WED, NOVEMBER 9 , 2005 Just a suggestion based on a wealth of dealing with the negativity on the net... FRI, OCTOBER 28 , 2005 Ahoy. I stumbled upon your comic the other day. I liked it. Don't be MON, AUGUST 1 , 2005 Dana wrote: god, darren, reading your latest rant reminded me of a short one act i wrote in college. i submitted it to the Student Play Festival and actually got it picked up for production. i'm talking lighting, sets, costumes, music, everything. even a chance to write up a little essay on the process of writing that would be included in the festival's program. needless to say, i was stoked. i had never worked on anything so hard in my whole life, and i was proud that i had, for once, produced something with a bit of merit to it. Dana, you had it far worse than I ever did. All they ever did to me was TALK about changing everything, not actually doing it. Sorry that happened to you. The one time I had somebody rewrite me, it was a 'producer' of a low budget film I was trying to get going. Although he had never written a screenplay before (or produced, either), he fancied himself a writer and set out to 'fix' some of my earlier scenes without my knowledge. I remember the sick feeling I had when I first realized it by reading the changes. That must have only been a fraction of what you felt seeing it unfold onstage for the first time. Awful, truly awful. There's a joke where a writer and a producer are crawling through the desert, dying of thirst. Suddenly, they stumble upon a beautiful oasis with a crystalline pond. The writer immediately plunges his face in and drinks deeply, until he hears the sound of water falling. He looks up to find the producer wizzing in the pond. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?" the writer screamed. The producer smiled proudly. "Improving it!" FRI, JULY 15 , 2005 John B. wrote in a second letter (come on, guys, John has schooled you non-writers TWICE now!), and asked a practical question. I want to do one of these myself. Got any tips pointers and such?
First off: a gameplan. Sounds like you've already got one, John. If you've got the comic name, you've probably got an idea of what you want to do. I recommend to anyone, before you dive headlong into the pool, get your major characters, any plotlines, etc. written out. Just notes, folks. No novels required. If you're interested in doing a 3 panel / joke-a-day kind of comic, make sure you know how and when you want to introduce your characters - after all, Charles Schultz didn't introduce Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy, Peppermint Patty, etc. all in one strip. Or in the first 20 strips, even. Which is a good point - your ideas (and plots and new characters) will evolve as you go. But you need a defined starting place, no matter how vague it might be, to get going. I would also highly recommend doing a rough version of your first 20 cartoons or so. You know, stick figures and dialogue. Get a backup reserve. When you're trying to come up with a great idea at 10:00 PM the night before you told your readers you would post, the pressure can kind of get to you. Have a bunch of stuff "in the can" as they say in Hollywood (meaning film footage that's already been shot), and replenish it often. Second off: the artwork. You can do a bunch of Googling and find out how each artist does his own thing. I'll try to find some examples later and post them, but I'm ON A ROLL, AND I CAN'T BE STOPPED! The problem with many of these sites is they can be very intimidating. At least, they were to me. Anything in color, or special art stuff like sponge application of ink, or fancy Photoshop shenanigans? I started to hyperventilate, man. A lot of web comics artists (certainly not all, but a lot - at least, a lot of the really good ones) have some sort of artistic training or background. Blue pencils...what's that? What the hell? How do you get rid of that stuff? And they talk endlessly about their Farber #13 micro-coated felt tip Razoback True Ink metal-nibbed whatchamacallits! Somebody get me a paper bag, I'm hyperventilating again! I started drawing (lightly) with a mechanical pencil. And then I inked with a felt-tip pen. And then I erased the pencil. And then I shaded in parts I wanted shaded in...with the same pencil. Voila. Done. Now, admittedly, it got a lot more complicated as I went on...and I did use Photoshop flimflammery to avoid having to do backgrounds, which I hate drawing. But look at the very first page I drew, Page #1. Pretty simple stuff. I did the type and balloons in Photoshop, yes (don't hyperventilate, man!), and maybe a little shading, but everything else was hand drawn. For a really simply drawn, yet pretty popular web comic, check out WHITE NINJA COMICS . Holy crap, that's simple! Yet they've got a big fan base. And they're pretty funny. And I swear I don't see any Photoshop in there. Third: why does this guy keep mentioning Photoshop? It doesn't have to be Photoshop. It can be one of any thousand image/photo manipulating programs out there. It's just handy to have a program to remove that ink line you accidentally slashed across your character's face. Or something to clean up some stray pencil stuff you didn't erase. Or type in the dialogue so you don't have to letter it by hand (because I swear, when you scan it in, it'll look so jagged you can't read it. Unless you're a professional calligrapher by trade with smooth, smooth handwriting). Photoshop-type software helps you correct mistakes in your art, and takes a big load of work off your shoulders in lettering the text. Plus it can help you optimize your file size for the web. There's a thousand different types, and a lot of them are cheap. GET ONE. Get a book, learn the basics. It's a big investment of time upfront, but you won't believe how much trouble and time it will eventually save you. And the more you know, the more you can do with your artwork. (Although sometimes less is more...) Fourth: equipment. You'll need a regular computer and a scanner. That's basically it. As you get more proficient with your artwork, I'd recommend getting a little Wacom drawing tablet, or something like it, that lets you use a special pen instead of a mouse. Your control will go up 500%. They can be pricey, around $300, and you don't NEED one, especially if you do something as simple as WHITE NINJA. Do 30 or 40 comics before you consider getting a drawing pad. Once you do, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. Fifth: a site name. Sounds like you've already got one, John. Great - for everybody else, go to the dozen registries available (GoDaddy.com, Register.com, etc. etc.) and check to see if they've got the URL name you want. Flexibility is good, because odds are somebody else has already registered it. (Read my tale of woe here.) Choose something memorable. Then go looking for a hosting site, so they can link your chose URL to the website you're currently building on... Fifth and a half: your hosting site. At roughly the same time you're looking for your site name, you should also be looking for a good hosting company for your website. Scratch that...first, start off on free space provided by Tripod or your own Internet Service Provider (AOL, Earthlink, whatever you got). Then, when you've decided you LIKE doing it (and that IS important, because it's a lot of work, folks), consider getting a site with lots of bandwidth. Unlimited if you are willing to pay $30 or so per month...or that's what my host tells me. I haven't put it to the test yet, so I don't know. But a lot of bandwidth is only if you plan on getting as many readers as possible. If you're content letting the site build slowly by word of mouth, you can probably start out with a GoDaddy starter site of $5 a month or so. But beware - if a really popular site loves you, and links to you, you might find yourself swamped with users and paying overage charges (maybe even hundreds of dollars). Check it out, and make sure you're prepared for the worst-case scenario (if you can call 100,000 people checking out your site a worst-case scenario). I use Hostway...so far they've been great. But there are literally a million out there. Do some research and find one that fits your needs. You can always change later if they suck. Sixth: consider advertising. This is kind of advanced...at least, more so that "use a mechanical pencil and erase it"...so I'll go into detail in a future column. But consider it if you want to get your readership kickstarted. Again, if you're more comfortable with building an audience by word of mouth, cool. There are plenty of "TOP WEBCOMICS" lists that will give you exposure, and if you get people to vote for you, you move up the list and get more exposure. FREE. Forget advertising. But I wanted to get the word out about my site, and I figured the easiest way would be to advertise. There are plenty of web comics sites with YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE where you can buy 50,000 ad views (that's your ad appearing 50,000 times, not people CLICKING it 50,000 times) for $50. That's pretty damn good. Plus, you'd be supporting other web comics, which is very good. If you can't afford the $50, there are smaller sites that offer $15 banner ad spots. If you REALLY can't afford that, cool...but remember, there's always credit cards (with low interest rates! If it's over 12%, NEVER! DON'T DO IT!)...or forgoing drinks at the bar for a couple of weeks...or eating ramen noodles for lunch for a month...there are ways. There is always a way. Anyway, my hand is about to fall off now, so I'm stoppin'. Hope that was helpful to the greenhorns out there. Future columns will go into more depth for those of you who consider the above pre-school...but dude, remember: as far as this web comics thing goes, I'm only in first grade myself.
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