysitter and the hospital. While waiting for the babysitter to arrive we took showers and got everything in the car. By the time she arrived, her contractions sped up to about 2 minutes apart! Gulp!

We got into the car and I put the pedal to the metal and my wife said she felt like she had to push. I sped up. Luckily it was Sunday morning with no traffic. I got to the hospital about 15 minutes away and ran in the front door only to be greeted by a chorus of crickets. Nobody?! Hello!

I jumped back into the car and drove around to the emergency room entrance and ran in yelling that I need help and my wife in having a baby NOW! Someone came out all casually and asked my wife to get into a wheelchair and she yelled, “It’s coming right now! YOU get me into the wheelchair!”

He realized she meant business and helped her onto the chair and rushed her through the doors. I squealed the tires to find parking and ran into the ER. A full staff of experts was frantically trying to hook my wife up to monitors when the baby’s head came out about 5 minutes after we arrived. She yelled, “Can someone please take off my sunglasses!’ Haha! She was still wearing them. Three pushes later and the baby was out and crying.

We were moved up to the delivery room to finish cleaning everything up. We stayed the night but asked to leave a day early because my wife felt totally fine and was walking around like a rock star. We checked out a day early and came home with a sweet little baby boy. I bet we could get a record for how short our stay was in the hospital for a delivery there. It was a complete rush and it’s a joy to have a new addition to our family.

His name is Story Brubaker.

 

57 Comments

Dreamworks DreamCon 2011

by Jason Brubaker on October 11, 2011 at 4:23 pm
Posted In: Blog

DreamCon 2011

Just a quick note to let you know I’ll be exhibiting at DreamCon 2011 (Dreamworks private annual convention) on Wednesday! (October 12th) I’ve been apart of this since it started and each year it grows bigger and better. I can’t really tell you an easy way to get on campus but if you have the ability then definitely check it out. I don’t have to tell you that there is AMAZING talent oozing from every pore of that company.

So, I’ll be there selling copies of reMIND Volume 1 between 3P.M. and 6P.M. I also have buttons, plashes and post cards too. If I’m feeling generous, I might even bring the first chapter of Volume 2 as well. (not for sale though)

Comikaze Expo 2011

If you live in L.A. but can’t make it to DreamCon, don’t fret, I’ll be exhibiting at the Comikaze Expo at the Los Angeles Convention center on November 5th and 6th. You can get tickets for Comikaze by clicking the image below.

2 Comments

How to get Traffic Without Spending a Dime

by Jason Brubaker on October 17, 2011 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog, Making Graphic Novels

How to get Traffic Without Spending a Dime

Growing Your Audience – Part 4 

Why do I break up things based on how much traffic you have or how long you’ve been doing your webcomic? Simple really. You don’t want to spin your wheels for nothing. If you launch a giant art contest to see who can draw the best version of your character and you only have family members checking out your 4 pages once a month then it doesn’t take a genius to point out that your contest might be a waste of time. Who knows, maybe your family is a bunch of artists excited to contribute but the reason for any of this is to get people that you DON’T ALREADY KNOW involved with your site.

So, this time, we’ll finally talk about some of the things that I know many of you are itching to discuss. But remember to wait to these after you’ve build a small but dedicated fan base of at least 500 visitor a day on average. It doesn’t have to be this number exactly but it really seems to me like things started changing when I crossed this invisible threshold. If you don’t have that many visitors a day but have years worth of content and 100 dedicated fans that visit your site every day then I’m sure these things will work as well. At least in my opinion.

This article will focus on the red parts. If you have over 500 visitors a day AND/OR more than 6 months of content.

Buy Advertising… for Free

Wait. Didn’t I just say these were things to do without spending any money? Yes. You aren’t going to be spending any money because your 500+ visitors a day are bringing in a little revenue to use if you’ve been treating your site like the pro-bloggers do. Remember the article I wrote about how much money my website was generating? Here it is if you need a reminder: How to Make Money with a Webcomic

When I wrote that article I was averaging about 1000 visitors a day and I had made about $1091 in a six month period (roughly). So if you have good compelling content and articles and good comic pages then I don’t see why a person can’t make money from their site. See why it’s important to build at least 6 months of content and have at least 500 visitors a day before moving to this part of the chart?

So lets be conservative and assume you are making $50 a month from your website. Invest that money into advertising like we talked about it the last article. The money isn’t coming out of your own pocket because it was generated from your website. So in essence, it’s free advertising. Kinda.

Submit Your Comic/Blog to Other Popular Sites:

When I started reMINDblog.com I expected other people to find my site and submit it to other sites and become viral in a matter of seconds. I was wrong. After a few months (and I admit that I did this a little too early) I decided to take matters into my own hands and just submit my site MYSELF! I sent an email to Jerry from CartoonBrew.com shortly after I launched my wordpress site, only after having a handful of pages online. Jerry replied within the day and premiered my site on his popular blog the next morning. It instantly sent me thousands of new viewers. At the time I was only getting about 40 hits a day too. This was HUGE for me and I wrote an article all about how great it was. The traffic spike died down after a day and I was back to normal but I kept a few new fans.

About a year later when I was trying to drum up new exposure for my Kickstarter campaign I emailed Jerry again to see if he would talk about it AGAIN! I didn’t hear back. It’s not because Jerry doesn’t care anymore, it’s just that he already talked about it on his site and so it would be weird to write an article AGAIN about the same comic. If I would have waited until I had more content and something that mattered, like my Kickstarter campaign, then it would have been a much more successful move. But I already used up my turn with CartoonBrew when I had very little to show for myself. I’m still grateful for Jerry for being the first person to send me a spike in traffic though. But looking back, I should have waited.

At the time I didn’t learn my lesson and I was more concerned about the rush of getting traffic spikes and I submitted my site to Notcot.org a few weeks earlier. For some reason, they put it up on their site and I had huge spike in traffic. Needless to say, I tried submitting it again when it really mattered and I never heard back.

There are tons of other popular sites and blogs that you can submit your site to see if they will feature your work. But just make sure it’s the right time because you probably only get one shot at it. Here are a few I’m aware of:

Email Introduction to Other Popular Webcomics:

Out of excitement, most people do this WAY too soon. Myself included.

Remember that having a popular webcomic is a popular idea. Everyone wants to have one. So popular webcomic artists and writers get tons of email from people just starting up without much to show for themselves. Popular webcomic personalities usually don’t want to hear from you if you threw together 5 pages and started posting last week only to insist on link sharing. They will just ignore your email. So make sure you have something AMAZING and you can prove you are the real deal before you start blasting everyone to see if they will link to you. Even if you are amazing, I wouldn’t ASK for a link. Just introduce yourself and tell them you are a fan of their work. Say you would be honored if they check out your site as well. Maybe even attach one of your best pages to the email so they don’t even have to click on a link to see what your stuff looks like. Remember that popular webcomics usually only link to other comics that they like or people they are friends with, not to every random person who emails them asking to share links.

Also, I’d suggest emailing other webcomic artists or writers that are striving for the same things as you. I tried to contact other artists that are focusing heavily on the artwork. If I admire their art then I wanted to introduce myself and tell them that I admired their work.

If you can become friends with other popular and established webcomics out there then you will probably have the biggest growth in your audience. If someone popular tweets about your site or comic or adds you to their links page (BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO DO IT ON THEIR OWN) then you will constantly see a nice flow of new traffic to your site and it wont take long to build a good following. Aside from advertising, this has been my biggest source of new traffic.

(And just so you know, even though I’m saying to avoid emailing right away, please don’t hesitate to email me even if you are brand spanking new. I might be the only exception to my rule. I love getting emails even from a brand new webcomic because, as you can see, I have a soft spot for helping someone who has a passion for comics but no idea where to start because I was in that spot when I started and it was frustrating. In fact, here’s my email jason(at)remindblog(dot)com. )

Email Journalists and Reviewers

This is a great way to build a professional presence online. Once again, make sure you have something worthy of their attention before you blast away. Reporters need things to report on so they will be happy to interview you or write a review for your book/webcomic/graphic novel if it is worthy of being shared. They will flat out ignore you if it’s not something they think their audience will want to see so be prepared to send out a bunch of emails and only get a percentage who respond. If you can contact the right people looking for your type of webcomic then you will obviously have better success.

Here are some great places to go find Journalist and Reviewers to email:

If you have more to add to this list then please help us build a massive PR list at MakingGraphicNovels.com. This kinda info is hard to come across because PR companies want to keep this stuff to themselves.

Anyway, some of these sites have a page that shows a list of their reporters with their email addresses. Some of them you just need to submit your story and see if they assign anyone to contact you if they are interested in writing something up about you or your comic.

Send out Press Release

This is pretty much the same as above. But this is a little less personal. It seems like you get a smaller percent who respond but it could be just me. I suck at writing a press release anyway so maybe that’s my problem. If you choose to do this then try contacting the people listed above. You can even hire someone to write a press release for you but that costs money so we can hold off on that one until you become a bajillionaire. To be honest though, I prefer to just email people and introduce myself and try to make friends. I still have several Journalists that I keep in contact with and have given me an open invitation for a future interview or review when I have something new to publicise.

Launch a Contest

I never thought this would do much for my comic but every time I launch a contest on reMINDblog.com I am overwhelmed with the positive response. I really believe this is a powerful way to get new subscribers now. But it’s important that you have a small following of committed fans to make it worth it. I also think an important part of making a successful contest is to make an irresistible prise.

My first contest was a pin-up contest to see if anyone would draw a sweet image of my characters. The prize was getting published in the printed version of reMIND. I wasn’t sure if I’d get anyone to take it serious but, boy, was I wrong. I ended up with so many good submissions that it was hard to decide so I launched a vote to help me decide the winner. Better yet, lots of people were blogging and talking about the contest on their sites and posting their submissions on their blogs which only lead more traffic back to me. Then when I asked people to vote for their favorite 3 pin-ups, the artists were asking their friends to come and vote for their submission, bringing in even more eyes for the first time. This whole process of posting the submissions and having fans vote spiked my traffic and subscribers.

The second time I launched a contest, was not too long ago. The publicist for Amulet 4 contacted me to give five Amulet 4 books to my readers. I could decide how to give the books away so I launched a twitter contest. All you had to do was tweet a link to my blog with the hash tag #reMINDamulet. I had over 100 tweets after 2 days and a nice little flow of new visitors checking out my book. It also helped that I said I’d also give away a copy of reMIND too.

It would have been completely free for me as well if I hadn’t offered to give away a copy of reMIND. Obviously there are more ways to approach this if you have a little money to spend to purchase a prize. We can talk about that in the next post though.

As far as other ideas for contests, I’ve thought about launching a contest for someone to design a cool new reMIND shirt. I’ll definitely be having more contests in the future, probably when I start posting new pages to make sure I give my new visitors something to come back for.

Ask for Guest Comics

This was more out of desperation that I decided to ask for guest comics after I finished Volume 1 of reMIND. I knew I would be facing a long period of time until I had new pages ready to post and a friend suggested I try it. I thought I might be able to get a hand full of guest comics to tide me over for a month or two but surprisingly, I had about 4 months worth of content by the end of it. I was also worried that my subscribers and page views would drop off if I wasn’t posting any of my own work during this time but it didn’t. In fact, even thought some of the long term fans of reMIND stopped checking in because they know I was in between books, many new people kept arriving because every new artist was blogging about their guest page for reMIND.

Although I think I overstayed my welcome in this area, asking for guest comics really did sustain me when I needed to replenish my backlog of pages and I know it brought in a bunch of new subscribers. I think doing this for a week or two max, would really be the perfect amount to give you a break and bring in new visitors before pissing off your existing fan base. Just make sure you explain what you are doing and why.

Make a Guest Comic for a Popular Webcomic

One time Ethan from AxeCop put the word out that he needed guest comics for a few weeks and I jumped on it and sent him one that night. Here it is. It has been bringing in new traffic every week since.

I’ve been looking for the right opportunity to do guest comics for other popular comics but it really is hard for me because I take FOREVER to finish a page and I’m already backed up on my own book. If you can do this then do it! It really does pay off and exposes the fans of another webcomic to your work as well and a portion of those people will always come and see what else you have to offer. This is why it’s good to have a big archive before you do this too much. You want to give new fans something to chew on for a few weeks or months.

This reminds me. I was asked to do a few guest pages for other popular webcomics while I was at the Comic-Con and I still need to email these guys to remind them that I’m serious. Being late to respond to a great opportunity is an awesome example of what NOT to do. :(

Fan Art, Guest Art or Guest Posts

If you are a fan of someone’s webcomic then do a fan art and send it to them. Serious. They might just post it on their blog and link back to you. Most of the time people will… I think. I know I do. I love it when I get fan art from anyone and I do my best to post it on my blog whenever I can, links and all. If you want me to link back to you then do this and your chances will be high. I’m pretty sure it will work for others too.

Ask other comics if you can send them some guest art. They might feature it on their site if it’s good enough.

Do you know of another blog or site writing the same kind of articles that you are writing about? Ask if you can write a guest article for them. Common courtesy is to get credited and linked to at the end of the article. Professional bloggers do this ALL the time because it can bring is massive traffic if you become a regular guest author on a popular site.

Make Voting Incentives

I talked about this before on my blog quite a bit at one point. I realised that if I could use a site like TopWebComics.com to get enough people to vote for my comic so that I could get into the top 30 or so then I would constantly be getting a new stream of traffic to my site because I was high on the list. The problem is that it takes additional time every time you post something to save out an image and upload it to your site and then goto TopWebComics and add an incentive that takes effect on a specific date and links to your new secret image. Confused yet? Yeah, it’s just too many steps to take especially when you are working a fulltime job and need to use your free time wisely.

But honestly, if I could, I would do this religiously because it really does increase your traffic if you can get onto the top 30 of TopWebComics.com. (at least when I tried it) If you can get into the top 10 then I’m positive you will have hundreds if not thousands of new visitors a week. Maybe a day!

The problem I discovered is that it takes a pretty good size fan base to get you enough votes to get into the top 10. I estimated that I needed 10,000 unique visitors a day before I could get enough votes to get into the top 10. It’s easy for the popular webcomics, but for everyone else with 100 fans it’s impossible.

So, in the end, I decided to quit spending the time to make incentives until I built up a bigger fan base. But if you have the free time to do it then I suggest giving it a shot. Even if you can get into the top 50 you will see a stream on new visitors each day.

Introduce Yourself at Cons

This one might be better on the other side of the chart because it costs money to go to conventions but I’ll leave it here because it might be a free convention or something. The thing is, I started seeing more webcomics link to me after I meet the artists at convention than ever before. I assume being a nice guy has something to do with it too. In other words, don’t go up to someone and punch them in the face. But seriously, when I started this blog I went to some cons just to walk the floor. I had printed up (on my home printer) a small stack of my cover image and blog info to hand to anyone who asked. All webcomic and small press exhibitors are excited to talk with anyone so I’d just start conversations and eventually I’d tell them that I’m also making a graphic novel and hand them my cheap printed flier. A few people recognised it and it was a great feeling.

I approached a few webcomic artists that I’ve been talking to or commenting on their sites and surprisingly, they remembered who I was after showing them my flier. Within a few weeks of meeting people face to face at conventions, I noticed a jump in links to my webcomic from some of the people I meet even though we had known each other online for a while. It seems like meeting people in person is the key to really winning a link back in a lot of cases. So go out there and be a nice guy!

Make Your Own Forum?

I’m still not convinced that this will bring you new traffic but I’m just adding it to this list because they said to do this in the book Making Webcomics. I just don’t get how making a forum about your webcomic is going to attract new visitors to your comic when the only people who care to join your forum are the fans of your comic already.

I tried approaching it a bit differently by making a forum about a specific subject INSTEAD of my comic. My forum is MakingGraphicNovels.com. Obviously, it’s about making comics. It’s a great little community there and even though it doesn’t bring in new traffic to my site, I have hopes for it in the future if it keeps growing. I love my forum memebers! I just wish I could spend more time there trolling it. (in a good way)

Launch a Kickstarter

This one is crazy. I only had a small audience coming to my site each day when I launched my Kickstarter campaign and by the end of the campaign, I was double the unique visitors a day and it kept growing afterwards. Believe it or not, about half of my backers from Kickstarter had never heard of my comic before seeing it on Kickstarter. The fact that I raised over $12,000 got a lot of people talking and coming to see why. I’m not sure if it was a fluke or just perfect timing but I’m convinced that Kickstarter gave me a big boost in fans.

If you have a bunch of content almost ready to go to print and no money then apply for a kickstarter campaign. This is an amazing new way to raise money and build an audience at the same time.

_________

We are almost finished filling in our chart now. One more post and I think this series will be wrapped up. If you like any of this then PLEASE post links to this series or Re-Tweet it!

If you missed the first articles in this series then here they are:

Prologue - Growing Your Audience is like Growing a Tree

Part 1 - How to Grow Your Audience if You Have no Money

Part 2 - How to Grow Your Audience if You Have no Money

Part 3 – How to Grow Your Audience if You Have some Money

 

Please Re-Tweet!

19 Comments

Podcast Teaser?

by Jason Brubaker on October 19, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Posted In: Blog

Finally I get to announce something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time now. Better yet, why don’t you just go and see for yourself at:

MakingComics.com

Over the next few months I will be discontinuing my How-to articles on reMINDblog.com and eventually move them over to MakingComics.com in an attempt to make a vast resource site dedicated to making comics. reMINDblog.com will still continue as my blog for everything related to reMIND so don’t worry. The only difference is I won’t be posting long winded articles here anymore. Some people only want to see progress on reMIND and others want more articles about making comics. Some want both. Hopefully this change will help satisfy everyone and relieve some of the pressure of reMINblog.com.

My idea with the podcast is to pull in 3 or 4 artists for each episode to talk about what we are learning and experiencing while making our creator owned comics. Hopefully there will be a large variety of guests from around the world too. If you want to be a contributor to MakingComics.com then please email me at Jason@reMINDblog.com.

See you soon!

10 Comments

Wow! Did I really just do that?

by Jason Brubaker on October 24, 2011 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Good Monday to you all! I have to officially confess that I have gotten very little accomplished with reMIND since the birth of my second child three weeks ago. This is not because I don’t have time to work on it. Nope, I’m actually home for a few months (hopefully) and my plans were to crank out spreads but plans took an unexpected twist.

About a week ago I got super stressed out about this blog and my comic and life and work and money and kids. I didn’t feel like I could keep up with the demands of having a blog that updates weekly with detailed how-to articles and finish my graphic novel at the same time. On top of that, my work is more stressful because I’m in-between movies at Dreamworks and it’s tiring to jump from project to project waiting for the next long term assignment to start. Then we had our second child and it all hit me like a ton of lead bricks. I was overwhelmed and unsure how to continue at present course. It was unsustainable I thought. I need to let go of something. But what?

After some deep thought, complaining to my wife, throwing a temper (with my children) and then praying about it all, I had an idea! I need to do a podcast!

What?

You heard me right. A podcast will solve all my problems.

But how you ask?

Honestly, at the moment, I didn’t know but it was a minute of super inspiration that lead me to finally set up a Skype call with Daniel Lieske that I had been planning for several months now. My initial thought was to have a random podcast every now and then and it would be easier than spending late nights and all my lunch breaks typing up a long winded article and proofreading it 12 times only to find 2nd grade spelling errors after it was published.

As Daniel and I talked, I told him, without consulting myself on the matter first, that I’m thinking of discontinuing my articles on reMINDblog. Then a few minutes later I remembered that I bought the domain name MakingComics.com a few years ago and had been sitting on it waiting for the right opportunity to present itself. Then it all kinda clicked. I need to move all my articles to MakingComics.com, try to find contributing authors to submit content and focus on a Making Comics Podcast every now and then! Suddenly everything fell into place. I called some friends and made some emails and within a few days I had booked over 12 amazing professional comic guests for the podcast, got it approved by iTunes, started a functional website with more than a dozen content contributors, an editor and researcher. I set up a Twitter account last night for @Making_Comics and it got over 100 followers within half a day. What!

So, you must now think I’m crazy and I’ve only added things to my plate to stress out about. Well, maybe. But the difference is this. I’m excited again. Excited about having reMINDblog.com focus on reMIND only. I’m excited about having an official home for my How-to articles and anything new that I choose to write. I’m excited because I don’t have the pressure of creating the content all by myself anymore either. Plus, there are tons of talented people out there writing great resources for comic artists but the problem is you don’t know where to look to find it. It’s usually on a hidden blog post or tucked away where search engines can’t find it because the artist doesn’t know a lick about SEO. With MakingComics.com, anyone who has a great article about making comics can get it out there for new eyes to finally see and hopefully they will get a spike in traffic back on their personal site since each article will link back to its creator.

Needless to say, I love making a good website that people will respond to. And honestly, I think I was more stressed out at the fact that my website was becoming cluttered and unfocused. I was letting too much stuff through the gate, trying to be all things to all people. That doesn’t work with a website. It needs a clear purpose and reMINDblog.com is now focused on reMIND while MakingComics.com is focus on making comics.

So with all that said, if you are a webcomic or graphic novelist (preferably someone who makes a living from it or is making BIG waves with your work) then I’d love to hear from you about being a guest on the podcast. I want to talk to people who are raising the bar and trying new ideas and techniques. Someone who is punching people in the face and taking names. Remember, this new podcast is about Making Comics, not wishing you could make comics.

In fact, today is the first official article AND it’s by contributing author, Mathieu Moyen who wrote Hand Lettering a Digital Comic. Check it out and give him some love for being my first guinea pig. Help me spread the word so that we can have new content appear EVERY DAY! If all goes as planned, I’ll release the first official podcast where Daniel Lieske (The Wormworld Saga) and I talk about Making Comics! Oh yeah, you won’t believe who the next few guests are.

 

15 Comments

I want to be Zombie Rat for Halloween!

by Jason Brubaker on October 28, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Posted In: Blog

Here is a little one pager I did for an anthology. I never officially submitted it though because of strange reasons but I still wanted to show it because I did it all with brush and ink. (a brush pen) There is no better time than now, with Halloween right around the corner, to show it off so here you go… Zombie Rat!

5 Comments

Making Comics Podcast & Comikaze Expo!

by Jason Brubaker on October 31, 2011 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Last week was pretty crazy with the launch of MakingComics.com. I can’t really say that my plan of freeing up my schedule has been successful. I’m sure you are all saying, “I told you so.”  But, at least it’s a change of pace for me and I think that’s important to keep things interesting. I’ve gotta say that the amount of quality articles contributed to the new site is nothing sort of amazing! I’m trying to space them out in case nobody submits anything else. Eventually I’ll update all my articles and post them on the new site to give it some content if submissions starts running low.

But the big fun news today is that the first podcast is now live. This took some work as you will hear about in the intro. We wasted a lot of time trying to record this one but hopefully we can tune our production to be efficient from this point on. The next episode will be really fun too and you’ll have to listen to find out why. Head on over to MakingComics.com to give it a listen. Or you can find it in iTunes.

Please help me spread the word about this new podcast and website. I think the only way it will really work is if it’s popular enough to sustain itself with contributing authors and editors. So, if you want to contribute then let me know. I’m even looking for help with SEO, and possibly someone who can edit the podcast to make it sound like the most amazing NPR radio show ever! You know, cool music, sound effects, catchy editing and all that. As it stands, I am doing all the editing myself and so I don’t have the time or knowledge to fine tune it. If you or someone you know is an audio editor looking for something to really blow minds with, then send me an email. You’ll get full editing credit and links to your site as well. If not, then I’ll just keep doing it myself and you’ll get what you get. haha

Well, back to work on reMIND for me! I’m actually starting to make some progress again! That’s good right?

____________________

In other news, I’ll be exhibiting this weekend (5th and 6th) at the Comikaze Expo in the Los Angeles Convention Center! My table number is 65! I believe I am located towards the back in a Small Press type area. This is my first year attending and exhibiting here so I’m not sure what to expect. It looks like it’s gonna be fun and the tickets are super cheap so there is no reason you shouldn’t come and see me… unless you are not in LA. :(

6 Comments

reMIND Vol 2 progress & CTN Expo

by Jason Brubaker on November 15, 2011 at 2:08 pm
Posted In: Blog

Hey all! Because I am asked so often how far along I am with Volume 2 of reMIND, I decided to make a little progress chart that I can update whenever I get another chunk finished.

So here we go. As you can see below, I am finished with the thumbnails of Chapters 4, 5 and 6. I have also finished sketching and I’m about half way finished with the inking of these same chapters.  I have the coloring nearly finished for Chapter 4 plus some and a little bit of the lettering finished as well. The only part that I haven’t touched is the final chapter. If I don’t keep changing things then I’ll try to have it well underway before too long.

I’ll keep updating this chart as I proceed. And the plan is to start posting new pages online when I get Chapters 4,5 and 6 finished. That way I can work on the final chapter while pages go live on the site. This will make sure that there are no interruptions with my update schedule.

CTN EXPO this weekend!

I will be selling copies of reMIND this weekend at CTN Expo. Actually, I’ll be selling them at a Mike Yamada’s table. So come by and buy a copy of Mike’s amazing new Alphabet cards and look at reMIND. You can buy reMIND too if you want. I’ll be there for a short time signing books too but I’m not sure what time that will happen. Sorry. :)

15 Comments

Holiday Schedule

by Jason Brubaker on December 5, 2011 at 11:56 am
Posted In: Blog

This post was long overdue.

I have a super cool announcement next Monday so come back to see what it is. It’s probably not what you think though. :) Oh yeah, and there is another thing that I’m working on that has been 2 years in the making that about half of you will appreciate. Haha. I know that probably wont make much sense until you see what it is.

As some of you know I exhibited at Comikaze Expo last month and it was amazing in my opinion and I’m definitely going to sign up for next year. I sold about 50 books total for the show and Saturday was just crazy! Thank you for coming out to say hi and pick up a copy of reMIND! There were also many of you who already bought a book at another show or on Kickstarter who stopped by to see if I had anything new. I had to sadly hang my head in shame. All I could say was, “I hope to get the second Volume finished within a year from now.” :(

On that same subject, remember when I said I would start posting new pages in November? Well, baby #2 changed all that. I can’t really say a specific time frame at this point because life is now full of diapers. I had hoped to figure out a new schedule for working on reMIND but so far when I get a chance to sit at my drawing board or computer I only think of sleeping. BUT I am still making progress, about 2 pages a week. Which is pretty good I think.

On a good note, Dreamworks just offered me another 3 year contract as a Visual Development Artist. This is the best job I’ve ever had and I’ve learned more in the last three years about art than I have my entire life. Hopefully within the next three years I’ll be able to start making enough money from my graphic novels to make it my full time job when this contract is up. It really is a crazy dream but I think it’s possible and I’m going to push for it as hard as I can. But honestly, I can’t do this without you. So if you have a second to share my book with anyone you know who might be interested in it, that would be super helpful. Remember that article I wrote way back in the day about 1,000 TRUE FANS? Yeah, I’m still working on building it. haha! But I am miles ahead of where I was when I wrote that article.

So once again, please subscribe in some way to this blog because I will be in holiday and baby mode for the rest of the year. I might not be able to post anything but you never know. And now… let the holiday begin!

11 Comments

New mailing list for MakingComics.com

by Jason Brubaker on December 8, 2011 at 1:53 pm
Posted In: Blog, Making Graphic Novels

Hey all. Many of you know I have discontinued writing how-to articles on this blog and instead I’m posting them on my new site MakingComics.com. I have some BIG plans in the near future with this new site. BIG! So if you are on the reMINDer mailing list in hopes of getting “Making Graphic Novel” type information then you need to jump on over to MakingComics.com and sign up there instead.

Once again, if you are on the reMINDblog.com mailing list please take a second to join my new list DEDICATED to people making comics.

I have finally switched to Aweber.com which is the most popular and powerful email marketing system out there. It costs money but I’m really enjoying the features.

Exclusively for the new mailing list, I am writing 20 tips for making your comic. These will be sent out ONLY through email so jump on the list if you want to get ‘em!

Thanks again for sharing my articles on reMINDblog.com and making them so popular. Hopefully MakingComics.com can take over from now on for any of your making comics needs.

- Jason

1 Comment

reMIND on Graphicly.com

by Jason Brubaker on December 12, 2011 at 1:00 am
Posted In: Blog

So the big announcement today is… reMIND is now on Graphicly.com! See, I told you it wouldn’t be what you expected. But before you make your judgments on if it’s worth buying even though you can see it mostly for free on my site I want to let you in on a few bonuses:

  • Each chapter comes with the ability to see all the pages in sketch form.
  • Chapter 2 has 4 pages not seen in the online version. (Chapter 2 will come out in a few weeks though)
  • This is the real version that went to print. (The online version have never been updated. It’s still full of mistakes.)
  • You can read it panel to panel or full page.

I’m very excited to announce our partnership with Graphicly to deliver a new way to experience reMIND. We’ve broken the story up into single chapters and added exclusive bonus content and cool digital features. Guided view takes you through the story panel by panel if you want, or read it normally, a page at a time. You’ll be able to check out sketch layers for almost every page of the story! You literally use their built in eraser tool to “wipe away” to the sketch layers! Its really a lot of fun…you have to check it out to fully appreciate the coolness.

Chapter one comes out Monday, December 12th and will be available for the super cheap price of $1.99. We’ll be releasing bi-weekly after that.

About Graphicly

Graphicly is a cutting-edge entertainment digital content delivery system and community platform, providing an immersive solution to tell, share and collaborate around story. With more than 300 publishers and over 4,000 creators from major publishers such as Marvel Comics, Image Comics, BOOM! Studios, Top Cow and IDW Publishing to indie creators from around the globe, Graphicly is the leading story-telling and sharing platform online. The Graphicly Network includes dozens of leading websites and blogs, mobile applications including the iPhone, iPad and Android; A desktop AIR application, and an industry leading HTML5 web app. For more information, please visit www.graphicly.com


http://graphicly.com/coffee-table-comics/

In addition to that awesomeness, I want to also direct your attention to the upper right hand of the site where you can see I have a new mailing list. The old one was starting to give me problems and so I decided to upgrade to a paid service that will finally be able to handle anything I throw at it. If you have subscribed to the reMINDblog mailing list in the past, could I kindly ask you to sign up again so you can stay on my mailing list? Please. I’m trying to transfer everyone still interested in reMIND stuff over before I cancel my old service. Thanks for understanding!

5 Comments

Have a Great Christmas!

by Jason Brubaker on December 19, 2011 at 1:00 am
Posted In: Blog

So, I don’t know anything about TheStar.com but they seem to be big and they listed reMIND as one of the top 10 Graphic Novels of 2011! I feel pretty special seeing Coffee Table Comics listed right next to Image, DC, Drawn & Quarterly, First Second, Vertigo (DC), Villard (Random House imprint) and Marvel Comics! That’s just crazy!

In other news I’ve been recording some great conversations with amazing comic artists over on my other site. If you are interested in hearing some then I’ll list them here so you don’t have to go digging. Here are the cool people I was able to talk to in 2011:

Daniel Lieske – The Worm World Saga

Nate Simpson – Nonplayer (Part 1, Part 2)

Skottie Young – The Oz books and a million other things

Maritza Campos & Bachan – Powernap

David Pettersen – Mouse Guard

Trent Kaniuga – Creed & Twilight Monk

________

I’ll give you another update on my progress on reMIND next week! I’m not sure if I’ll get a chance to make a new Christmas picture this year for this blog so here is a link to the one I did last year.

Merry Christmas! 

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas this year!

 

5 Comments

Happy New Year!!!

by Jason Brubaker on January 2, 2012 at 12:14 am
Posted In: Blog

Well, I’ve been living it up on my Holiday break an I still have a week before I have to get back to work so I’ll be working on reMIND Volume 2 as much as I can! I’m so excited about this new year that I can hardly contain myself. 2011 has proven to be a super fun and successful year for me and I can only imagine what this new year will bring.

Before I forget to post it again, please check out Daniel Lieske’s Wormworld Saga!

It’s an online graphic novel that he’s been working on for a few years now and he just released the second chapter over Christmas! It just gets better and better each time I look at it. Not to mention the little hidden reMIND posters in Jonas’s room! hehe.

Thanks for the amazing plug Daniel! In the next week Daniel and I will record a new podcast for MakingComics.com to discuss how everything has been going since the release of Chapter 2. I can’t wait to talk about it all!

In other news, Maritza Campos, of CRFH and Powernap, sent me a picture that her 6 year old daughter drew of Victuals! She said, she studied my book several times and then drew it from memory. How cool is that!

Speaking of kids drawing stuff. My oldest son has been drawing like crazy since he was 2 and the other week we sat down at the kitchen table and drew for about an hour. In fact we did it again tonight! It’s so much fun to be able to finally draw with my son. He drew a bunch of cars, trucks and trains and I was able to get some more work finished on my Kickstarter paintings that I am desperately behind on. Here we are drawing together:

And here is my newest Kickstarter painting that I was working on:

Sorry it’s kinda blurry. I took it with my phone.

2 Comments

reMIND Chapter 4!!!

by Jason Brubaker on January 9, 2012 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog

I am getting really close now! Yes, you guessed it. I’m almost ready to start posting Volume 2 of reMIND!!! Here is my new progress chart.

If you missed my last update, I explained that once I finish Chapters 4 -6 I’ll start posting pages again because I will have about a years worth of pages ready to go! I decided that my progress has been so good that once I finish coloring Chapter 5 I will start posting pages which means I will probably be about to start in February now! I’m so excited! Chapter 5 is pretty simple to color too and so I am expecting it to go pretty fast. I can’t wait to start showing you some of these new spreads because I think I have really upped my game on the coloring.

And just so you believe me, here is a little cropped in version of the intro:

If you happen to have a webcomic that has been around for over a year then I’d love to talk to you about helping me launch reMIND Volume 2. I plan on giving a copy of reMIND to anyone who is willing to blog about it on their own webcomic. You see, it has been about a year since I posted my last few pages and so many of my regular visitors have wandered off into other corners of the interwebs and I’m trying to figure out ways to let people know that I am starting to post comic pages again. So if you are interested in helping me get the word out, I’d love to give you a free copy of reMIND to give away to your audience or you can even keep it for yourself if you want. :) Just email me at Jason@reMINDblog.com and let me know your comic/blog URL and if you are interested.

Yay!

Also, a new podcast is up at MakingComics.com with Daniel Lieske. We discuss how things have been going with the release of Chapter 2 of The Wormworld Saga! Hear is here: MakingComics.com.

Double Yay!

11 Comments

Some New Places to Buy reMIND!

by Jason Brubaker on January 17, 2012 at 11:07 am
Posted In: Blog

For this new year I signed on with a sales rep to try to see if I can get reMIND into a few more stores. Tony Shenton is his name and so far he is working his magic because I keep getting orders. If you own or manage a store and are interested in reMIND, please contact Tony at Shenton4Sales(at)AOL(dot)com. You can also contact him if you have a good book that needs to find an audience.

If you are in New York, NY and want to pick up a copy of reMIND then here are a few new stores that started carrying it this week. Please go bother them and pick up a copy while you’re at it! :)

Forbidden Planet
840 Broadway
NYC NY 10003
(212) 473-1576

Jim Hanley’s Universe
4 W 33rd St
NYC NY 10001

Also, another store in California started carrying copies! Thanks ya’ll!

Fantastic Comics
2026 Shattuck Ave.
Berkeley CA 94704

You can see my growing list of shops carrying reMIND here!

4 Comments

Things are Still Happening!

by Jason Brubaker on January 23, 2012 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Even though I’ve been a bit quiet online these days, it’s not to say nothing is happening. On the contrary I worked on a secret project until 1 AM each night for the last 8 days. I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag yet but I will say that… It’s probably the script for my next graphic novel after I finish reMIND Vol. 2! hehe. But don’t worry, I’m still planning on posting new pages soon but a small distraction was well needed for me to recharge my reMIND batteries. In some ways, I need to just pull the trigger and start posting pages again to put the fire back under my seat. I am still planning on starting to post in February sometime. Probably the end of February.

And just so you know here are a few more comic shops that started carrying reMIND. If you live close to one of these then please go bother them for a copy so they will order more! :)

More Cool Comic Shops to find reMIND!

Wow Cool (Note: Grand Opening is Early March!)
21607B Steven Creek Blvd.
Cupertino, CA 95014

Titan Comics
3128 Forest Lane
Suite 212
Dallas, TX 75234

For a list of other cool shops carrying reMIND click here!

Also, I have to give a shout out to Patrick Bower of:

CHALLENGERS Comics
1845 N Western Ave 2R
Chicago, IL 60647
773.278.0155

who was actually the first comic shop to carry my book. Patrick has been super helpful in every aspect of selling reMIND and at the end of last year he send me an email saying:

“reMIND ranked #98 on our 2011 Sold Graphic Novels List. 
To give you a little perspective on this list, it’s for ALL Graphic Novels sold in 2011, not just books released this year. And there are a total of 3453 places on this list. reMIND was #98.”

All I gotta say is that it takes a good comic shop to move that many copies of reMIND and from what I hear, Patrick has one of the best comic shops around. I can’t wait to take a road trip to Chicago someday and check it out for myself. Thanks again Patrick!

reMIND Chapter 1 – 3 on Graphicly.com

Also, Chapters 1, 2 and 3 are all available now on Graphicly.com. You can download them all here: http://graphicly.com/coffee-table-comics. Remember that you can switch each page to sketch mode to see what the rough page layout looked like. Here is a sample of one of the pages finished vs. rough layouts.

9 Comments

Good News all Around!

by Jason Brubaker on January 30, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Posted In: Blog

So the biggest news this week is that reMIND got on the Great Graphic Novels for Teens list for 2012! (GGNT) This is a pretty big deal I hear and I am honored to have my first book listed with so many other talented storytellers. Perhaps this is why I had to send out so many copies of reMIND yesterday.

Usually I get orders for about 20 books a week from Libraries, Comic shops and Amazon combined but last week was a record with 36 copies sold! Before I forget, here are a few more comic shops that started carrying reMIND this last week! Once again, Please go bother them for a copy of reMIND so they reorder more :)

Traders of Babylon
66 A Willow Ave
Hoboken, NJ 07030
tel: 201-659-0802

Chicago Comics
3244 N Clark St
Chicago IL 60657
773.528.1983

Showcase Comics
874 W Lancaster Ave.
Bryn Mawr PA 19010
610-527-6236

To see the full list of shops carrying reMIND, click here!

Now, onto even crazier things! I have finally decided when I’m going to start posting new pages of reMIND! I still don’t think I’ll be finished with everything I wanted to have complete but I’m going to pull the trigger anyway! The madness will officially begin on…

Monday FEBRUARY 27th 2012!

This probably means that I will be staying up late at night for the entire month of February to get as much finished as I can before this start date arrives. And just like before, there will be spelling problems and typos and little things to fix as I go but I trust that,  once again, you will all help me refine Volume 2 as we go to be the best book it can be.

But honestly, I’m pretty nervous about what everyone is expecting with Volume 2 because it seems like I have only had positive feedback from this first Volume. I keep worrying that I can’t live up to the hype but I’m sticking true to the original story however simple or complex it may seem. I can tell you that it will probably go in directions that are unexpected. That’s what I like about it.

But, I’ll just shut my mouth and see how things play out as I post pages. :)

13 Comments

NEW PAGES!?

by Jason Brubaker on February 6, 2012 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Yes, you heard me right! Today I put up a NEW page. Well, it’s new on this site. When I printed the book I added 4 pages to Chapter 2 where Sonja and Victuals were working on the suit to get it fitting Victuals’ body. Now that Chapter 4 is about ready to begin, I figured I should update all the pages from Volume 1 to reflect the book. So in addition to updating all the pages in Chapters 1 and 2 I have added the first two missing pages online. Click the image to see in within the story.

So, Next Monday, I’ll post the next spread so make sure to come back. In fact, I’ll be posting new pages each Monday from now on leading up to the start of Chapter 4 on the 27th. Yay, my page posting has officially begun!

Free Advertising this month! Right there ——->

Along with posting new pages each Monday, I am now offering advertising again on this site. To jump start things a little, I want to give you a chance to advertise here for free for the month of February leading up to the start of Chapter 4. To get your banner rotating for free this month, all you gotta do is buy some ad impressions for NEXT month (March). The sooner you lock in your banner ad impressions the sooner your banner will be rotating through the cycle with all the others leading up to the start of Chapter 4. Does that make sense or am I just completely confusing here?

In other words, reserve your ad impressions for NEXT month now and get free impressions for THIS month. Yes, I will cycle your banner with everyone else’s banner (who has reserved impressions) all February until I start posting Chapter 4. If you are interested in reserving impressions for when I start posting new pages then head on over to my advertising page and buy some impressions now. I will start cycling paid banners on a first come first served basis when Chapter 4 begins.

http://www.remindblog.com/advertise/

New Shirt designs

I tried to make this shirt over a year ago and failed. Now I am forcing myself to finish it and eventually print it for conventions and stuff. I’m still not sure of the colors yet so let me know what you like. Even if you want to grab this image, change the color to what you think it should be and send it back to me then I’ll consider it. I might have a vote for it at some point later too.

Here’s a version on a black shirt:

Here is a version on a blue shirt:

And here are some other color ideas:

I really have the worst time deciding on something like this. When it comes to simple color design I lock up like a Commodore 64. Speaking of which, I loved that computer!

8 Comments

More Missing Pages

by Jason Brubaker on February 13, 2012 at 5:00 am
Posted In: Blog

Here are the last missing pages from reMIND volume 1. Click to enlarge and see it within the story. Next Monday I’ll try to update all the pages in Chapter 3 as well as post a new little intro for Volume 2. Then after that it’s all new pages!

Oh yeah, I’m going to be hitting some conventions pretty soon. I’ll give you a rundown later this week when I put all the info together.

Have a great Valentine’s Day tomorrow! See you soon!

  Comment