The first part of this is here.

Now I’m not unfamiliar with conventions, although previously I had always shared a table and nearly all of my experience was in the US. This time, I was only taking on my homeland of Vancouver, BC, Canada. This led to some very interesting experiences and a look at some very interesting revelations about my fellow canucks and the climates of the various conventions.

Minicomi

My first convention of the season was Minicomi. A new one day comic market based after the 1 day dojin markets in Japan and put on by UBC’s Anime Club. The event was held in UBC’s Student Union Building (a place I have become very familiar with…) in the ballroom. It was quite spacious, and seemingly well organized as far as checking in and setting up was concerned.

I had generally guestimated that the crowd’s demographics would probably be 15-25, biased to the females, likely asians or asian decent. I had thought that it was, from all the advertising, going to be a market of people buying stuff, or looking to buy stuff. Since there were no ‘official’ vendors, as in commercial vendors, and this was an artist only event, I figured it would be a good climate for independent comics. However, this was pretty far from the truth.

The event was free, and so a lot of families were showing up with their kids (ages ranged from about 7-14ish), and there was a LOT of browsing and not a lot of buying. The crowd that was gathered was mostly interested in cosplaying and window shopping. A lot of people stopped and looked through my artbook, and really liked my jewelry, but never wanted to buy. It was strictly looking.

The sales that were being made around the hall were specifically fan art of established, popular series. There was also a price point of about $5. Most things sold were under or not much exceeding $5. Keychains, buttons, and small fan art prints appeared to be the best sellers. Now, I used to work in a commission sales position. I KNOW how to work a tough crowd. I worked it as hard as I could without being a bitch, and I just BARELY made back my table costs. I sold about six things total, including one commission, an art card, a couple of buttons and a couple of comics. I know that other independant comic artists didn’t do much better. The people who were doing well up were the fan artists, not just of anime, but also video games. There were some crafters there as well who I don’t think were doing particularly well either. The price point of this event was very very low, and the people who were there really were interested in fan content, not original content.

I may give this another whirl with many of the new, fanish buttons I came up with over the three conventions I did. I only started with about 7 or so designs, and I have a lot more now. I would also think i need to do more fan art or genre work to make back my money on this. Overall, I broke even on the table, but not the gas or my time at the convention.

I would only recommend this market for people who do a lot of fanart or fan based work, and bring stuff that is 5$ and under. Don’t expect to sell much above $10 in price. (unless you sell cosplay items or plushies… I saw people walking around with those) If you have a lot of product already, it may be just another opportunity to sell, but unless you are making things that appeal to fans of established series, this probably won’t be a good market for you.

Notes for next year: I’m going to try this convention again, but I’m definitely going to find more $5 or less items, and tap a few fandoms for ideas like I did with my buttons later in the season.

Cos & Effect

Cos & Effect is supposed to be an alternative fashion and Cosplay convention which was held at UBS, that, like Minicomi, was a brand new convention this year. However, since the demise of the local anime convention “Anime Evolution”, this sort of became this year’s defacto replacement.  Unlike Minicomi, this was a two day event and had a registration fee associated with it. It also had dealers/artist alley separation. The price was more than Minicomi, but it was WORTH it.

The artist alley was located in a room on the second floor, and it was a friggen destination at the convention. The room was PACKED for nearly the entire con, so much so that making your way around the aisles in cosplay (which turned out to be far too narrow) was hazardous to displays and fellow con-goers. The biggest issue was that if someone stopped to browse a table or take a picture, it stopped up the whole flow of traffic. This made it difficult for some folks since no one could actually STOP at their tables. I was lucky, I got a table in the front corner, where there was a large space and it was right in front of the entrance. Everyone could see me.

For this convention, I made up a bunch of new button designs, had a t-shirt printed, and did up some earrings for the necklaces I already had. I also had my comics and, art cards,  art prints from the previous Minicomi since I sold so little.

The sales were brisk and the place was packed even before the room opened (someone screwed up and let people in early. ). Over two days I met a ton of interesting people and sold more than enough to cover everything, from my table to my gas money, and covered what I lost at Minicomi.

My most popular item, hands down, were my buttons. Buttons FLEW off the table. Seriously, I pretty much made my convention off button sales. Several times I had to whip out my button maker and press more of particularly popular designs. I can officially say the button maker paid for itself.

The next best selling items were the comics (awesomely enough), and artwork (prints, artcards, and commissions)

The big loser as far as product went was the T-shirts and the jewelry. Again, price point was an issue. A lot of interest in the jewelry, a little in the shirts. But not a lot of people willing to spend larger sums of money.

The con’s demographic was slightly higher than minicomi as far as age went. about 18-30, with some families, but less than the one day Minicomi. It was more highschool/college students, with a smattering of working adults, and a few family units here and there. The main difference I think between minicomi and Cos & Effect, was that people came to the convention expecting to buy stuff. They were LOOKING for stuff to buy, and not just of their favorite fandom. They were much more open to discovery, and artists. This made the convention much better for independent artists who’s work doesn’t center around fan stuff. Although fan stuff obviously sold very well.

The price point was higher than minicomi. $10-$15 was the threshold that made people buy or make them think and “come back later”, although I learned that bundled table deals make things sell much better. My button bundles were far more popular than anything else on the table. I plan for next year to make more available. A lot of people wanted to buy more expensive things, but a lot of them spent their money in the dealers room. I’m guessing the threshold for the dealers room was higher in terms of what people would spend, but that’s pretty typical it seems for most conventions. I think a lot of younger people too are struggling in the current economy. There was more than once people were extremely interested, but they just couldn’t afford it.

Overall this was an awesome convention, and I’m sure it will be even better next year. IRL Events really knows how to run a good event. With some of the changes and feedback they got from their artists, I’m sure the alley will be even better next year. I expect the artist alley will be juried again, which is different from a lot of conventions way of handling artists alley, but I hope I make it in again. (assuming they have one)

Notes for next year: I’m going to add some cosplay elements to my table specifically for this convention, and try to work on my jewelry so that I can get it to a lower price point. Also, more button designs and work on updating my artbook, new comic issues, and freshen up my prints. But I’m definitely coming back to try for this one.

Vcon

One of the oldest sci-fi conventions in Canada, Vcon is a proper convention held in a hotel. It’s been around a long time, and as such had (as I expected) the oldest demographic as far as age ranges. It also didn’t separate the artist’s alley from the dealers room, which was actually pretty small comparatively to many other conventions I’ve been at.

Vcon is… unique as far as conventions goes. The vendors room was a little more like a craft fair than what you’d expect from dealers. Which makes what you can buy there a truly unique experience. And also what’s expected from you as an artist shifts a little sideways I discovered.

The attendees were generally in the 35-50 age range, although there was a smattering of  younger adults, they were definitely the minority. A few families had young kids, but for the most part you were dealing with older sci-fi/fantasy fans, which, let me tell you, are a very different breed than anime fans. Also, unlike cosplay/anime conventions, it skewed a bit to the male heavy side somewhat. The price points seemed higher in the room, 20-50$, but you had to have the right stuff.

These folk had money to spend on the right products. But the right products were tricky business. Artwork these people were looking for was classic fantasy and sci-fi art, and they expected to see originals as well as prints. Large ones. Like 11×17 or larger, on bristol or canvas, in traditional mediums like ink, acrylics, oils, or watercolour. The artshow was a big deal, with some AMAZING pieces. These people are buying art for their homes, or are collectors. They are willing to spend some big dollars for the right pieces, but most of the artists in the alley (including me) were definitely NOT ready for that sort of crowd.

As far as my table went, I brought a few new items with me to the convention. Clip on kitty ears, cyberlox ponyfalls, and a brand new set of sci-fi/geek themed buttons and added Zipper pulls to my repertoire of my most popular designs. I also had to reprint my comics, since I had sold so many at Cos & Effect. ( you can read my reviews of Ka-blam and RA Direct’s print jobs if you want to know how they stacked up.)  Otherwise, I was working off old stock from the previous conventions.

Vcon is a 3 day convention, and the first day, Friday, was predictably slow. The Saturday was also slow, surprisingly so since Saturdays are usually the busiest at 3 day conventions, however Sunday was a gong show. Almost 80% of my sales were on Sunday. I did… alright. The buttons, once again, were a life saver. Sold more buttons than anything else at the table. Our other surprise, was that we sold out of kitty ears in a flash on Sunday. We didn’t bring that many, since it was an experiment, but we’ll be for sure bringing more next time.

Again, lots of interest in certain products. Cyberlox were a definite novelty, people stopping to touch them all the time, and browse the jewelry, but only sold one item, one of the cheapest ones. Had a lot of people browse the art, but my anime stuff is definitely NOT for this crowd. I would probably have done better with more generic fantasy art, and definitely need to bring traditional originals.

I bundled my comic with my T-shirt, and thanks to a few friends sold a couple, so that made the table cost. A nice promotion that the Vcon folks did was create a con currency for the dealers room to encourage people to shop. Everyone got a free 2$ of con cash with their registration, and the convention ‘cashed’ it at the end once the dealers room closed. They also awarded prizes in con cash, so it encouraged people to shop the dealers room. A very cool idea for sure. I cashed out a fair amount of it.

Notes for next year: Bring more ears, more buttons, more artwork, particularly an original portfolio of more classic artwork. Enter the artshow. Make jewelry that I can sell at a cheaper price points.

Overall Notes for 2011

I think I broke even more or less on the conventions I went to. It wasn’t easy, but it was also my first time there, and my displays were not ideal. I have a lot of work left to do on those yet, but I need money to make things like popup banners. I did managed to get some better racking. I might need more though.

I am definitely happy about my button maker purchase. It paid for itself many times over and saved my butt at each convention I was at.

I need to work on updating my artbook and focusing a little on my core product, which is my art in general. Comics and originals/prints and such. My artbook is horribly out of date.

Overall Notes for 2012

I am definitely going to look at deals/bundles for the table, making more buttons. I might consider getting another button maker of a different size. I also want to work at making most of the products on my table under 10$ as much as possible, nothing over 20$, unless its in a bundle. I will probably try to leverage a little more fan inspiration into some of my art, but also look at producing some work which can be sold as originals, especially since I’m already committed to Vcon and looking at other conventions in the summer. I want to have my other comic, Shifters, printed. I had Brymstone #1, but I also need to get back on top of updating for Brymstone (which kind of fell behind thanks to Shifters and conventions) and be well prepared in advance this time.

As a graphic designer who works almost exclusively in print, I’ve worked for about a decade with a number of different printers (large and small). This gives me a lot of expertise and expectation when getting anything printed as to what kind of quality I should get from a printer. So I’ve recently printed my first set of comics, and  as such I’m exploring the world of on-demand comic printing. In an effort to help the community, I will bring my findings to you all so when you come to the time when you want to print some comics, you’ll have some perspective.

My first stop on this Road is one of the more well known On-demand services: Ka-blam.

My Experience with Ka-blam

On my first visit, I wanted to get a sense of Ka-blam’s prices, quantity breaks, and formats. Ka-blam’s website has a nifty little instant quote wiget, that tells you all that information pretty instantly. Ka-blam has an option to include and ad for them to help lower the price of your cost per issue, which is also nice. The cost, over all, for a standard 32pg full color book is about 3$ an issue or there about. Sounds extremely reasonable, yes?

They also offer to add it to their online catalog, Indyplanet, for free, where they will pay you commission of markup minus printing fee  if you sell copies off their website. They also offer a service to offer it to Brick-and-Mortar comic book shops called “Comic Monkey”. They’ve recently also begun offering a digital marketplace option.

My book is the first ‘prequel’ chapter for my webcomic Brymstone. Fortunately, having intended for it one day to be in print, I had high resolution files. A high resolution file is 300 DPI or better, for those of you who don’t know. My first task however, was to make them fit into Ka-blam’s standard comic template.  I was actually quite grateful for the template, although as a designer who’s delt with PDFs forever, I was a little dismayed to have to send my print job as 32 individual TIFF files… in RGB. *shudders*

But this is their show and in all fairness, most of their clients are NOT designers who know of color space and proper discipline when making a PDF. So they are trying to make their process as easy as they can for clients who have no design experience whatsoever.

It took me several weeks to re-format, re-letter, and then have the work proof read. I did plan ahead however, as if you read the fine print regarding their print policies, you need to have your files ready 28 days before you need your order delivered. Not just 28 days, but 28 BUSINESS days, or about a month and a half, or the price of the quote goes up. Significantly.

Unfortunately I had planned to submit my files a month in advance, rather than a month and a half in advance. That bit me on the ass somewhat, since I got dinged with the rush surcharge.

You see, with Ka-blam, the faster you want it, the more you have to pay. This gets a bit difficult for small comic books, as the price per unit can end up not worth the cost. They also have a deeper discount if you want to wait 42 days or more for your books, but, lets face it, most people aren’t ordering like two  months in advance. While other printers have rush charges, you are usually paying that when you want it in less than 10 days, not less than a month.

I find this a bit ridiculous as a turn around time as every other printer I’ve worked with in my professional life has an average turn around of 10 business days (or two weeks). Ka-blam charges a 175% surcharge for what I see as a standard turn around time. Many printers have a turn around time of 5-7 days.  This extreme turn around is limited to comics. Their other products are standard 10 day turn around. I’m not sure why comics pose such a problem (binding issues perhaps?), but if you do plan to order from Ka-blam, make sure you are working MONTHS ahead of your delivery date.

The price break points are also few and far between. You have a choice of 25 books for a price break or 100. Most printers, the more you order the more you save. It seems a bit odd there’s only two points for the price break. I guess they don’t get many orders over 100? It makes some sense since most people who can afford to have those kind of numbers probably shop other offset options.

The other issue with Ka-blam is that they don’t do proofs. You send your files, and then hope and pray. Most printers have at least a digital proofing process, if not a physical proof. It’s extremely unnerving to simply send files, pay a lot of money and then hope that your book turns out okay.

That being said, however, I *DID* get my books by the time they promised, in time for my con and they were GORGEOUS. I have no issues at all with the colors or stock. It was a fantastic job, and came reasonably well packed in recycled shreds. I could recycle most of the packing material and box.

Their print quality is fantastic. The colors are brillant, the pages crisp, the cuts crisp, the binding was solid. The books I received were things of beauty, which had definitely made me proud to sell them, and I think the sheer quality of the books has made a difference to buyers and convincing comic stores to carry them. I can honestly say my books look as good or better than anything made by Marvel or DC.

Overall Ka-blam rates the following from me in terms of a printer choice:

Ease of submission:****

The upload area is easy to use, although having to reformat everything to RGB tifs is a bit cumbersome. Although likely non-designer types will find it easier and more intuitive

Proofing/prepress: *

No proofs at all (unless you want to order 1 copy, wait 10 days, get it, and then place your proper order), prepress is handled by you, verified by them. Make sure you follow their instructions carefully. Although if you follow the guidelines to the letter, you can get a great product.

Price: ****

The value is VERY competitive and cheap enough you can actually make a profit on your book at a low price UNLESS you need a rush job. Which can get very expensive, very quickly.

Turn Around: *

28 BUSINESS days are required to get the low, website generated quote.  So about a month and a half in advance. VERY slow. If you want a faster turn around, be prepared to pay for it for a comic book. If you need your comics within 6 weeks, you might want to consider another printing option, or you may end up paying too much for your books.

Product Quality: *****

The product was EXCELLENT. Great colors, no smudging, kisses, buckling, smooth gradients, clean edges, cut properly, stapled properly, and doesn’t take fingerprints. I honestly could NOT be more pleased with the quality. On par with any pro job. I cannot gush enough about how good the books I received look.

Delivery: *****

Delivery was ontime, as promised, with tracking, and was well packed so nothing got mushed.

Would I print with them again?

Yes, I would, IF I didn’t have an urgent need for comics (such as reprinting between conventions that are less than a month apart for example ) and had the luxury of ordering 6 weeks in advance. I was quite satisfied with the product, just the turnaround time seems excessive, considering everything else they sell they can turn around in 10 days.  I have no qualms with the product, and they offer many great services, but 6 weeks is a LONG turnaround, and 175% surcharge for what should be a standard turn around time seems ridiculous.

Readers are, by nature it seems, a shy bunch. You can have several hundred readers and only ever see a fraction of them make a peep. Like we are talking in the single digits. And even less become regular commenter. There’s several reasons for this, lets examine what prevents people from commenting and how you, as the author can help alleviate these conditions to get more people to talk and participate on your site.

Reason #1 – Nothing to say

A lot of readers simply have, well nothing to say. They like what you are doing. Its clear because they keep coming back, but they don’t really have anything clever or witty to say. You might not think this is important, but a lot of readers do think its important to have something relevant beyond ‘thanks for the update’ or ‘nice page’.

How to fix it: If you give your readers a topic to comment on, something they can relate to and give an opinion on, it really helps to alleviate this problem. When you write your comic blog, try to think of a single question to ask your readers and solicit feedback from them. Not only does it provide something for them to do or say, but it makes them feel valued and allows you to collect information from your readers.  Giving them something to give their thoughts on really helps. It won’t get everyone to comment mind you, but it often gets people out of the woodwork who might not say anything otherwise.

Reason #2 – Conversation feels one sided

A lot of artist creators soak in the comments but don’t actually respond individually. While its nice to get comments, its also nice to be recognized for your comments and thoughts, particularly by the artist in question. If the artist never responds to comments, or never acknowledges the contributions of the readership, people can get tired of giving, giving, giving and never getting anything back.

How to fix it: This one is really easy. All you have to do is recognize your commenters kindly and regularly. Treat them as friends, build relationships with them in terms of conversations in the comments. Reply to each and every comment and try to be gracious and kind, even if the comments aren’t always good. Remember, at least people are taking the time to tell you what they think. That’s really worth something.

Reason #3 – An empty forum/comment section is an intimidating one.

No one likes to be the first one to stick their nose out into an empty forum or comments page. Unless you’ve got some kind of culture where that sort of bravery is lauded and celebrated, most people will be reluctant to be the first person to comment. Once there’s a string of comments, more people will tend to join in, but the trick is to get that first person to comment and then begin talking to them to build those page comment numbers so that people don’t feel intimidated.

How to fix it: Make the first comment on your page something special. Offer some kind of special mention of the commentators name, give them a digital cookie, or find some other way to reward people who are brave enough to comment first. If you do this, people will scramble to be the first comment when you update.

Reason #4 – The Author appears to be mean/emo/reclusive or otherwise unapprochable

There are a lot of authors who either don’t believe in the blog, don’t know what to say, or don’t write particularly well in a prose form. Conversely they might also perpetually bitch about how miserable they are, or complain about things, or put their comics down, or annoyingly give a blow by blow of the comic. Constant negativity or saying the same things over and over again does not encourage people to comment, it sometimes discourages them if it goes on too long. You get what you give, if you give nothing, you probably won’t get much back in return.

How to fix it: Make yourself as approachable as possible. Invite feedback, even if you have to say “Feedback is always welcome”. Try to talk about things possibly related, but not directly about your comic. The readers can see for yourself. Keep the conversation positive and interesting. If you don’t believe in blog with a comic, try to engage people elsewhere, such as through a facebook page or on twitter, encouraging them to comment. Treat people well, and they will treat you well back. (generally)

Reason #5 – Readers feel no sense of urgency to comment

Readers, by nature, are kind of passive. So to engage them you need to give them reasons, and immediate reasons to comment, or do something. In advertising this is called a ‘call to action’, giving clear instruction and reason for the reader to engage.

How to fix it: Giving your readers a good reason to engage is key to this. Recognition can go a long way, but sometimes your bribe needs to be a little more substantial. Running contests or other forms of competition requiring people to jump through a few hoops (joining forums, making posts, commenting on so many comics, etc) will break the ice with a bunch of new people. It gets them to join forums, and make some posts. If you have a handful of regulars, try to get them to help keep the newbies engaged. If people feel like they are getting recognized and being accepted on a forum or website, they will tend to stay around. Make sure you use a time limit on contests to give a sense of urgency. Having monthly, or reoccurring contests can be very good for keeping people engaged. The more they are invested in your site, the more likely they are to say things.

First off writers, I’m going to give you a very important tip that’s going to save you a lot of grief when you get to the point of pitching your project.

Two very important words. You ready?

Be Prepared.

What does be prepared mean in this case? Basically it means having your act together before you set out on the road to finding some art talent for your project. There’s a lot of things you need to do before you start figuratively knocking on artist’s doors. Remember, there’s a lot of writers out there competing for the talent. If you want to attract the upper crust of that talent, you gotta wow them a little. Here’s 5 tips on how to do it.

1. Have your script ready

This seems like a no brainer, but a lot of writers jump the gun when it comes to hammering out a script for their webcomic. There’s also the problem that comic script writing is a unique artform. Its not like writing a novel, or a short story, or even a play. Its closer to writing a screenplay for a movie or TV show, since you, as the writer have to convey a set of visual instructions to an artist, much like you’d convey instructions to a camera crew, actors, lighting specialists, effects people, costuming staff, etc.  Being a comic writer is a lot like being a director, in that you set the vision and the shots in the script, and then they are interpreted by the talent. I highly suggest you do some research into what an actual comic script looks like. There’s a lot of variation, but most artists feel more comfortable working with someone who’s bothered to actually learn something about how to actually write their ideas down properly for interpretation by the artist. Look at professional examples and make sure you apply it to your own story. Another little thing writers often forget (because you are word people after all) is that comics are a visual medium. You shouldn’t be focusing on pages of exposition and dialogue. You need to write out descriptions of scenes that convey visually your exposition and keep dialogue snappy and short. You need to shift your mentality to the ‘show it’ rather than ‘tell it’ mode. To this end, you should have written and edited, and had edited by a third party at least your first ‘book’ script before you go heading out to find an artist. You are going to need it to show you are serious about your end of the commitment and bring the best product you can to the bargaining table.

2. Don’t come empty handed.

A lot of writers come to a site full of vim and vigor and excitement for their project, and of course they expound on how amazing their writing and project idea is (even it sounds like a million other webcomics) and then follow up their diatribe with the inevitable  ” I can’t pay you, but…” and of course this is where most artists worth anything just walk away and move on.

You have to realize that an artist’s skill is not to be taken for granted. In fact, if it was easy to do, you, as a writer, would not be seeking one. You have to first RESPECT that fact, and be willing to reward that skill. Artists who work professionally rely on their skill to eat, pay their bills, and support their families and likely won’t be interested unless there’s cash involved at some point. Artists who are more hobbyists still want to get something for the hours and hours of their lives spent working on your project, although they are likely to be more flexible about what that compensation is. But you should never come to the table and say to the artists “I need someone to work for free”. You would expect to get paid or compensated for a writing job, wouldn’t you? Well artists need to be compensated to.

Most comic artists work on something called a page rate. This is how much it will cost you to have them do a page. Depending on what you want from them (pencils, pencils+inks, Pencils+inks+colour), this page rate will vary pretty dramatically. It may be as low as 10$ or as high as 120$, and of course anywhere in between. Typically the better the artist and the more you want them to do, the higher it will go. Sometimes a writer can save on page rate by learning an intermediate skill such as inking or coloring and only buying pencils or pencil/inks and doing the colors (or tones for things like manga) themselves. Its not a hard skill to learn, particularly if the art is simple. Some artists like to have a minimum number of pages ordered, but others are willing to work on a page by page basis, you pay for the pages as they are produced, and if you can’t afford a page, they just won’t produce for that week. Many artists fall in the 25-45$ per page range so you can use that to budget for yourself how many pages you could possibly afford a month. Knowing your budget and having cash in hand gives you leverage to negotiate with artists, and it will attract those of a higher caliber than if you walked in with nothing and disrespected the talent.

Maybe you really can’t afford to pay a page rate. There are other options, but here you’ll need to have your ducks even more in a row because you need to prove that their time investment will be rewarded. Here are the most common olive branches extended by writers who can’t pay their artists… yet.

Option A: Profit sharing

This usually involves a business plan on behalf of the writer regarding the operation of the site. The writer promises a split of any donations, profits, subscriptions or monies collected as a direct result of the comic or artists work between the writer and the artist. This is often a 50/50 or 60/40 split. This tends to be more attractive on established comics than new ones, simply because it can take up to a year to gain any sizable audience.  I highly suggest some kind of written agreement between the artist and writer to make sure that it is understood how this profit sharing will work.  Writers often like this one because if they make money, both make money, if they don’t then the writer still gets their art. Professional artists probably won’t agree to this unless its on an established title, but hobbyists might.

Option B: Service exchange

Sometimes, depending on the writer’s other talents, there can be a bargain struck for an exchange of services. For example a website developer might offer some programing services for art, or perhaps a musician writer might offer a song for art. A marketing professional/writer might offer promotional services for art. This is a bit tricky, matching values, but sometimes its worth it to an artist to not have to pay for other professional services. A writer offering this needs to evaluate all the skills he can bring to the table and offer in exchange for artwork.

Things you shouldn’t promise an artist in exchange for their work is:

• Exposure – because frankly they are probably already more famous than you and your work, unless you happen to be a famous author. Unless you happen to be some kind of marketing god, working on your project probably isn’t going to be ‘their big break’. You probably are looking at non payment options anyway.
• Experience – they can get experience working on their own projects, and its probably more enjoyable to work on their own stuff than for a boss that doesn’t even give compensate them for their time.

So in short, have a plan to compensate the artist. The more cash or profit potential you bring to the table, the more like you are to find a good artist. If you don’t feel comfortable stating a  page rate you are willing to pay, invite artists to submit a portfolio and page rate to you. There’s no commitment on either side, so its no problem to ask. Don’t ask however, for specific renderings of say… your characters. That borders on something called ‘spec work’, and its generally frowned upon since you are getting usable artwork for your project for nothing. You should be able to tell from a portfolio what sort of art you’ll be getting. No need to ask for specifics.

3. Do your homework on comic art

There’s a huge range of artists out there and their skills and styles vary all over the map. As a writer, you probably haven’t spent a lot of time LOOKING at comic art. If you are basically thinking of hiring/buying some, you should probably have an idea of what you are buying. When you get artists submitting work to you, you need to know how to evaluate their portfolio. Artist’s styles are kind of like finger prints. Each one is signature and unique. People hire artists based often on if they like the style they work in, and most artists really can’t change their style too dramatically. They can shift around a bit, but their art always looks like their art. Spend time looking at comic art, gathering samples of the kind of art you want for your project. Study it in every detail. The lighting, the linework, anatomy, detail, inkwork, colour, make sure you acquaint yourself with what is and isn’t the quality you are looking for. Make sure you know what good sequential art looks like, so when the artists do come, you can not only find the artist you want, but the artist you want for the price you can afford. Some very good, but new artists will charge a lower page rate than more established artists with possibly less skill. You have to have an eye for the art to be able to tell when you are getting a deal, and when you aren’t. As the buyer, this responsibility is square on you. Don’t get had.

Some writers also come to the table without understanding the comic market and expect the artist to somehow introduce them into it. That’s not really the case. You are expected to know the market you are entering and do your own research. This is YOUR project, you need to take on the bulk of responsibility for the business research.

4. Bring a collaborative attitude

As an artist with a lot of experience collaborating with writers of various sorts in both comics and graphic design, I can tell you it is infinitely more rewarding to work with a writer who is willing to work with an artist rather than be draconian about their writing vision. Open minded writers who are open to different interpretations of characters, environments, etc of their work by an artist tend to get a more inspired product than those who feel the need to beat their artists into a pre-determined mold. Most artists are a bit fragile, and while professionals can handle changes, and being sent back to the drawing board, eventually they do get frustrated with it. It is a bit of a curve to learn to work with an artist. Artists by their very natures are kind of flakey and weird. This is where it becomes very crucial that you do your homework as stated above. Don’t be afraid to ask a potential artist questions about their workflow,  how they’ve worked with other writers, what they expect in terms of freedom to create, or how much need do they have for direction from you. Some artists just like to be given a script and run with it, others might want each stage verified and signed off. When you are selecting your artist, make sure you choose one with a style and approach to working with you that you can live with. Also make sure that you are honest about the scope and length of your project from the get go and that the artist can commit. It can be difficult when artist and writer part ways halfway through a project, forcing the writer to get a new artist, and re-establish workflows and look/feel of the writing. No two artists will have the same interpretation of the source material. Its best for consistency to stay with one artist, unless you plan in advance. For example if you have short comics, each one done by different artists, its alright, but for a continuing story to just shift artists half way through a chapter, its disruptive to the reader.

5. Protect yourself

While most artists aren’t out there to screw you over, particularly those who are professionals and make a living off their art (reputation is everything), there are individuals out there who are a little on the unscrupulous side or just plain flakey. Artists are a weird bunch to work with and do not tend to behave like some kind of art ATM. Today’s society has us conditioned to expect certain things when we pay for them, service with a smile, the customer is always right, and the department story mentality. Art, especially original art, is not a mass produced commodity and the people predisposed towards making it are not Walmart. Some artists sometimes need a bit of babysitting to keep them on track. This means emailing them every so often (keep this reasonable, don’t do it every day or it gets annoying) to see how progress is coming. Its important with creative people to make sure you set deadlines, and set them a little in advance of when you actually need things. Creative people tend to be procrastinators and you don’t want to get caught holding the bag because they were late. Anticipate the behavior. If your artist proves to be reliable, you can always adjust. Its also a standard practice to pay the artist half of a job’s worth up front (to prove you are a serious customer) and half upon completion and delivery. If the artist doesn’t hold up their agreement, you only forfeit the deposit, rather than a whole amount. Being paid only half is also an incentive for the artist to finish. If you are hiring an artist, you may also want to double check their reputation but doing a little googling on line. Some places have places where deadbeat artists are tracked or deadbeat clients are tracked so that people can avoid them. This is more prevalent in some communities than others, but it doesn’t hurt to check up on how satisfied previous commissioners were with the artist. Often artists display commissioned work on their websites or in galleries and normally list who it was for. You can always message these previous customers and see what it was like dealing with the artist.  This type of research also helps you to avoid art thieves, people who steal an artist’s work or identity and takes commissions/jobs as the artist they have stolen the work of. Of course its fraud and the people who pay never get the art they were promised. Examine the work presented to you in a portfolio carefully for things like altered signatures (or missing signatures), clearly cropped work, work that appears to be degraded artifacted or signed with a huge ugly digital font rather than a hand signature). If you’ve done your homework, you might even be familiar with the work of a particular artist, and be able to identify if it is being used inappropriately. While it might also seem attractive to go out of your own country for cheap artists, keep in mind language barriers, time differences, and currency fluctuations may cause problems. There is also often no way to legally pursue anyone out of your own country if they screw you over, so keep that in mind when choosing your artist.

If you do plan on working long term with an artist, it may be in your interest and his/hers to come up with some kind of written agreement regarding rights, payments, schedules, deadlines, etc, just so that you are all on the same page and that everyone knows their responsibilities. This helps protect you, the investor in the project, as well as the artist, as they know what they have to do.

Start Early

The conventions/shows I’m planning to attend are happening in June, August, and October 2011 respectively, but I’m starting prep now in March 2011. Preparing (even half arsed) is a long process and if you want to have everything by the time of the show, you need to start at least a few months early. If you happen to be ordering things (like books, prints, charms, etc) You need to allow for production times and delivery times from the companies producing them. You also have to give yourself time to produce artwork, and complete the projects for these companies to produce. It often takes longer than you would think!

The second thing is that artist’s alleys in cons or other venues tend to be first come first serve. Some are juried (they take an application and decide) but most aren’t. You have to be on top of the application dates and make sure that you apply early! If you snooze, you lose. Its best to start with conventions near to your local area to reduce costs and learn the ropes, so find out what’s going on in your community (or at least within driving distance) and mark the date of when artist alley submissions begin. Sometimes there’s no set date, but you have to watch the convention communication channels (like forums, twitter, facebook, mailing lists… etc) like a hawk.

Deciding what to Sell

This should be generally done fairly early on as it takes time to produce. It can be hard to know what to sell, but generally speaking, there are some rules of thumb as to what you need. It seems intuitive, but its surprising how many people don’t think about this (myself included the first time around), at a comic/manga show, people tend to want to buy comics/mangas, so if you can produce one, even a small book, this should be your #1 priority. At my first conventions I had a little, hand made ashcan comic (basically some letter paper folded in half and stapled run off a laser printer). This time I plan to have something professionally printed. I want to have at least one graphic novel of 100+ pages, and possibly a second 30ish page minicomic. Ambitious? Yes, but worth it. This is one of the #1 things people come to cons to buy. If you forget everything else, this is the #1 thing webcomic people should MUST HAVE for cons. In my first few conventions, I can’t tell you how many times I was asked for a book. People bought the little ashcans, as crappy as they were, but if I had put some real effort into it, I could have done much better. So this time, I will.

Another common standby that people tend to buy are prints. My best sellers in previous conventions were always either generally topical (werewolves or busty women turning into werewolves in my case) or fan artish stuff. You have to be cautious with fan art, as a lot of artist’s alleys have regulations about how much you can have, and display due to copyright restrictions. So its important, that even if you have some fan art, to make sure you come with a good amount of original character artwork, which is usually fairly easy for us webcomic peeps.  Fan art can be a great gateway to commissions, which are usually pretty lucrative at a con. Prints in general are usually either commercially produced on glossy or good matte stock, or some people produce them at home on a good quality laser printer or inkjet printer. I also learned that its good to have sleeves and boards for them, just like comic books (actually comic ones are the ones I use). So you have to order them and have them intime for the convention, or go to a comic bookshop and get them. Last time I took about 15 of each print, and had them displayed in a portfolio book people could flip through. Portfolio books are very good for displaying not only your prints, but also original art for sale or sample comission stuff. People like to flip through them. I also used mine to showcase my comic work, which gave me a foothold into selling people my comic stuff. I plan on doing this again, since it worked well.

Other merchandise

Other things that seem to sell well at cons I’ve been to, I’m going to try, as well as a few dark horses. I’m going to get a button maker. These sell really well, and anyone I’ve seen with buttons has almost always done well provided the buttons were cute or witty. They are a fun collectible that a lot of people… well they collect. So they are predisposed to buying them. Button makers are pretty expensive if you are looking at getting a good one (about 300$ or so for the button press and circle punch), but they often come with a lot of parts, and once you sell those, you’ve almost made back your money. You can also share the cost with a friend or sell buttons to other creators to help make back your money. Generally speaking, these are good investments I hear, so I’m going to give it a go. I’m going to get a Tecre 1.25″ button press with a cutter. I’ve got a friend who wants in, and possibly some other people locally who I might be able to do some small business with. I’ll keep everyone posted on how this investment goes for me.

The second thing I’m going to sell that’s a little sideways is jewelry and charms. I’m a girl. I’m crafty, and this is actually really cool to me. I’ve picked up some ultra light sculpty, and plan on doing cellphone charms with it as well as beads for the jewelry. This is highly experimental. I intend to try to go cute with some, and more cool tribal with others. This is another ‘we’ll see how it goes’. I’ve got a backup plan to sell whatever I don’t managed to get rid of at the cons on-line. I am going to try to tie the jewelry/charms into my comics, but in a very generalistic sort of way. Most merch doesn’t do well if its too tied into a property no one knows about, but if its very general, like say werewolves and vampires, or medieval heraldry or tribal magic, it tends to hit on more casual congoers. So its good to be able to identify yourself in a very general sort of way.

The same applies to T-shirts, of which I plan to make a very limited amount with only one or two general designs. It is generally pretty expensive to carry this sort of merchandise for a smaller con, like two of the ones I’m going to, but I’m kind of banking on merch for all three (assuming I get tables at all three… we’re still waiting to see how that pans out).

My goal with having a variety of merchandise is to hit on all the various price points. A lot of people come to cons with variable amounts of money to spend. Kids tend to be given small amounts of money by their parents to spend, whereas teens or young adults typically are willing to spend more. I’m sure you can remember a time in your life when you were a kid somewhere and your parents gave you a small amount of money, maybe five dollars or less to ‘pick out something’. So you want to have stuff that’s only a small amount of money, like a $1-5, a midrange of about $5-10, and then the higher end stuff which is often $10+. A lot of people also come to conventions looking for deals. Make sure you can price your stuff as a deal ( two-for-one, or three-for-two, or a bonus if you buy something else) to help entice customers to buy.

Giveaways & Freebees

Generally you also need some kind of freebees to people, promoting your comic to them even if they don’t buy something. Bookmarks, businesscards, and stickers are often good giveaways. I’ve already got a bunch of business cards from previous years that are still good, but I’ll need to do some bookmarks or fliers of some kind to give to people for free.

Because this stuff is given away, it has to be kept fairly inexpensive. You don’t want to put all your money into the stuff that isn’t going to make anything back. My personal focus for my freebees is to get people to go to my website after the con. The more useful I can make my free stuff, the more likely people will keep it and it will remind them to visit my website. If I can build my personal brand, that’s even better, as I can use my freebees to reinforce my brand to potential new customers.

The Booth/Table setup

This is the other major thing I’m working on at this point. Your booth setup can make or break your show. Numerous tales of how a very small tweek to a booth setup changed the fortunes of a webcomic artist have been spun on various blogs and con journals. One thing that is always stressed is vertical space. I’m going to need some ways of displaying my products that take advantage of vertical space and don’t hinge too much on anything hanging below the knees. At smaller shows, a table banner might work alright, but at bigger shows, the traffic of people just walking by obscures it. I plan on having a fair number of things, so I want to be able to show them all well.

Things I need to get sorted:

• A vertical or hanging banner above my head
• A vertical way of displaying art and jewelry
• Bookstands
• Display for buttons and other small items like charms
• Tablecloths (never assume you’ll be provided with one)
• Security for items on table
• Display for portfolio book
• Locking moneybox
• Transportation system for display/items

Most of this stuff I can buy, but its expensive to buy professionally produced banners with their associated hardware. I’ve researched other artist’s setups and found some ideas I think would work alright, perhaps a bit cheaper, such as setups with PVC poles and vinyl banners, and simple grid panels for vertical hanging space. Its just a matter of making sure that they will collapse and setup without too much difficulty. You never know how far you’ll have to hoof all your stuff, so its best to make sure you can get your setup into as compact a space as possible. This may also require me to buy a little cart or rolling bag to put everything on (or in).

I’ll probably have to buy a metal lockbox, I know I can get stuff like that from staples. I should also produce a sign that has my commission prices on it. I’ve forgotten this one several times now, and hand done signs look unprofessional and tacky.

Once I get my stuff sorted out and start making progress, I’ll chronicle my journey and successes (and failures) here in other related articles. Stay tuned to see how I fare in my journey to showing at conventions.

Comics that stand out have GOOD WRITING

You know all those times in English class when you looked at the teacher with resigned disdain in your eyes? Remember how, as you doodled superheros and cartoons in the margins of your books, you wondered why things like ‘semi-colons’, ‘spelling’ and ‘sentence structure’ were important? Do you remember when they asked you to analyze the structure of of a story that you scoffed at words like  “crisis”, “climax”, and “dénouement”? You wondered to yourself when you were actually going to use this stuff anyway? Well, the answer is, in your comic.

Comics are a story medium. Even if you are going to write a joke comic that’s four panels long, there’s still a beginning, middle, and end.  You need to understand things like conflict, pacing, and plot, and tension and how to create them. If you are going to do a long form comic, this becomes critical because the story is the lifeblood and longevity of your comic. Awesome art can attract people to your comic, but without a solid storyline to keep people hooked day in and day out, its just fluffy, pretty art and the readers lose interest fast. Good webcomics, comics that stand out, have good stories and good writing. Dialogue is strong, pacing is  even stronger, and the use of dialogue and plot are masterfully used to keep readers faithfully coming back every week.

Assuming here that I’m speaking to people who are thinking of making English comics, another common mistake that lowers a comics bar is to make simple spelling and grammar errors. Webcomics might give you the freedom to not be under an editors thumb, but you now become your own editor and proofreader, which puts all the responsibility of proofing your work on you. If you can’t spell, you look like an idiot, and constant spelling errors and grammar problems in a comic results in readers having difficulty getting the story out. Comics that are persistently plagued by spelling errors appear unprofessional and its harder for readers to get into the story, and is jarring them out of the story every time they come across one. Its not hard to run a spellchecker or have a proof reader look at your pages before you post them.

Comics are a unique medium to write for, particularly webcomics as they aren’t published generally in one big block, but a single page at a time. The flow of the story on the page has to grab the reader in a very short space of time, not just once, but with every single page. The expression ‘page turner’ very much applies to webcomics that are well written.

Another extremely common mistake is that comic creators don’t plan out their story in its entirety. They start writing, but they never actually take a story all the way through from beginning to end. They don’t plan out their character’s development, pacing, plot, figure out a total page count, edit it, have it beta read, edit it some more, etc. Its important when you are writing comics to have a plan with your story, or you may find yourself written into corners, and having to butcher your otherwise well written comic to suddenly account for massive plotholes or story shifts that mess with the pacing to get you out of a writing jam. A really good comic has a cohesive story from beginning to end. Make sure you’ve planned your story all the way through.

The bottom line: Building a comic is like building a house. If you want your comic to rock from the get go, you need to start with a solid foundation and strong supports on which to put the dressings. Writing and story is the foundation to any comic, from jokes that make you bust a gut to an epic story that spans ages. If you want to build a comic that stands out, your story has to be solid. Not just in concept, but in actual execution. You have to be able to write, and write well. Without solid writing, the readers won’t stick around.

Comics that stand out have GOOD ART

Its been a long debate if story or art is more important in a comic. The reality is that webcomics that really stand out have both. Not only are they examples of excellent story telling, but the art is of such a quality that it really supports the story. This is not to say that all art is shiny and of a certain style, or even has to be hand drawn, but comics are a visual medium and as such require good supporting artwork.

The second part of that is that the artwork has to be suitable to the sequential nature of comics. There are a lot of wonderful pinup artists or artists who do everything BUT sequential art, but the harsh reality is that comics are a unique art form and require art that not only illustrates the words, but breathes them to life.

Generally most of the most notable comics are drawn, either digitally or by hand, although some have managed to carve out niches in less traditional mediums such as 3D or sprites. But all of them that are truly notable display a skill at handling the medium they have chosen. If we keep with the house analogy, the story is the foundation and soundness of the structure, art is the curb appeal and dressings. Art that is strong to the story concept helps to attract readers to have a look, and support the story. When you are choosing how you want to illustrate a story, you need to consider what sort of art work would support the writing, and breathe life into it.  Artistic decisions should be actively made regarding options such as if the comic is black and white or colour, if it is in a particular style (manga, independant, marvel, european, 3D…), colour schemes, digital, traditional, all these factors need to be considered, weighed and ultimately decided for or against in relation to if it helps the written work. There are of course other factors, such as speed at which the artwork can be completed, level of skill, materials available, but ultimately, what the writing needs, should be what it gets.  The artist needs to at least be able to convey the heart of the writing through expression, movement, composition, and mood, no matter if its a hilarious joke or a somber dramatic scene. Cartooning, and indeed any sequential art is a medium that has to tell a story. Each panel has to communicate as much as possible unspoken, and the very best webcomics do this very well.

Comics that stand out UPDATE ON TIME

One thing that makes a webcomic look professional, and keeps people coming back, are webcomics that update on time.  Updating on time shows a level of commitment to your comic, to your fans, and to the work. People are ultimately creatures of habit. In order to get them to keep coming back week after week, they have to always get their cookie when you say its coming. And it will become habit and they will keep checking back. That habit can span over years if don’t correctly, and hold your audience even if you have to take an unexpected break or hiatus. However, webcomics that update sporadically, once a year, or say they update a particular day and never do, are disappointing to their audience. The audience is fickle in that they want their free entertainment and they want it when its promised. Years of tv shows, and before that radio shows, and before that plays,  being on at a particular time of day, a promised time of debut, people want to see it when its promised. They spend all week waiting, and they want their cookie. To deny them their promised morsel is going to damage your reputation over time, and believe you mean, it takes a LONG time to rebuild it when you do get your act together. The solution, especially if you take a long time to do comics, is never to promise more than you can deliver. Make sure you know your production schedule, and err on the side of caution. If you can only deliver a comic every other week, then only promise it every other week. If you can do more, buffer it, or offer it as a bonus. But don’t promise weekly updates or daily updates or any other schedule unless you can deliver.

Comics that stand out HAVE A GREAT WEBSITE

As webcomic creators, we can’t discount the power of good website vs bad website design for attracting or repelling readers. Most of the best webcomics also have really great site designs that make the comic easily accessible, and the most notable features of the comic site are easy to find and access. They also tend to pick colors and schemes that are appealing and easy on the eyes, and that compliment their comics. Good websites are also clean, and not overcluttered with advertising, buttons, and widgets. A lot of people do use the wordpress/comicpress combo for setting up their websites, which is fine of course, but a lot of people lack the ability or willingness to truly customize it so it doesn’t look like a generic site.  Website design needs to be both engaging visually, but also able to guide the users eye to the right places, and showcase the content, namely the comic, in a good way.

The most common mistakes are either to leave the site too plain or make it too busy. A stark white and black site with perhaps a header, no additional graphics, text links, etc. While this can work with blogs, with webcomic sites, it tends to just look lazy and boring. Then there are those that swing the other way. They try to pack too much into too little space. All sorts of adds, visual links, blinking buttons, widgets, polls, vote buttons, etc all packed onto their front pages.

There needs to be a balance. If you aren’t any good at web design, do yourself a huge favor and find a webgeek or webdesigner friend who can help you out. Working with a webdesigner can open the possiblity for things you may never even thought of. Also, asking for critiques on your website from fellow creatives can be helpful in refining your site.

Just always remember, the comic is the most important thing. You should have a very good reason for it not being on the front page.

Comics that stand out DELIVER MORE

The comic is great, and that’s what people come for. Ultimately, that’s what people want, but a lot of the great comics offer a little extra, either in between updates or as a part of the update. This can be in the form of blogs, tutorials, resources, wallpapers, gallery images, character information, world information, or simply really strong interaction with fans. Comics that can deliver additional content generally stand out as being more complete, giving readers something to explore.

The more you can give to keep people busy and engaged in between updates, the more value it adds to your website as a whole. Websites that do this well build audience not only for their comic, but for additional content. There’s also always a chance that people are going to come for the extra content and then check out the comic.

I thought this might be fun, since I get a lot of interesting search strings about webcomics, often formatted as questions, to take some of the top ones and do a sort of Q&A every month for the previous month’s search strings.

So here were the best search string questions of Jan 2011.

Q. Can you use poser for making your own comics?

A. Hell yes you can. You have to get and learn the software, but lots of comics are using this software these days.

Q. Can i legally make money from sprite webcomics?

A. Technically yes, but only if you have the owner of the sprite’s permission to do so. You have to go through the process of asking and getting written permission to commercially use the copyrighted material, ie. the sprites.  As long as you’ve got official and legal permission, go nuts.

Q. Can you hire an artist to draw your comic?

A. Of course. Its done all the time. Just make sure if you hire an artist, you have the money to pay them for their hard work.

Q. What is the best drawing program for webcomics?

A. This is HIGHLY subjective. It really depends on your process and what you will and won’t tolerate out of a graphics program. I think the programs made for drawing tend to handle tablet input the best. Programs like MangaStudio, Open Canvas, Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash, the GIMP, and Inkwell are all used. I personally prefer MangaStudio for drawing, as it accepts my tablet input at the most comfortable level for me.

Q. What equipments required for webcomics drawing?

A. This depends on if you want to go a traditional or completely digital route. For traditionally done comics, you need paper, pencil, pens to ink, eraser, and a scanner. If you want to go digital you need a digital tablet, and appropriate drawing software.

Q. What is the best webcomic merchandise?

A. The best merchandise is obviously what will sell to your particular audience and make you money. This is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT for different audience groups. Some audiences will buy t-shirts, others will not. Sometimes they will buy toys, sometimes they won’t. As a webcomic author it is very beneficial to regularly connect, and get to know your audience so you can get a sense of what they will buy. If you can’t figure it out, ask them directly with a poll. The only more or less universal peice of merch a webcomic should have is a book/compilation of their work. But even that’s not a guaranteed best seller.

Q. What is the best graphics tablet on a webcomic budget?

A. I’d probably recommend a Wacom Bamboo Pen. Its about 69$.

Q. Do graphic artists get paid before a job is completed?

A. They should have received at least half the payment (usually a deposit and then a progress payment), and then payment in full before files are surrendered to the client.  The reason for this is that clients have a nasty tenancy of not paying for stuff after they get the files. Unfortunately a lot of Graphic artists & designers don’t ask to be paid in installments and then are left holding the bag when they try to collect on the business and/or people that screwed them out of their rightfully earned paycheck. Let this be a warning to you. Don’t wait till the end to get paid. Its like asking them to screw you over.

Q. How many visitors does a webcomic need to sell merchandise.

A. The basic math? Only 5% of your readership will be interested in buying stuff, only 2% actually will. If you want to sell 200 items, you need to have a readership of something like 10000 readers. Most webcomic artists are lucky to sell 10 of an item so most have readerships of more like 500-1000 readers. If it doesn’t cost you much to offer merchandise, there’s no harm in offering it. Just don’t expect to be making huge sales if you still can’t break 10000 uniques a day. Although if you go to a convention and are good at selling yourself those results can be quite different.

Q. How do I make my lines more defined in photoshop.

A. Well if you mean by ‘defined’ you mean thicker/deeper. Duplicate your line layer and stack it on top. Set the blending mode to multiply.

Q. How do I get started as a webcomic artist?

A. Draw a comic and post it on the web. Rinse. Repeat. Ideally on a regular schedule. It’s not really hard. Not like you have to got to school for it or anything. You don’t even have to know HTML. Just use a service like Drunk duck or Smack Jeeves. The hard thing for most people is getting over that fear of posting things on the web. Ironically a lot of those people become attention whores later on. Just post it.

Q. I can’t draw, but is there software that can?

A. Eh…. sorta. There’s software that will let you post pre-made clipart like drawings. I go into it here.   But seriously, if computers could make art, you think we’d still have a reason for existence?  Sorry dude, but there’s no programs that will take what’s in your head and translated those dreams into drawings onto the screen. You are going to have to suffer trying to get it out of your hands in one form or another just like the rest of us. There’s a REASON artists are valuable. They have an important skill. People should respect that more.

Q. How do I find webcomic artists to hire/work for me/draw my webcomic idea?

A. There are places to go, like webcomic community forums, deviant art, professional sites, etc where you can look for artists either looking for work or trying to catch one that’s interested. Although these days, like many others, its best to socially network with artists, get to know them, their styles, limits and availability and THEN try to see if they will work for you. It works better than just screaming “Hey! I need an artist over here!”

Okay I think that’s enough for this month. Next I’ll try to write a REAL article.

Recently, I’ve been participating in a discussion over on Drunkduck with a sprite comic artist who wanted feedback specifically from people who hate sprite comics. I obliged him. Although in the course of the conversation it became clear to me that there needs to be more awareness raised for alternatives to ripping sprites for those who can’t draw. Legal alternatives that will help people who don’t feel like learning to draw (or mistakenly believe they can’t), create instant comics despite their artistic handy cap. So I’ve provided some links here in this article to software that helps you, the zero art skills dude make comics as a follow up to my first post about making webcomics if you can’t draw.

Online Comic Creation Options

Pixton

Lets start with a web 2.0 solution to webcomics, the drag and drop webcomic creation site, Pixton. While there is a pay option that gets you some extra perks as well as the full comic making product, but you can join the site for free, either with your own username or you can use your facebook ID to sign in. Pixton lets you drag and drop preexisting props and arrange and change them at will. They have layouts set up for you to use, and provide hosting for your comic as well. If you are curious about how it works, check out their teaser video. It has its limits, but at the same time, it does provide an easy way of using and modifying pre-existing art to plop into your already existent story. It seems fairly robust, allowing you to change the characters, effectively allowing you to, in a limited fashion, customize and make your own characters.

StripGenerator.com

Another web solution with pregenerated art is Stripgenerator.com.  It has an easy drop and drag system with pre-generated black and white characters, word balloons and props. The above example strip was created with Stripgenerator.com. You can register for the system or create the strip as an anonymous user. You aren’t limited to the three panel format, but it doesn’t allow for extensive modification of the characters aside from size and orientation. But it does provide a quick and easy solution for those who are art impaired.

Software options

Secondlife

If you aren’t up for learning poser or a more complicated piece of 3d software, you might consider using this huge virtual world as your canvas. Avatars are easily adjustable, and you can pretty much buy or scrounge all the content you could ever need to make hundreds of looks of original characters. Accounts are free, and there is an entire world of vistas to grab screen shots from. Couple this with some basic text bubbles and you have an instant 3D comic. You can sign up here.

Comic Life

Comic life is made by plasq and while originally for the Mac, is also available for windows. While this product is more aimed at taking pictures or other source and images and adding comic elements, it can be used to easily ‘comic up’ screenshots of digital sources, such as from something like Secondlife or other 3d software.

MangaStudio

While a lot of people might think that you have to be able to draw to use this software, its not entirely true. While it does function best with a tablet and some solid talent, it has the capability of importing .obj files and running a filter to make them look like drawings. While it can appear somewhat rough, its not hard to use them as something to trace over which is good if you are actually feeling like attempting to learn a bit of drawing. Smith Micro also has a huge source of legal, royalty free material available from ContentParadise.com. The debut version is 50$, but for the full version of this software its about 299$. Try a demo if you are unsure if this suits your needs.

Hopefully this provides you with some options that don’t involve ripping other people’s art off and copywritten properties, as many people do when confronted with wanting to do comics and being artistically handicapped. And yes, I’m looking at you sprite comic guys. Not you, the one who made their own sprites, but everyone else who didn’t.

Generally its recommended that a webcomic be at least a year old and have a reasonably substantial audience before they try to make a buck. If you are considering merchandising, get some real metrics on your audience size and traffic using Google Analytics or something like Comic Rank to get some real numbers to base your decisions on. If you consider that only 5% of an audience might actually shell out cash for something (if you’re lucky), you should make sure that 5% of your audience is still a worth while amount of people to be attempting to sell to.

There’s a lot of questions that webcomic authors have to ask themselves when considering this step for their comic, not the least of which is “What do my readers want to buy?” In terms of considering merchandise this is a pretty important question to answer, and the answer isn’t completely simple as every audience is different, and what you might take to a convention and what you might offer via your website are also different questions.

However, there are a few stable products you may want to consider as your first options.

The Graphic Novel or Comic Compilation

This one is almost universally agreed to be the very first piece of merchandise you should offer, and also tends to be the one that sells the best on both websites and at conventions. The reality is that your readers already like your product (ie: your webcomic), and if you provide them an option to buy a paper version, they will take it. I believe so strongly in this option I won’t even go to another convention until I have physical books to take with me. Comic readers want to buy comics. Its just a no brainer.

Fortunately, there’s been a lot of breakthrough in the comic print-on-demand market which gives comic creators an extremely cheap and actually profitable way to produce dead tree versions of their online comics. With little to no overhead, no stock to maintain, and not even any mailing to do, the profit you make is really that, profit. Depending on the size of your readership, that could be a little, or a lot.

Print on Demand suppliers that specialize in comics:

Ka-Blam – Kablam can do both regular saddle stapped comics and perfect bound graphic novels, and their prices are very reasonable. If you need to order a bunch of physical copies, they provide a slight price break at 25 and 100 copies. They also offer a free ISBN at 100 copies. If you want to see their quality, you can order a sample comic for 2$. They will carry your book through their Indyplanet website and make your comic avaliable to brick & mordar retailers through their ComicsMonkey distribution site. Ka-blam also offers a quazi affiliate program, offering 5$ credit per new customer referals.

ComicXpress – One of the first exclusive to comic print on demand sites (least that I can remember), ComicXpress has proven to be a very reliable printer with good quality product I’ve actually personally seen. They have comparable prices to Kablam. Like Ka-blam, they also have an online store where they will carry your product for order, and unlike Ka-blam it is integrated with their main website. They have also recently eliminated any setup fees, which is helpful for new and upcoming comic peeps to get their book into print. ComicXpress offers the same sort of referral program, offering a 5$ credit to clients who bring them new customers (and those customers say who referred them).

Lulu – I’ve heard a number of creators who’ve gone with Lulu have a positive experience with them. They provide a wide variety of page sizes and binding options and provide templates for people to work with in order to make sure they’ve got their book laid out correctly for their process. They also provide store front services, and ‘publishing packages’ which include various services including an ISBN number, which is useful if you want retailers to be able to carry your product.

T-shirts and other clothy stuff

One of the next most common items that comics will put effort into making is T-shirts, and often other clothing (hats, scarfs, whatever) T-shirts are a bit of a dangerous territory as they aren’t as straitforward as simply putting your comic’s logo on the shirt and believing it will sell like hotcakes. Far from it. Unless you are famous already, the T-shirt has to be approached from a totally different angle.

After scouring interviews and videos, such as this one, its become clear that making a hot t-shirt is often about stepping away from plastering comic artwork or characters or logos on the shirt, and coming up with witty, interesting, and stylish designs that riff off the themes of your comic. These are things that would appeal to your audience’s tastes, but would still be something that someone who’d never seen or read your comic might still be interested in. This is actually a lot harder than it sounds. Designing for a t-shirt you have to really think about the kind of things your audience might be into or interested in outside your comic, and play off those interests. Most artists approach it from a humorous or witty angle or a ‘holy-shit-that’s-cool-looking’ angle.  But ultimately it has to appeal beyond your basic audience to a larger audience. Things can be inspired by your comic, have similar themes to your comic, but ultimately it shouldn’t relate directly. This rule applies for most clothing designs.

It is also worth keeping in mind that not all audiences are t-shirt buying type audiences. Just because it works for one comic, does not mean it will work for another. You have to really get to know your audience to be able to offer the kind of merchandise they want. For some groups T-shirts may not sell well, but bags do great.

In terms of price point and profitability, there is a few different ways of approaching it.

Printing Local – Like with book printing, this can give you the best price per unit to be able to offer your shirts for a reasonable price. You do have to deal with taking orders, printing, packaging, mailing, and customer service issues, you stand to make a much better markup than on print on demand services. There is normally a minimum order of shirts that must be purchased to get a decent discount, although there are more and more places where those orders can be 5-10 units. Although the printing on the shirt is digital, direct-to-garment- printing rather than traditional silkscreening, much like print-on-demand places. But at least you get to quality control your product.

Print-on-demand garments – Like book publishing there are many print-on-demand places that offer t-shirts and other merchanise, among the most popular (and notorious) is Cafepress. They do offer a large selection of POD merchandise, but have not always been the best for T-shirts.  There are alternatives however, like Printfection, Zazzle, Spreadshirt (good European alternative!), Redbubble, etc. There’s a pretty comprehensive list here. Although you might have to shop around to see who offers the best ‘base price’ so you can mark up your shirt decently (the markup is your profit amount, BTW) so you don’t price yourself out of your audience’s market. Most people these days, unless it is BEYOND cool, won’t make an impulse purchase of a t-shirt over 20$. Most are looking for a better deal than that because we all have so much less money to spend. And then there is postage and shipping to consider. Many of the shirts start out around 15-18$ leaving only a tiny 2$ markup of profit for you. Make sure you look at all your options. Quality and consistency is also a point to consider when deciding on a provider. You don’t want to be selling your customers crappy shirts.

Prints & Cards

Many artists offer prints, and if you have a lot of magnificent splash/cover art, it might be a considered offering, however, it really depends on the market and venue. Online, as an offering, cards and prints tend to do poorly in comparison with other offerings. However, at conventions, art cards and prints sell very well and it would be almost artist’s alley suicide to go without any.

Like with garments, you have a choice to print them up with a print company, or go with a POD vendor, or if you have a good inkjet printer, you can do them yourself.

If you choose to do them yourself, its very handy as you have a lot of control over quality, paper type and production. But be careful to track how much it costs you per unit (factor your printer ink, plus your paper, plus extra for the wear on your printer and electricity it uses) and make sure that your prints are created on good quality paper. Unfortunately inkject printed material does not hold up well when exposed to water, as opposed to commercially produced materials.

If you require a large amount of cards or prints to be on hand, say for a convention (or convention season. If you can order in bulk. It saves money), it is often more efficient and better quality to shop for a local printer who can do high quality digital printing on glossy stock for you. These prints not only look very professional but are more durable than their inkjet counterparts. They are also less likely to fade over time if exposed to light.

If you are looking to vend prints through your website, a POD supplier, such as Zazzle, Deviantart, Cafepress, Artybuzz or Redbubble. It will save you hassle in the longrun, however if you do a lot of conventions and are producing local anyway, you might find you get better returns if you simply vend your unsold convention stock manually through your site.

Sketch Cards

These are a kind of unique offering that has become popular in recent years both at cons and as sort of auction ish items. They are 100% original. They are not copies, and if you have time to do them, they can be a good addition to the table. If you want to read about them, there is a page here. But they boil down to basically being trading cards with original artwork on them. I’ve actually had people send me cards and ask me to draw on them. XD Its worth trying if you’ve got the time to knock a few off.

Charms & Buttons

A much more common offering at a convention than on a website, charms and buttons follow a similar philosophy as T-shirts in that they are best linked to, but not directly derivative of your comic (although sometimes characters work well with the charms, its very individual). Although done well, these items can be ridiculously good sellers. Because they are generally priced fairly low, and make great impulse buy items. There are also a lot of people who collect buttons, and as such they are always on the look out for this product to add to their collection. I have seen these fly off artist alley tables, when literally nothing else would sell.

Buttons have the advantage of being a possible ‘do it yourself’ crafty project. By purchasing a button press, and the button shell supplies, you can craft yourself as many or as few buttons as you need. The presses can cost between $50-$400, but many artists have paid for their presses several times over. You can also pimp your button making services to fellow creators and make some buttons for them too on the fly. I encountered more than one person carrying a button maker with them at a con for making new buttons when they needed, but also offering their services to other artists if the other artists were willing to draw button sized artwork. Obviously its easier to shrink art to fit the button size than draw in a tiny button.

There are places to order them however, like Smallworld Buttons. Zazzle, Cafepress, or other print on demand services that offer buttons. Many of them do. But watch the price per unit and make sure you are getting the best deal.

Acrylic charms for cellphones, books and bags is slowly catching on and adorable charms can definately hold appeal. Its also not a common offering, but its certainly more oriented towards the girly with its highly cute quotient and the fact girls are more likely to dangle things from their cellphones than guys. However, done right, one can create charms or jewelry that would appeal to both, but like so much, it has to be carefully designed to appeal to your audience. The only place I’ve found to order these is Printsess which offers both acrylic and metal charms. If you know any other good suppliers, let me know.

While I have seen webcomics sell these successfully, I think it very much depends on what they look like and the webcomic in question, as well as the sort of audience they have.

Unique Merchandise

Often some of the most successful merchandise is unique and creative things related to the comic, but that can be applied to the real world. One that comes to mind is the Medallions sold by Kory Bing of “Skin Deep”. Not only are the designs aesthetically awesome, but they could be worn by anyone that’s a fan of mythology, but gives a real fan an almost touch into the world of the comic, given that its part of the ‘mechanics’ of the world/story of the comic. They are also unique. No one else is selling anything quite like them, so there’s only one place to go.  Kory also polled the hell out of her audience before creating them, so she did her market research! A good way to see if your audience is ready to buy something you take the time to make. Polls are great.

Because ‘unique’ is the word of the day here, unfortunately I can’t really provide any resources because I have no idea what you might come up with. But the point is to try to be innovative. Obviously whatever you come up with still has to be made (or make-able) but being creative is what us webcomic peeps do best and by doing that we can bring merchandise to the table that is both great for our readers and customers, unique and memorable, as well as a good seller so we can continue eating while we make comics.

While there is a lot of other options out there, including toys, stuffed animals, magnets, stickers, etc. Many are too expensive to develop for a fledgling webcomic ( unless you happen to win something like Patch Together’s toy contest) and magnets and stickers don’t tend to be the best sellers or money makers but are better served as bonuses to include when someone purchases a book.

One thing to always keep in mind is cost vs return when it comes to merchandise, particularly if you are printing locally and footing the bill. Make sure your sales are worth it and don’t be afraid to do limited experimentation. A single run of 10 shirts of a new design, wait till you’ve sold them, then go print more if they sold well. If not, then you only have to deal with the handful of shirts that are left. There is also a benefit to taking pre orders.

Getting Merch on your site

A lot of the POD sites offer a store front or some kind of imbedded scripting to get the store front onto your site, but if you are doing your own printing and need something to supply an e-shopping cart, there are a lot of options if you happen to be running a wordpress/comicpress site. Simply by installing a plugin, you can have the functionality of a cart. If you aren’t running wordpress/comicpress, you may have to find a PHP solution, and if you are on a free hosting site, you would probably be best to stick with free hosting solutions. Some places like DrunkDuck even have integrated merchandise hosting. Unfortunately free hosts make things limited, but if you are using a POD service, they can often set things up for you to work around the problem.

Ending thoughts

95% of webcomics don’t make any significant money off merchandise. This can be due to a lack of aesthetic design in that merchandise, choosing the wrong merchandise, or simply a lack of audience numbers. If you don’t have at least 1000 uniques a day, steadily, its not even worth worrying about merchandise. Over 5000, you might begin with the book, and as you climb in your audience numbers, look at other options. Merchandise must also be turned over frequently to produce steady income, be prepared to do new things regularly, and try to innovate as much as possible. Be yourself, and be unique!