COmicLab Ep 360 — New ways to make an old mistake

COmicLab Ep 360 — New ways to make an old mistake

After years of listening to Brad and Dave extoll the virtues of self-publishing, a ComicLab listener signed with a corporate...
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Content exchange: Cross-promotion made simple

Content exchange: Cross-promotion made simple

With social media on a steep decline, many of us are scrambling to find ways to replace its benefits. One...
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Incorporating an oddly shaped panel into a vertical-scroll comic

Incorporating an oddly shaped panel into a vertical-scroll comic

Building an audience on the web means adapting to the vertical scroll. But that doesn't mean giving up innovative page...
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Webcomics Confidential: Draw larger

Webcomics Confidential: Draw larger

I took a question on Twitter recently: "Would it be wrong to draw my comics on A4 paper? I find...
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November To-Do List

November To-Do List

It's time to get started on (*choke*) the penultimate month of 2024.If you plan to offer new merchandise for the...
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ComicLab Ep 359 — Should your readers be your writers?

ComicLab Ep 359 — Should your readers be your writers?

BlueSky is beginning to feel like Twitter did ten years ago! Engagement is up, conversations are genuine, and follower counts...
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Understanding social media

Understanding social media

Social media is among an independent artist's most frustrating elements. We struggle for engagement, wage constant battles with "The Algorithm,"...
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Writing humor

Writing humor

Writing comedy is a challenge that is made even more daunting by the fact that humor itself is completely subjective...
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CMYK vs RGB

CMYK vs RGB

If you're saving your comics in RGB mode, you may be making a potentially expensive mistake. The content you are...
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ComicLab Ep 358 — “Help! I’m not funny anymore!”

ComicLab Ep 358 — “Help! I’m not funny anymore!”

Cartoonists Dave and Brad share some thoughts with a young humor writer trying to find their Funny. Also: Is BlueSky...
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Webcomics.com — Best Of January 2015

Now, more than ever, it’s easy to see what a subscription to Webcomics.com will get you.

Every Friday, you can read the entire Archive Dive post without a subscription. The Friday Archive Dive is a post from the site’s archive that I pull out front again because it still has relevant information you can use today. This is especially nice for newer subscribers (or anyone else) who may have missed it when it originally ran.

Plus, at the beginning of every month, I do a wrap-up that highlights some of the best posts — from the site as well as the private forum — from the preceding month.

If you’re curious about joining, we’ve made it easier than ever with a $5 trial membership. You’ll get full access to the site for thirty days so you can see what you’ve been missing. At the end of the trial, you can choose to re-subscribe ($30 for 12 months of access) or walk away with no strings attached. You will not be re-billed unless you choose to subscribe.

Please note: The links below will lead you to content that is “subscription-only” content. Why do I do this? Simple. If you see something that intrigues you and decide to subscribe, you can come back here and use this post to jump right to the post that caught your attention. And once you do that, use the other Best Of posts to drill even deeper into the site!

Best of the site

The Q1 Crash: It happens every year, your ad revenue takes a huge dip in January. Here’s why it happens — and what you can do to compensate for the lost income in the meantime.

On a related note, it’s very important to adjust your ad rates in January.

Our Hot Seat Critique series focused on lettering in January.

The Kramdenization of Comics: Every time you turn around, there’s a new come-on for cartoonists to consider — a contest, a promise of Big Buck if you agree to host you content with an aggregator site, and so on. But what is the risk of scampering from Promise to Promise?

Kickstarter Drops Amazon Payments; Switches to Stripe: When Kickstarter first made their announcement, there was a metric ton of misinformation being bandied about — especially on some Facebook groups. This post corrected the false information and gave subscribers an informed perspective on what this change actually means.

The USPS announced that is was not hiking rates in the first part of 2015.

Where’s the best place to register a domain? With Google entering the ring, it may be time to re-think what you thought you knew. We look at Google’s new deal and compare them to some of the most popular registrars. Then, members chimed in with their favorites — complete with rate comparisons. This is one of those posts that could save you the cost of an entire year’s subscription!

Wizard World announced their purchase of Pittsburgh Comic Con.

On the Surviving Creativity podcast, Jim Demonakos talks about merging Emerald City Comicon with ReedPop. And then ReedPOP Global VP, Lance Fensterman, joins the show to answer some tough questions about the changes in store for this fan-favorite show.

The WHY behind crossbar I: We’ve been told — by everyone from Chris Eliopoulos to Nate Piekos — that we should only use the “crossbar” I in the case of a personal pronoun. But why? While I was explaining the rule to my Sequential Arts class at Hussian School of Art, I had an epiphany.

How many people read my comic? It’s a deceptively difficult question to answer with any degree of accuracy. But there’s a more important question that you’re not asking… why is it important to you in the first place?

The UPS Store has saved me a significant amount of money since I started using them for bulk shipping. I share the details.

Webcomics Q&A: The Ann Arbor Public Library brought me in, via Skype, to do a half-hour Q&A session for their webcomics group. I talked about a wide variety of subjects, and then I posted the annotated video so members could jump right to the topics they were most interested in.

Facebook’s Call To Action Button: It was easy to overlook, but Facebook unveiled a new feature for people who run Fan Pages — a Call To Action button. We gave subscribers a heads-up, a quick tutorial, and a few thoughts on using the button wisely.

A neat CSS trick for better hyperlinks. Are the links on your site ugly — or worse, dated-looking? Here’s an easy-to-follow tutorial that will have your site looking more professional in no time!

Best of the Private Forum

The private forum is a tremendous resource. Not only can you bounce ideas off other professionally-minded working cartoonists, but you can share thoughts that you wouldn’t want to put on a public messageboard. This is the place to discuss strategies of dealing with an inappropriate commenter — or to vet a business deal that you’ve been negotiating. Got a tech nightmare? I guarantee you that one of our members has been there and dreaded that. Here’s some highlights from last month.

Sponsorship offer? A member got an offer from an entity that wanted to sponsor one, specific comic in his archives. Members helped him see some of the potential pitfalls to this seemingly simple proposition.

Switching hosting: How much downtime is acceptable before you’re forced to switch hosts?

To Buffer or Not To Buffer! That is the question…

Creating movie-style trailers to promote books?

Je Suis Charlie… or Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie? It’s an emotional topic. We talk about it here with mutual respect from all sides.

If you’re publishing many titles, is it better to have a hub site or should you host the individual comics on separate sites?

Should there be a Webcomics.com Facebook Group?

Webcomics.com Study Group: From time to time, members of the site gather via Skype or Google Hangout to get together, talk shop, and share information, inspiration and ideas.

by on February 5, 2015
Posted In: Promos, Site News
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February To-Do List

Get out your calendar and start circling dates. It’s time to do a little webcomics planning.

Business

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by on February 4, 2015
Posted In: To-Do List
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Custom avatars

Here’s another helpful tip that comes out way via Philip M. Hofer (“Frumph”), creator of the popular Comics Easel WordPress plug-in. This one will work equally well in either ComicsPress or Comics Easel.

If you’re running a WordPress-managed site, your comments section probably has avatars that are administered through Gravatar (globally recognized avatars). Gravatar links an avatar image to a user’s e-mail address, and then whenever that person uses the e-mail address to sign in and comment on a Web site, Gravatar delivers the chosen image as an avatar.

Screen Shot 2015-02-03 at 5.57.19 PMBut what happens when someone doesn’t have a Gravatar image linked to his or her e-mail address? You get one of those generic silhouette avatars (like the one to the right). And that can be kind of drab.

Luckily, you don’t have to be locked in to those grey ghosts. You can easily set up an entire compliment of custom-made avatars for your non-Gravatar-enabled commenters.

And it’s super easy.

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by on February 3, 2015
Posted In: Tech, Web site
└ Tags: ,
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10 Reasons Switching to Manga Studio Will Improve Your Comic

20150126_first_mangastudioMy first comic created fully in Manga Studio EX appeared on my site last week.

After 25 years of using Photoshop, this was a huge decision. I’d tried several times to make timid forays into Manga Studio, but each time, I got frustrated.

“It’s nothing like Photoshop!” I would exclaim, rage-quitting the software to run back to Photoshop.

Finally, after Lar deSouza offered to spend a few hours via Skype with Dave Kellett and me, walking us through the software. He (and others) generously offered to help troubleshoot issues that might arise while we were making the switch.

Finally, one weekend, I decided that the only way I was ever going to pull this off was to jump in with both feet and commit to creating an entire week of strips in Manga Studio.

I did.

It took me an entire weekend — with frustration, more rage-quitting, and a lot of expletives — just to build my standard comic-strip template. But once I got the hang of using some of the basic tools, I started drawing my first strip.

And I’m never going back.

Know why?

Same reason

I hated Manga Studio: “It’s nothing like Photoshop!” Now, I’ll never go back. Why? …Same reason. http://wp.me/p4lKly-331 via @Webcomicscom

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Here are ten reasons I think Manga Studio EX will improve your comics:

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by on February 2, 2015
Posted In: Art, Tech
└ Tags: , , ,
31 Comments
Archive Dive

Friday Archive Dive: One More Panel

Once again, I’m trying something new with the Friday Archive Dive. If you’re not a member of the site, you can read the entire post, which originally ran on Jan. 24, 2012, in its entirely. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good sample. 

Writing humor is something many of us grapple with. In the past, I’ve discussed a method that I advocate called Fermentation. And in many critiques and discussions, I’ve found myself advising writers to push or push further or push to the Funny. And every time I write those words, it occurs to me that the phrase is somewhat ambiguous and my advice may be missing the mark.

So I’m going to try to refine the Fermentation method, and I’ve love for those of you who are working in humor to try it out and let me know how it worked for you. (More on that later).

One More Panel

Once you’ve written your joke — refined the set-up and fine-tuned the punchline — I want you to leave it for at least 24 hours. I think this is crucial. It allows your subconscious mind to come into play and it brings you in fresh on the next day.

Now, look at what you’ve written and add another panel. Your job now is to use your punchline as a set-up to another punchline. Take the concept one step further. If an action has happened, explore the after-effects.  If a surprise was introduced, top it with a bigger one. If the punchline was word-play, warp the words another step.

Finally, reduce the comic to its original panel count. Let’s say you do, indeed, produce a four-panel strip. Either lose the fourth panel and go straight from Panel There to Panel Five (making any necessary wording adjustments) or incorporate any crucial parts of the fourth panel into the third panel.

And “crucial” is the operative word here. The point is not to write longer, it’s to write better.

The optimum outcome should be to arrive at a sequence in which the word-count is very similar to the original.

Some solid advice on improving your humor writing. http://wp.me/p4lKly-34b via @Webcomicscom

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Case Study

Before I go any further, I want to thank member Oskar van Velden of Mojo who graciously agreed to allow me to use his most recent strip as an example. I noticed Oskar’s update on Google Plus, and it struck me that this was a perfect subject for this conversation because, although the punchline was good, I think it could have been taken to a higher level. Click on any of the images for an enlarged view.

This was Oskar’s most recent comic.

It’s a decent punchline.

But when I saw it, I couldn’t help but think about how the really funny stuff happened in the unseen next panel.

So, let’s allow our minds to wander for one more panel.

The idea of trying to stop nicotine cravings by slabbing slices of turkey meat on you skin has a really nice silliness to it. And the turkey slices look enough like the nicotine patches to make the concept cross over effectively.

But now it’s too long. The third panel doesn’t do a thing to advance the set-up. It doesn’t charge the tension, and if we leave it in, it actually telegraphs the joke, draining away much of the Funny. Since it’s pretty much extraneous…

I’m not even necessarily saying that this particular fifth panel is the best of all possible fifth panels.

And you could definitely refine it. For example, I might have added a skinny panel between Panel Two and Panel Three in which the penguin and the cat walk away from the man, having removed their patches. It might prevent a reader from thinking that the nicotine patches are being removed in the final panel.

I feel confident in saying that it’s an improvement, but I’ll bet there are dozens of “fifth panels” that you could dream up that take this very good set-up and push the concept to a much funnier place.

My challenge

I’d love to see this in action. So I’m placing a challenge. Choose one of the following:

(1) Go through your archive and improve a couple strips using the Fifth Panel method. Post Before and After strips here for discussion.

(2) Use this method as your writing future strips, and post the results. The “Before” could be a written script and the “After” can be the finished comic.

If you’re interested in subscribing to Webcomics.com, you can get access to four posts a week containing news, tutorials, information and advice that applies directly to your career as a cartoonist — plus the private forum and exclusive member benefits.

A $30 membership gets you access for 12 consecutive months. But if you’d like to try it out for a month to see what you think, you can get a no-strings-attached one-month trial membership for five bucks.

Still on the fence? Scroll down. You won’t be able to read the full articles yet, but you can see the diverse topics and useful information that make this site a daily stop for so many working cartoonists.

by on January 30, 2015
Posted In: Archive Dive

Use this easy CSS trick to get better hyperlinks

Here’s another helpful CSS coding tip from Philip M. Hofer (“Frumph”), creator of the popular Comics Easel WordPress plug-in.

Landing on a good hyperlink style is difficult. If you use the default style, you get a look that’s somewhat dated. On the other hand, if you stray too far from that, some readers might miss the links entirely!

However, with an easy copy-paste CSS code, you can get a unique, recognizable hyperlink style — and tweak it to fit the unique requirements of your Web site.

Here’s the code:

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by on January 30, 2015
Posted In: Tech, Web site, Web Site Design
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Webcomics Talk at Ann Arbor Public Library

The nice people at the Ann Arbor Public Library facilitate Webcomics Lab — a regular meet-up of webcartoonists. And they invited me to join their hangout last night, via Skype, to talk shop. The conversation was tremendous.

We talked about a lot of great subjects, such as:

• When do you know when you’ve found the “right” project to work on? (2:20)

•  Is a daily update schedule still as important as it used to be? (10:50)

• How do you handle “touchy” subjects without offending people? (14:24)

• What about adult comics — is there a pushback? (16:02)

• There’s an element of cruelty in all humor (18:10)

• I tell a joke about a library (18:20)

• How did readers react to the transition from Greystone Inn to Evil Inc? (20:32)

• Don’t listen to some readers; only listen to all readers (20:15)

• How do you monetize a webcomic? (23:40)

• How do you build a webcomic Web site? (32:10)

• Getting better at lettering. (37:57)

A video of the conversation follows…

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by on January 28, 2015
Posted In: Art, Business, Creativity
5 Comments

Friday Archive Dive: Back Up Your Site

Once again, I’m trying something new with the Friday Archive Dive. If you’re new to the site, you can read the entire post, which originally ran on Jan. 31, 2013, in its entirely. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good sample. 

You probably already know about the Great Website Outage of 2013. So let’s talk about backing up our Web sites.

It’s not enough to assume that your Web host couldn’t fall victim to this sort of thing, too. If your Web site is important to your livlihood, you’d better take a few moments every month and make sure you have your own back-up just in case.

DIY

Of course, there’s the obvious answer. Download all the files from your Web site to your own computer and whisk it off to an independent drive.* Heck, you may be able to delegate this to one of those little Flash drive you can get for about $20 at Target. As long as you do it somewhat routinely, you should be able to mitigate any damage that could be done by a hacker.

*Note: Member AndyL notes, “Woa, slow down. It’s not this easy, of course. You need to also back up your database!” Read the comments for more information. Thanks, Andy!

Services

Of course, the problem with the DIY option is that you have to remember to do it on a regular basis. And then you have to actually do it when you remember to do it — and not put it off because there’s a more pressing issue at hand. For that, you could us a service like CodeGuard that offers to do your back-ups for you for a monthly fee. You may be able to get away with the Personal Web Site plan, which offers a daily back-up for only five bucks a month and covers 5 GB. There are others — like Backup Machine and DropMySite — which offer similar services.

Other options

AMAZON S3

You may also want to check out Amazon S3, which backs your data up to the cloud. You’ll have to load some software on your server, though, so do a little research first.

DROPBOX

I love Dropbox.com. And it’s feasible that you could use it to back-up your Web site. WordPress-users can use this handy third-party app to get the job done painlessly.

Emergency!

If you’ve been hacked and your site is down, the first thing you need to do is get the bare bones of the site up and running again. You may not be able to get the archive running immediately, but you can at least post today’s comic along with a blog post explaining the situation to your readers. And you’ll probably want to get you ads running as well. To that end, don’t overlook the usefulness of the Wayback Machine, which may have a recent crawl of your site that you can swipe the page code from. In a pinch, it’s a quick way to get something posted fast.

What about you?

You you have a back-up method that’s not listed above? Wanna share a back-up experience with our members? Please add your comment under the original thread. 

by on January 23, 2015
Posted In: Archive Dive