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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ISBN — a beginner’s guide

ISBN — a beginner’s guide

An ISBN is a 10- or 13-digit number used to identify a book from a specific publisher. Once your book...
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How to write a Halloween joke

How to write a Halloween joke

On Substack, a cartoonist was struggling with writing a Halloween joke. He was experiencing a common problem. He was stuck...
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Webcomics Confidential: Size doesn’t matter

Webcomics Confidential: Size doesn’t matter

when it comes to your audience, size doesn't matter. A small and engaged readership beats a huge, lukewarm audience every...
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ComicLab Ep 357 — Innovation fascination

ComicLab Ep 357 — Innovation fascination

Having wrapped up his 16th Kickstarter, cartoonist Dave Kellett shares some insights about setting realistic expectations, avoiding paid advertising, and...
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On Becoming a Full-timer

As many of you know, I have spent the entirety of my career in Webcomics balancing that, my family life, and a “day job” (actually, a night job) at the Philadelphia Daily News.

Last month, the company announced layoffs, and — despite my 14 years’ seniority — the chances of my getting cut were pretty good. The day after they announced the layoffs, the company also announced a plan to combine the newsrooms of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News — switching to a “24/7” news organization that would be staffed around the clock.The content you are trying to access is only available to members.

by on March 28, 2012
Posted In: Business
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Safely enlarging digital art

You can always reduce digital art without sacrificing image quality. However, trying to enlarge art will usually result in poor image quality. That’s because you’re effectively reducing the DPI and the LPI of the image as you stretch it. If your original art has a high enough resolution, however, there’s a workaround. Here’s how to do it in Photoshop.

Select Image —> Image Size.

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by on March 26, 2012
Posted In: Image prep
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Mailbag: Multiple-Domain Branding

Q.: I have several elements to my work, a children’s book, a young-adult graphic novel / webcomic, and an adult graphic novel. I also have a strong desire to launch a small press publishing company as an umbrella for my work (and possibly others). How do I split up these different hats in terms of domain branding? Most webcartoonists seem to have the name of their comic as the domain name, then buy a new domain if they do a new comic. Others put the titles under subdomains of one, main domain. My particular problem with the young-adult graphic novel is that I want to market to 12-to-16-year-olds, and I can foresee that being a bit tricky in terms of a 34-year-old man pursuing a young readership. (My story is based on my 12-year-old daughter.) I have brought a bunch of domains to go either way, but with my first-ever con fast approaching, I feel none the wiser.

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by on March 22, 2012
Posted In: Web site
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2 Comments

Mailbag: Storing originals

Q.: After over 2 years of drawing, I need a long-term method of storing my penciled artwork.  I was thinking about buying a portfolio, but was wondering if that was good for storage.  I also considered using a similar method for storing my full notebooks of written work.

I’ve been struggling with this issue ever since I moved into my new studio a year ago. Here are some things I’ve figured out along the way. The perfect art storage is…
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by on March 21, 2012
Posted In: Mail Bag
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Interview with Henry Kuo, JustTheFirstFrame.com

As you may recall from last week, Just The First Frame became the first comics aggregator to reveive an actual endorsement from this site. I’m hearing that members are receiving some good traffic from this site, so I wanted to take a moment to check in with the cretaor of JTFF.com, and find out more about what brought him to create the site and what plans he has for the future.

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by on March 20, 2012
Posted In: Interviews
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Have you ever seen that on the copyright page of a book?

That’s a holdover from a different era in printing. This used to be a method used to indicate the print run of the book. Since the printing plates were expensive to produce, printers simply reused the plates and lopped off the number at the far right. Therefore, if you have a book that has the following series on its copyright page

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by on March 15, 2012
Posted In: Print publishing
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Webcomics.com poll: Buffers

Buffers fascinate me. On one hand, I can respect the immediacy and the energy of comics that are donewith little or no buffer. And the other side of me — the practical side — appreciates a large buffer for its ability to sheild a creator against the hazards of real life. So where do you stand right now? How many comic updates do you have completely done, ready to present on your site? How big is your buffer?

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by on March 13, 2012
Posted In: Uncategorized
19 Comments

5 Tips for Improving your Web site

As webcartoonists, we all share a set of common goals. We want our comic to be presented in its best possible light. And we want our Web sites to facilitate this process, hopefully engaging readers along the way. Here are ten painless ways you can improve your Web site today.

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by on March 8, 2012
Posted In: Web site
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