This is followed by conversation between Patrick, Socar, and Jeremy, about goals for the new year, web comics, and technological obsolescence.
We hope the episode gets you back in your studios and hard at work in 2011. :)
Webcomics:
Resources:
To our fellow Ninjas--
We hope you enjoyed the holiday season!
If you care to share your goals for 2011, please post right here in the comments section!
If you happen to read web comics, please share some links with us.
Thanks for listening!
11 comments:
A good long episode, I really enjoyed this one!
(Steve Prescott is awesome and his blog is totally worth following.)
Pity the overall tone was a bit pesimistic. :( Poor Jeremy was trying so hard to cheer you up.
--
As for webcomics - I read:
Questionable content - a bit of a hipster soap. The art got a lot better in time and it's quite funny if you're into that kind of thing.
Johnny Wander - a sweet sort-of-autobiography with very nice art by Yuko Ota.
Oglaf - a really NOT safe for work porn webcomic. Recently it's been a bit hit or miss, but it has quite a few absolutely hilarious chapters. (and the art is good too)
Gone with the blastwave - a quite famous postapo comic. Ridiculously funny at the beginning, not so much near the end. New chapters are coming out very rarely, but it's still worth reading.
Ha, ha; sorry about that! It was a bit of a "tiredcast," or maybe a "whinecast," this week. We were all suffering from overwork, except maybe Jeremy, who DID seem really chipper!
Hi guys! Love listening to you guys as I work as always. I had a few comments regarding sketch book printing -
So first off, not knowing the company Steve had his book printed with, it's hard to know for sure, but it sounded like it was a digital print on demand company, due to the quality of the b&w that he described.
A couple of things about PODs, greyscale, and B&W that I've learned myself through experience: most PODs are optimized for text printing because that is the probably the majority of their business, not art. This means they're great if you have ink artwork that is scanned as 600+ dpi B&W, but absolutely horrible for greyscale. Their greyscale renditions look worse than the output of a $100 home laser printer!
There are VERY few POD companies that have the printers capable of doing good greyscale because it requires specific machines. If you can find one of them, you can get away with paying B&W prices for your book rather than full color (which really just seems a waste when you're dealing with just pencil drawings). I'd mention the companies I've used in the past that have this capability, but unfortunately PODs are always going in and out of business and so I currently do not know of one. Not to say they don't exist. Ask specifically for samples of greyscale output when researching companies and you can quickly find out whether they can handle it.
If on the other hand, you're printing at least 500 copies, then offset printing is a much more viable option. With offset printing you don't have the problems with greyscale that digital printing has. So you can go for B&W, with good quality, and for probably quarter to half the unit cost you'd be paying a POD for say 100 copies. Or even just go for full color if you're doing high quantities. I've paid as much per unit for a 98 page, full color, hardcover offset printing book at 1000 copies, as I did for only 200 copies in greyscale of a softcover, 50 page, POD.
top web comics any talk of web comics should start with the master list, hours of time wasted right here
girl genius
red moon rising
lackadaisy cats
nedroid
romantically apocalyptic like gone with the blastwave but updating
freakangels is great
(hope I did that linky thing right)
girl genius I think supports the artists, by selling the dead tree version after it's been released. But I think in general web comics if they are funded are funded by schwag like t-shirts, which really comes down to building up a good IP.
I think they mention on the W.I.P podcast, that many fantasy artists put down on taxes that their profession is housewife. And even the super pro's make "40k a year, with 35k expenses" or something. Seems like such a brutal industry to try to be in.
My brother who's published a few chapbooks now appreciates that they are in printed book form, because a blog post for instance slips away within a week, but someone could come across Horace Spiegelman in 20 years and pick it up and it will still communicate as well as today. So you have to think of the long tail. Also it seems to be a bit of a niche (don't notice any giant spandex breasts on the cover ;) so you have to find where that niche audience is and promote it there.
Someone feed Socar some chocolate, she needs pepping up :)
as for personal goals, got a 3 year old and a 6 week old, that'll be top priority for me for a long while ;)
Socar, cheer up!
Hi guys,
here's a webcomic from an unreliable author (me!) who updates it sporadically (but I have an excuse: I do it in my spare time, alternating personal portfolio work and this).
Toxitizens
It's been conceived for the web only, as you can see from the way chapters are structured (no pages). I was intrigued by Scott McCloud's experiments so...
there you go. :D
Hey guys why aren't you posting as frequently as you used to? seriously missing those weeklies and I'm not the only one :( hope to hear more soon.
link to my blog btw :)
http://adrianwilkins.blogspot.com/
Hey, great comments and links, folks!
Great thoughts on sketchbook printing, Stephanie!
I'll keep that in mind if I ever get the courage and finances in place to do one. :)
Adrian--We scaled back the schedule to bi-weekly for the podcast as we are scrambling professional illustrators who do this as a fun hobby.
The weekly schedule was getting to be untenable in light of our professional and personal commitments. :)
Still, we continue to have fun producing the show and enjoying the conversations that arise.
We're glad you and our fellow ninjas are enjoying it too!
The interview with Steve Prescott was cool. His book "Aggregate" is awesome! Everyone who likes fantasy art and/or drawing in general should snag a copy.
Towards the end of the episode I'm pretty sure I heard Thomas James's book mentioned. I just finished working my way through his book "15 Steps to Freelance" culminating in me sending out my first promos. It is a great read. I found it most helpful in that he took a lot of the how-to-knowledge and advice that I've been picking up here and there on various podcasts, books, articles, etc, gathered it all together and organized it into a simple thorough volume. Plus the inclusion of a workbook really helped me to not just learn more but put what I learned into practice much quicker.
The DeWolf books are great as well. A couple other more general business books that I have found useful are "The Slight Edge" by Jeff Olson and "Making a Living without a Job" by Barbara Winter.
~Looking forward to all the new episodes this year will bring!
Hey guys!
I'm a relative new-comer to the podcast world and I really enjoy your stuff. Thanks for taking the time to record and post.
In regards to the latest podcast, I know how Socar feels. My parents moved towns on my 25th birthday without telling me and didn't even bother to call. They also forgot my 31st birthday last year. Then, this christmas they spent looking at their over-priced LCD TV being miserable curmudgeons and wondered why my wife and I left early. My mother also doesn't like my wife so it's great fun at family get-togethers. Woo-hoo! (I would just like to clarify that my wife is actually an awesome Canadian and that my mother doesn't seem to like anything very much.) :-P
As to my goals for 2011? Well, funny you should ask! I plan on leaving teaching (which I've been doing for 6 years) and actually follow my dream to becoming a freelance illustrator! Or die trying! With that in mind I'm thinking about downloading Thomas James' (proper punctuation and all!) 15 Steps to Freelance Illustration. Is it as good as I'm being led to believe? It SEEMS like it's exactly what I've been looking for. Would it be relevant for an Australian illustrator? Or should I wait to put it into practice when I move to Canada this time next year? (Sorry for the questions, I was just after some opinions from you guys and maybe the other audience members...)
Anyways, I apologise for carrying on like I have. Take care and keep up the great work guys!
Damien.
I'll cvome back for the rest of the post but for now just some love and hugs for Socar! :)
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