That's a What Blog's For, Silly!

So this month of January, for me, in my Earthbound comics duties, is deadline fever.  I'm prepping 3 (possibly 5) books to be ready in time for March and April conventions.  I seem to be mostly ahead of the game though...

My big big project is getting the Mastorism trade paperback volume ready, which, last night, meant I had to write a forward for the book (for lack of a better term--  I coaxed Jeff into writing an introduction).  All the while, putting this thing together I had thought about how far I had come from the first page...  but it really wasn't until I really put my head into writing the forward that I truly analyzed and saw the scope of how transformative a process this volume of Mastorism was.

I mean, I certainly knew that I grew as an artist.  A quick comparison between the prelude and the epilogue would convince anyone of that.  And as a writer, I likely also grew.  One of the things I noted in my forward was having to adapt the story, hitting the beats, so that it worked well as a bi-weekly webcomic but also as chapters and finally as a full story.  (Not to sound like a pretentious snob, but there is most certainly a difference between developing a story to be presented as a webcomic at certain regular intervals versus just posting your story comic on the web.)  So there was significant (and documented) growth in those areas, and pretty much every day that I completed a page, I was reminded of those things.

But the look back brought to light some other transformations that I hadn't ever stopped to consider, which are interesting to dwell on.  At least momentarily:

Webcomics.  My views on webcomics have practically done a complete 180 since the early development of Mastorism.  While my first run of Explosion Proof was more or less an experiment for myself to see the ins and outs, process wise, of getting a book created and published, even with a heavy promotion effort on my part, it seemed nigh on impossible to do what I wanted with a print publication.  What I wanted, of course, was to reach an audience.  A few message board chats  with DJ Coffman turned me on to the concept of publishing my story as a webcomic.  It was still swimming upstream. 

At the time webcomics had almost zero appeal to me, so why would I want to do that with my own comic?  But I persisted, learned everything I could (DJ was an amazing resource)--  today, not only has my own comic been relatively successful in the webcomic arena, but I'm a totally converted webcomics reader.  Totally part of that scene, to the point where, in this blog, I'm working to have a weekly webcomic feature.  I care about them that much. 

Digital Art.  Okay.  I noticed this.  In fact, many people know me as digital art/wacom evangelist.  Its one of my favorite subjects.  But the thing is, I can't remember when I wasn't.  Unless I think about it, that is.  Because two years ago I thought my Wacom tablet was a waste of money.  The REAL truth about how I came to make the digital jump is this:  I can't draw fast enough the traditional way.  Pure and simple.

You see, I had originally set out to draw Mastorism 100% traditionally.  In fact, I have one or two of the first pages drawn out traditionally (what you see published, though, are digital re-works), and about 2 or 3 more pages with the panels delineated that I never even got to.  I had dedicated myself to getting 2 pages done a week, and working traditionally was simply not cutting it.  Traditionalists like to sit an argue that traditional art is actually faster (they seem to think that us digital artists spend half the day hitting ctrl-z simply because its there), but I think its more up to the individual, and for THIS individual it cuts several steps from my process, and is just way way way WAY faster in excecution for me.  So I forced myself to learn to first ink, and shortly after also draw digitally.  And I never looked back. 

Okay okay, I look back all the time.  My wife would totally bust me on that since I've bought like 45 cheapo brushes (and one expensive one) hella pads of paper, pens, nibs, etc over the last two years.  I actually nerd out on that stuff.  Buuuut, when I want to get something done, I'll flip on the computer, and its most certainly how I define myself as an artist.

So, those are two of the biggies... there are some others, but I'll spare you for the time being.  You can see why I chose not to expand on these in the forward, or half the book would be just me writing about how much I changed during the book. 

That's a what blog's for, silly!

Let's Ink Outside the Bottle in 2010!

Well, as you likely noticed, I took quite a bit of a break over the holidays.  Since this blog is still in its "rocky start" phase, I figured there was no sense in writing a bunch of crap posts just to keep it alive in a time where I otherwise chose to stay away from my computer.

Also, for Christmas we bought ourselves a new TV and snazzy blu-ray player that streams netflix and all that.  

So, that might have been a contributing factor.

Happy New Year, everyone, and I've already got posts in the queue, so let's Ink Outside the Bottle in 2010!

Tales From the Blog side

On the blog side of things (continuing from my previous post):  I signed up for the Amazon affiliates program, which I’m trying to decide if that’s making me a crappy sell out, or an inventive monetizing blogger.  As such, I haven’t utilized my affiliate status yet.  I’m leaning toward the side of it not being such a bad thing since I know I’m an honest guy and would only push products that I can get behind, and would never try and deceive folks about it.  I would just have the links there as an option if folks want to support me.  Thoughts?  Anyway, since a lot of it would be comic books (or graphic novels if you will), price wise, Amazon is the way to go anyway.  Sheesh!   So…. We’ll see whether or not, and how much, I implement that.

Speaking of such things, I noticed that webcomic guru Kris Staub’s daily webstrip Chainsawsuit asked everyone to update their RSS feed over the last week or so.  The new feed goes through Feed Burner (as does mine, they give you nifty stats), but also includes AdSense ads.  HMM!  At first I felt like “well that’s kinda cheap and annoying!”  But the fact of the matter is-- particularly in the web comics/blog arena-- we’ve built everything around free content, so it only makes sense to monetize a bit. 

RSS feeds seem to be the toughest nut to crack, too.  Anything good an serialized on the net pretty much NEEDS to have a feed.  And I know from my own habits, that I pretty much stick everything in my Google reader, and read it from there.  I rarely surf to the original article, but just stay in my reader just read the feeds.  Even feeds that are summaries-- typically don’t get my traffic.  They’re just more likely to get ignored. 

The problem is that the blogs and web comics that make their (little) money from ads, may gain a huge  and extremely loyal audience through RSS, but none of that translates into traffic to drive the ad money.  So, in that sense, while RSS ads are not yet common, and feel a little invasive and cheap, it something that makes sense, too, in a lot of ways.  RSS ads are probably the way of the future if we’re going to survive the free content era.  Well, y’know, with the free content still intact.   It will be interesting to see how things pan out.  But in the mean time, I’ll have to try and not be so annoyed by ads in RSS feeds.

Really, when I found out I had the option of doing that, I thought to myself, “who would do that?!?!”  But I think its telling that someone at the front of the webcomics movement like Kris Staub, one of the big four that most of the rest of us look up to, even if what we’re doing is nothing like what they’re doing, is the first I’ve seen of this phenomena.  

Coming full circle back to my affiliate consideration… still not sure.  I’m going to test it out and see how it works.  Seems like there’s various options from simply putting links in my blog to items of interest to a full blown “recommended reading” widget on the sidebar.  I just feel a little funny about having that, AND Project Wonderful Ads, AND AdSense ads.  Holy cow. But on the other hand, I really wouldn’t mind getting some good books in front of people.  Or funding my blog a little bit.   So, we’ll have to see. 

No ads in my RSS for the time being though.

Productive Comicking = Sparse Blogging

So, originally much of this was part of my Links Outside the Bottle feature for this last week, but the post turned out so long, I though I out to break it in two.  The original post (as written) started out as an explanation for a slow blogging week (hmm.. The irony of that causing me to have two posts come out of one).  ANYhow the point was I had a busy comicking week, so here’s what I had to say about it (and then some):

On the home front, I’ve actually been fairly productive (hence the lack of blogification).  I’ve been fighting the tough I-want-to-be-drawing-but-I-have-lots-o-production-work-to-do battle (which is pretty much a battle even to type out, what with all those dashes), and winning.  All of my story pages are formatted for both Mastorism #6 as well as for the trade. 

Oh and shhh, top secret, but I think I’m going to be going through Lulu to print my trade in order to get an ISBN and some distro to Amazon.  It will still be an Earthbound production, no worries there, and I’ll probably also offer the trade on IndyPlanet as well, to be consistent  with the rest of the Earthbound books. But, a little bit of forum convo and subsequent research discovered for me the fact that Lulu, at least for the size trade I’m working on, is fairly competitive with Ka-Blam’s pricing (within pennies)  and offers free ISBN/passive distro (again, basically just to Amazon, but still very cool).  So, I’m going to try it out and see how it works out for me.

So, I had to explain that in order to make sense when I tell you that my other triumph for the week was getting all of the trade story pages, AND chapter lead ins, set up in InDesign-- ready to go!   So now, for both books, its just a matter of getting the editorial content completed. 

I’ve also already got my covers for both books being colored by the fantastic Norman Wong right now.  So, a happily productive week, even if I never really drew or wrote anything….

Links Outside the Bottle 02

So I started this installment of Links Outside the Bottle with a touch of a monologue about what I’ve been up to this week, but the links portion turned out so long, I figure I ought to break the whole thing up into two posts so as not to bore you all to death. 

So, away with the link blogging and the rest of the stuff I’ll schedule for later!  Enjoy:

Discovered a cool web comic this week called Freewheel.  The Comic Tools Blog turned me onto it, and I found it to be quite a good comic.  I was hesitant to post a link here, because I want to start a Webcomics feature article on the blog, but, what the heck, that’s a lame reason not to share a link!  So check it out, and I’ll probably have another go at it in a web comics feature.  It’s not like I’m totally spoiling it what with such a small group of current readers anyway.

Illustration art posted an interesting article about conceptual art.  I remember struggling with it in art school quite a bit.  I’m a much more functional/pragmatic thinker when it comes to art.  Not that I can’t enjoy or appreciate conceptual art, but I get absolutely nothing out of creating it.  This proved rather rough when I had a BEGINNING sculpture teacher who, apparently, roamed from school to school teaching beginning sculpture classes.  It was a “thing” for him. 

Anyhow, the class seemed less about actual sculpture construction basics, and more about how good of a “concept” you came up with.  Ugh.   This meant, I could spend forever constructing something really cool, but if my concept wasn’t engaging, it was worth crap.  While other people could (literally) buy 10 lbs of pork on the way to school, plop it on the table, say something nice about it and get an A.  By the time the final project came, I was so frustrated with the class, that I just bought the ugliest lawn decorations I could find at Ross, put a garbage bag over it, and hung a sign on it that said free.  I was told I had a “break through,” and that my work was “very intelligent.”  After that critique period, another student, who had hammered a nail inside a suitcase so that it poked out the side, that got equal praise, came up to me and told me his was total BS too, and we had a good laugh about the whole thing.

Sorry tangent..

So, in case you haven’t heard, Marvel announced a book this week called “Girl Comics” which, I gather, is an anthology by all female creators (100%).  Lots of good talent on the book, to be sure, but there’s also been a lot of controversy about why we even need a book like this, whether or not it “ghetto-izes” female creators, and how gender has become the selling point vs. the true accomplishments of the creators involved.  Whatever side you take, its likely become more of an argument than it ever needed to be, but just the same it makes good reading and Heidi over at the Beat does an excellent job covering/interpreting the whole mess.

Kinda gets me thinking, being the publisher/contributor of a book called Lady Fight, and all.  Though, I think our book can remain controversy free-- I think we have good female characters, and (as one reviewer pointed out) they all wear pants!

On that Frazetta story that I wrote a bit about last week, it seems there’s further “shocking” developments reported at the Beat.  An interesting story where there’s been a bit of a family dispute which came to a head when Frank Frazetta Jr. was “stealing” an estimated $20 million worth of paintings from the family museum/gallery.  Or so his siblings say.  Now a notary has come forward to state that Frank Sr. had transferred the power of attorney from the other siblings to Frank Jr.  But still, the whole thing seems suspicious.  Time will tell, I suppose!

Finally, not so much a news item, but a fantastic read anyway:  The Comics Journal has a great conversation between Dave Gibbons and Frank Quietly.  They discuss all kinds topics from editing “then and now,”  the development of UK vs. American cartoonists, and just good art in general.  These are a couple of comics’ greats, and we’re lucky to be living in a time when such a conversation is available to read.  Check it out.

Well that’s it for links this week. 

Moving Right Along + DJ concept sketch!

Have you noticed I totally ditched my ghost story idea?  Did you even notice the ghost story thing in the first place?  No?  Well, never mind then.  The point is:  I'm getting focused!  The covers for the last Mastorism book, and the trade paperback are complete.  I'm (with luck) sending them off to my colorist this week.  So I'm going to be into full bore pre-press mode with those soon.  Wrapping my brain around the whole trade paper back thing is going to be the most challenging-- Keeping track of all the pages and whatnot.

With 132 story pages (plus editorial content that could push it close to 150 total pages), its most certainly the longest publication I've ever prepared.  So, equal parts excitement and nervousness.  Well, mostly excitement actually.  I actually really nerd out when it comes to digital pre-press and just working with the print world in general.  With my job, in a relatively short amount of time, I've had quite a variety of design/pre-press/print projects and I love every minute of it.  Usually there aren't enough minutes of it... making the minutes I do have a tad stressful, but hey!  That's the biz!

Anyhow, here's what you want to see, a prelim concept sketch from my upcoming Mastorism project.  This time it's DJ:

Oh yeah.  That's the good stuff.

So again, its a loose "ink" sketch done in Manga Studio, to kind of get the costume/character design down a bit.  Here's the concept for her:  From the beginning she was always kind of a "wannabe" Mastor.  Those of you who've read the comic know that she came from the Dark Universe to Mastorism Universe to become a Mastor, but got rejected, and has since joined up with (everyone's favorite) Z-Squad.  So, her costume was always a tad of a knock off of the Mastor uniform as a nod to this fact.  Here I've more or less done the same thing.  The Mastor uniform got an upgrade, and so has DJ's outfit.  Blatantly showing off my laziness, you can see that I gave her different pants/boots.  I'll likely switch that up to better match the Mastors.

I've purposely made her outfit a closer knock off of the M uni because I think it fits an interesting conflict within her character, and also makes for an interesting contrast between her and Ash.  Ash, the former Mastor, will have completely un-identified herself with the Mastors.  DJ, who's long been bitter with the Mastors at this point, still considers her role with Z-Squad as a consolation prize for not making it as a Mastor.  So, some of this will play out in the story.  Should be interesting, to say the least.

Well, that's it for now.  More fun stuff coming your way soon!

Links Outside the Bottle

Week in Review and Friday Linkblogging, wee!

While I try and get my poop together on regular features, one of my ideas was a Friday linkblog post/week in review sorta thing, so let’s try it out and see what happens!  Here we go!
 
Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!

The big news this week in comics was the 47 or so “bombshells” DC dropped about 2010.  The one that seems to stir up the most controversy is the Year One “OGNs.”  If you’ve been under a rock (or at least don’t fanatically read comics blogs like I do), DC is launching an all new series of out-of-continuity “graphic novels” (meaning, no floppies) aimed at new readers in book stores.  The idea behind their intentions is a good one, but I think, marketing wise, they’re going to be fighting an uphill battle.  Time will tell.  They’re starting with Superman and Batman origins, which is kind of, sigh…. But again, time will tell.  Its caused a bit of ruckus with the online community.  But I’m thinking the reason for such a ruckus is only that so many folks are concerned that SOMETHING needs to be done to bring comics to a wider audience, they get passionate about it.  If nothing else, though, they’re trying and it will be a learning experience for all of us.

I’m not super enthused about the rest of their “bombshells.”   

The return of Bruce Wayne:  too soon, I think.  I like the Dick Grayson version--  I would have liked to seen them run with it a little more.  Which, I get the feeling we’ll have more time with it while Bruce has adventures throughout history, apparently. 

War of the Supermen the big event of 2010:  I had barely gotten interested in Superman comics again when this while New Krypton debacle started.  Its been pushing me away while I’ve been waiting for some status quo and some smaller stories.  I guess that’s not happening.

Legacies and the Who’s Who revamp:  I can get behind these.  Not sure if I’ll buy it, but ok.

New Flash series: Not really a big announcement, but the hype on new Flash stuff is not lost on this Flash fan! 

Other stuff…

Not a big Marvel fan, but I was pretty intrigued to hear about Valarie D’Orazio’s upcoming stint on Punisher MAX.  I’m a fan of her Occasional Superheroine blog, and the story behind her relationship with Punisher is pretty nifty.  I’ll likely check it out.  Rich Johnston seems to think its going to be an attack on the publishing industry, though Valarie’s blog post doesn’t seem to touch on that specific comment.

My colleague Mike Luoma wrote a really informative article about how to go about making your own comic book.  Gives all the need-to-know for every step.   On the pre-press side of things, it’s a tad skewed towards Ka-Blam’s specs, but I’d recommend them anyway, and it’s a great way to get a feel for pre-press stuff.

Crazy and sad story this week is the family infighting and, now, strange burglary within the Frazetta family. 

It’s a bit older, but Optimum Wound put up a post this week with a ton of cool inking videos (if that sort of thing floats your boat).  I haven’t even seen em all yet, but… yeah.  Rad.

I saw Doctor Solar/Magnus as a solicit from Dark Horse for Free Comic Book day.  No link.  Just pointing that out.  I have to wonder if Jim Shooter is going to be involved or not…  heck, I have to wonder if its going to HAPPEN or not. 

That’s it for this week.  Probably more than enough!  Just touching on stuff that caught my interested.  So far this feature seems to be fun enough for me.  I’ll slowly be adding these regular features in…  with luck!