THE WEBCOMIC MANIFESTO - HOW THE PEOPLE GOT THE POWER
I. INTODUCTION
1. COMIC BOOKS SLOWLY INTRODUCED TO A NEW REGIM
2. THE BABY BOOM - WHAT'S OUT THERE NOW
3. IS THIS REALLY A CHANGE, OR JUST POLITICAL CHATTER? - WEBCOMICS AS A NEW STORYTELLING MEDIUM REVOLUTION AND NOT JUST A FORMAT CHANGE
II. COMICS, COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET
1. WHAT TECHNOLOGY WAS KEY FOR THE REVOLUTION
A. THE INTERNET
B. DIGITALISING ANALOG THROUGH A SCANNER
C. DRAWING DIGITAL AND THE GRAPHICS TABLET
2. NEW MEDIUM, NEW FORMAT, ALL THAT NEEDS A REDESIGN!
A. ADAPTING TO THE SCREEN AND ITS RESOLUTION
B. ADAPTING TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB, AND CONNECTION SPEEDS
C. CUSTOM DOMAIN OR SIMPLE BLOGS, THERE'S SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE
3. WEBCOMIC DESIGNS: WHAT UNITES THEM
A. WEBCOMIC BROWSERS
B. ARCHIVE SYSTEMS
C. CONNECTION TO THEIR READERSHIP
III. THE PEOPLE'S REFORMS - HOW DEMOCRATISATION AFFECTED THE COMIC WORLD
1. ONLINE SOLIDARITY - CROSS REFERENCING
A. MY SPAGHETTI MONSTER EXPERIENCE
B. PENNY ARCADE AND STEAM
C. WE'RE ALL ON THE SAME SIDE - LAID BACK RELATIONSHIPS AMONGST WEBCOMICS
2. PRINT TRIES TO CATCH UP
A. ONLINE COMICS BUT NO REDESIGN?
B. ADAPTING PRINTED COMICS TO THE INTERNET
I. ANIMATED COMICS
II. EXCLUSIVE AND NEW CONTENT IS MANDATORY!
3. WEBCOMIC SUPERSTARS AND PRINT RECOGNITION! - SUCCESS STORIES.
A. PENNY ARCADE AT THE SAN DIEGO COMIC CON
B. ZERO PUNCTUATION
C. CYANIDE & HAPPINESS AND SIMON'S CAT HIT THE PRESSES!
IV. THERE'S NO TURNING BACK, I'LL TELL IT MY WAY - WHY WEBCOMICS ARE UNIQUE AND HOW THEY HAVE PLAYED TO THEIR STRENGTH
1. IN THE LAND OF SELF-PUBLISHING, THE ARTIST IS KING
A. NO ONE IS THE BOSS OF ME!
I. YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!
II. HOMEPAGE SAFE HOMEPAGE - SURE, I CAN PUT A DISCLAIMER, THEN NO ONE CAN BOTHER ME
III. XKCD LIKES TO PLAY WITH FORMAT - WHEN THE PUBLISHER'S OUT, THE ARTISTS GO OUT AND PLAY
B. IT'S THE INTERNET, I CAN SAY WHATEVER I WANT! - PENNY ARCADE, ZERO PUNCTUATION, CYANIDE & HAPPINESS
2. BUILDING A FAN-BASE AND MAKING MONEY?
A. SUCCESS IS FROM KNOWING YOUR READERSHIP (XKCD ON PENNY ARCADE)
B. A HAPPY READER MAKES FOR A HAPPY ARTIST - HOW TO MAKE MONEY AND ALL BE HAPPY!
I. MERCHANDISING
II. ADVERTS
III. DONATIONS
V. RESTRICTIONS FROM TOTAL FREEDOM - TECHNOLOGICAL BOUNDERIES ARE STILL TO BE OVERCOME!
1. I WANT EASIER WAYS TO CREATE A WEBSITE! - WHAT THE HELL IS HTML, PHP, AND CSS?
2. I WANT FASTER INTERNET FOR ALL!
3. I WANT BETTER HARDWARE FOR ALL!
4. I WANT THE CHINESE TO STOP INTERNET CENSORSHIP!
VI. CONCLUSION - WHY NOT TRY IT YOURSELF? THERE'S NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.
1. £10 A YEAR FOR A .COM, £4 A MONTH FOR WEBSPACE, EMAIL AND INTERNET SECURITY? I CAN AFFORD THAT
2. IS TIME REALLY THAT PRECIOUS?
3. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO TELL YOUR STORIES? - THERE'S SO MANY POSSIBILITIES, EXPERIMENT
Sunday 18 July 2010
Plastidip
For my stickmen statue I was recommended a substance/material for the finish: Pastidip. Basically, it's spray paint (or just paint) that will cover your surface with rubber/plastic. Yes, aerosol plastic! It must be the must unnatural substance in the world. The fumes are pretty nasty though, so I ordered a spray paint (light chemical and particle filter) mask. As long as I'm not actually using concentrated asbestos in a can, I should be fine.
I got 2 cans of plastidip yesterday and have been experimenting on the finished. It's really quite impressive stuff, but doesn't work well with cloth or anything too absorbing, and to my surprise, it looks fantastic on bear tube, and really cool on duct tape. I need to do a couple more coats on my sample to have some realistic results (the thing need about 3 to 4 coats on average, might need 5 on duct tape). I'm actually thinking that high grade masking tape would be the best thing to have as an undercoat. Once the plastidip is applied, you can't tell what's under it, and it doesn't drip and looks quite homogeneous.
I got 2 cans of plastidip yesterday and have been experimenting on the finished. It's really quite impressive stuff, but doesn't work well with cloth or anything too absorbing, and to my surprise, it looks fantastic on bear tube, and really cool on duct tape. I need to do a couple more coats on my sample to have some realistic results (the thing need about 3 to 4 coats on average, might need 5 on duct tape). I'm actually thinking that high grade masking tape would be the best thing to have as an undercoat. Once the plastidip is applied, you can't tell what's under it, and it doesn't drip and looks quite homogeneous.
Friday 9 July 2010
Adpating comics for the web
I've already posted on part of what I'm going to write here a while back when I compared webcomics and their layout to translated manga, and English adaptations. I'll just come back to this a bit later.
I've been reading Will Eisner's "Comics, a Sequential Art," and have been putting my readings in parallel with my webcomic. Will Eisner analysed, like quite a few other comic book experts like Thierry Groenstein and Scott McCloud, the sequence and design of comic books. When you look into the design of a single page and it's sequential art inside that defined space, webcomics work in the same way. The pages in most webcomics can be read following the "right to left, up to down" occidental reading method.
I've illustrated this by adapting a couple of sequential pages of a speechless comic into an animated .gif picture. This experimenting has allowed me to explore and visually demonstrate quite a few differences, similarities, obstacles, and adaptation techniques of printed comic books to webcomics.
I have adapted these 2 comic pages into the following .gif:
The images in the comics have been organised in the .gif file in the logical sequential reading order. This brings me swiftly to two points: adapting printed sequential art to the internet, and digital medium sequential artwork representations which cannot use digital technology that cannot be reproduced in printed form. That sounds really long, but what I mean by that is that there's quite a few ways to adapt a printed comic into a digital sequential art form, but only one way to go adapt it the other way around.
In the digital world, the tools are infinite to tell a sequential story, and mixing the media to create a digital comic book, say like mixing the layout of the comic, but adding animation to some of the page and images allows for a whole new storytelling method that cannot exist (without a substantial budget, resources and research) in a physical print form. All I'm saying here is that by digitalising comic books, many more options are given to us a part from the printed sequential form.
Now if one has a look on my webcomic browser and remembers the previous post I have written about webcomic browsers, which can be summed up easily by: webcomics favour people revisiting the website to newcomers by placing the latest page/comic in the place of honour. On my webcomic, while placing the 2 directly sequential pages which should/would be following each other in an order that would make the most logical sense. Therefore adapting this to a new medium causes some logistical problems (as I like to call them). This is just worth pointing out seeing as I already discussed quite extensively the reasons for my browser setup on my website. One has a choice to make, and generally, like most choices each decision contains pros and cons. The pros outweigh the cons, but the frustration of not having a perfect system is there: what if I put a few sequential pages on my webcomic, and people read the end before the beginning because of the browser setup? Nothing is perfect.
I've been reading Will Eisner's "Comics, a Sequential Art," and have been putting my readings in parallel with my webcomic. Will Eisner analysed, like quite a few other comic book experts like Thierry Groenstein and Scott McCloud, the sequence and design of comic books. When you look into the design of a single page and it's sequential art inside that defined space, webcomics work in the same way. The pages in most webcomics can be read following the "right to left, up to down" occidental reading method.
I've illustrated this by adapting a couple of sequential pages of a speechless comic into an animated .gif picture. This experimenting has allowed me to explore and visually demonstrate quite a few differences, similarities, obstacles, and adaptation techniques of printed comic books to webcomics.
In the digital world, the tools are infinite to tell a sequential story, and mixing the media to create a digital comic book, say like mixing the layout of the comic, but adding animation to some of the page and images allows for a whole new storytelling method that cannot exist (without a substantial budget, resources and research) in a physical print form. All I'm saying here is that by digitalising comic books, many more options are given to us a part from the printed sequential form.
Now if one has a look on my webcomic browser and remembers the previous post I have written about webcomic browsers, which can be summed up easily by: webcomics favour people revisiting the website to newcomers by placing the latest page/comic in the place of honour. On my webcomic, while placing the 2 directly sequential pages which should/would be following each other in an order that would make the most logical sense. Therefore adapting this to a new medium causes some logistical problems (as I like to call them). This is just worth pointing out seeing as I already discussed quite extensively the reasons for my browser setup on my website. One has a choice to make, and generally, like most choices each decision contains pros and cons. The pros outweigh the cons, but the frustration of not having a perfect system is there: what if I put a few sequential pages on my webcomic, and people read the end before the beginning because of the browser setup? Nothing is perfect.
Thursday 20 May 2010
Stickmen propaganda
Imagine my amazement when I turn on google analytics for the hell of it and saw I just got 200 hits in one day out of the blue! Well, that's what I thought...
Then I turned on my brain and remembered I'd done harder things than to figure out which referring site sent 200 people to my website, and I did find it, very easily as well. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster published on their website one of my comics... Pretty cool heh? I think so, especially with 200 hits on the very first day it appears! And that's the story of how people came to my website...
Link to The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, stickmen propaganda
Then I turned on my brain and remembered I'd done harder things than to figure out which referring site sent 200 people to my website, and I did find it, very easily as well. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster published on their website one of my comics... Pretty cool heh? I think so, especially with 200 hits on the very first day it appears! And that's the story of how people came to my website...
Link to The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, stickmen propaganda
Thursday 13 May 2010
Pictures of my spray paint
I think I've already written quite a lot about my spray painting. I just had the idea of adding some more comic books to my paint job, mainly because it fit so perfectly, creating my stickman revolutionary group mixes reality and 2D stickmen, allowing for the comics to really leap out of the page.
Wednesday 12 May 2010
Stickmen merchandise hits the... well I made a Tshirt.
made a stickmen comics tshirt. But why? I have to say, I'm quite ashamed to mix this seemingly shameless promotional campaign with art and design. I am quite terrified to mix business with art because that's what I've been taught to do in my under-graduate course.
Is it truly a shameless promotion? Well, it is a bit, but not with the intent of selling anything of making money, it's more of a satirical artistic take on promotional campaigns. I really enjoy trying to bring live to my stickmen in my webcomics. Everything is promoted these days, so why not my campaign to acknowledge stickmen as real people? It's really on the line of taking comics to people on the street, like my spray paint. I guess creating any public art is a form of publicity, by definition at least. So my remorse goes away, and I just treat my t-shirt and its promotion as a playful way to promote not just my website and my webcomics, but just any webcomic, and taking them to viewers in a free way (I only have one t-shirt for now, and it's not for sale).
Here's 3 of my flyers:
I made a mistake in my first flyers which I corrected . The mistake was I forgot to put the neck of the stickmen inside the t-shirt, so that's been settled...
Is it truly a shameless promotion? Well, it is a bit, but not with the intent of selling anything of making money, it's more of a satirical artistic take on promotional campaigns. I really enjoy trying to bring live to my stickmen in my webcomics. Everything is promoted these days, so why not my campaign to acknowledge stickmen as real people? It's really on the line of taking comics to people on the street, like my spray paint. I guess creating any public art is a form of publicity, by definition at least. So my remorse goes away, and I just treat my t-shirt and its promotion as a playful way to promote not just my website and my webcomics, but just any webcomic, and taking them to viewers in a free way (I only have one t-shirt for now, and it's not for sale).
Here's 3 of my flyers:
I made a mistake in my first flyers which I corrected . The mistake was I forgot to put the neck of the stickmen inside the t-shirt, so that's been settled...
Tuesday 11 May 2010
List of Inspirations and Reading
I just realised I haven't formally noted what I have read recently and what has inspired me, mainly because I read a lot of comics and books or articles about the subject, but in a nutshell, this is what I've been looking at:
1666, by Pat Mills & Leigh Gallagher, a 2000AD comic, mainly because it's just a great story and it's just absolutely great inking. I keep on looking at it to get inspiration for my black and white inking technique. I think these guys are an ultimate reference in terms of inking.
Tank Girl, by Alan C. Martin and various artists including Ashley Wood and Rufus Dayglo, Image Comics and Titan Comics. I just like to see how a story evolves after going through so many authors and artists. I also watched the film adaptation which was surprisingly brilliant! I did expect Tank Girl to have a deeper voice instead of the high pitched one.
Nemesis, by Mark Millar (the man who wrote the comic book Kick-Ass, which is now a "major motion picture") and McNiven. This comic is the answer to Kick-Ass, in a way that it's a real world masked super-villain in our contemporary times.
American Splendor, by Harvey Pekar and various artists, including Robert Crumb. Harvey just writes about his day to day life and underground comic book artists draw it up. It's my main inspiration for writing my stickmen comics about myself.
Scott McCloud, he's a comic book historian and teacher and artist amongst other things. Scott's probably the biggest academic reference in terms of American comics. He writes his books in comic book form, so it's a good read to see how he teaches about comics in comics.
Will Eisner, which a lot of people know as the creator of The Spirit, adapted to film by Frank Miller, or his comics about New York, such as The Contract with God Trilogy. Needless to say the man is a comic book genius, and luckily he wrote instructional books. The one I refer to quite a lot is Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, which is basically about the semiotics of comic books, and how details, expressions, and items are a way of telling a story. Comic book readers find this obvious, but when it's written out in front of you, it's very clear that some weapons are clearly made for bad guys, or good guys, and even the way a person holds a gun can give more information about his character than any text. I try to use all of this in my comic books, using basic comic book semiology to transmit a narrative. Will Eisner tends to lay out all the tools available to comic book artists, and reading his books just shows the extent of the tools available.
Orc Stain, by James Stokoe, at Image Comics. I can't wait till the next issue comes out. This comic is just genius in so many ways. It's so original in both the design, character creation and artwork. Luckily I managed to get in contact with James Stokoe, but he seems to be very busy working on his comics.
I think I'll stop the list there because I have more comics on my desk that most people have in their homes and I don't think it would bring much more if I described them one by one.
1666, by Pat Mills & Leigh Gallagher, a 2000AD comic, mainly because it's just a great story and it's just absolutely great inking. I keep on looking at it to get inspiration for my black and white inking technique. I think these guys are an ultimate reference in terms of inking.
Tank Girl, by Alan C. Martin and various artists including Ashley Wood and Rufus Dayglo, Image Comics and Titan Comics. I just like to see how a story evolves after going through so many authors and artists. I also watched the film adaptation which was surprisingly brilliant! I did expect Tank Girl to have a deeper voice instead of the high pitched one.
Nemesis, by Mark Millar (the man who wrote the comic book Kick-Ass, which is now a "major motion picture") and McNiven. This comic is the answer to Kick-Ass, in a way that it's a real world masked super-villain in our contemporary times.
American Splendor, by Harvey Pekar and various artists, including Robert Crumb. Harvey just writes about his day to day life and underground comic book artists draw it up. It's my main inspiration for writing my stickmen comics about myself.
Scott McCloud, he's a comic book historian and teacher and artist amongst other things. Scott's probably the biggest academic reference in terms of American comics. He writes his books in comic book form, so it's a good read to see how he teaches about comics in comics.
Will Eisner, which a lot of people know as the creator of The Spirit, adapted to film by Frank Miller, or his comics about New York, such as The Contract with God Trilogy. Needless to say the man is a comic book genius, and luckily he wrote instructional books. The one I refer to quite a lot is Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, which is basically about the semiotics of comic books, and how details, expressions, and items are a way of telling a story. Comic book readers find this obvious, but when it's written out in front of you, it's very clear that some weapons are clearly made for bad guys, or good guys, and even the way a person holds a gun can give more information about his character than any text. I try to use all of this in my comic books, using basic comic book semiology to transmit a narrative. Will Eisner tends to lay out all the tools available to comic book artists, and reading his books just shows the extent of the tools available.
Orc Stain, by James Stokoe, at Image Comics. I can't wait till the next issue comes out. This comic is just genius in so many ways. It's so original in both the design, character creation and artwork. Luckily I managed to get in contact with James Stokoe, but he seems to be very busy working on his comics.
I think I'll stop the list there because I have more comics on my desk that most people have in their homes and I don't think it would bring much more if I described them one by one.
How's my site doing?
I stuck Goolge Analytics on my website, and I get all sorts of fun statistics. So here's some of them from the last month (10/04/2010 to 10/05/2010):
All in all, my website visits are booming, and I'm now listed on a website called "stumbleupon.com" which gets me quite a few random visits. I haven't tried to qualify for add-space since I just started my website, but I don't think I will, mainly because it wouldn't get me any revenue and ruin the aesthetic of my website.
Nota Bene: If you can't read the statistics, click on the image to enlarge it.
That's the numbers of visitors per day over the last month.
And that's the statistics on the number of new visits and such.
That's where in the world they visit from.
I use to be able to pin-point exactly who visited me from where, but now I lost track, and I don't know a lot of people who visit my website.
That's just the list version of the map.
That's the 4 cities that I get the most visits from in the UK.
Aberdeen get 73 visits, London is second with 14, then Edinburgh and Sale.
That's how people get onto my website.
I'm now second on Google when you search for "stickmen comics".
That's what people searched in the search engines.
Nota Bene: If you can't read the statistics, click on the image to enlarge it.
Friday 30 April 2010
My comic #100 & the Church of the Flysing Spaghetti Monster
Iain asked me "why do you put the email address on the bottom of some of your comics?" My answer is simple: when I write a comic about someone else I send them a copy of the comic, and just in case I write down the link to my website if they want to check things out.
The other reason I put the address of the website on the comics is when I make promotional posters. I put the address of the website on my comics cause it can be used as a promotional stunt, but mainly it's a form a signature.
Why am I explaining this now? Well for the first time I actually got an answer from someone I didn't meet in person, and of quite high profile. My comic #100 on my website is about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so I sent a copy to the creator of the church and got a reply. That was good enough to put a grin on my face, knowing that someone liked what I did and thought it to be topical. Bobby, the creator of the church thanked me for my contribution and said he would put the comic up on the church's website.
http://www.venganza.org/ - Church's Site
What is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Well I do admit it is a bit of an intellectual underground movement, but I'll fill you in. In America, in the state of Kansas, home of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, a law passed: they had to put a sticker in front of biology books saying that evolution is just a theory and were bound to teach creationism as the other explanation of life on Earth... So as a reply to this, Bobby decided he would present the school-board with his explanation of life on earth, and to cut it short, he believes in a flying spaghetti monster. If the creationism gets into science, well then he should get to dress up like a pirate, right? It's a religious thing in the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The other reason I put the address of the website on the comics is when I make promotional posters. I put the address of the website on my comics cause it can be used as a promotional stunt, but mainly it's a form a signature.
Why am I explaining this now? Well for the first time I actually got an answer from someone I didn't meet in person, and of quite high profile. My comic #100 on my website is about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so I sent a copy to the creator of the church and got a reply. That was good enough to put a grin on my face, knowing that someone liked what I did and thought it to be topical. Bobby, the creator of the church thanked me for my contribution and said he would put the comic up on the church's website.
http://www.venganza.org/ - Church's Site
What is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Well I do admit it is a bit of an intellectual underground movement, but I'll fill you in. In America, in the state of Kansas, home of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, a law passed: they had to put a sticker in front of biology books saying that evolution is just a theory and were bound to teach creationism as the other explanation of life on Earth... So as a reply to this, Bobby decided he would present the school-board with his explanation of life on earth, and to cut it short, he believes in a flying spaghetti monster. If the creationism gets into science, well then he should get to dress up like a pirate, right? It's a religious thing in the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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