Indie Comic Book Marketing

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Patrick Yurick hosted an amazing online discussion about Comic Marketing last night and I was one of the panelists along with Jen Vaughn, Mark Luetke, Lee Cherolis and Enrique Lugo. You can see the whole hour long discussion here:

[Below: Copied from the Google+ Event page]

Little Fish Studio is hosted by:
Patrick Yurick (www.lilfish.us & American.BOOOM.us)
Mark Luetke (2816monument.com)

Guests:
Jason Brubaker of reMINDblog.com
Jen Vaughn Marketing Unicorn at Fantagraphics Books & Journalist at the BEAT
Chikle of www.elchikle.com
Lee Cherolis of littleguardianscomic.com

Little Fish Studio is a Google+ Hangout ONAir Series that connects makers of comics together. It is hosted by +Patrick Yurick, founder of Little Fish Comic Book Studio in San Diego, CA (www.lilfish.us), and +Mark Luetke, web developer & adjunct professor for VCUArts and creator of 2816monument.com.  Little Fish Studio come out with a new Hangout each month. See past hangouts at: http://bit.ly/10X55HU

How to Deal With Rejection.

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From now on I plan to host all the MakingComics.com podcasts through my Youtube channel and then I’ll embed them here. This will make it easier to upload, see stats, find a wider audience and more. This might mean that I don’t host it through iTunes anymore though and I hope that isn’t a big problem for many of you. Let me know your thoughts.

Anyway, to accompany my longer form podcasts, I’ll be doing a few shorter form video’s and tutorials too. Here is the first of hopefully many more shorts. Enjoy! And please share this with everyone, even Grandma.

Doug TenNapel & Ethan Nicolle on Making Comics #17

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For the second time, Doug TenNapel, the creator of Cardboard, Ratfist, 13 other graphic novels, Earthworm Jim, tv shows, movies and more joins Ethan Nicolle, the creator of Axe Cop, Bearmageddon and Chumble Spuzz to talk with Jason Brubaker about life in comics.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

If you missed the first conversation with these guys in January of 2012, you can find it here:

Doug and Ethan 1

Doug and Ethan 2

More links:

Doug TenNapel’s $116,000 Kickstarter Campaign

My Wife’s Jewelry Website: CheliJewelry.com

AxeCop Animation in ADHD:

Photo’s of Illegal AxeCop Billboard - https://www.facebook.com/axecopfanpage/photos

Daniel Lieske & Jason Brubaker on Making Comics #16

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This is Part 2 of the conversation about Kickstarter. You can hear Part 1 here.

Shortly after I ended my second Kickstarter for reMIND Volume 2, which raised over $107,000 Daniel and I got onto Skype to talk about the whole adventure.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

See Daniel’s WormWorld Saga here: The WormWorld Saga

See Daniel’s Kickstarter here.

See Jason’s reMIND here: reMIND

Daniel Lieske & Jason Brubaker on Making Comics #15

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Shortly after I ended my second Kickstarter for reMIND Volume 2, which raised over $107,000 Daniel and I got onto Skype to talk about the whole adventure. This is just part one of the conversation. Sorry it took me so long to edit and upload. :(

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

See Daniel’s WormWorld Saga here: The WormWorld Saga

See Daniel’s Kickstarter here.

See Jason’s reMIND here: reMIND

Kazu Kibuishi & Jason Caffoe (part 2) on Making Comics #14

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This is part 2 of the conversation. Part 1 can be found here.

Kazu Kibuishi and Jason Caffoe sit down with Jason Brubaker (reMIND) to discuss the making of Amulet published by Scholastic, the Flight Anthology, raising more than $50,000 on Kickstarter to self publish Daisy Kutter and why we are even doing comics is the first place. This is another one that gets deep. :)

Also, see Jason Brubaker’s Kickstarter for reMIND 2 here.

Kazu Kibuishi & Jason Caffoe on Making Comics #13

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Kazu Kibuishi and Jason Caffoe sit down with Jason Brubaker (reMIND) to discuss the making of Amulet published by Scholastic, the Flight Anthology, raising more than $50,000 on Kickstarter to self publish Daisy Kutter and much more.  This is just the first half of the conversation.

Easy Text Effects in Photoshop

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by Tom Dell’Aringa (Maroonedcomic.com)

This short video tutorial explains how to create quick, professional looking text sound effects using Photoshop. What’s more, the effect is non-destructive, meaning it uses layer styles on active text (not rasterized text) so you can change the word, change the look and even save it as a style to apply to other text. This is the way I do a majority of text effects on my comic Marooned.

I believe this technique should work with Photoshop CS2 or later. I’m not sure about earlier versions.

The video is pretty self explanatory but I do move kind of quickly. Here’s a breakdown of the steps if you’d like to review.

1) Create a text layer and type your text sound effect. Do NOT rasterize the text!
2) With the text layer selected, click the “fx” icon at the bottom of the layer palette. (see below)

3) We’re going to use the drop shadow as an outline instead. In order to do this, set the blend mode to “normal” and the opacity to 100%. Then the key setting is to change the spread to 90-95%. This will “harden” the drop shadow and make it look like a border. From here you play with the distance and size to get the look you want. (see below)

4) At this point this might be all you need. Often I will use only white text with a black border using this technique and stop there. But you can do more to make it look spiffier. Go back into the layer effects and choose Gradient Overlay, and put an overlay over the text. You can also add a stroke, playing with the stroke position and color until you get something that you like.

5) You don’t want this text looking plain, though, so we’re going to Warp the text. Right click on the text layer and choose “warp text.” Under the “Style” pulldown, choose “arc,” and change the “bend” property to something that you like (either negative or positive). I generally choose something around 35% start. You can play with other warp styles, but arc tends to work the best.

6) An optional step, but one that helps make things look a bit more dynamic is to adjust the baseline shift of a couple of letters. I often choose the second and second to last letters, or something like that. Simply select a letter, go to the Character palette and click and drag on the baseline shift icon (see below). A couple points in either direction should do it.

7) Lastly, you can hit CTRL-T (CMD-T on Mac) and transform your text, rotating it to fit the action in the panel.

That’s it! The effect you have now is completely editable because we’ve used non-destructive techniques. Change the word, the arc, anything you want. Save it as a style and apply it to text in other strips. Play with the settings to get the look you like, there’s no one right way to do it. Now go play with some text!

Making Comic Links!

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Once again, this site is thriving because of the generosity of its contributors who go out of their way to write articles and tutorials for free. If you have benefited from this site then please consider supporting Scott King in his Kickstarter project! He has almost raised enough money to hit his goal but still needs a little help.

Kickstart Holiday Wars by Scott King.

If you enjoyed Scott’s articles on writing comics then you might be interested in his “online class pledge option”.

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In addition to Scott’s Kickstarter, you might have heard about Jake Parker’s Kickstarter project too. Jake was a guest on the Making Comics Podcast here.

Jake has already raised over $65,000 and he still has 7 days to go.

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Making Comics Podcast Co-host, Daniel Lieske, has recently released the third chapter of his amazing online graphic novel called “The Wormworld Saga” which is just breathtaking. Check it out and donate to help support his efforts. If he can continue to support himself through this comic then he will be able to keep completing a new chapter every 3 to 4 months.

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Tom Dell”Aringa, another contributor to this site, who also has a great webcomic called “Marooned“, recently announced a limited edition poster print. It will be available until this Friday (the 11th) for $28. Grab one while you can in his store here: http://www.maroonedcomic.com/order-the-poster/

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And finally, there is a FREE student run digital comic magazine called INK that I was just introduced to. You can download it for free on your phone or iPad or computer. It’s full of great little comic samples and articles about independent comics today. Here is the press release if you want to grab a free copy!

INK, an entirely student-run digital comics magazine, is proud to present you with our Spring 2012 issue, now available online and on all iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch). The magazine has been designed for the new iPad’s high resolution Retina display, allowing the content within INK to come to life on the screen. Published by the cartooning students at the School of Visual Arts, INK has established itself as a place for emerging artists to showcase their work and connect with the SVA comics community at large.

The magazine has placed itself at the forefront of the comics industry by embracing digital publishing and new technologies. The current issue features a selection of work by SVA students and alumni, along with interviews with Christopher Hastings (Dr. McNinja), Drew Friedman (Any Similarity to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental), and an article focusing on WFMU’s Lowest Common Denominator magazine.

INK is completely free. It is available for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch on the iTunes App Store
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ink-spring-12/id516466846?mt=8
as well as online as a PDF at www.sva-ink.com

Now, go make some comics!