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This month’s Hot Seat topic is Character Design. The rules are the same for every Hot Seat critique. I’ll start the conversation and then open up the discussion to the general membership. There’s still time for you to submit a character (or characters) for discussion. Just follow the directions in this thread.
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Recently, a reader asked me about the possibility of providing an RSS feed that featured only the comic updates. Some of the podcast posts in the blog were causing problems with his RSS reader.
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Since starting a single-panel comic, I’ve been interested in exploiting the fundamental social-media advantages of the format to the best of my ability. And part of that has been experimenting with Instagram for the first time. But Instagram seems to be hard-wired to exclude almost anything other than posting photos from your smartphone’s camera. So, forget about posting your comic strip there — it doesn’t fit the hard-coded aspect ratio. But what about my single-panel comics? Was I going to have to take a photo of the screen?!
Luckily, there’s a sneaky little workaround that will get your image into your phone’s Photos folder where Instagram will be able to access it.
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You don’t need a subscription to read today’s Friday Archive Dive!
Even if you’re not a member of the site, you can read the entire post, which originally ran March 18, 2010. 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.
Yesterday, in the Private Forum, a member asked, What are some tips and tricks for getting attention at a comic con? One member said: “Make sure you look like you’re having a great day even if you aren’t!”
It made me remember this wonderful moment in which a convention veteran took a moment to share some priceless advice with a newer exhibitor who was having a rough weekend.
A few years ago, the great Phil Foglio walked up to a colleague of mine.
“How ya doin’?” he asked.
“Feh,” said the cartoonist,”my feet hurt like hell, I’m not selling as well as I’d hoped, and I feel like I’m coming down with a cold.”
“No,” said Foglio, in what could only be called a fatherly tone. “These people,” he gestured across the convention floor, “they want to know that you’re having the time of your life and that when you fart, butterflies come out. It’s why they’re here. And it’s what you owe them.”
After that, every darned time I ever felt a little tired, a little sick or a little defeated at a convention, Phil’s voice piped up in my head.
And I farted butterflies.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a grammar post here. (Although, if you’re writing “ya” when you mean “yeah,” it might be good to do a little review.) But not too long ago, I saw someone use the phrase “for all intensive purposes” and it inspired me to start a new list of idioms and other phrases that are commonly misused.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
This month’s Hot Seat topic is Character Design. The rules are the same for every Hot Seat critique. I’ll start the conversation and then open up the discussion to the general membership. There’s still time for you to submit a character (or characters) for discussion. Just follow the directions in this thread.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
If you’re like many cartoonists, you learned Photoshop long before you learned any other image-manipulation software. As Manga Studio 5 EX continues to make converts out of us, I thought it would be useful to post a guide to manga Studio from the perspective of someone who, like myself, once saw all image-manipulation through the lens of Photoshop.
Good news! Manga Studio 5X is now $79 — down from $209 — for a limited time! (Offer ends 3/15/15)
Many of the shortcuts, processes and commands are identical. But there are some old habits that you’ll need to dispatch — and still other new tricks to learn that were never possible before.
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Here’s another helpful tip that comes our way via Philip M. Hofer (“Frumph”), creator of the popular Comics Easel WordPress plug-in. This one will work equally well in either ComicsPress, Comics Easel, or any other WordPress-powered Web site.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
You don’t need a subscription to read today’s Friday Archive Dive!
Even if you’re not a member of the site, you can read the entire post, which originally ran March 25, 2014. 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.
Patreon is proving itself to be a formidable tool for monetizing webcomics. Here are a few tips to consider before you launch yours.
The Kickstarter video rule holds here as well: Keep it short, bright and friendly. Absolutely under two minutes — better yet, aim for 60 seconds:
OK… you’ve probably got more to say than that. I tried to address this by recording a “Director’s Cut” video that went into further detail on the campaign. It was easy to embed that into my Patreon page with a custom YouTube thumbnail that invited people to play the extended video for more information.
Milestones and rewards were the most vexing part of Patreon for me. Rewards are what you offer people at different pledge levels, and Milestones are what you offer everyone if and when you reach certain levels of cumulative giving.
My gut was to make significant offers in both places, but that, I think, would have been a mistake. Remember: This isn’t a Kickstarter. This is going to be a monthly commitment for a (hopefully) long time to come.Having spoken to a number of people who have launched successful Patreon campaigns, I tended to hear variations on the same theme: This is a way for your True Fans to support you. They don’t necessarily want more stuff. They want to support a comic they love. The Milestones are secondary. If you do Milestones at all, they should either be 100% fun or they should be digital good you can “ship” via e-mail.
Milestones that remove advertising? I’m very leery of that one. That’s not a significant move forward in term of revenue. Rather, it’s trading one for another. If you consider this kind of Milestone, be sure to put it far beyond what you stand to typically make in a month through advertising alone.
Rewards, on the other hand, are much more important. Once a person has made the decision to support you on Patreon, those rewards can tempt a $1 pledger into becoming a $5 supporter. That’s key.Your lowest level should offer access to your Activity feed and nothing more. That’s the base level of support. Each level higher should offer something that’s more and more enticing. Don’t be afraid to put some high pledge levels in there (with equally enticing rewards). My top level is $20/month and I had a $20 pledge within the first ten minutes of announcing my campaign.Here are some great Reward ideas:
You have two feeds — the Activity Feed and the Creations Feed. The first is for casual communication with your backers. The latter is where the important stuff happens.
If your Patreon backers are paying every time you post a new project — for example, a Patreon campaign in which supporters pay for a graphic novel project by supporting each individual page that is posted with a money reward — then posting here with a “paid” post will trigger a payment from your backers.
If your Patreon backers are paying by the month, you should also post in the Creations feed. You will not need to mark them as “paid” posts because your backers are paying on a monthly basis anyway.
In either case, you can even control which backers can access the post. This way, you can post items that $10 backers can access, but backers at lower levels cannot.
The Creations Feed is the main engine to your success on Patreon. The number of updates is the first thing that fence-sitters will look at to gauge the “value” of their pledge. It also has an effect on how prominently (and how often) your campaign appears on Patreon’s Comics page. If they see a bunch of activity there, they’ll be much more likely to sign up. And if you keep bringing the goods in the Creations feed, they’re going to have no qualms upping their support.
Need proof? Look at the successful webcartoonist Patreon campaigns. You’ll see copious amounts of content there.
The Creations Feed should be dripping with Star-Bellied-Sneech appeal. This is your private club. You should make this a place that fans want to be a part of. Here are some great ones:
Need another reason to keep that Creations Feed popping? Everytime you add content to it, you’ve got a good excuse to casually mention it on your site/social media.
My one problem with how the Patreon page is set up is this… the most important part — the Pledge buttons — comes at the bottom of your page. And if you have a lot of content on that page, you’re going to be asking people to do a lot of scrolling.
There is a way to get your Patreon reward buttons up into the page area (like this)…
… but Patreon kinda makes you hunt for the information. I’m including a quick walkthrough here, but I’m going to warn you upfront: You have to be somewhat comfortable with HTML coding. If you’re not, this might not be a good time to experiment. Making even a tiny mistake is going to screw up your Patreon mistake completely.
Go ahead. Ask me how I know.
Here’s the code you need:
[html]<div style="text-align: center;">
<br>
<input onclick="window.top.location.href =’***patreonURL***’; return false;" value="***Button_Text_Here***" style="width: 400px;" type="submit"><br>
</div>[/html]
Note, there are two places in which you’ll plug in your own information:
Now, go to Your Patreon Page in the Creator Dashboard.
In the Tell your patrons why they should pledge to you section, click on the button that looks like this: </>
That will turn this…
…into this…
Now any place you want a button, drop your code in. For the ***patreonURL*** do this:
Replace ***Button_Text_Here*** with the wording you’d like to see in the button.
Click Save and continue.
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