This article has been updated and moved to MakingComics.com.
Please follow this link to read the new improved version:
10 Things BEFORE You Start a Comic or Graphic Novel
I hope you enjoy this spread because I thought about it way to much. For a simple comic-page layout, I must have sketched 20 versions before finally satisfied. I had the idea of splitting the cats head into different panels early on and it opened a giant can of worms. You might also notice the greenish red hand behind the cat which was another time-suck for me. I still don’t know how obvious I want this hand to be. At one point I had a shadow on the cats body but that never looked quite right.
On the right side is my ode to Christian Schellewald I guess. You see, I bought his book, LA/SF, at the San Diego Comic Con in 2006 after looking through the entire convention. It was one of the only books that really stood out to me, besides Joshua Middleton’s Sky Between Branches. Schellewald’s book is filled with amazing little guasch paintings and sketches of completely normal things. Mostly streets, airplanes, and palm trees, but with every sketch is an amazing composition and what amazed me most was his use of negative space. Almost an entire panel would be painted white and then the lower third would be a cool tree or something. This really opened my eyes to a few things. One, negative space is a really good thing. And two, the whole guash painting approach is a good thing too. I know what you are thinking right now. This guy can’t write to save his life. I know, I know, I may not be J.K. Rowling when it comes to sharing my thoughts but I sure know when I love an artistic style.
Schellewald’s and Middleton’s books are some of the biggest influences on this graphic novel. Middleton’s sketches on his blog just make my head spin. You might have to dig a little for them but it’s worth it.
Anyway, I loved the negative space idea and as you can see, I wholeheartedly applied it to the right side of this page.
Below are a few of the steps that I had to take to get this finished spread.
A step is missing here where I blew up this thumbnail and printed it on 8.5 x 11 paper and traced over it using tracing paper and a bald point pen.
This is the final line work after blowing it up again and printing it on two sheets of legal paper (8.5 x 14) taped together. I used a light table, bristol board and a mechanical pencil. Scanned to Photoshop, adjusted the contrast and presto.
For about 3 years now, I’ve been slaving away at my coloring process about as slow as possible. I would spend hours and hours filling between the lines all while throwing textures over everything to see how it might look. I would work on a page for half a day and then just leave it alone for a while. Perhaps I might dream of a better color pallet that night. Or maybe I’ll be able to see something better if I open it up in a week or a month.
Outsourcing Comics
To start this off, I'd like to say that I'm not trying to promote outsourcing. I'm sure someone will read this and be upset with me for showing a clear cut way to outsource your comic pages causing the American economy to collapse…again. All I'm trying to do here is get my stupid graphic novel finished before I'm to old to draw. Plus I'd rather spend time with my wife and son then flatting a page on the weekends. After all, this isn't my job, it's my personal project/hobby.
Surviving the effects of globalization for an online freelancer?
Now that I've captivated you with that last link, I'll plow forward. The whole idea of outsourcing arose after reading the book The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. This book, in itself, is a controversy. I think Tim is a bit of a salesman myself but I did pick up some interesting things from his ramblings.
Outsourcing was one of them. Outsourcing boring, time consuming, or monotonous things that don't need your special attention so you can focus on things you want to do.
The book suggests a few websites that specialize in aggregating freelancers from around the globe. Here are a few of them:
I suggest Elance over Guru. Guru is slow and it's hard to find anyone for a good price. Why would I want to pay someone $75 an hour to flat out my pages. Elance, on the other hand is a pretty fast site to look through and you can find people around the world but it does take some getting use to.
I ended up using a small company of five from India called Dream Computers. They have a few comic coloring samples in their portfolio. Their hourly rate said $15 but after I paid them for my test pages they emailed me back, dropping their page rate to $15 a page for finished coloring. Just so you know, I never used what they colored because it wasn't what I was looking for but I'm thinking about emailing my contact at Dream Computers to show them a flatting tutorial and negotiate a new price. After all I don't want to pay them the same price for flatting a page as I would for finished coloring. My only problem with this method is it seems like you have to spend time and money to get the right freelancer and maybe even teach them what you want them to do.
Even though I can see how this might work out well with the exchange rates, I'm still curious about hiring someone who already knows how to do flats. I mean how much more could it cost to have a professional flatter? But where do I find one?
[Edit] Click here to find out – Outsourcing Comic Flatting – part 2
P.S. I just got reamed the other day about my lousy lettering job in these pages. I promise I will make it all better once I learn to do it right and I'll post what I learn.
[Edit] What I learned – Lettering and Making your own fonts
I'm thinking of adding part of a row boat in the bottom left panel foreground. I already redrew Sonja twice and finally asked my wife to pose for me so I could get it right. I worry it looks more realistic then the rest of her frames. And talk about negative space!
In my last post I brought up Elance or Guru for outsourcing. This has been useful to know but I almost hate the process of finding the right person, spending money to test them, possibly train them and the whole time wondering if I could just find a more direct route to a professional flatter in the comics industry for a good price.
Enter GutterZombie.
This is an awesome forum started by Dave McCaig, pretty much dedicated to the comic coloring world. These guys really know their stuff and when I asked about flatting they laughed and directed me to a "work for hire section" that is full of Flatters just waiting to get work. It looks like the going rate is about $10 a page. That's not bad in my opinion. I can see paying ten dollars instead of using 3 hours of my free time and I don't have to teach them about Flatting.
Here is a link to the work for hire section: Flatters!
There are several people offering their service as flatters but it looks like posting a thread about your project is the best approach. It seems like everyone finds someone when they post a thread.
I dug through some of the posts and found a few professional looking websites of flatters. Here are the first five I found but there's plenty more:
I talked to Aaron Daly by email and he offered to flat a page for free to show me how it might work if I hire him for more. He finished the page I sent him in a flash and it looked amazing! We talked about a page rate and I must say that it is much better then I expected (sorry I don't want to say his price because he's doing me a favor since I'm paying for this out of my own pocket.) I'll share what he is doing for me in a future post but feel free to check out his samples here.
In conclusion, I'm pretty convinced that finding a flatter through GutterZombie.com is the best approach when looking to outsource. I know I've found my guy and it was pretty easy.
Here is spread 6 along with the pencil lines. Sorry I'm starting to impose my name and the date of conception on my work. I've noticed some sites are posting my images which is very exciting but also makes me kinda worried if I don't watermark it from now on. I hope it's not to intrusive into the art.
Here are the final pencil lines of spread 6.
And here is the final colors (I think). Notice almost a year passed between the pencils and colors. I'm sure you're also noticing that I'm milking the splash page spreads here. Don't worry, the whole book isn't going to be like this, although it will have splash spreads throughout. I just wanted the first chapter to be a slower pace to force the mood and feel of the world onto the reader before I jumped into heavy story.
(All this information about outsourcing is my unprofessional opinion only. Please contact your CPA for any tax related questions about outsourcing.)
An interview with Ian Hannin, a professional comic colorist with many high profile titles under his belt including:
JASON BRUBAKER – Hey Ian. Thanks for taking the time for this interview.
To start things out, How did you become a comic colorist?
IAN HANNIN - No problem, Jason. I'm a fan of your work- especially, the colors!
Let's go back to 1995. Wow. I was a comic book fan, and a Photoshop enthusiast working at Kinko's in downtown Orlando, FL. On one of my weekly scheduled trips to the comic book store, I found myself with the latest issue of Wildstorm Production's, WildC.A.T.s, drawn by my favorite, the legendary Jim Lee. And to my astonishment, there was an page in the back devoted to their talent search! They were looking for writers, pencilers, inkers and colorists. I figured I'd give it a go since I'd had some traditional painting experience, and was fresh out of Ringling School of Art and Design of Sarasota, having learned Photoshop 2.0! I crafted a resume, collected some of my photoshop work, and dropped it all in the mail to La Jolla, CA. A few days later, I received a call from Wildstorm- a truly life-changing day. I will always be indebted to Alex Sinclair- pioneer in the biz, and Jim Lee colorist to this day, for giving me the opportunity. Within a few short weeks, I had moved to La Jolla, settled into a small studio apt, and begun coloring Jim Lee's comics- with the man himself just down the hall. And by the way, he's still my hero, and a great guy.
JASON BRUBAKER – What a great story. I remember picking up that same issue of WildC.A.T.S. and spending the next 2 weeks perfecting 4 penciled pages for a submission. They told me I wasn't chosen but I was second on the list. Oh well. So since my blog is about making comics and graphic novels I'll try to get really specific now of your process.
When you color, do you use any photo reference or do you just pull it all out of your head?
IAN HANNIN - If I need photo reference, it's usually for background elements. With deadlines looming, sometimes I'll search online for photos of things I'd have a tough time starting from scratch. A cloudy sky or some ripples in the surface of a pool. Maybe a nice moon with craters and gashes across the surface. In any case, I tweak it heavily- adding contrast, blurring, smudging, adding my own details, and of course changing the hues. By the time I'm done with the reference, it's no more a photo than a Monet is.
JASON BRUBAKER – It seems like that is a pretty common practice now days. About half the artist I work with manipulate photos for their visual development paintings. They also make a lot of custom brushes in Photoshop. Is this something you do as well?
IAN HANNIN - I do have some custom brushes, but I use them sparingly. I'm a big believer of less-is-more. I try to keep the colors simple and clean. Too much rendering is too much to look at. I mean, come on, the reader is READING. If I need some blood splatter, or some rust, then I'll go for the custom brushes. But I don't care for coloring with textures everywhere. Just because you can make blue jeans look real in Photoshop, doesn't mean you SHOULD.
Ninety-Nine percent of the time, I'm using the lasso tool and the airbrush to render the lighting set up by the inker. That's it.
JASON BRUBAKER – I see. Do you have someone flat out your pages before you start?
JASON BRUBAKER – Wow, 4 hours seems really quick to finish a page. Do you throw down color and then adjust it later?
IAN HANNIN – I generally finish as I go, rather than tweaking things constantly as I work the whole page. When I feel like I'm wrapping it up, I'll give the page a good long look and make some final adjustments, but they are minor. Maybe some contrast here and there, to pop the foreground from the background. I keep an alpha channel of my flats so that I can easily select anything that needs adjusting.
JASON BRUBAKER – And how long does it take you to flat your pages?
IAN HANNIN - It depends on the artist and the level of detail, but anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. Again, French Bulldog…
JASON BRUBAKER – Do you work in CYMK or RGB?
JASON BRUBAKER – Coloring Batman! That must be every childhood boy's dream job. Do you feel like you are at the top of your game now or is there still something that you need to do to feel like you've made it, so to speak. Or what's your dream job?
IAN HANNIN – I'm a Batman fan. So yeah, I'm honored and excited to be coloring the comic book. In that personal sense, I kind of feel like I've "made it", but I'm not gonna retire early doing this gig. The dream job is making movies. Writing, story boarding, acting, pushing a dolly, whatever. When I'm not coloring Batman, I'm putting a feature film together with a group called UNTAMED CINEMA.
JASON BRUBAKER – I'll definitely have to keep my eyes open for your film projects. I'm sure working in comics helps when it comes to making movies. In animation, a color script is planned out before production begins to figure out the colors of the scenes. Do you make a color script before you start coloring a comic?
IAN HANNIN – Wow. I'd love to see a color script! That's a great idea! So, no, I don't do that. I deal in 22 page stories. I can say though, that as I'm progressing through the book, I'm conscious of the need to change palettes from scene to scene. Color is absolutely imperative to letting the reader know they've entered a new location- or even a new situation in the same location!
JASON BRUBAKER – How hard is it to switch styles between books?
IAN HANNIN – That can be tough. But I think there's a switching curve. Once I've figured out what I'm doing differently, the speed increases.
JASON BRUBAKER – Do you think about how to lead the eye around the page with your colors?
IAN HANNIN – Always thinking about that. With panel to panel stuff, that's not always easy, or even possible. Maybe I think about how to lead the eye around the PANEL with my colors.
JASON BRUBAKER – What advice could you give to someone trying to get into your field now days?
JASON BRUBAKER – And if someone were to show an editor their work…What does it take to get noticed as a colorist? Or to stand out.
JASON BRUBAKER – Okay, and now for all the self-publishers out there. I'm not sure if this question is right for you but I figured I'd ask. What advice can you give me and others trying to make a graphic novel?
IAN HANNIN – To paraphrase one of my heroes, there is no "try". You are DOING it. You're making your graphic novel. To those reading this who's work I haven't had the good fortune to see, I would say only this: Make it your own and do it in a way we've never seen before.
JASON BRUBAKER – Very good advice. And now for the most important question…If you were a color which one would it be?
IAN HANNIN – That would change from day to day, but sitting here right now I'd have to say C 65, M 85, Y 0, K 30.
To start things off I want to apologize for using the Comic Sans font in my pages as seen above. I just learned a bunch of stuff lately about my lack of skill and understanding of lettering and now I'm kinda embarrassed with what I've posted. I will be updating the lettering fonts really soon so worry not! Because of this eye opening experience I have decided to do some posts specifically about this subject.
First of all I'd like to thank Jim Campbell for being the first person to point this out to me. He re-lettered some of my pages to show me how much better it could look if executed correctly and helped me see many things I was overlooking.
To list a few things that I was doing wrong:
First, here is a link that breaks down all the basics of comic lettering. It's very helpful just to understand strange symbols and to know what people are accustomed to.
Comic Book Lettering Grammar and Tradition – Nate Piekos
Second, here are two sites that sell comic lettering fonts and some are even free.
Blambot Fonts (comic lettering fonts and some free fonts)
Comicraft Fonts (these are really professional looking but cost money)
(Thanks to Ryan Christopher Lord for giving me these links.)
Third, here are some tutorials on Lettering:
Comicraft lettering tips and tricks
Jim Campbell's lettering guide using Illustrator (download link)
So now that I have discovered the basics of graphic novel lettering, I need to update my pages to cool the burning hatred fueled from frivolous overuse of Comic Sans.
After a quick internet search I found this site with a simple looking program called FontCreator from High-Logic. It costs $79 for a home version which is as cheap as any semi-good font out there and I could potentially make as many as I want without worrying about any complicated licensing fees.
I downloaded the template and filled it in on my computer using a Wacom Cintiq. It only took 10 minutes or so just like they said. Once I uploaded my completed template it took about 40 seconds to create the font ready to be downloaded. I was really blown away with how easy it was. My only problem is not being able to control the kerning of the letters but you can do that in Photoshop or Illustrator. They suggest using FontCreator to get more technical. But as far as a font made out of your own hand writing, I’m impressed.
Better yet, I happened to stumble across the site when they had a free promotion code so I made a bunch just for fun. Here they are:
http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/
Here is a tutorial on making your own fonts with Photoshop and Illustrator.
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Create_Your_Own_Font
And finally here is a FREE font creation program. It is a bit more complex then YourFonts.com but you can really get in there and control the kerning, add a bold to your fonts and all the nit-picky details that any anal font creator will love. Oh yeah, and it’s free. I downloaded it for my Mac and it’s running like a charm but I need to sit down with the documentation to fully use it. I was able to import my fonts I created at YourFonts.com to adjust a few minor details that were bothering me. Here’s the link:
Anyway, I still need to master my word balloons and sound effects. I’ll save that for another time. Plus, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve learned this week.
Can Forums Promote Your Graphic Novel?
So I’ve started spending time in art forums these last few months. One of the forum rules is “No Trolling”. I have no idea what this means and when I asked an artist friend he told me it was to sit under a bridge and grant wishes. I looked it up in the dictionary and found that it was either loud singing or a method of fishing. I’m still confused but apparently I haven’t broken this rule yet because I’m still allowed to post.
I’ve never used a forum before a few months ago. To tell you the truth, I am pleasantly surprised with them, for the most part. Growing up, the only way to share my art with others or get critiques was to join a drawing group at the local comic shop (which I did) but joining the local comic shop drawing club had it limits. There were only a handful of us and all our styles were polar opposites. Showing art to the world was just impossible at the local shop too.
These forums, on the other hand, are great for getting critiques from as many people as you can handle as well as helping someone else see something they are missing. Not only that but you can show off your art to the whole world. Since I’ve started trolling I’ve had almost 5000 views of my thread in ConceptArt.org as well as some really great advice on how to make my cover better at PencilJack.com. ConceptArt brought over 200 unique viewers to my blog and PencilJack pulled in over 100. Aside from the numbers I’m totally inspired by some of the amazing artists who post regularly. Some people will start posting as beginner artists and 2 years later their progress blows my mind. It’s been so inspiring to see how people have learned their anatomy through their sketchbook threads at ConceptArt and it makes me want to start doing the same.
This whole idea came about after talking to an amazing illustrator, Ronald Kurniawan, about how to get my artwork noticed. He suggested spending an hour a day in forums both posting work and commenting on others work. He said if you can do that for a month then you will have mad traffic. I started about two months ago and I have…some traffic. But I have to admit that Ron’s work is VERY impressive and I can’t expect to see the same success as he has. None the less, I’ve started getting a small steady flow if traffic to my site which is much better then before when I just had my family visiting once a month.
Now even though I started attending forums to get traffic to my site I have become quite addicted and enjoy it too much to stop now. I can seriously see myself doing this for a long time.
I’ll talk about specific forums next week. If someone knows what a Forum Troll is then please shed some light on the subject.
[Edit] Forum Trolls explained. Thanks everyone!
Artist, Illustrator and Comic Forums
Which Forum is right for me?
When I first heard about artist forums and online communities I was totally lost. I had no idea where to look and how to find them. When I did a google search, I typed in "Illustration Forums" and the only one I found that seemed legit was IllustrationMundo.com. I didn't realize the forum was a separate part of the site and I never got anywhere because they didn't want to include me in their artist portfolio database. I assumed they were all a bunch of snobby artists who thought they were God's gift to mankind so I marked them off my list.
Months later I was talking to a another good friend, Jason Scheier, who suggested I try out CGsociety and ConceptArt. I immediately signed up and finally saw what a forum was all about. I was still very lost and didn't really know where to begin. They seemed so big and complex and I wasn't sure if my art would fit in so I put 'em on the back burner as well.
Months later another friend told me about the Flight Forum. I signed up with Flight, which seemed more my speed and subject, and posted some old pages of Phobos to test the waters. The next morning I had a few comments from other members. Suddenly my eyes were opened. I began posting comments on other threads that I found interesting. I started getting friends and began following other comic stories.
Later I learned about PencilJack and signed up there too. This forum is mostly comic artists both pro and amature.
Each forum is tailored specifically to something. I've been learning that it's good to find one with your same taste or niche. Here are a few things I've learned about specific forums and I suggest getting involved if you haven't already. But no need to join all of them as I have. Just find the few that specialize in what you want to do.
Does anyone know of other great forums helpful to graphic novel artists? I'm sure there are plenty more I haven't found. Hope this list helps.
In the advertising world there is a simple theory that if you’re given lots of options, it’s hard to make up your mind and you’ll never buy anything. But if greeted with one or two options, it’s easy to decide and you spend lots of cash. Well, that’s what some people think anyway. Just look at Apple products. They only have one option when buying a phone. The iPhone. They only have a few options for laptops and computers….and…the iPad?
I am this way when trying to decide where to post my blog, comic or artwork online. I’ve studied all kinds of options. I tried multiple services for years with my portfolio. I learned Flash and built animated menus. I tried free portfolios. Even MySpace for some dumb reason. I’ve used many hosting sites some of which really sucked and some were okay but overwhelming when trying to settle on a hosting package. I mean, what’s SSH, SSL, CGI, Ruby, RoR, Perl, PHP, and MySQL? Please don’t answer that. I really don’t want to know.
So to make this simple, I’m not going to go into all the options, hosts, sites and portals that you can use. Instead I will focus on the two best ways for artists to start a blog or comic online. I might talk about BAD options later, but not now.
The two best options are Google’s Blogger or WordPress.org. Both are great and could be your Internet home depending on what you want out of it. Before you decide, here are pros and cons of each that are important to me as an artist.
______________________________________________________________
So there you have it. If you want things as simple as possible then use Blogger but don’t expect it to be unique. If you want more info on the two then do the google search: Blogger vs. WordPress. You might want to get comfortable. It’s an endless search. But that just proves they are the two best choices.
I switched to WordPress because I wanted to start having a professional presence on the web. I wanted my site/blog to have a unique feel as well as other pages with links and information aside from my blog. I liked the idea of controlling my permalinks and content too. Here’s what reMINDblog looked like on Blogger. It’s still active but I rarely update it. But if you decide to set up a WordPress blog then I strongly recommend one host.
I’ve used many hosts before and the only one I will recommend is Bluehost. In fact Bluehost will give you a free Domain name for life if you use them as your host. It’s $6.95 a month for everything. Wordpress recommends Bluehost above all the other hosts and Bluehost is the only one to offer a WordPress auto install. I used it and it set up everything in a minute and logged me onto my new WordPress site. Bluehost also includes everything you need for WordPress and Comicpress to function. Bluehost has unlimited bandwidth. This is important if your art or comic gets popular. You don’t want your site getting shut down when tons of people start flocking to it or be forced to pay more money for more bandwidth.
You will need to buy a domain name too.
Usually about $10 a year. Use Bluehost.com not Godaddy.com. I have many domain names I’ve bought over the years through Godaddy and I hate logging in because it’s a maze of confusion and unnecessary complications. And Godaddy’s customer service is like talking to death. Bluehost is very simple without all kinds of stupid add-on options slapping you in the face trying to force more money out of you like Godaddy. I’m slowly moving all my domains to Bluehost now.
The only thing that takes time to get set up is ComicPress.org. Like I said before, it takes some CSS knowledge (which I have none) if you want to change it up much. Luckily I have a good friend who knows how to do that sort of thing. The CSS thing is the biggest drawback, in my opinion. But after the initial setup, it’s been a breeze ever since. I love it! I love Bluehost. I love Wordpres.
If you decide to use Bluehost then do me a huge favor. Click through from these page links. I will get some cold hard cash for sending people there who sign up. It’s the best and only host I’ll recommend and it’s perfect for WordPress.org.
One of the things I’m asked is how I keep my drawing style consistent on a project that’s taken over three years of my free time. Part of the reason is because I’m drawing a style that’s natural for me. My style. But I also recommend making a model sheet or character turnaround. This is extremely important if you’re working as a team to create a graphic novel. While working in the movie and animation industry, this has been an important learning experience. Sometimes I like to stray from the model sheet when trying to express an emotion. But knowing what to stray from needs to be in place before you can stray from it. In fact, I can really stress it’s importance now because I didn’t think I needed one for Sonja in reMIND and now she’s giving me problems every time I try to draw her face from a new angle or with a different expression.
My Definitions:
Model sheets are posed characters, styled ideally for a project. They can be referenced in order to keep an artist or team of artists “on model”.
Character Turnarounds are similar to model sheets but focus on the front, three quarters, profile and back views. I’ve seen Turnarounds with up to 8 angles. Some turnarounds only focus on closeups of the head at different angles.
Expression Sheets are examples of the range of typical expressions a main character might have to refer to later when trying to keep a characters personality “on model”. Here’s a good example I found online.
There are other names for these but you get the idea. They are all designed to help you keep consistent. Constancy is key to being a professional looking artist. Notice I said “professional looking”. If your art is professional looking then it won’t be long until you are a professional artist.
My first commercial animation job was animating Barbie for Mattel. What a nightmare. Don’t ever take a job from Mattel. Anyway, we were forced to crank out animation without an approved model sheet and then when the model sheet was approved it kept changing. We ended up reanimating the same characters over and over.
I was hired later to design a character for a Windows XP commercial and the first thing I insisted was getting the final approval on a model sheet or turnaround before any animation started. Here’s what I ended up creating for the character turnarounds.
Notice the attention to details in height and proportions as well as pockets and folds in the clothes. You should be able to draw a horizontal line across any part in a turnaround and have the lines hit the same point of the character across the board. This is important to figure out at the start so you don’t have to redraw anything later when you realize the strap in the front never goes anywhere on the back. Not to mention just figuring out all the angles and faces really good. Another good idea is to make an expression sheet with several common poses and expressions. You can build these with notes of things to remember like what the buttons look like or the bottom of the shoes or how that fold in the pant leg looks. Here’s what I came up for Windows.
Another brilliant idea is to make a head bust, sculpture or marquette of your character to view from multiple angles and under different lighting conditions. I’ll go into this in a later post.
We were lucky enough to get James Baxter to do the character animation for this commercial. James is a legend in the animation industry.
Even though this example is from a commercial, all the same rules apply for your graphic novel. I learned it the hard way. I made one for Victuals but I never made one for Sonja. Now I need to keep reworking Sonja over and over until she looks the same throughout the book. Make a model sheet or a turnaround!
All this artwork was created at Stardust Studios. If you want to see the final commercial go to Stardust.tv. Click on their Library link at the top left and filter by “Tech”. Then look for “Windows XP: Monster 2″. Sorry there’s not an easier path. Stupid Flash.
I’ve been told my Inks look great. Really? Because I don’t Ink anything.
The End.
No, but really. I tried to Ink my comic pages back in the mid 90′s but whenever I’d go to a convention and show an editor my work they would scratch their head and ask why I was ruining my pencils with screwed up inks. Later I started to focus only on my pencils, my strength, since I could control the lines better then my chicken scratch, blotted, messed up Ink lines.
Years passed and I decided to make a graphic novel and I contemplated inking all over again. I chose not to. To help you understand why I chose not to ink, I need to side step a bit to explain my conclusions.
The argument of Inking for the sake of printing is also obsolete in my opinion. Printing gray tones or full color paintings is just as easy as black and white now days. Printing in solid back and white is still cheaper but you can still adjust clean pencils to be black and white by boosting the contrast.
Advertising on Top List Sites. Which ones work?
Updated – April,14 2010
Since I started posting reMIND online I’ve been scouring the internet to find ways to promote my site. One of the ways I’ve seen are “Top List Sites” or “Webcomic Directories” where hundreds or thousands of webcomic creators come to list their online comics in hopes they can get more followers. These are websites designed to organize lists of webcomics by popularity. Each site decodes popularity based on a different algorithm of their own. For some it’s a combination of your hits, page views, etc. Others are based solely on voting while others are a complete mystery to me. I joined a bunch of these when I first started but most of these top-list’s seem to be gimcrack sites. It makes me question if it’s even worth it to list my comic there.
Before I go into details I want to mention the “Pareto’s Law” or more popularly called the “80/20 Principle“. I’ve read about this rule in many motivation books and it goes something like this:
80% of outputs result from 20% of the inputs.
or..
80% of my time at work produces 20% of my finished work.
or in this case…
80% of all websites are 20% effective.
Some push it even further…
90% of all websites are 10% effective.
You can even flip it like this…
10% of all websites are 90% effective.
If you look into this rule more you will see that it can be applied to almost everything in life. If you can figure out what 10% of your life is 90% effective and just focus on that 10%, you can save lots of wasted time. With all this said. I think it’s a complete waste of time to add your webcomic to every list out there especially if it’s in this 90% that is 10% effective or less. So lets move forward.
As I mentioned, most of these sites have the ability to advertise on their homepage in which I have tried 4 so far and have no reason to try any others yet. So here is…
I structured it this way because once you get past the top four on the list it’s just a complete waste of time to try to figure out which one is better.
Top Web Comics seems pretty relevant to todays online communities for one. I joined and listed reMIND about 3 months ago and was ranked around #1500 on their list finding it hard to move up because the top comics were getting thousands of votes a week. I tried to remember to log on each day to vote for reMIND, I know I’m cheating, but it hardly moved me up the ranks anyway. I let it go for a while but one day noticed the ads on the top of the page were prime placement so I looked into it more. Turns out you can buy an ad there for as little as $10. (which is a discount for webcomics!) I bought an ad for $35 (300,000 impressions) and waited about a month for it to make it’s way up the queue. So far this ad has brought in an average of 100+ unique viewers a day since it started displaying. It looks like my ad will run for about 3 weeks. From what I can tell I am averaging about 100,000 impressions a week on their site. This could mean over 2100 highly targeted unique viewers by the time my ad expires. Not to mention lots of new subscribers.
But the biggest advantage to advertising at TopWebComics is people start voting for your comic (if they like it). Since my advertisement started, I’ve moved from around #1300 on the list to #320 (as I write this) in just about a week. Because I’m moving up the list, I’m now getting more people to recognize my site. When people goto the site to vote for other comics they might see my ad at the top and decide to vote for me too. So your not just paying for a little advertising, your also putting yourself on the map so people can find you to vote for you which will continue to drive traffic to your site long after the ad expires.
[Edit] When I first wrote this article I blow this one off thinking it was useless. The nest month I had some traffic from the site so I went there to check it out. What I found was a pleasant surprise. Someone had listed my comic and it was being displayed on the front page as a new comic. Being on this list alone was sending an average of 60 unique visitors to my site. Wow. Then I got another surprise when so many people subscribed to my comic there that I was added to the Most-New Subscriptions list. This shot more people to my site for a few weeks.
I started advertising on the Belfry lately and it’s been a wonderful return on investment, as far as getting new people to notice my graphic novel. So my end conclusion is that the Belfry is the second best Top List site I’ve found so far. Go there and sign up and list your comic if it’s not there yet!
This site is kinda clunky, but hey, they all are. The Webcomic List is sometimes very slow to load a page and I find it frustrating to navigate. The stats don’t really work on my comic too because it’s a blog but I don’t really need stats. I use Google Analytics. Overall, since I’ve listed my comic here I get about 4 unique viewers a day who somehow find me in the infinite list of burnt out comics. I think they add your page views to their algorithm and since 80% of the comics don’t get updated anymore, you automatically move up the list. As of writing this I’m ranked at 1,839 out of 15,310. That’s allot of comics to dig through!
One thing I’d suggest is to buy a spot in the featured list for $15 a month. This was my first advertising attempt being cheap enough for me to risk. They have other banner advertising but it seems really expensive at about $100 for 150,000 impressions. I’ll let you know when I tap into my Home Equity Line of Credit for this.
When I bought the $15 featured spot, I was sent about 5 to 16 unique visitors a day from the ad. Not bad for about 50 cents a day. Of corse it’s important to make a catchy button to attract people or your precious 15 duckets will float down the toilet. So in other words, this site is pretty good and seems up to date. I’m not sure if I will keep advertising there though. All together it has brought in a little over 300 unique viewers in about 3 months, mostly when I was featured.
I bought a featured ad on this site too for 3 months because it was only $5 a month. I’ve had a total of 37 unique visitors since I joined. Advertising the WHOLE time. What? Is that possible? But I’m ranked # 210 on their list (as of this writing). It seems like this list is pretty rarely traveled. It seems like a well managed site though but it definitely falls into the 80 to 90% ineffective catagory. Unless this changes in the future, I wont be spending my time there anymore.
Below are more Top List Sites that I found but don’t see the point in listing my comic with yet. If you know anything about any of these then feel free to leave a message in the comments below.
Me – Oh good. What did you think?
The Rock Star - Well, they aren't dynamic enough. All my comics are really dynamic.
Me – Oh okay. Can you explain what panels might need to be more dynamic? And how I can make them more so.
The Rock Star – Have you ever seen one of my books?
Me - Yeah.
The Rock Star - They have blood and sex and, you know, their more DYNAMIC!
Me – So if I add more blood and sex then it's more DYNAMIC?
The Rock Star - Yeah.
Me - Okay I'll make the changes.
Notice how the textures turn into flat colors in CMYK when they are adjusted with an overlay. The other thing that drove be crazy was towards the end of the video, turning plain texture to white and still having dark spots or turning it to black and having uneven blacks. It's not as clear in the compressed video but the CMYK file has blacks and dark blacks for some reason. I mainly wanted to show the basic differences with the modes and why it's just easier to use RGB and convert your flattened file to CMYK when you are finished. Always save your master file with all the layers in RGB though.
Hope this helps!
Please vote for reMIND to keep it in the top 100 webcomics at TopWebComics!
I’m putting together a package to send to the Xeric Foundation for their March 31st deadline. If you never heard of the Xeric Foundation, it’s a private, nonprofit corporation started by Peter Laird who co-created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The corporation gives out grants for self-publishing comic book creators bi-annually. Here’s more info. It looks like they gave out over $54,000 in grants in 2009 alone. I know they wont give me the full amount I need to publish reMIND as a hardbound book but anything I can get will help.
In applying, I need to write a little essay of why I’m self-publishing as well as give my full financial statements and business plan with printing estimates and all. It’s a bit overwhelming to put together. I was planning on submitting last year but didn’t get my printing quotes together in time.
[Update 6-14-2010] I got the grant! See more info here.
As far a printing quotes, I’ve contacted CrossBlue and Regent Publishing. Both of these companies are full service overseas printers with offices in the US. If you print a hard bound book in China vs the US you can save up to 75% I’m told. The only drawback is waiting for the books to get shipped on a boat across the ocean. I hear I should expect the whole process to take up to three months.
I went to the Crossblue’s office in LA about 2 years ago when reMIND was going to be a 64 pager. I was really impressed with them so I decided to ask for a new quote with my new page count. They already got back to me with new quotes in only a day.
On the other hand, Regent was referred to me by a friend who published through them and was very happy. He said that tons of his friends have used Regent and they always turn out perfect. But the first time I emailed Regent it took them 2 weeks to send me an email back. Then it tool another month to get samples mailed to me. I tried to email them again a few days ago to get a quote started and still haven’t heard back from them. I guess I just need to trust my friend and keep trying here. If their printing service is anything like their correspondence then I’m in trouble.
So I bet you are wondering what the quote price is for printing reMIND. Well hold onto your seats, it’s a bit much. Here we go.
For 2000 copies, hardbound, (cloth binding) 136 pages, full color, plus shipping. We are looking at around $10,800.
For 3000 copies of the same specs we are looking at $12,300.
Now keep in mind that this is the best quality I can get and it will look beautiful on thick paper. I’ve seen their books and they look amazing. I’ve also seen Regents books and they look amazing too. This turns out to be about $5 a book. If I can actually sell these for $20 a piece then I could actually make a little money here. I’ve heard that 2000 is the magic number for printing hard bound indie graphic novels. You can most likely sell all 2000 copies if it’s a good quality book. (from what I’ve heard)
I might get another quote for a non-cloth bound version and see if I can knock a few more dollars off the price.
Does anyone else know of a good printing company they would recommend? Please only tell me about printers you have used. I’m only want first hand experience for this subject.
P.S. I got my first $20 donation the other night! It works! It really works!
One Thousand True Fans.
The idea seems like it makes sense. There was also a follow up article where he tried to find someone who had 1000 true fans who made a living off them. Well, basically he couldn’t find anyone who meet his criteria, yet. Between the articles and the comments I only have one question which someone said in a comment.
If someone were to get 1000 true fans than why wouldn’t the appeal of their product chain react and reach thousands more. In other words, just maintaining 1000 true fans might be a strange middle ground between being a no-name, selling 100 copies to your friends and the rare indie fans who like your niche and someone who has mass audience appeal. If my work could wrangle in 1000 fans, why couldn’t I get 10,000 or more.
Anyway, here’s the article.
If you are a TRUE FAN (see link for specifics) of my work then PLEASE leave a comment below saying you are a TRUE FAN. I know, I know. I’m totally shooting myself in the foot here because I might have 2 partial fans and it will be totally obvious when nobody posts a comment. But with all fear of failure aside, if three years down the road someone becomes a TRUE FAN and reads all this back log of junk and posts a comment here then I will really know for sure that they are a true fans for digging so hard through my blog. If I ever reach 1000 then I’ll email Kevin Kelly and tell him the good news if I am supporting myself at that time with my fan base.
Here is my only rule. Don’t comment twice so it’s easy for me to see the true number. If you comment twice then I will have to delete one of them, sorry. True fans wouldn’t though because they would have read all my rules. ha
This may seem like a no brainer to some of you but I know that there are many who have no idea why Comic Sans is a bad choice. I know because I was one of them. In fact I completed three whole comics in Comic Sans MS and paid tons of money to print ‘em. I still have copies of these books and I’m embarrassed to try to sell my leftovers. Other newer comic creators have asked me to explain why Comic Sans MS is so bad so here is my list.
1. Just because it has “COMIC” in the name and it’s FREE doesn’t mean you should use it in your comic that you spent years laboring over. In fact, because it comes free on every computer in existence know to mankind, you might want to choose a different font for the sake of standing out from the massive crowd who blindly use it.
2. You will instantly look unprofessional to anyone who has already learned this lesson no matter how good your art or story may be. Designers and Letterers will want to roundhouse kick your face.
3. Comic Sans has uneven default kerning. Some letters are spaced weird which hurts the flow of reading. Below is an example of bad kerning. This is Comic Sans but I pushed the kerning so it was obvious to a non-letterer.
4. Comic Sans is an incomplete font when it comes to comics because it WASN’T really made for comics in the first place. For example, Comic Sans is missing breath marks which come before and after some sort of cough or sputter. (unless there is some special way of getting them I don’t know about.) Here is my own personal font with breath marks.
5. With many professional COMIC fonts, the lower and upper case letters are all capitals with a slight variation so that repeated letters can look somewhat random. Below is the same sentence with the top line in lowercase and the bottom in CAPITALS. Although the “I” stands out the most, they are all slightly different.
6. If you use the letter “I” with crossbars within a word, many letterers will want to drop kick you. In many comics the capital “I” with the crossbars is reserved for the personal pronoun only. Below is an example for clarity. Notice the “I” within the words “think” and “right”.
So which one is correct? That depends on who you ask. The majority agrees that the last one is correct. The top one is also fine. Some argue that “I’m” can be used either way and some argue that it should never have the crossbars unless the “I” is by itself. My main point here is Comic Sans only looks like the middle line which is by far the ugliest version.
7. Lettering is the one thing that people will stare directly at as they read your comic. Making it blend to your art is important. A badly chosen font will distract people from your work and story. Comic Sans will not only distract readers but get you hate mail. Good typography should be invisible. It shouldn’t call attention to itself unless there is a specific reason for it. Comic Sans will never be invisible because there is such a large group of people who hate it that you will most likely be hearing more comments about your font choice than anything else in your book.
If you are still in need of convincing then I encourage you to watch this video.
http://bancomicsans.com/home.html
Still not satisfied? Here is a great article about the history of Comic Sans.
http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/comic-sans-the-font-everyone-loves-to-hate/
Here is an article from a professional letterer talking about why he thinks Comic Sans MS should never be used for comics. I thought I had a pretty original list until I found this one. Oh well.
http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=3599
Here are some other posts I wrote about comic fonts:
I decided to start calling the spreads "pages" now because I don't like that Google's number 3 keyword for my site is "spread". In case you are wondering why the page numbers don't quite match up to the spread number, it's because I'm using the page number of the printed book just so I don't get confused. Worry not, you are still seeing all the pages here.
So if anyone wants to know how to get 10,000 unique viewers in 3 days, then write an article about how much you love or hate Comic Sans MS and submit it to a few sites. A warning though. With great arguments comes heated comments. Not so much on my blog but on the websites linked to my article.
Most of the negative comments came from my statement that people will hate you for using Comic Sans in your comic. Now I know the truth, may people will hate you for talking about Comic Sans no matter what the context. So to please all the haters, I have changed my statement from "many people will hate you" to "many letterers will want to dropkick you." I hope you will take me seriously from now on. I never joke. Comic artists don't exaggerate anything. EVER.
I was going to compose a top ten list of hate comments from other sites linking to my post but it would be to hard to weed through. Plus, some are so vulgar it would make a drunk navy trucker quiver. So I decided to share one of the funniest comments I read among the rantings. And here it is:
"Comic Sans is based on Watchmen. Why do you hate Alan Moore?"
This quote truely sums up the power of the internet. I laughed, I cried. I scratched my head because, Wow!
First of all, Watchmen was written by Alan Moore, not lettered by him. Dave Gibbons lettered Watchmen and in an interview with him he says Comic Sans is "an appalling-looking font" and "Comic Sans is so ugly" and "The major sin about it that really bugs me is that it only includes the uppercase I, the one with bars on the top and bottom, which as you know, you only use in comics for the first-person pronoun." Read the interview here.
With all the opinionated controversy behind me, it's time for my next subject. Why Mac's are better then PC's. ha!
I'm sure there are a number of you who love this technical stuff like PageRank and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but I am mostly clueless about making my site stand out on search engines. From what I know, search engines like Google, rank websites depending on things like who and how many links they have going to them. The more incoming links a site has the higher the page rank. The higher the page rank, the better chance that site has of being displayed in a search with similar keywords.
Before I switched from Blogger to WordPress, my site had a 3 out of 10. Shortly after I switched, it dropped to 0 and I couldn't figure out how to get Google to know I had switched. Apparently I didn't submit a sitemap to google. My IT guy helped me and a week later my site was recognized by google again. I now have a 3 out of 10 page rank. The funny thing is, I still had the same amount of traffic after dropping to a "0" as I did with a "3" from before. So now I'm trying to figure out why. It seems like many of you understand this better then I do so maybe you can shed some light on it. I also read that there is a difference between a PageRank and a page rank. So confusing. Anyway, I have a 3 now and I feel better about myself but I'm not sure what it's really doing for me.
