One of the most polarizing comics on the web, and one of my personal favorites, is Penny Arcade. Love them or hate them you’ve most likely at least heard of them. Their popularity and notoriety reaches far and wide across the web comic micro-verse so it would seem only natural that Gabe and Tycho would have a high selling printed book of their comic. However, that is not the case.
My third comic is up online. Hope you guys like it. I may have gone a little overboard on the PhotoShop effects in the third panel, but the idea I was trying to get a cross comes through.
This will be the last comic that appears on the main page. Tomorrow I’m moving my stuff to it’s own site with a permanent link from here. I will still announce new comic updates from here too, but I want the focus of Digital Strips to be on the show. Running my own comic is mostly for my own personal amusement anyway.
If you look around the site a bit I’m sure you’ll notice a few new additions. I’ve signed us up for some advertising. I hope thy aren’t too annoying, but running this podcast isn’t exactly free. We have some special plans in store for you folks and to pull it all off it would be nice to have some coin trickling in. I have set it up so that all the ads are relevant to comics and not very flashy. If you feel so inclined, make a purchase through the Amazon.com links. It gives us a cut and clicking through to any of the Google ads helps us out too.
If this way too much and you guys can’t handle it chime in, but I don’t think they are too intrusive. Thanks.
Hey, a second comic and on time! So far, so good. Today’s comic reflects my own experiences in coffee houses. Very often I would get the inspiration to hang out there with my sketchbook and as was most often the case be suddenly hit with artist’s block or get distracted or just start daydreaming. Oh well, at least I was out.
Just so everyone knows, the location of the comic is temporary. I’ve registered for a new domain and once I have that set up the comic will move to it’s own page. I want to keep the focus of this site the audio show and web comic blog.
Besides, we’ll need that space for our BIG ANNOUNCEMENT.
If you’re into web comics then chances are pretty good you’ve at least heard of the new Sony PSP, a nifty little device for playing games, listening to music, watching movies, and various other techno-weenie stuff. Well, it certainly didn’t take long for the more technically inclined to figure out how to add some missing features.
The folks over at 8Bit Joystick.com have posted detailed instructions on how to read web comics on the new PlayStation portable. That’s right, you can read PVP on your PSP. Sitting on the train or on the crapper, your favorite web comics can now come with you. Awesome.
Today marks the launch of my own web comic, The Last Drop. Right here on the Digital Strips site I’ll be updating new comics three times a week. This is something I’ve wanted to try for a while now and here it is.
The Last Drop is about a group of people who spend probably more time than they should hanging out in a city coffee shop, talking about life more than living it. The situations and characters I’m writing about are drawn from my own life and the three or so years I spent hanging out in a place very much like this. They always say to be a successful writer you should write what you know.
The question I’ve had to ask myself while working on my own comic is why am I doing this? What is going to keep me motivated to try and keep it up? I think the wrong thing to do would be too look towards other artists and try to figure out why they are creating comics on the web because that invariably leads to me trying to be like, and produce work like, the artists I admire.
The answer I came up with is simple, I want to become a better cartoonist. This will be my own personal driving force. Only practice can help me improve and not just constantly doodling in a sketchbook. It takes bringing a thought all the way through to completion to really crystallize all the things I want to improve and work towards in my work.
So, here you go, yet another web comic. I hope people like it, I hope there’s an occasional chuckle out there, but most of all I hope I learn something. Enjoy.
As the time gets closer to me actually posting my first comic on this site I thought it would be appropriate to make another How To post. Here we have the “Newbie’s Guide to Webcomics” from the folks over at Slackercomics.com.
The guide starts off with a screen shot of an actual web comic annotated with details that dissect the typical features of a web comic site. It is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but helpful none the less.
As previously posted the Daily Grind’s Iron Man Challenge currently has some controversy among the artists as to the status of Dean Trippe’s comic “Butterfly” and apparently one other. The rules as they are currently posted on the contest’s page declare that single panel updates are allowed only if 10 other multi-panel comics are posted between the single panels. This would put the comics in question in clear violation and subject them to disqualification.
However, it appears that the single panel update rule is a modified version of the original rules laid out for the contest. According to Ed Brisson the original rule regarding single panel updates read “Strips must be a minimum of two panels, however, artists may produce one single panel strip per every 10 strips.”
Since the original rule did not clarify a chronology for when the single panels could be used the interpretation of this rule could have been that for every 10 comics in total one single panel update would be allowed. At the time of this post there are 25 comics in “Butterfly’s” archive and, if one were to interpret the original rule this way two single panel updates would be allowed.
Whew! So, for the purpose of clarification the rule has been updated and enforcement of the rule will only take place after the revision since the judges feel it would not be fair to enforce a rule in retrospect. I think that is understandable. The big confusion here is why there is no indication of the rule change on the contest site itself. Changing the rules mid-stream should come with a detailed explanation and probably a notification sent to each competitor.
Personally, I’m going to let them slide on this one. Despite the sloppiness of the execution I understand the reasoning. I would just like to see them be more open and clear about the situation. What they should have done was left the original rule wording in tact and added a dated clarification after it so people knew what was going on.
The Daily Grind’s Iron Man Competition may have a controversy on it’s hands. Dean Trippe, one of the competitors in the web comic contest, seems to have violated the rules laid out for single panel updates and yet remains in the running.
The second rule listed in the competition states as follows, “Strips must be a minimum of two panels – two single panel strips are acceptable. Artists may produce one single panel strip per every 10 strips. This is not cumulative. There must be at least 9 strips of two panels or more between each single panel strip.”
In his strip “Butterfly“, however, Dean has only 6 multi-paneled strips between the March 22 comic and the March 31 comic, both of which are single paneled comics. The violation has been clear for several days now, but Dean has not been placed into the “loser” category on the Iron Man Challenge home page.
Will Dean be eliminated? If not, what does this mean for the validity of the contest? Will the other comic creators react? I have sent an email from the email link provided on the Daily Grind page asking for an update and I will report on their response. We’re keeping an eye on the situation.
NOTE – Story found via message boards on Yirmumah.net.
We start this show off with an announcement. I, Zampzon, am starting my own web comic. It will debut right here on this very page Tuesday. Please be sure to check back and have a look. Now everyone who’s web comic I’ve reviewed on the show can come and get me back.
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