It’s time to launch another Hot Seat critique series. This time, let’s talk about Character Design.
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This morning, Scribd announced it would be adding comics to its offering. From Robot 6:
Popular digital subscription service Scribd, often referred to as “Netflix for books,” this morning launched a comics section, giving users access to more than 10,000 titles from such publishers as Marvel, IDW Publishing, Archie Comics, Top Shelf, Top Cow, Valiant and Dynamite. The expansion brings the Scribd library to more than 1 million titles.
It’s notable that DC Comics does not appear on that list.
But what does this mean for webcomics?
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Thanks to the nice people at Smith Micro, I have two copies of Manga Studio EX to give away!
This is one of the many exclusive benefits that subscribers to the site have access to — along with daily news, tutorials, tips and advice.
I’ll draw two names at random on Feb. 27.
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A short while ago, a subscriber asked about the possibility of a Webcomics.com page on Facebook.
My response was that I was very much against it.
But it’s an idea that has been nagging at my for a while now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d like to give it a trial run.
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Once again, I’m trying something new with the Friday Archive Dive. Even if you’re not a member of the site, you can read the entire post, which originally ran here last February. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good sample.
If you’d like to join the site, you can get a 12-month subscription for $30 — or you can get a one-month Trial for $5 … with no obligation after your 30 days expire.
When Phillip Hofer, the man who created Comic Easel and co-created ComicsPress, gives me a technology tip, I take it to heart. And this one kinda took me back.
“Do not use personal domains to register for Web sites,” he warned me, “use GMail [or an equivalent].”
Why?
He pointed me to this story on The Verge.
To paraphrase, Naoki Hiroshima reportedly lost his “valuable” Twitter account because someone allegedly broke into his e-mail by taking over his domain. According to the story on The Verge:
While the attacker didn’t gain access to Hiroshima’s PayPal account directly, they did manage to pose as a PayPal employee and convince the payments firm to release the last four digits of Hiroshima’s credit card over the phone. Those numbers are usually fairly useless on their own, but the attacker then used them as verification on the phone to GoDaddy. Hiroshima uses GoDaddy to host his own domain and email accounts, so the attacker assumed control over the domain and was able to access Hiroshima’s email address. “It’s hard to decide what’s more shocking, the fact that PayPal gave the attacker the last four digits of my credit card number over the phone, or that GoDaddy accepted it as verification,” says Hiroshima.
It’s important to note that Paypal denies such a breach occurred.
Nonetheless, it’s a security loophole that I hadn’t considered. After all, GMail offers three levels of security on their e-mail accounts. Beyond your password itself, you can register a cell-phone number and register security questions.
And if that doesn’t work, Google concocts a series of questions (based, I assume, on public records) about your life that help verify that you own the account.
The questions we ask to verify your identity are intentionally difficult. Answer as many questions as possible, and make sure your answers are accurate. If you’re unsure about an answer, provide your best guess. It also helps to submit your answers from a computer you’ve used in the past.
I’ve been through this one. It dug an address from an apartment I lived at twenty years ago and put it into a multiple-choice question (“Have you lived at one of these addresses?”). Most of the cities were cities in which I had lived at one point in time, but only one had an accurate address.
I will be interested to find out whether GoDaddy will use similar methods to put the domain back into the rightful hands of the proper owner.
In the meantime, I’m going to make sure all of the sites that I register with have non-domain e-mail addresses attached to them.
Don’t use your domain-based e-mail to register with Web sites. Here’s why… http://wp.me/p4lKly-35k via @Webcomicscom
Editor’s Note: This post does not mean you cannot use your domain-based e-mail to register on Webcomics.com — especially for Returning Members. Rather, it’s a general, all-purpose piece of advice about Web safety.
Now, more than ever, it’s easy to see what a subscription to Webcomics.com will get you.
Every Friday, you can read the entire Archive Dive post without a subscription. The Friday Archive Dive is a post from the site’s archive that I pull out front again because it still has relevant information you can use today. This is especially nice for newer subscribers (or anyone else) who may have missed it when it originally ran.
Plus, at the beginning of every month, I do a wrap-up that highlights some of the best posts — from the site as well as the private forum — from the preceding month.
If you’re curious about joining, we’ve made it easier than ever with a $5 trial membership. You’ll get full access to the site for thirty days so you can see what you’ve been missing. At the end of the trial, you can choose to re-subscribe ($30 for 12 months of access) or walk away with no strings attached. You will not be re-billed unless you choose to subscribe.
Please note: The links below will lead you to content that is “subscription-only” content. Why do I do this? Simple. If you see something that intrigues you and decide to subscribe, you can come back here and use this post to jump right to the post that caught your attention. And once you do that, use the other Best Of posts to drill even deeper into the site!
The Q1 Crash: It happens every year, your ad revenue takes a huge dip in January. Here’s why it happens — and what you can do to compensate for the lost income in the meantime.
On a related note, it’s very important to adjust your ad rates in January.
Our Hot Seat Critique series focused on lettering in January.
The Kramdenization of Comics: Every time you turn around, there’s a new come-on for cartoonists to consider — a contest, a promise of Big Buck if you agree to host you content with an aggregator site, and so on. But what is the risk of scampering from Promise to Promise?
Kickstarter Drops Amazon Payments; Switches to Stripe: When Kickstarter first made their announcement, there was a metric ton of misinformation being bandied about — especially on some Facebook groups. This post corrected the false information and gave subscribers an informed perspective on what this change actually means.
The USPS announced that is was not hiking rates in the first part of 2015.
Where’s the best place to register a domain? With Google entering the ring, it may be time to re-think what you thought you knew. We look at Google’s new deal and compare them to some of the most popular registrars. Then, members chimed in with their favorites — complete with rate comparisons. This is one of those posts that could save you the cost of an entire year’s subscription!
Wizard World announced their purchase of Pittsburgh Comic Con.
On the Surviving Creativity podcast, Jim Demonakos talks about merging Emerald City Comicon with ReedPop. And then ReedPOP Global VP, Lance Fensterman, joins the show to answer some tough questions about the changes in store for this fan-favorite show.
The WHY behind crossbar I: We’ve been told — by everyone from Chris Eliopoulos to Nate Piekos — that we should only use the “crossbar” I in the case of a personal pronoun. But why? While I was explaining the rule to my Sequential Arts class at Hussian School of Art, I had an epiphany.
How many people read my comic? It’s a deceptively difficult question to answer with any degree of accuracy. But there’s a more important question that you’re not asking… why is it important to you in the first place?
The UPS Store has saved me a significant amount of money since I started using them for bulk shipping. I share the details.
Webcomics Q&A: The Ann Arbor Public Library brought me in, via Skype, to do a half-hour Q&A session for their webcomics group. I talked about a wide variety of subjects, and then I posted the annotated video so members could jump right to the topics they were most interested in.
Facebook’s Call To Action Button: It was easy to overlook, but Facebook unveiled a new feature for people who run Fan Pages — a Call To Action button. We gave subscribers a heads-up, a quick tutorial, and a few thoughts on using the button wisely.
A neat CSS trick for better hyperlinks. Are the links on your site ugly — or worse, dated-looking? Here’s an easy-to-follow tutorial that will have your site looking more professional in no time!
The private forum is a tremendous resource. Not only can you bounce ideas off other professionally-minded working cartoonists, but you can share thoughts that you wouldn’t want to put on a public messageboard. This is the place to discuss strategies of dealing with an inappropriate commenter — or to vet a business deal that you’ve been negotiating. Got a tech nightmare? I guarantee you that one of our members has been there and dreaded that. Here’s some highlights from last month.
Sponsorship offer? A member got an offer from an entity that wanted to sponsor one, specific comic in his archives. Members helped him see some of the potential pitfalls to this seemingly simple proposition.
Switching hosting: How much downtime is acceptable before you’re forced to switch hosts?
To Buffer or Not To Buffer! That is the question…
Creating movie-style trailers to promote books?
Je Suis Charlie… or Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie? It’s an emotional topic. We talk about it here with mutual respect from all sides.
If you’re publishing many titles, is it better to have a hub site or should you host the individual comics on separate sites?
Should there be a Webcomics.com Facebook Group?
Webcomics.com Study Group: From time to time, members of the site gather via Skype or Google Hangout to get together, talk shop, and share information, inspiration and ideas.
Get out your calendar and start circling dates. It’s time to do a little webcomics planning.
Business
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Here’s another helpful tip that comes out way via Philip M. Hofer (“Frumph”), creator of the popular Comics Easel WordPress plug-in. This one will work equally well in either ComicsPress or Comics Easel.
If you’re running a WordPress-managed site, your comments section probably has avatars that are administered through Gravatar (globally recognized avatars). Gravatar links an avatar image to a user’s e-mail address, and then whenever that person uses the e-mail address to sign in and comment on a Web site, Gravatar delivers the chosen image as an avatar.
But what happens when someone doesn’t have a Gravatar image linked to his or her e-mail address? You get one of those generic silhouette avatars (like the one to the right). And that can be kind of drab.
Luckily, you don’t have to be locked in to those grey ghosts. You can easily set up an entire compliment of custom-made avatars for your non-Gravatar-enabled commenters.
And it’s super easy.
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My first comic created fully in Manga Studio EX appeared on my site last week.
After 25 years of using Photoshop, this was a huge decision. I’d tried several times to make timid forays into Manga Studio, but each time, I got frustrated.
“It’s nothing like Photoshop!” I would exclaim, rage-quitting the software to run back to Photoshop.
Finally, after Lar deSouza offered to spend a few hours via Skype with Dave Kellett and me, walking us through the software. He (and others) generously offered to help troubleshoot issues that might arise while we were making the switch.
Finally, one weekend, I decided that the only way I was ever going to pull this off was to jump in with both feet and commit to creating an entire week of strips in Manga Studio.
I did.
It took me an entire weekend — with frustration, more rage-quitting, and a lot of expletives — just to build my standard comic-strip template. But once I got the hang of using some of the basic tools, I started drawing my first strip.
And I’m never going back.
Know why?
Same reason
I hated Manga Studio: “It’s nothing like Photoshop!” Now, I’ll never go back. Why? …Same reason. http://wp.me/p4lKly-331 via @Webcomicscom
Here are ten reasons I think Manga Studio EX will improve your comics:
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Once again, I’m trying something new with the Friday Archive Dive. If you’re not a member of the site, you can read the entire post, which originally ran on Jan. 24, 2012, in its entirely. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good sample.
Writing humor is something many of us grapple with. In the past, I’ve discussed a method that I advocate called Fermentation. And in many critiques and discussions, I’ve found myself advising writers to push or push further or push to the Funny. And every time I write those words, it occurs to me that the phrase is somewhat ambiguous and my advice may be missing the mark.
So I’m going to try to refine the Fermentation method, and I’ve love for those of you who are working in humor to try it out and let me know how it worked for you. (More on that later).
Once you’ve written your joke — refined the set-up and fine-tuned the punchline — I want you to leave it for at least 24 hours. I think this is crucial. It allows your subconscious mind to come into play and it brings you in fresh on the next day.
Now, look at what you’ve written and add another panel. Your job now is to use your punchline as a set-up to another punchline. Take the concept one step further. If an action has happened, explore the after-effects. If a surprise was introduced, top it with a bigger one. If the punchline was word-play, warp the words another step.
Finally, reduce the comic to its original panel count. Let’s say you do, indeed, produce a four-panel strip. Either lose the fourth panel and go straight from Panel There to Panel Five (making any necessary wording adjustments) or incorporate any crucial parts of the fourth panel into the third panel.
And “crucial” is the operative word here. The point is not to write longer, it’s to write better.
The optimum outcome should be to arrive at a sequence in which the word-count is very similar to the original.
Some solid advice on improving your humor writing. http://wp.me/p4lKly-34b via @Webcomicscom
Before I go any further, I want to thank member Oskar van Velden of Mojo who graciously agreed to allow me to use his most recent strip as an example. I noticed Oskar’s update on Google Plus, and it struck me that this was a perfect subject for this conversation because, although the punchline was good, I think it could have been taken to a higher level. Click on any of the images for an enlarged view.
This was Oskar’s most recent comic.
It’s a decent punchline.
But when I saw it, I couldn’t help but think about how the really funny stuff happened in the unseen next panel.
So, let’s allow our minds to wander for one more panel.
The idea of trying to stop nicotine cravings by slabbing slices of turkey meat on you skin has a really nice silliness to it. And the turkey slices look enough like the nicotine patches to make the concept cross over effectively.
But now it’s too long. The third panel doesn’t do a thing to advance the set-up. It doesn’t charge the tension, and if we leave it in, it actually telegraphs the joke, draining away much of the Funny. Since it’s pretty much extraneous…
I’m not even necessarily saying that this particular fifth panel is the best of all possible fifth panels.
And you could definitely refine it. For example, I might have added a skinny panel between Panel Two and Panel Three in which the penguin and the cat walk away from the man, having removed their patches. It might prevent a reader from thinking that the nicotine patches are being removed in the final panel.
I feel confident in saying that it’s an improvement, but I’ll bet there are dozens of “fifth panels” that you could dream up that take this very good set-up and push the concept to a much funnier place.
I’d love to see this in action. So I’m placing a challenge. Choose one of the following:
(1) Go through your archive and improve a couple strips using the Fifth Panel method. Post Before and After strips here for discussion.
(2) Use this method as your writing future strips, and post the results. The “Before” could be a written script and the “After” can be the finished comic.
If you’re interested in subscribing to Webcomics.com, you can get access to four posts a week containing news, tutorials, information and advice that applies directly to your career as a cartoonist — plus the private forum and exclusive member benefits.
A $30 membership gets you access for 12 consecutive months. But if you’d like to try it out for a month to see what you think, you can get a no-strings-attached one-month trial membership for five bucks.
Still on the fence? Scroll down. You won’t be able to read the full articles yet, but you can see the diverse topics and useful information that make this site a daily stop for so many working cartoonists.
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