|
|
|
Will you be doing another Zot! Online story? If so, when?
As I write this in May 2001, there are no firm plans for the next Zot! story but I suspect it's only a matter of time. No matter when such a comic goes up though, you can find it through the Online Comics section of this site, so check back often.
Actually, I'm working on one now -- maybe it will be up by the time you read this, in fact -- but I don't plan to use Flash to create little pockets of animation and voice-overs the way other cartoonists have. Instead, I hope to use some of the plug-in's capabilities to offer alternate spatial effects (the one I'm working on now, for example, shows each panel embedded in the previous panel; something that wouldn't be practical in html).
Eventually, yes, but let me take a break first. Carl was exhausting!
Threads pop-up from time to time on The Comics Journal message board and The Comicon.com message board. Comicon.com, in particular, has an Online Comics section I encourage people to post to. There's also a message board run by online comics artist Greg Stephens devoted specifically to the issues raised in Reinventing Comics available Here!
Good Question! Check out the newly updated 24-hour comics section (in Inventions) and click on "The Dare."
I think there's a lot potential for these sharp, resolution-independent tools and I look forward to artists willing to work to their strengths. One artist who seems to be taking advantage of that vector-based clean line is Demian5 from Zurich.
Nope. I think "sequential art" is still the best one, whether online or on paper (specifically, "juxtaposed pictorial or other images in deliberate sequence" but I don't expect people to trot that one out in casual conversation!). In Reinventing Comics I suggested thinking of comics as a "temporal map" as a way of suggesting new shapes, but I don't see that as contradicting the "sequential art " definition at all. Digital Comics are simply comics in digital form. I don't think we need a different definition of comics because I never saw comics as necessarily tied to paper and ink in the first place. |
|
|
|
Why is this site only updated occasionally?
Creating and maintaining my own site has been one of the most gratifying experiences of my career so far. I love the freedom, real-time interactions and design challenges of online comics. Unfortunately, I can only a minority of my work day to it -- for now -- since my printed work and speaking engagements remain my family's primary source of income. As the web evolves, I expect that to change. Unlike a lot of my colleagues, I don't feel any particular loyalty to pen and ink. In fact my obsession with the potential of digital comics has become something of an industry in-joke, since most of what I've predicted still requires a broadband environment and a more mature economic model -- both of which aren't quite here yet -- so I'm pretty much tilting at windmills until they arrive. In the meantime...
(With the opening of the Store section, this may be a less of a mystery, but here's some additional information.) In the past, sales of original art more than made up for any costs associated with the site, so it has actually been making money, strangely enough. On the other hand, that's something of a hollow victory since it still involves selling paper and ink and I believe that the web experience can be valuable in and of itself rather than just serving as a promotional gimmick for its predecessor. (Besides, I'm running out of originals since all my recent work is paperless -- D'oh!) Lately other sources of revenue such as Amazon and Paypal have come into play that allow voluntary contributions, but needless to say, those are limited in number. Eventually I hope to charge very small amounts of money for access to certain features (nothing you've seen so far) but a lot of factors (all covered in Reinventing Comics) need to come into play first so that may be a few years off. Anyway, for now it's all free, as it should be. Most of you are still paying enough with your time, just waiting for all this stuff to load!
Uh. Sure! (Like, I'm gonna say No??) I appreciate being asked, but really, Guys, the whole Web would grind to a halt if we all had to ask permission just to link to another site! As for a graphic to link with, I'd prefer this one: Not currently, sorry. My Links section is more designed as a recommendation service and guide than the old bottomless pit index-style list.
I'm paying $35 a month for hosting of this domain, (unless it gets too popular all of a sudden). Domain registration is under $100 for two years. Free hosting deals (the kind that come with email accounts for example) are a mixed bag and frequently saddle you with banner ads, limited space and even the potential for losing control and ownership of your work in some cases. If you can afford it, I suggest directly registering a simple, easy-to-remember domain name and consider that $20-$40 a month charge to have it officially reside on someone's servers, so that we can always find you and we'll only have to see what you want us to see. |
|
|
|
How do I break into comics?
Get a piece of paper. Draw a comic. Run down to Kinko's and photocopy it a few times. Sell it to someone for a dime. Voila! You're in comics. If that's not good enough, I'm not sure what more I can suggest, except to always do what YOU think is interesting. If you try too hard to do what someone else wants to see, you might get work eventually but you'll always be second-rate because there'll always be some kid out there that actually believes in the very same kind of work you consider crap and that kid will whup your ass every time. Remember: Just because you've decided to sell out doesn't mean that anyone is going to buy!
I used to make my pictures -- badly -- with technical pens, crowquills and felt brushes on kid finish 2-ply bristol. I now make my pictures -- badly -- with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and various other applications on a Power Mac G4 with a Wacom Intuos Tablet attached. Photoshop is considered standard on Macs and PC's. Linux users seem to like The Gimp as a cheap alternative but I haven't used it myself. Illustrator and Macromedia's Freehand are considered equivelent but I don't have much experience with the latter. Currently, I'm using Adobe's GoLive to put my web pages together (yeah, Adobe really cleans up on guys like me) but I know plenty of designers who like Dreamweaver better and others who think it's important to have both. For the first couple of years, I hand-coded all of my web work with a shareware text editor called BBEdit Lite, which I still use and recommend. You can do a lot with just Photoshop and a text editor, and new web designers can get a lot out of starting that way because it allows them to get "under the hood" later on when using more visual tools like GoLive and Dreamweaver. I use another loveable old shareware program called Fetch to upload my pages Most Web Design programs incorporate such FTP (File Transfer Protocol) programs these days, but I just like Fetch. If you're considering taking the plunge into digital, I would suggest reading the trade mags and sites (e.g., MacWorld) for a few months beforehand and look for those big comparative articles to help you make your first buying decisions. Never buy top of the line! Get the next best computer and save yourself a lot of money. Once set up, I strongly suggest an income-free zone of at least 6 months to just play around and get a feel for the new tools, without expecting any tangible return on your investment. Learn to play with them first and you'll have a far better grasp of the full range of "work" they can help you with in the long run.
It would take many thousands of words and a couple of weeks to accurately record all the details of my working method but here it is in a nutshell: 1. Layout. For Zot!, I use sheets of fine graph paper, assembled into a big scroll and sketch in pencil. I still do these on paper but they're getting sketchier all the time and I could see this part of the process migrating to digital in the near future. 2. Scan and Chop. I scan the layouts in sections and reassemble them into one big scrolling Photoshop document. Then I decide where to split the art into individual gifs and jpgs. Sometimes, a panel will need to be it's own image file, sometimes I'll keep several panels together in a single picture. Mostly this'll be based on expected color depth, width, image type, etc... In Photoshop 6, you can use the "slice" tool to get this done without too much grief. 3. Rough to Art. Now I have a whole bunch of indivual Photoshop documents that consist of nothing more than a scan of a rough sketch. That sketch becomes a dim background layer on top of which, I can add several or even dozens of layers on which I can do the finished artwork. IMPORTANT: The act of doing the finished art at this point could be seen as analogous to "penciling", "inking" and "coloring" but increasingly, the process has become a lot more organic than that. More a background-middleground-foreground approach, and more concerned with continually modifying color, helping to define planes and literally "painting with light." Does that make any sense?? Basically, the longer I've been doing it, the less like traditional drawing it's become. 4. Lettering. The lettering and balloons exists on the top layers. (I used Illustrator to do all the lettering for Reinventing Comics, but for Zot! I just did the balloons in Illustrator, rasterized a bunch of them, and then dragged-and-dropped as needed. The lettering I did directly in Photoshop (v6 having better text-handling.) 4. Conversion. Next, I convert each panel, or set of panels, into gifs and jpgs (no PNGs yet!) and stuff away the PS files for future reference if needed. 5. Build for Web. Finally, I use GoLive to assemble the images into big long tables, add the background pattern, check for errors and... 6. Upload. Hmm. Okay, here's a question for YOU: Would it be worth it for you guys if I took a week or so to really write down and diagram every detail of my working method, tools, techniques etc. in exhaustive detail, and sold it using Paypal or something over email for, say, $5? Lemme know.
Last I heard, you could major at making comics at School of Visual Arts in NYC, Savannah College of Art and Design, and The Kubert School. And yes, I've considered teaching at some point, just not yet.
There might be, but I haven't heard about them yet.
If you want to make art digitally, a Tablet/Pen of some sort really is a must. Drawing with a mouse isn't really practical. I use a Wacom Intuos (the smallest, in fact -- 5" by something) and get along fine. Yeah.
|
|
|
|
What kind of research materials on comics theory and history are there?
Aaah, be careful what you WISH for! Also check out the Michigan State and Ohio State Collections for some great resources and links.
This is an older question, obviously, since more and more of the 24-hour comics have been going online. Check the 24-hour comics Index to see what's currently viewable.
"Cracking Jokes" is a great comics essay about the psychology of humor. I think it originally appeared in Arcade and was reprinted in Spiegelman's seminal 80's anthology "Breakdowns." Beyond that, I'm not sure where it could be found, but I assume it would be available through Raw Books in NYC. Okay, this isn't really a "frequently" asked question. Just a chance to plug an old friend and a great cartoonist. Matt is now at http://members.aol.com/cynicalman/ email: cynicalman@aol.com
Not yet, but I still think it's a good -- if somewhat odd -- idea.
Nope. He just thought it was funny -- and so do I! Check out his brilliant home page at MARKMARTIN.NET. The story in question is "Marky Mark Britches." |
 |
|
|
|