2012 looking ahead

This  year we hope to be as productive as this last year.

We plan to do more comic conventions, most likely even attending the same conventions as last year.

Angela hopes to complete a longer comic – but is having a hard time deciding which one to focus on. There is a new white board covered in comic ideas. No less than 16(!) story ideas from Angela alone. First she needs to complete the three short comics she started last year.

Also, we are planning to update this blog twice a month. Maybe not a regular schedule, but twice a month as we can. More if we can think of things. We already have two for January! Way to go!

Because Abe is learning so much at school, we will likely also have more exciting plans. For example, The Saddest Sasquatch may become a beautiful large poster and maybe even a t-shirt. He is learning lots of exciting things and we will try to apply his school projects to Flying Dodo ideas.

2012 in review

Happy New Year! Well, it was a slower year in 2012 than in 2011 for the crew of Flying Dodo Publications. We only printed three comics, but we have an additional 2 in anthologies.

• Bubbles and Other Tales – originally in Bureau of Drawers Volume B (PDF); expanded in Bubbles and Other Tales online and in print.
• Tightie-Whities and Their Men – small printed book of sketches
• An Extensive and Practical Guide to Protecting Your Chickens from Coyotes – print only (so far)
• Corner of Imagination – Bureau of Drawers Volume C (PDF); we will make a book of this short comic soon.
• Tardigrade – Science: Fact and Fiction published by Stumptown Underground
  preview

Unfortunately we had a few failed comics, but they are still in progress. We have not forgotten about The Autovoyuerist, but that one just falls apart more and more. Not only do the original colors not want to print in a legible way, but we lost the original art somewhere. And we are having troubles with Great Beard colors. Colors are just difficult. But they are not in the scrap bin just yet.

However, there is another mini comic in the works – just needs layout and printing – calledDelicate Souffle. And I thumbnailed my longest story yet, working title of COB, that is about 108 pages. This will hopefully be completed by the end of 2013, so it should be an exciting year here. Look for an announcement of chapter 1 in March, hopefully.

I started my own web comic, Spaz Hands, for autobio, which is a genre I am extremely fond of.  And The Jerks went to full color with the marvelous talents of Abe.

On the show front, we did great. We had a booth at 5 conventions and I hosted an art show with my mom, Ink Tub Art Show. We got to walk around at Stumptown Comic Fest in Portland where we met Shing Khor in person (Marlowe the Monster) and said hi to Liz Conley, who we met the previous year at Stumptown.

One of the biggest things of 2012, Abe graduated from Seattle Central Community College with a certificate in Publishing Arts and now works at Minuteman Press. He is busy, but doing great and loving it.

In addition to completing COB in 2013, we, as last year, plan to blog more. And more interesting. This of course seems feasible after a week where neither of us had to go to work. I haven’t even left the house since Wednesday. But we have a plan and a list. Hopefully this pans out.

I would also like to introduce our new team. Some of us you already know.

Angela (that’s me) is the artist behind everything we do. She writes, she draws, she makes everyone (Abe) work really hard.

Abe is the head of IT, PR, Prepress, and Customer Service. Quite a big hat. He wears it well. He can be a bit of a downer but is good enough at what he does that it doesn’t really matter.

Walter takes care of our website and computing needs as directed by Abe. He likes sulking and the most we know about him is his headphones have skulls on them.

Pamela is responsible for all artistic decisions. In her spare time, Pamela is an enthusiastic, if confused, soccer player.

Susie is the only extrovert here and thus is responsible for letting you know when awesome things happen and developing relationships with people outside of our office (living room). Pamela is her twin sister. Susie hates soccer.

Bret takes care of your purchasing needs. Though he has been out of the frat for a while, due to an unfortunate misunderstanding according to him, he still has the frat mentality and will frequently shout “Chug, chug, chug” whenever anyone drinks anything. Ever.

Milton is our curmudgeonly owner. We tried to get him to retire, but he would miss grumping about the office too much.

Constance takes care of all our digitizing and layout needs. No one knows much about Constance. We had to tape her picture to the back of her monitors to remember what she looks like.

2011 was great

So I guess now that 2011 is over, we can look back at what a success it was.

Uh, probably most significant – we started Flying Dodo Publications to publish all our comics under. We are loving it.

We published a bunch of comics:

• Hardly Kind – though it was drawn over my winter break in the last week of December 2010, it was published in January, so that counts right? This was a fun one and is still one of my favorites.
• Herbert – a great collaboration between Angela and Abe. Not their first, but a good story.
• One Lemming’s Loss – Angela’s first comic in color.
• Ooh! Shiny – this one took all summer and longer. Probably one of the most difficult ones because Angela had to print all the linocuts.
• The Fire Breather – first one in water color. This was all painted over a three day weekend and the next night.
• Fart Happens: The Jerks Year One – we published the first year of The Jerks in a book!
• The Autovoyuerist – I am not sure if this technically counts. It was published in December, but we have to sell them as rejects because something went wrong. Except real copies soon.

We published mini comics!

• The Saddest Sasquatch – seems to be a favorite. It is one of my favorites.
• Square Today, Circle Tomorrow – this poor little fella seems to go unnoticed, but I think people like it when they read it. This is Abe’s favorite comic.
• A Not-So-Quiet Mouse Krismas – not for sale, but you can read it on the blog. We gave a printed version out as Krismas gifts.

We put some of the published comics up to read online! This one barely counts because we did it the last two nights of December, but we got them done!! We will continue to put more up for the rest of January and publish new ones online as we finish them.

• The Autovoyuerist
• Hardly Kind
• Harrowing Tales at the Bus Stop

We put comics up for sale IN COMIC STORES! The Comic Stop people are great and you can find our comics at the one in Lynwood and the one in the U District. Both are great stores and the people who work there are super friendly.

We also had our first booths at comic conventions: Bellingham ComiCon and Jet City ComicShow. We had such a good time; we are really looking forward to doing more next year. Yay! As soon as we know which ones we have a table at, we will certainly tell you here. And our own blogs. And on Facebook. And on Twitter. You’ll hear.

Abe started school to learn about publishing, which was a direct result of his work on all our comics this year. He loved working on it when he didn’t know anything and had to learn it all through trial and error. Now that he is in school learning all the crazy things like letter press and even more about desktop publishing, he is ready to burst with excitement.

This was a big year. We started toying with the idea of comics in 2006, but this year we really took the bull by the horns and put in a lot of effort. Angela treated it like a second job, getting home from work at her full time job and spending the rest of the day drawing away and on weekends.