rpmichel
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Odd tips, eh?
First off, I’ve tried all sorts of sketchbooks but always found that I treated them too preciously to actually use them as sketchbooks. I would always end of doodling in margins of notebook paper, back of xerox scratch paper, post-its, etc.
So I bought a form holder and filled it with scratch paper and black BIC pens (for some reason still my favorite sketching tool). There is nothing precious about my sketchbook and I can carry all sorts of things in it, if needed. (Like books, important documents, DVDs… but mostly books.) The linked case is kind of expensive at Amazon. But I think I found a fairly cheap one at my local office supplies shop for somewhere around $8 – $14.
I’ve never been able to get into messenger bags. I’m probably weird, but I’ve always worried about the offset weight. So I basically always have a backpack with me. Nothing special. Basically an old, trusty friend that I’ve had well over 10 years. Sometimes people giggle at me and ask if I’m still in school. But most of the time folks ask if I was ever in the military. *shrug*
If I can’t carry my pack or case with me, I bring the hipster’s PDA with me: a stack of notecards bound by a binder clip. The blank sides of the cards are great for sketching and the lined sides are great for notes. Bonus: I can hang my pen off the binder clip to keep it all together in my pocket.I like to work with bristol pads and Moleskines. And my favorite rag paper is Stonehenge. But like I said, I freeze up if my sketchbook is too precious, so I run with the cheap office supplies.
I also find that I have to kick off my “Time to Work” Pandora station to put me in the right frame of mind to get to work. I have a specific location in my apartment designated for artwork, or I go to the local grocer who has open seating and free WiFi. And when I can swing it, I try to keep a pretty routine schedule. Mental, physical and temporal spaces make a world of difference.
I’d like to second Brad’s advice: consider your writing in your comic before you worry about an AdWords Ad.
First, understand–your artwork is amazing. And I mean: ah-ma-zing. It’s Mignola meets Assassin’s Creed.
If you aren’t already, you definitely need to be doing freelance illustrative work. Your style is elegant and edgy. It’s gritty but streamlined. I’m sure it’d work well enough with a variety of different production processes. (Which is harder to achieve than one might think.) The color palette is focused; and I bet your inks stand on their own super-well.
But I am not likely to return to your site to read your comic.
Don’t get me wrong: I could stare at prints of your work. I’d love to buy album art with your name on it. Your covers are fantastic!
But I don’t know anything about your characters, the world they are running around in, or really what’s going on right now or why anyone is doing anything.
What’s everyone’s motivation? What’s at stake? Why should I care? What are you trying to tell me? What is your message, your moral, your theme, your armature? (In my opinion: these are all different words for the same concept.)
For your particular work, I don’t think you should focus your writing time on the action or the dialogue. I think you need to go higher-level; more broad. What is your comic about. Right now, there’s a lot going on. A lot of things are happening. But I don’t have the faintest idea of what your comic is about.
There’s a bunch of fascinating concepts floating around, but they aren’t anchored to an armature. A bonding, binding structure that provides meaning. I need more context.
I strongly suggest you check out Brad’s article on The Sitcom Framework.
I’m also very fond of the work of Brian McDonald who shares some main points from his books via the Chris Oatley Podcast. (But still check out the books; they’re great!)
Pixar also released a fun little short on their Toy Story 3 Blu-ray about Beginnings.
Again, I think your action-narration (visual storytelling) is solid and your dialogue works. You just need to go broader; think bigger and figure out what your message is. That will better inform where you need to stretch out the tension (read: what’s at stake?), and where you can pop that release.
I would looove your comic to succeed. It’s got a lot of great concepts in there so far that remind me a lot of the creativity that’s gone into Saga. Just, reign it in a bit so I have a touchstone to empathize with the characters and relate to what’s going on.
But no matter what–do not stop! Keep up the great work, keep studying, keep experimenting.
I suggest you check out Margaret Trauth’s work: http://egypt.urnash.com/
I feel that Margaret pays great attention to layout and how it may function on a digital device. And she is really playful with her panel layouts.
I mostly remember Decrypting Rita, but I see that there’s more work, now, that I need to check out. At the very least, there’s some fun things one might be able to do with layered transparencies like on the main Egypt Urnash site. It reminds me of the old site design for Think Geek, where a colored gradient reveals a different image when scrolling up/down.
Hi Jenn! I really love the hard work you’ve put into your comic so far!
I really see no problem with you using your Aldwen Archives umbrella in conjunction with your Blightrun story line.
However, when I first hit your site, I thought perhaps your comic was part of some fantasy adventure comic collective called Aldwen Archives. Similar to SpiderForest or Elfwood. But it was a minor mental stumble, not a “game over” scenario.
And I really like your Blightrun logo and really don’t want you to change it. But if you’re truly concerned about it, then I think Aldwen Archives: Blightrun works well. Blightrun An Aldwen Archives Adventure feels like the equivalent of “The Facebook,” you know what I mean? “Facebook” has less words but the same content.
To that effect, Blightrun is really all you need.
My only other suggestions refer to your About section. I first read “Blightrun: An Aldwen Archives Adventure” and thought of a fantasy adventure comic collective. I then sought out an About tab to see what the Aldwen Archives collective was all about, but it wasn’t in your main nav. I love that your About blurb is in your footer! But maybe you could have an About tab in your main nav that simply jumps to your footer?
Aldwen Archives is a collection of fantasy adventure stories set in the world of Aldwen College.
The first story in the series is called Blightrun.
And your about blurb hits all the right points. But maybe you could tighten it up just a little bit?
Your world isn’t called Aldwen College, right? Aldwen College is a locale of your world. But what is the name of your world? Or of the land? What is your Narnia, your Azeroth, your Middle Earth?
Furthermore, your story doesn’t take place in the college, right? The Blightrun is not like the Triwizard Tournament at Hogwarts. (Or maybe it is. I guess we just aren’t that far, yet, into your comic.)
I’ve been really drawn to how cartoonist James Anderson of Ellie On Planet X would narrate his blog posts from the perspective or persona of “Mission Control.” It really helped provide an immersive experience for me, the reader.
So maybe we could do something similar with your About blurb?
This adventure through the Blightrun is released from the Aldwen Archives at Aldwen College in Middle Earth.
I don’t know. Two Aldwens feels redundant. Maybe just “the archives at Aldwen College?” But then what about brand recognition?
This adventure through the Blightrun is brought to you by the scholars of the Aldwen Archives, a college nestled in the foothills of Azeroth.
But I like the tempo of your blurb better, so maybe the in-world tactic won’t work.
The simplest change would be to insert your world’s name.
Aldwen Archives is a collection of fantasy adventure stories set in the world of Narnia.
The first story in the series is called Blightrun.
Thinking of Narnia, and looking up the Wikipedia page perhaps I’m misreading the use of Archives as a place and you mean it to be the materials, itself.
The Aldwen Archives collects a series of fantasy adventure stories created by cartoonist Jenn Furman.
The first story in the series is called Blightrun.
Still not there, because in this example Aldwen would be the name of the world. Therefore, Aldwen is to Narnia as Blightrun is to The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Which I don’t think is true for your story.
Or taking it back to a Hogwarts setting…
The Aldwen Archives are a collection of fantasy adventure stories from the halls of Aldwen College.
The first story in the series is called Blightrun.
Anyway, I think I’ve sufficiently over-analyzed this topic. But hopefully you get the idea of what I’m trying to illustrate.
Again, I really like your work, your site and I think everything works as-is. But since you asked about clarity, this is my amateur shout-out from the peanut gallery.
Nate, I just have to say:
Wow!
Outstanding work!
I love your drawing style. I’m totally cool with it being b&w because everything is so cohesive. Even the one color strip that I saw was good, too! I don’t see why you aren’t confident in your coloring abilities.
And your writing is spot-on! Even though I haven’t heard of nearly half of these games, I totally get what’s going on. I don’t get lost in the dialogue, nor do I lose focus of the joke.
The site design is super-clean and consistent. Does Squarespace help with that? Is it pretty easy to use as a webcomic platform?
To be honest, any criticism that I would provide would completely be nitpicking.
My biggest concern is burn-out. Can you honestly keep up this kind of schedule? You seem to be putting out the same types of content that Penny Arcade does (comic, game posts, twitch videos, blog posts, etc.) but I’m guessing it’s just you, right? I mean, they’ve been at it for nearly 20 years and have nearly as many employees working on their stuff. You’re just one person!
Is this why you don’t feel confident in your coloring abilities? Does it add to what appears to be an already-full schedule? I know you’re just posting once a week, but still!
Similarly, I’ll be really interested to see if you can keep this going on such a narrow topic. You definitely appear to have the passion for the content.
I’d just hate to see your amazing talent die out because you’ve painted yourself into a corner by only posting video game reviews. I’m just saying that as a reader, I’d be cool if you decided to expand into other pop culture, or further developed your characters or whatever. But only if you need to!
If video game reviews keep you going, then do it! Your passion is showing through in your work.
You have laser-focus here, and it is spectacular to see!
Keep up the great work!
I’m not quite sure what that means; sorry.
Is my Webcomics.com login not using a WordPress login? (I only know enough about account management to be dangerous; again, sorry!)
I was using the Jetpack Like button for two reasons:
1) I want to communicate which articles I like on Webcomics.com. You know, a quick-and-dirty feedback loop for Brad.
2) I thought at one point, I was able to see the articles that I Liked through some kind of account page. That way, I could re-visit those articles more-readily in the future. You know, some kind of in-site bookmark system. But I could be mistaken.If you guys have bigger fish to fry, by all means, don’t spend any time on this issue. Just let me know and I’ll try to bookmark links to articles in some other way.
Thanks for your time and help!
Sorry to be a pest, but I’m not able to Star or Like articles anymore. Looks like some people can, though.
I click on the “*Like” button and a WordPress login pops up in a new window. I try my Webcomics.com login information and the login box just shakes its head at me.
I’ve tried in both Chrome and Firefox on a Win 7 machine.
I don’t think I’ve been able to do this since the beginning of this calendar year.
Let me know if I can share any more information to help.
Thanks!
Is there any way to make it easier to log into the Webcomics.com mobile site?
I take the bus everyday, and my phone is the best way to check out this site. But, I’m a lazy internet user, and I have to really rummage around in order to read articles.
More often than not, I see interesting articles posted in my RSS feeds and decide to view them later on my computer. The only problem is that I tend not to follow up on my computer.
Here’s a play-by-play of me logging in on my phone:
– Open Feedly
– Oh, wow, that looks like a great article at Webcomics.com! Let’s check it out!
– Open it in my mobile browser
– Gosh, what a great mobile-friendly WP site
– Ok, cool. Now, where do I login?
– Pan up, down, left and right. Nope! No login button to be seen
– Maybe I need to “Join now to read the entire thing!”
– Nope, I’ve already done that. Already a member
– That’s cool, I’ll just go back one page
– Ok, this time I’ll try the site Menu and try Member Info
– Oops! Members only
– Ok, site Menu and My Account
– Oops! Members only (Hmm, I’m sensing a theme)
– Ok, let’s try going all the way down to the bottom again
– Oh, good. I can “View Full Site”
– Hey, there’s the login bar! But I need to zoom in
– Awesome, I can enter my username. (No, auto-correct, that is not how I spell it!)
– Now, let’s just pan over to the password box
– Wait, it won’t pan with the rest of the site…
– Guess I’ve got to zoom out to type in my password
– Oh, right! I need to open Lastpass!
– Ok, new tab…
…Take five minutes to retrieve my password…
– Ok, now… did I enter my username?
– Zoom in–yup!
– Zoom out and press and hold on password box to paste in password
– No, wait, not Member Info, again!
– Sigh, Members onlyOnce I get logged in, things seem to be cool.
Ultimately, I wonder if there is a way to add a Login item on the Mobile Menu that will direct to:
https://www.webcomics.com/wp-login.phpOr it could all just be that I have no idea how to use the internet and I am completely missing something. So, any help or insight is appreciated.
As always, thanks for all of your hard work and thanks for hosting such a great community!
Thanks for your input, everyone! I feel much better about my purchase now.
I’ll probably check out the EX trial just to see what I’m missing in regards to the text tools.
What’s SAI? I’ve never heard of that before.
Agreed, it’s a great deal and I just bought a copy last night.
But does anyone know if I’m missing much by buying Manga Studio 5 instead of Manga Studio 5 EX?
I mostly make comic strips and saw that the story editor is the main feature added to EX. Is that super useful for strips? Am I missing out on anything else?
I guess I should have tried the 30-day trial before buying it; but it was such a good deal!
If this is what you mean by digital stamps:
http://rubberstamping.about.com/od/digitalstamps/a/DigitalStamps.htmThen I suggest a GIF instead of a JPG.
From what I can tell, you want to provide line art for someone else to re-work as they see fit. If so, then you will only have two colors to worry about in a GIF and the file size should plummet.
It’s an elegant way to get fans to interact with your work.
Just to make sure–you’re selling the stamps, right?
If not, then I’d be super worried about giving away hi-quality artwork. For free desktop printing, maybe 150 dpi instead? 200 dpi at most? A fan can still interact with the image, but they don’t get press-quality prints.
But you said “customers” so you’re probably selling them.
