Graphic Novel Panel, Part 3

If you missed it, you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Publishing

To find a publisher, find comics that are similar to yours. Fantagraphics really publishes anything they like. I think Kim mentioned a few times that they are not taking many new projects on now because they are booked up with the reprints of classic comics. Image is basically on a model of you finance. You don’t earn any money from the books until Image has earned back the cost of printing and a little extra. It sounds like a fair model. At the after party, I asked why this was worth it and it seems to be mostly about branding and distribution – Image will distribute your book through Diamond to comic stores everywhere and then you have that I on the spine that is a signal of quality.

Megan recommended self-publishing. Many people start with self-publishing and as it becomes popular a publishing house might pick it up. In the world of comics, as opposed to prose, self-publishing is highly respected. As a side note, you might want to check out this great blog post by Faith Erin Hicks about her experiences publishing.

Mark said to go to conventions in your genre – not just comic conventions. His examples were the horror conventions in the Seattle area (there are no less than three in a year). In the convention vein, Matt suggested you make ashcan copies and give out tons of them. Megan agreed (that is how she got started, I think).

Emi said the web was vital for her (what with being a web comic and all). She says it is not necessary to hide your work – Show it! If you can get a response, people will want more. Comic fans like to hold their comics in their hands so web comics are a good starting place to gain followers. Use Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook to get your comics out there. In a later question someone asked how she gets people to buy the book, if she holds half back or makes everything available. Emi makes everything available, though just by chance people who buy her second book will get to read comics before they are put on the web.

Marketing

Great question – promoting on the web. Matt actually recommended reading the Fantagraphics blog. He also said go to conventions, read and comment on comics blogs. He compared commenting on a comic blog or news site to a global comics bar. Megan pointed out that the world of comics isn’t really that big. If your participate, people will start to recognize your name. Mark said to be a social butterfly. He has a Facebook page for every comic. You have to constantly put yourself out there.

Emi recommended putting your images on Tumblr. You can connect it to your Facebook page and Twitter so everyone will get an announcement when you post a new image. She was surprised how many followers she got just through Instagram. You sell yourself through your images. When her first book came out, she emailed over 200 comic shops with a link to a PDF copy of her book to read for free so they could decide whether they wanted to sell it in their shop. She also said to hand out postcard of your art at conventions for free to every single person you see.

Brandon brought up that, when getting press, you must remember that you may be addressing non-comic folk.

Random questions

Another question was about failures that they would recommend avoiding. Megan said if you have spent lots of time on a project, don’t quit. If you get bogged down, put it away for a little or for even a year or more and come back to it so you can find the good parts. Matt agreed. To keep himself from demotivating himself by over analyzing his drawings, he puts them away as soon as they are done. Don’t’ get in your own way. Emi said not to worry about what other people think. Just draw stuff for yourself. Brandon said don’t feel that you haven’t succeeded by measuring success against anything but happiness.

In regards to t-shirt profits and merchandise, Megan has found that Girl Hero swag has earned her way more than books have. Matt said it wasn’t way more for him, but still more. And he finds that the more cool crap you offer, the more real you appear. Kim said Fantagraphics doesn’t offer merchandise because it is too distracting. They want to focus on the books.

And that was it. Then we were off to the Fantagraphics Bookstore for the after party. I tried really hard and did talk to people. But we only handed out one business card. We suck. It was really fun to stand around for a few hours talking about comics with so many other people who make comics (because that is who I ended up talking to). Now that I think about it, I bet it was all people who were comic makers. Duh. So much fun. The Fantagraphics book store has that wonderful booky smell and has so many great graphic novels.

Graphic Novel Panel, Part 2

If you missed it, you can read Part 1 here. I intended to post this on Wednesday, but Drink and Draw made me forget.

Art and Writing

Someone asked what not to do in art and writing. This rather stumped some of them. Kim said not to submit too little – at least 6-10 finished pages, if not more. Show you have gumption to finish what you start. A one and a half page synopsis and a couple character sketches is way too little. A completed story is great. One to two dozen completed pages is good, too.

Brendan said to be a professional. Approach it as a job. Write inquiry letters. Everyone nodded.

Matt’s was interesting. To make comics your job, you must decide what you want from it. Indie comics feed your soul but pay shit. Marvel/DC pay great, but it is a crappy job. I bet that last one depends on the person, but that is just part of figuring out what you want.

Megan basically said don’t bite off more than you can chew and if you are bored with it, so is the reader. When she first started drawing comics, she started with a long, feminist, cyber punk story, but felt she couldn’t draw. Then (after many years) she realized that she had a problem with people walking down halls for pages to get from place to place. Then she realized she’s in charge and can make the decisions about what to show. Her rule is if she feels ennui when drawing, there is a problem she needs to work out – find a new way to transition, stop and think about what would be interesting or enjoyable to draw.

Mark said to pick a subject you love to death and can never fall out of love with.

I like this question for Kim: What to do it I have a great story but my art isn’t up to par? Should I wait? Kim said give it a shot and see if you can get something that will work. Some artists have started making a graphic novel to force themselves to draw so they would get better. This is actually why I do mini-comics. I get to practice and get better, but I can try new techniques and tools and maintain visual consistency within each story.

Someone asked at what point do you need to layout where a lot of scenes occur. Of course, this varies from person to person, but led to interesting answer. Megan’s first comics all took place in her apartment for this reason – she knew it like the back of her hand and could get visual reference whenever she needed. Matt once took 25 hours to use Sketch Up to plan out a detailed 3D model of a house for a story. When sounds useful.

Then my favorite part: Tools! Though the question was specifically about computer tools:

• Mark – Word for the script, Photoshop for the scanning, Illustrator for framing and layout. He hand letters everything.
• Megan – Photoshop to scan and fix line art and color. Hand drawn and lettered.
• Matt – Finaldraft (and Notecard) and Word for scripts
  Art laid out by hand in ink and pencil – he actually scans and resizes throughout the process.
  Sketchup to build 3D models
  Illustrator to letter
  Photoshop to color
  Manga Studio is for comics like Photoshop is for photos. I am actually starting to be tempted by this program. Might need to look for a demo.
  He likes to do bruises because he gets to dip his thumb in ink.
• Emi – mostly traditional. Photoshop to tone. She finds that she loses the grittiness that traditional provides (I agree).
• Brandon – Word and Google Docs. I always wondered if professionals used Google Docs and now I have my answer.

I will post Part 3, the final part, tomorrow. Look forward to it!

Graphic Novel Panel, Part 1

On Jan 28, Abe and I went to a Graphic Novel Panel hosted by the Seattle Graphic Artists  Guild. We missed the last one and I had heard of three or four of the five speakers that would be there this time. It’s a panel, so it was directed at Q&A basically. The moderator would start things off and then the rest of the time was spent with the audience asking questions.

We spent almost the whole first hour listening to them introduce themselves – entertaining, but not useful. I took 9.5 pages of notes in my 8×5 inch drawing pad, so I will try to just hit the highlights.

• Mark Monlux – moderator and member of the guild. He has been an illustrator and cartoonist since the 80s. I think he was a decent moderator. Forgot his own rules sometimes, but he was jovial about being reminded.
• Megan Kelso – she was supposed to speak at a Cartoonist NW once, but she lost her voice from having so many speaking engagements! I have two of her books, Artichoke Tales and Squirrel Mother, but neglected to bring one for her to sign. Whoops. Oh well.
• Matt Southworth – He draws Stumptown for Greg Rucka and does some more mainstream DC/Marvel stuff for the money. He had a lot to say and is a charismatic speaker.
• Emi Lenox – of Emitown. She was the newest to the comics game and the only web comic. She felt too new but added a good voice from both the web and newb point of view.
• Brandon Jerwa – mostly writes for licensed characters. He was the most mainstream of everyone, but still had interesting stuff to add. Not that mainstream Marvel/DC is bad, just not my interest.
• Kim Thompson – co-owner of Fantagraphics, who hosted the event. He was pretty quiet. Felt like he felt he didn’t belong, but I thought he brought a good voice from the publisher viewpoint.

They went into their histories more than I did here. Those were just the final impressions I am left with.

Planning

I thought Emi had an interesting planning process for Emitown. Emi town is a daily autobio comic. Each day she writes down notes of interesting things that happened over the day. That night or even that weekend or later, she goes over her notes to draw some pictures that she later adds text to, if I understood correctly. She stayed on top of it for a year, but fell behind. Then she went back to her notes…1 year later! And had to decipher her notes from each day. She mentioned that Flickr, Tumblr, and Facebook were handy references to decipher her cryptic notes.

Megan likes to go to a place and get a few sketches down to cement the idea in her head. Then she can use those sketches as a memory jump later. She seems to do a lot of planning work. For instance, she did lots of sketches of a climbing knot for a scene in Artichoke Tales. She knew it wouldn’t be prominent, but wanted to get it right, make it authentic. She also solves her visual problems in the layout.

Editing

Matt said editors for a comic are not like editors for prose. In comics, they are more like a film producer. For mainstream comics, they really just keep hold of their licenses, making sure the guidelines for the character are followed. Brandon called them traffic cops.
At this point, the dreaded graphic novel v. comic book question came up. However, (and they all agreed with my point of view, that in the end, it doesn’t really matter), we did get some interesting information from Kim out of it. The difference in publishing a monthly/pamphlet vs. a whole graphic novel I 30 days vs. 30 weeks or more. This panel was the end of January 2012 and Fantagraphics had already locked in their publications through March 2013! He also mentioned that monthly/pamphlet format is dying out for indie comics.

Part 2 coming Wednesday! Art and writing portion of the panel.

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.

Belated Happy Holidays

For krismas this year we made two things to give to our friends and family. First, Angela made a lino-block image of Platyclaus, which I used to print letterpress cards with. Second, we made a cute little comic  to go with the card. We bound the comics by hand. They were a big hit and we thought that all you Flying Dodo lovers out there would like to see these two projects. Enjoy!

–Abe

 

Jet City Comic Show and Bellingham ComiCon

So we went to both the Jet City Comic Show and Bellingham Comicon since we last posted (forever ago!). Abe started school the Monday after Jet City and we’ve been incredibly busy since then. So, here’s our post-con post with pics and everything. Hope you enjoy it.

Here’s our booth at Jet City. I know you can’t tell, but Angela really does have two pony tails.

Here is Angela with her tea, talking to her mom on the phone before the service cut out. Since it was in Seattle and they could drive there in 15 minutes in the morning, both Abe and Angela got to bring some tea to drink from home. Angela had Irish Breakfast and Abe had Golden Monkey-both their favorite teas. Her Starbucks tea mug keeps the tea too hot, so Angela brought a small tea cup to drink out of. How dainty.

No pictures of Abe because he was behind the camera. Good way to save a camera though – no broken lenses. Even though Jet City was slow, we had a really good time. Emi Town was across from us. Abe and Angela really enjoyed talking comics with all the great people who stopped by our booth to see what we are all about. Some people asked great questions. Abe particularly enjoyed seeing the demographics of the people who are interested in our comics and honing his sales pitch. Angela got annoyed by the sales pitch, but all she could muster up was to say hi.

Next up, Bellingham ComiCon, which was way busier and hence more fun. Our booth looks almost exactly the same, but switched so Abe could get a picture for his school project. This time you get to see Abe and Angela because Anita came over to take pictures. They were even kind enough to let her in for free when she dropped off our lunch and when she came back later to take their pictures because she forgot her camera the first time.Aren’t they adorable? Those are their normal faces.We were boothed next to Wayward Studios. Abe was kind enough to chat with them for a while after a bathroom break (more about the bathroom break later). They were friendly and nice and we all recognized each other from Jet City.

Anyways, they had their first barter experience. This fella, Jesse James McFarland, traded us his Aric the Redd 24-hr comic for Hardly Kind and then he was awesome enough to buyThe Saddest Sasquatch from us. Here he is chatting with us – great conversation, but we might have had our comic goggles on. 

Great fun.

After Bellingham ComiCon, we popped into Anita’s place for dinner and more photos for Abe’s school project. Here is Angela and her mom.They are supposed to be fencing not re-enacting their favorite wand duel from Harry Potter.

Just to let you know, this was Abe’s final experience at the Bellingham ComiCon bathrooms.

While we were watching the hordes of people walk past our booth, Abe and Angela got talking about things we could do to get those hordes to stop at our booth. We noticed that lots of people stopped at the booths with boobs and butts so we decided we should have some boobs and butts too. Out of this conversation was born Fannie, who is a fan repair service tech.

And that’s our belated Post-Con wrap up. Thanks for reading! Hope to see you at a con in the future.

–Flying Dodo

Print madness

First, a reminder. Abe and I will be at the Jet City Comic Show (Seattle, WA) in just under a couple weeks! We will have a ton of stuff and would love you to come by and say hello. We are at booth AA68. It is September 24, Saturday, from 10-6 at the Seattle Exhibition Hall. We have been working hard getting ready.

What a busy weekend. On Saturday, Abe and I went up to Bellingham to print lots of stuff at my mom’s place, Egress Studio Press. But lucky us, we got to spend a couple hours driving around Seattle first looking for paper. Office Depot and Staples only carry paper that is too light-weight. So Paper Zone was the winner, even though it was heavier paper than we really wanted (28 lb. instead of 24lb.).

During this time driving around, we had to leave early and so stopped in at Starbucks for breakfast. I got a pumpkin scone and Awake tea because that is always what I get. Abe got coffee, which is a change for him in the last few weeks, and his usual cranberry scone. Their scones are actually good now, by the way. Anyways, the tea was too hot still when we got to Staples, so I wasn’t drinking it and forgot it in the car. When we got back to the car, Nisa had pulled it out of the cup holder and poured the whole thing out on my seat so she could drink it! Fortunately, there is a great drive-thru coffee, Gourmet Latte, place right next to Staples and Office Depot (which are across the street from each other) so I got another tea and the dogs, even idiot Nisa, got dog treats.

After all our driving around and drink buying, we eventually got up to Bellingham and started working away. I was a bit of a task master, but boy was it worth it. First up, my mom took pictures of Abe and me! It was hilarious. They have been put to good use, but I think they will have other uses as well. We had fun and were all laughing our heads off.

Then we ran upstairs to the computer. The first thing we worked on, because it was the last requirement for the Jet City Comic Show: Posters! We have one for The Jerks and one for Flying Dodo Publications. I am so glad she helped us because even though The Jerks poster was complete, we replaced some of the hand-written text with a font and it looks amazing. And she helped us with our Flying Dodo Publications poster and it could not look better. It is covered in a bunch of variations on the flying dodo, like this one, my favorite, called “Big Butt, Skinny Jeans.”

Poster for The Jerks

Poster for Flying Dodo Publications

Now we finally have a saleable copy of Ooh! Shiny. Lovely goldenrod cover (the image does not do it justice). Japanese stab binding. I am still binding it, but as of this posting, 10 of the 100 books are complete. Japanese stab binding is so much fun. The first 100 copies have a hand-written dedication, but any after will have a printed dedication. After printing all theOoh! Shiny papers, Abe ran downstairs with them all and folded them in half.

Cover of "Ooh! Shiny"

Title page of "Ooh! Shiny"

Abe had to fold a lot of paper

We also finished The Fire Breather, which I did all the watercolor paintings for on the Labor Day weekend. Great fun. It is a small book, but full color.  I will post more about this on it’s own, but I am pretty dang pleased with it.

Just look at it all! Pages for "The Fire Breather" and "Ooh! Shiny"

The second to last thing we worked on was Fart Happens, the collection of the first year of The Jerks comics! It looks great! I am really excited for this. It is by far the biggest book we have done: 60 pages. We did not have time to print it, but my mom will bring it down this weekend. Abe did the layout and did a great job. I can’t believe how much he has learned about layout this summer. He is going to do great in his Publishing Arts program this coming year.

Finally, but not really, we made up a couple prints: Secrets (a Gertrude comic), and Two Birds on a Wire. So excited. We should have at least 5 different prints available at the Jet City Comic Show. Two Birds looks Great. They are huge prints on glossy paper.

Then for reals finally, we ran downstairs at 11:00 in the evening to cut up all the Ooh! Shiny and Fire Breather papers (two sets of pages printed per paper). We didn’t even leave until 11:30, so we sadly missed out on ice cream with my mom and Jim.

A couple days later, Monday, I got in the car at 6:30 in the morning to head to work. As soon as I opened the door, it smelled like something died in there. I sent Abe a panicked text, but I was running late, so I got in and drove to work. It smelled just as bad if not worse when I finished work. I forgot: I put milk in my tea and it was still apparently spilled in the back seat. Mostly on a blanket, so this evening, we put it in the wash and doused the tea spots in Febreeze. Dead animal and Febreeze go great together, let me tell you.