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.
Not a few hours after I came up with the idea to put up these ‘How To’ posts did I read Friday’s blog post by Wes Molebash, artist behind the comic ‘You’ll Have That‘. The post gives extensive detail on how he creates his comic.
Fans of the behind the scenes look at comic creator’s processes will find a lot to love here. Wes provides photos of each stage of comic creation and details how he goes about his work. The post focuses in his inking technique, so we don’t get to read about his writing process or any computer work involved.
Comic artist of American Splendor fame, Gerry Shamray, has a review of the new Frank Miller film Sin City published by Sun News. However, this isn’t the sort of review you’ll find in most entertainment sections of your newspaper. In honor of the films graphic novel origins Gerry has written his review of the film in comic form. Here you can find the comic review of Sin City.
Not only is this a review of a comic book based film in comic form, but the artwork is styled as an homage to Frank Miller’s Continue reading
It seems as if the hard drives that house the Modern Tales network of web comic collectives have failed. For the past two days comics on ModernTales.com, GirlAMatic, serializer.net, and Graphic Smash have been unavailable. Going to any of the sites reveals a message from Joey Manley explaining that they are working on the issues, but do not yet have an estimation of when the sites will be restored.
If you’ve been spending any time at all reading web comics you’ll come across similar features that web comic sites have and one of those features is sometimes a step by step walkthrough of how the artist creates their comic. I’m going to kick off a series a posts here about creating comics and, more specifically, comics for the web. There are a ton of online resources on this topic, but the very best and most enlightening come from web comic creators themselves explaining how they do their own thing. So, the series of posts marked with [How To] will explore various artists’ pages that explain how they work their magic.
The first one I want to talk about can be found at InkTank.com, a site that is home to a couple of web comics all by artist Barry Smith. The comic that Barry uses to explain his process is his own “Angst Technology”. We haven’t discussed Angst yet on the show, but look for it as a future pick of mine.
Barry has one of the most thorough explanations of a web comic creation process that I’ve ever found online. You can read his whole process on the page Creating Angst Technology. Barry starts off with a description of the tools he uses to create the comic. A common set of questions aspiring artists have for their favorite cartoonists invariably begin with what type of pens are used, what type of pencils, etc. Here Barry goes into great detail even going so far as to list various prices.
Then he includes a page about how he comes up with ideas for his comic, also a very common question creators are asked. This topic, though, is often left a mystery. Creators rarely want to reveal their writing process. Barry gives an honest discussion here about how he copes with one of the most difficult aspects of creating a comic, the idea.
Barry steps the reader through his drawing, inking, scanning, and even touch-up processes. He includes photos of the progress as well, a very useful aspect to the descriptions. Now, this isn’t meant as a tutorial. Every comic is created differently and there really isn’t a hard and fast color-by-numbers way of creating any comic strip. This is meant as an explanation of this one artist’s process and a lot can be learned by reading through it. If you’re thinking of creating a comic or looking for an answer to your basic comic creating questions stop over at Ink Tank for a very detailed look at how one artist does it from start to finish.
If you’re a fan of comics then you, like me, are probably chomping at the bit to see the upcoming film Sin City. The film opens this Friday and you can bet your sweet pitootie I’ll be there. While the Sin City series of comics and graphic novels are not web comics there is a taste of the amazing work by Frank Miller on the official movie web site (sincitythemovie.com). If you go to the site and click on ‘Fan Central’ then ‘Original Art’ you’ll be treated with a couple pages of storyboard and concept sketches Continue reading
A third contestant has dropped out of the Daily Grind’s Iron Man Challenge, a competition that challenges web comic artists to continuously update their comic strips at least once every 24 hours. The latest web comic creator to bail out is Bruce Gorr, the cartoonist behind A Day in the Life. It isn’t clear yet what happened to cause Bruce to stop updating his strip, but as of this post the last comic he has is dated March 22.
Cartoonist Stephan Pastis is the creator and artist behind Pearls Before Swine. The horizontal paneled humor strip is published in newspapers around the US by the United Media syndicate and features a talking rat and pig. The strip dated March 23 is of special note since it contains a pretty biting remark on the current state of comic strips in print. Check it out while you can, Comics.com only keeps individual strips up for a month.