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.

Google’s Blogger (Blogspot domains)

Blogger – Pros

• Blogger is super easy
• Blogger has free hosting of your blog and files.
• Blogger is easy to access from any online computer.
• Blogger does not spam your site with unwanted ads.
• Blogger has a big artist community.
• You don’t need to know any programming at all. Period.

Blogger – Cons

• Blogger has to have (.blogspot) within you domain name. Unless you forward one to it but that costs money.
• Blogger has limited templates to choose from.
• Blogger does not have a menu bar.
• If you want to move to another host later then all your permalinks are permafried.

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WordPress.org with ComicPress template

WordPress – Pros

• ComicPress.
• WordPress has thousands of free plug-ins and widgets.
• which means WordPress is easy to customize to do ANYTHING you want.
• WordPress has the ComicPress template to help showcase your comics in addition to your blog.
• All your permalinks are registered to your domain name so they can be moved to a different host without changing your links.
• WordPress has page options and so it could pass as a website or portfolio as well as a blog.
• Comicpress allows you to click through your comic pages easily as well as many other features.

WordPress – Cons

• WordPress takes a bit more time to set up.
• ComicPress takes some knowledge of CSS to customize.
• WordPress needs a webhost to store your files.
• You need to buy a domain name and web hosting service.
• I recently noticed lots of spam comments. But this can be controlled. It’s still a little hassle.

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.

Bluehost.com

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.

This week was pretty productive with reMIND. I almost finished coloring 4 pages (2 spreads) and I sketched some thumbnails for my Flight submission. I also think I figured out how I want my word balloons to look finally. This spread is an example of what I’m thinking so far. It’s more of a hand drawn look to match my art and lettering. I’m also toying with the idea of making each characters word balloon a unique color. I’m not sure if this will help or just make the pages look more colorful. We will see as the pages go. I’ll try to incorporate the color balloons from now on.

So, we are approaching the end of the first chapter finally. I think there will be 7 chapters total divided into 2 hard cover books about 130 pages each. It’s my attempt at bridging the gap between European and American comics. European comics are cool because they a treated more like books from what I’ve seen. They are around 40 to 64 pages and they come out whenever the artist finishes, sometimes taking a year or two. There’s just something I really like about that. It’s more about getting it right then hitting a monthly deadline. My only difference is printing in dimensions of standard American comics and having more pages so it’s a nice thick hard bound book. Anyway, enough of my idealistic daydreaming babble, there are several things I want to share today so I better begin.

First of all, notice the new advertisement that is on the left hand side of the blog. I just started this Saturday to see the results. If anyone has a graphic novel related blog then please join Project Wonderful and put your ad up here. It’s free until someone else outbids you. Plus if I end up getting a few bucks a month from it then I could use that to advertise on other sites.  Allowing others to advertise on my site brought up an interesting strategy. If you do a search on Project Wonderful for smaller sites without others bidding yet, then you can potentially put ads up on several sites without paying for any advertising. Just have your maximum bid at $0 and if no one else is bidding then your ad will pop up. It’s just an idea based on a few people doing that with my site. Another thing I’ve noticed is how inflated the numbers seem to be in the site statistics for my site on Project Wonderful. This makes me question how accurate the numbers are for some of the other sites I’m buying ad space on. It might just be a glitch so I’ll keep my eye on it and let you know how it goes.

Second, I wanted to say thanks for all your feedback last week with the ads. It’s been really helpful and has worked wonders for bringing in new viewers. Saturday was my best day yet. I placed an ad for $2 and brought in almost 200 unique viewers with a very low bounce rate.  It looks like quite a few people subscribed as well. Advertising on other webcomics really works for bringing traffic to an online graphic novel.

Third, I wanted to point at a few people out there who are making some interesting comics and blogging about it . I’m going to add these guys to my list of Comic Creator Blogs at the top left of this site. Please note that this list might change solely on how I feel about it. Later on I plan on making a giant list of links on my links page.

Other Good Comic Creator Blogs:

Shane M. Vidaurri

SMVidaurri.blogspot.com - Blog

SMVidaurri.com - Illustration site

I met this guy on the Flight Forum and have been following him ever since. Shane has been making a beautiful water colored comic and posting pages on his blog. Check it out and show him some love. He does some neat compositions and has a great style.

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Yaxin the Faun – Man Arenas 

I don’t know to much about this guy because I can’t read his blog but his graphic novel “Yaxin the Faun” is so beautiful that I just had to share it with anyone wanting inspiration. He also has a artist blog with other amazing art. His page layouts and compositions are really cool. His colors and character designs are quite good too.

yacinfields.blogspot.com - Yaxin the Faun

man-arenas-news.blogspot.com - Art blog

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Sam Mooney – a Manga Addict

Sam is living in Japan and drawing lots of short Manga stories on the side. He has some interesting compositions and stories techniques. I hope Sam keeps making progress on these and keeps sharing his artistic journey.

amangaaddict.blogspot.com - Manga Blog

nihonniiru.blogspot.com - Main Blog

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I have a few friends who are also starting a graphic novel blog. I’ll share them when they have some stuff to show.  If you have a blog specifically about making a graphic novel, showing your progress or techniques then please send it my way. I’d love to check it out and and maybe even list it here.

So as you can see in spread 17, I am going to have a small intermission for a week to repost all the pages of chapter 1 with a few corrections and updated word balloons. So please don't skip out on next Mondays post, in turn missing these much needed improvements. Please call out any mistakes you've seen as soon as you can so I don't have to update them again in the future. 

When I started posting Chapter 1 in November of 2009, my main fear was getting through all my pages before getting an audience. It's really hard to release everything you've worked on for the last 3 years in a few short months only to find 3 people care enough to come back every week.

Here are a few stats since I started:

November 3rd I started posting spreads every Monday and had a steady flow of about 20 visitors a day.  (I'm starting to sweat)

December 2nd, Notcot.org featured reMIND driving massive traffic for a few days but back down to around 30 unique viewers a day for the rest of the month.

January, My new WordPress/Comicpress site was launched with an average of 40 viewers a day. (gulp, is anybody out there?) Shortly after the launch, CartoonBrew featured my new site on the 21st driving 3000 unique viewers in the next 2 days. Suddenly I had over 100 viewers a day and my first handful of subscribers.

February I learned how to start advertising and immediately got over 200 viewers a day along with more subscribers.

March is here and chapter 1 is online with a whopping 117 subscribers and over 275 unique viewers a day at this point. Thanks to all your votes at TopWebComics I am in the top 100 for this month. Help me stay there by voting every day for reMIND. This weeks incentive is an illustration for Vampire the Masquerade that never got published.

I'm not telling you my stats to brag about anything. In fact these could be considered really low when compared to other webcomics. I just know there are people out there who are in the same boat as me trying to figure this all out, wondering what's normal.  I want reMIND to be a completely transparent site instead of pretending I'm something I'm not. 90% of the time I don't know what I'm doing and when I figure something out that works I want to share it. Hopefully reMINDblog is not just a webcomic or a graphic novel to you, but also a helpful resource and motivational tool.

Chapter 2 is nearly completed with just 2 more spreads to finish coloring and I'm very curious to hear your comments on it. It's been my most problematic chapter to date with lots of exposition which I hope doesn't get to complicated for the sake of clarity. There is a fine line between telling a story and explaining a story which I've been juggling since I started this thing. Either way, some questions will be answered and I hope many more will arise. So once again, Chapter 2 will begin on Monday the 22nd. 

Now onto a small list of things I've been wondering about.

What's the deal with Donation Buttons?

So I've noticed almost every webcomic site has a donation button. I think it a complete waste of time to assume someone will just send you money but since everyone is doing it I want to ask if it really works. Does anyone have a donation button on their site and more importantly, does anyone give you money? 

I guess my thoughts are mixed on the subject. For example, if I were to have a donation button with a goal of X amount of money to help pay for the printing costs of my graphic novel, that would make sense to me. Or in the case of the most awesome webcomic I've ever seen, Axe Cop! They have a donation button for a college fund. That's a worthy cause in my book. If any of you haven't witnessed Axe Cop yet then PLEASE go there now. It's written by a 5 year old and drawn by his 29 year old brother (who is an excellent artist). It's one of the funniest and creative, original webcomics I've seen. Check out the first episode on Youtube too. It's amazing!

On WapsiSquare.com (a very popular webcomic), the artist is asking people to donate so he can get his wife a new TV for about $1000. Last I checked he has totaled about $700 in the last week. That's crazy in my mind but it's cool that he's making it work. If he can get money for his wife's new plasma then why couldn't I get a fund going for the printing costs of reMIND. Let me know if I'm crazy to think this might work.

There is also the question of taxes. From what I've seen with Paypal, the person who donates has to pay a little extra percent of what they are giving as taxes. I might be wrong but I'll ask my tax guy soon.

Should I start a mailing list?

Okay, so I have an RSS subscribe button. But I've been wondering if I should have a separate button for those of you who might not think to check back every week to see my progress. You know, to just get a monthly update of things like release dates and convention info. I know people are forgetful of what they came across last week on the net and not everyone likes RSS feeds. 

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Thursday I have a new video about the CMYK vs RGB workspace in Photoshop I'm excited to share. But first I need to fix all the times I said CYMK instead of CMYK. I'm an idiot.

So as you might remember from last weeks post, I will start Chapter 2 next Monday to make time for a good updating of all the pages in Chapter 1. I've replaced all the pages with their new improved ones. The main thing you will notice is the new word balloons and word balloon colors being consistent now. I also replaced most of the sound effects. Click through the pages if you don't mind and tell me what you think. You might have to refresh them to get them to update.

More text below.

Tons of things to share this week:

I also started a mailing list right under the subscribe button. This may look like a mailing list but it is really just a Feedburner email service. Now you can easily get reMIND updates delivered right to your inbox. This is the way I like to subscribe to my favorite websites.(as long as they don't update 40 times a day) I seem to forget what I found 2 days ago online even if I really liked it. If I find a new artist I love, I always look for a method of getting their new posts into my mail box instead of trying to remember to look for it again online. Plus I'm trying to keep reMINDblog filled with useful information so I hope this option is appreciated. If anyone is interested in how I set up a mailing list in feedburner then give me a shout.

I have officially put my foot in my mouth. A while back I wrote about Top-List-Sites for Webcomics and bagged on many of them. One of the sites I bagged on was BelfryComics.net saying it just looked to outdated to look into further. In retrospect, I noticed it was the only site I really didn't study much. I just assumed it couldn't be useful for whatever reason at the time. Well, starting last Sunday I noticed a few hits were coming from that site so I looked into it more. Turns out someone wrote a description for reMIND (and a good one at that) and listed it on their site. By the end of the day I had 81 unique visits from the Belfry alone being my number 1 top refferral site that day. Monday I got another 77. Tuesday I got 41. Wednesday 112. Thursday another 81. Okay, okay, so this is turning out to be the best Webcomic directory I've been apart of without doing any advertising at all. I admit, I tried a little advertising on Wednesday for a few hours which helped but over all I am really blown away with the traffic from that place. I'm going to create a few half banners and run them for a week or so just to see how well that works. I'll let you know the results.

So in return for the awesome traffic, I will update my Top-List-Sites article to reflect my new opinion and findings (in a few days). TheBelfry.net has officially moved to number 2 on my list right uner TopWebComics.com (when I update it).

In addition to sending traffic my way I also found a beautifully drawn and colored comic there that is turning out to be my new favorite visually. I haven't read it yet because I usually never read webcomics but if I keep going back to look at the art then I might just give it a shot. It's called Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name. Check it out if you love good art, page design and coloring with textures. Here's an image from her site:

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(Ultimate geek-out warning!)

So I want to end this all by being a total geek. I usually don't get the chance to geek out now that I'm in my mid 30's (I really don't know what that means) but every now and then something happens that brings me back to my geek out roots. (I don't know what that means either)

So there I am at work just minding my own business about to go to lunch when I decide to check my email. I had a nice fresh new unread email in my inbox and as I was about to click on it I noticed something strange. It said it was sent from Sam Kieth. You know, THE Sam Kieth who drew the Maxx and helped start Image comics and only has one of the coolest styles in the comic book world. He's one of my biggest inspirations to this day. In fact the ONLY pamphlet style comic books I bought in the last 10 years are his Scratch books by DC. I usually wait for everything to become a trade before buying it but his stuff is just so awesome that I couldn't resist.

Anyway, he said he came across my stuff and like it. I couldn't work or think straight for the rest of the day. Having one of your heros contact you and say they appreciate what you are doing is the best feeling ever. Thank you again Sam! I hope you don't mind me mentioning this.

Help me get back into the top 100 at TopWebComics. VOTE HERE!

These pages were a blast to work on because… you guessed it, ACTION! But I can’t help but wonder if I should change the rating of this comic to PG-13 because of crab blood. I guess I’ll find out if angry mother’s comment. Also, let me know if you can think of a better way to write that 3rd narration box. It seems funny to me and I can’t figure it out. It will all be sent to my editor in the end so I guess I shouldn’t stress on it too much.

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This week has been good. I finally finished a lingering page that changed a million times right in the middle of Chapter 2. I also changed up the ending of Chapter 2 and I’m very happy with it now. It was one of those things that I knew I’d have to come back to later. Oh yeah, I also scrapped the first spread of Chapter 3 and sketched a new one adding a pile more work for myself. Yay, the joys of being your own worst critic.

I sent 9 spreads to my flatter, Aaron Daly, and he’s blowing through them like nothing. Do you know how much time that is saving me? Let me think… probably about 2 to 3 hours a spread (at my speed) which equals 18 to 27 hours of work! I can only work for about 2 to 3 hours a night on this stuff so that’s pure gold!

I just remembered, Aaron has an unpublished spread of reMIND on his blog from a while back. Go check it out if you want a look into the future of reMIND.
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I did some reading this weekend.

I read How to Make Webcomics and I must say that it was kinda useful. I might just be overly critical because I learned 99% of the stuff they talk about from just doing research online and taking an educated guess. But anyway, it’s geared more towards a daily webcomic which isn’t exactly what I am doing but I thought it might have some secrets to making one successful. There were a few good things that I’ve never heard before but all in all I can’t say it gave me any breakthroughs in what I should do differently. I’ll write a more thorough review later but for now the main things I learned from it are as follows:

• Buy paid ads on networks and forum sites.
• Make free wallpapers and down-loadable stuff.
• Fliers for campuses, cons, and comic stores.
• Look into a freelance distributor to handle my books.
• Use shipping supply company for cheap shipping stuff.
• Offer my books to a retailer at cons so they can sell my books and maybe get more orders later.
• Make press kit online and hard copy for Cons. For people in the press.

I’m not sure if this bullet point list makes any sense to anyone but me. I’m also not sure I’d recommend buying this book unless you were brand new to everything. If you are brand spanking new and want to make webcomics then, YES, by all means, it’s going to be helpful.

But honestly, I’ve been getting more out of the book called Tribes by Seth Godin. Thanks for the suggestion Kelly!

One last thing. I updated my Top-List Sites article. I added a few more I found and moved the Belfry up on the list.

I get tons of people coming to me asking for advice on how to get into the field of art. I use to get confused when self proclaimed artists would approach me for advice but when asked to see their work they only had old school assignments from years ago. If they really were artists, I thought, then where was the art? Anyone can be an artist if they love to draw. This person must not love to draw, so why was he asking me for advice on how to become an artist?

I finally realized these artists who don’t do art are approaching me because they think I have a natural talent and they think they might just have a natural talent too. Perhaps someone told them in the past that they are “a natural”. They think art is just super fun and easy for us gifted ones born with the talent to draw. Artists have the good life. It’s all about who you know. You sit back and draw a little here and there. It just flows from you like a river of gold. You can whip up something on a napkin to pay for your meal. Art is easy work. Art is fun.

Ever since I was a little guy scribbling with my crayons I’ve had people look at my art and say, “You sure are talented. It must be nice to be born with it!”  I’d shyly say thanks and continue with my masterpiece while they move on after mere seconds.

Aside from my late teens, art has been my only source of income. I’m in my mid 30′s now and I’ve had a blessed career as an artist and it wasn’t until my mid twenties that I started thinking about what talent really was. Contrary to the dictionary definition, this is my opinion…

Talent is created and grows when you are overly passionate about a specific subject.

So committed that you spend large sums of free time studying a subject beyond what anyone else could stand. So interested that you try to decode what others are doing who excel in the craft. So obsessed that you will spend hours alone trying to meticulously perfect a nuance that only you will notice. Then, when the moment of focus is over, you have gained a small fraction of knowledge that only you were passionate enough to spend the time to understand.

Now, are you an artist?

A musician?

A chef?

A businessman? (Yes, even businessmen have the talent of being good at business)

Writer?  Jogger?  Halo champion?  Fly fisherman?  Snowboarder?  Surfer?

Now days, whenever someone comes to me for professional advice in the field of art, I always start with this question…

What do you love to do?

This is a hard question for many people to answer. It’s not really hard but people make it hard when they replace what they love with what they think they should love. For instance, a friend asked me what programs he should learn next to help his career. My response was, “Only learn the programs that will help you achieve your personal goals. Don’t learn a random program just because you think it will help your career even though you have no interest in that program. But if a program will aid something you’re passionate about then it’s worth learning. Nothing launches your career better then a personal project that you LOVE. Remember, a client will most likely ask you for something you’ve already proven to do well.”  So, in other words…

If you love animation, start animating your film.

If you love to draw comics, start drawing your comic.

If you love to make stuffed animals, make the best stuffed animals you can.

This may seem like lame advice. Most people want me to just hook them up with someone who will offer them a job. Some people just want to be told which school will guarantee their success. Reality check. Schools don’t make you talented. What you are passionately interested in creates the talent.

If you LOVE music, you will pay closer attention to it than the majority and in turn you will become more talented at music then the majority.

If you LOVE comic art, you will study your favorite comic artists and you will become more talented at drawing comics then the majority.

If you LOVE animation, you will closely examine master animators to see what makes them tick and in turn you will become more talented at animation then the majority.

If you LOVE amazing food, you will start to study what makes something taste good and in turn…

Get the picture?

None of this stuff is something you are born with. I don’t believe anyone is born with talent. I will say it again. Nobody is born with talent. Sure, I might have shown early aptitude as an artist even in preschool. You know why? BECAUSE I FREAKIN LOVED ART AND I DROOLED OVER IT WHEN I SAW SOMETHING THAT I LIKED I WOULD STARE AT IT FOREVER UNTIL I UNDERSTOOD IT A BIT MORE THEN THE AVERAGE PRE-SCHOOLER OKAY!

I still can’t draw feet very good. You know why?

These pages went through several changes before I finally figure ‘em out. For example, the first panel used to be Victuals at the doorway of his mom’s house and he was in peasant clothes. All the detail in the room was added after the fact and with a Wacom Cintiq. I think it blends pretty well with the pencil drawings. The beads are also all digital. The third panel use to be 2 frames. One with Victuals giving her a ring and the second with them kissing. The ring idea was bad from the start. I mean why would lizards be giving each other rings like humans? Then the kissing panel just looked silly so it got cut. When I think about it, most of the time when I can’t figure out how to draw a story point, I just cut it out and let the narration speak for itself. What a cheap trick. Anyway, I hope this conveys the story I was intending.

If you want to see thumbnails, sketches, pencils and the first coloring pass of these pages then vote HERE!

6 Month Milestone

Today is a special date for me and reMIND.  Six months ago I published the first 2 pages of reMIND. I had no idea what would happen when I started this blog and I had no idea what I was doing either. But now after six months, I can’t imagine trying to finish reMIND without it. I had concerns and doubts when I started but now I can’t stress the benefits enough. I’ll talk much more about this in the future because it’s a fairly new and misunderstood path for publishing. I also hit a few milestones that I want to share real quick:

• I just hit 200 RSS subscribers about a week ago. For some reason I had 200 as a goal for myself. Not sure why but I’m pumped that I hit it!
• According to ComicBlogElite, reMINDblog has had over 50,000 unique visitors in the last 6 months. That’s cool!!!
• I colored a complete spread in an hour and a half yesterday.  This is really fast for me. When I started reMIND (4 years ago) it took me about 3 days to color a spread because I had no idea how to even start. I’ve refined my coloring over the years and started using a flatter and in turn, whittled down the process to a reasonable time. I’m not saying every spread takes me 1.5 hours now, some may take a good 6 hours until I’m happy but the fact that I don’t have to kill myself to get this done is very relieving.

T-Shirt Update

I just talked to my brother-n-law who is also the one making my T-shirts and he told me that I should have my first batch of shirts this Saturday. So it looks like I will be packing up all the Gorilla Packs next weekend to ship out.(assuming all goes according to plan). I still have a few left to move. I have 3 small, 10 medium, 10 large left. So jump on it if you want it for $10. Once I finish selling these I think I’m going to raise the prices to $15 (plus shipping this time). I’m basically selling them for no profit this first batch just to get the word out there. It also leaves me with the bill unless I sell them all. So yeah, buy a shirt so I can pay my brother-n-law. haha

Click here to order shirts.

Also, thanks to all who donated a little extra to help me cover the shipping outside the US. I’m really excited to know that reMIND shirts will be seen around the UK, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium! In fact, I’ve almost sold as many shirts in Europe as I have in the US. Maybe it’s because I like European comics better than most US comics. Interesting.

Rock Stars and Comic books

In my career as an artist I’ve noticed some strange things. One thing that keeps surfacing is famous musicians making comics. In my article about Agents, I talked about an unnamed famous rock star who hired me to draw his stupid comic and never paid me. Yeah, talk about a looser.

I have a good rock start story though. It’s about Rikki Rockett. You know, the drummer of Poison. He’s pretty much the coolest rock star I ever met. When I was at the San Diego Con back in the 90′s I showed him my portfolio and he immediately wanted to hire me. I was invited to Rikki’s private party that night for his new comic company called “No Mercy Comics”. That was cool.

Later that year my friend, Brian Brethauer and I planned a road trip to LA from Idaho to see Rikki and show him some more work. Needless to say, nothing ever panned out. Rikki was awesome but it just wasn’t the right timing. Talk about a surreal moment seeing Rikki Rockett color one of my comic pages in Photoshop. I’ve never seen Photoshop before that day either. Remember, this was 1996.

Rikki coloring one of my pages.

Here’s another picture of Rikki Rockett and Brian Brethauer. I’m not in the picture because I was the one behind the camera. Rikki was eating a giant sandwich.

Since I have no pictures of myself and Rikki to prove that I actually met him. Here is a picture that has Brian and I so you can at least see that I know the guy sitting next to Rikki.

From left to right: Jeremy Barlow, Me, Jon Barlow, Brian Brethauer. Brian’s face is half covered but it’s really the same guy. Seriously. Brian, help me out here! This proof would never hold up in court. Brian?

I bet Rikki and Brian are off somewhere playing golf right now, laughing.

Anyway, so the point of this rock star memorabilia is this.

Last week, I was contacted by someone who works for the singer VV Brown. I guess VV is really into graphic novels and is making her own called The City of Abacus. I was asked to do a feature review of her book but instead I just want to say how fascinating it is that everyone is in the same boat when it comes to making a graphic novel. They might have more fame or money but in the end, they are the same as you and me, just trying to make a cool comic. It’s kinda encouraging when I think about it, I mean the fact that someone famous is asking me to plug their book? Me? I just have a blog and a comic that’s not even published.

I wish VV Brown all the best in her new venture as a graphic novel creator. When I cut my first thrash-metal-country-opera album I’ll know where to go for some press.

Although it can seem like a daunting goal, there are ways to achieve a project of this scale in a reasonable amount of time. To make more sense of my following points, I need to first bring up Parkinson’s Law.  It goes something like this:

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

In the years that I’ve worked freelance I can definitely say that this law was in affect. In fact I’ve had commercial storyboarding jobs in which I was given 3 hours to finish 26 frames. That amount was usually a full days work for a storyboard artist. I was also considered a fast storyboard artist in the agency that represented me. I honestly think I was considered fast because I was the only one to accepted the fast jobs. Other artists would just turn them down saying they were impossible. So, in turn, I became the fast artist. Any impossible storyboarding deadline would immediately get sent to me before anyone else. This was good and bad. Good in which it brought me plenty of work but bad because it was all crazy deadlines that drove me nuts.

The invaluable lesson this taught me was simple; work doesn’t need to take as long as the status que says it does. I applied this thought process to all my personal projects from that point on and because of it I’ve been able to accomplish tons of stuff in my limited free time. If I thought a project would take a full day in a studio environment, I would give myself three hours. And guess what? It usually would get done in three hours too. Maybe four.

It wasn’t until a month ago that I learned about Parkinsons Law. I never knew it was a specific term for what I was doing, only that it worked for me. I have to admit, if you work in this fashion long enough, you will be mentally drained of all your creative juices. There is a limit to how far it can be pushed. As long as I only apply it to my personal work every other night and not my full time day job then I can usually keep my energy tank full for when it really matters. My day job pays me to work at the status quo speed, which in a corporate environment is an extremely slow pace. So this works out well for me in my current situation. If I was still doing storyboarding at lightning speed then I would never have the mental energy to go home and do more, which is one of the main reasons I got out of storyboarding.

I don’t believe you can just jump in and start doing this from the start. If you don’t have a good understanding of anatomy and perspective and other fundamental skills then you will spend more time focusing on learning these things then you will on getting the job at hand done. So if your just starting out then take your time to learn your skill. I’m also not suggesting that you only focus on speed and only produce sloppy crap. It’s not a race. But if you can achieve the same level of quality in half the amount of time then why not learn to do it. We are talking about quality AND quantity here and I think it’s achievable. After all, my dream is not to spend 24 hours a day locked in a room doing my art.

Here are a few tricks and programs I’d suggest if you want to push yourself to get work done in a shorter time.

1. Remove distractions

This is important for me. If my office is cluttered with all kinds of other things that are more interesting to me at the time then I will space off and think about all the other stuff I could be doing. The internet is the biggest distraction of all time to me so one method of removing this distraction is by…removing it. Below is a link to a simple program called Freedom in which you can turn off your internet for a specific amount of time. It’s pretty awesome if your like me and want to check your email every five minutes. You can set it for the amount of time you think it will take to get your piece finished and the only way to get back onto the internet is to restart your computer… or wait until your set time expires.

Freedom – a great program to turn off the internet when you need to focus. There is a free donation version too.

2. Set a Timer

The best way to push yourself to speed up while staying focused is to get a simple kitchen timer and put it next to your desk. Think about how long it will take to complete a small task and then set the time to half that. You will be surprised how many times you will catch yourself getting sidetracked and then noticing your time is ticking away and jump back to work. Even if you don’t finish by the time the buzzer goes off you have at least started training yourself to think this way.

An alternate approach is to download a timer for your computer that will count down. I found a really good one for the Macintosh that politely beeps every 5 minutes to remind you that you’ve got work to get done. Trust me, if you do this long enough, you will be amazed at how much work you can generate in your free time.

Chimoo Timer for Mac

The timer combined with locking off your internet can do wonders in crunch time. And lets admit it, the time we spend at home after work is definitely not long enough to be filling every second with more work. Remember, work expands to fill the time available for completion.

Planning out pages has been the most challenging aspect of creating reMIND and when planning a good set of pages, I always start with thumbnails. I’ve mentioned it before in the past assuming everyone knows what I’m talking about but since every artist is unique with their workflow I figure I should show the early stages of mine. I also noticed many young artists visiting here, trying to make heads or tails on how to start their own comic or graphic novel so hopefully this can shed some light on the subject enough to get the ball rolling.

After I finish a loose script (and I mean loose. No dialogue. A script with the main plot points. About a chapter per page) I started my thumbnails. Thumbnails are super small drawings just to get the initial ideas of composition and page layouts out of my head and on paper. Sometimes I have a clear idea in my mind but most of the time I don’t. If I have absolutely no idea where to start I force something out, however crude it may be, and this usually gives way to ideas that eventually start to gel.

I usually don’t like to show my thumbnails because they are so sloppy and bad. In the case of the pages above, you can really see where I struggled to figure out what to do. There are a few rehashed versions of the same things. Now days I like to draw my thumbnails with ink. This forces me away from little details. If I mess up then I have to start another one. It keeps the ideas fluid and loose.

Thumbnails can easily get really messy and scattered here and there and lost on small random pieces of paper. To battle this bad habit I’ve learned to keep all my thumbnails in nice tidy sketchbooks. I learned this working with many commercial directors. Many would keep similar hard bound sketchbooks clearly marked for each project in which they could collect all their random thoughts.

I started doing this for reMIND long before it was a graphic novel. The top book with the Fuel sticker is full of storyboards and concept art when I was planning on making reMIND an animation called “Vittles”. Most of these pages are full of clipped sketches and thumbnails, taped down to keep organized. I’m glad I did this otherwise I would have lost track of most of it.

This is the first image of Victuals (Vittles at the time) that I liked. I cut it out and taped it to the front page. Yeah, that says Tender Vittles 3.2 for some dumb reason. I just like that cat food name. I don’t have a cat…really. I don’t even really like cats. I just like drawing Victuals.

Above are some storyboard thumbnails for the animated version in it’s extremely early stages. The yellow panels were sticky notes that I later taped in the book. The lower left page is the first sketch of a lizard man. Sonja was going to be a boy at one point and above is a sketch.

Anyway, that’s my way to develop ideas. I’ve got to keep it all organized or I never get anything finished. And hey, it’s fun to look at later on…or put in a blog.