Have you ever wanted to ask your favorite comic creator a question? Maybe listened to a podcast and thought, I could ask a better question than that? Well, here’s your chance.
We at MakingComics.com are working on designing a new Gutter Talk project (which may potentially be unveiled as a panel at San Diego Comic-Con International 2018 – yes, THAT Comic-Con) and both the questions and the guests will be determined by you. We’ve been so blown away by the overwhelming positive response by learners in our “How To Make A Comic Book” Coursera course that we’ve decided we want you to be the center of what we are doing next.
I’m not going to lie. Scripting is my jam. I’m a writing kinda guy, so excuse me if I get a little resource happy here. But there’s so much stuff to learn about scripts that just giving you guys only a couple of resources might break my heart. So we’ll start at square one.
“…it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”
Rocky Balboa’s inspirational speech to his son in the 2006 installment into the Rocky franchise is definitely the inspiration for this show. There’re a lot of projects I work on right. Art, design, and educational experiences I am currently slaving away over. I spend a lot of time, and incur a good deal of mental anguish, trying to figure out what the “right” thing to do is as a day job. When Rocky talks about taking hits, in my context that is all about my own personal demons regarding my design process. My own shadow/devil on my shoulder telling me I’m wasting my time.
Last month, I’ll be honest, I almost considered #ComicFuel a waste of my time. Three episodes in and I was ready to give up.
I almost didn’t finish episode 3. Even during the process of doing it, I didn’t want to finish it. I did finish, barely, and then I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to do another episode the same way again (if I did another episode). So I called Adam and asked him to record a quick episode where we powered through a ton of questions. It turned into a longer episode.
As I sat down with Adam Greenfield this week to record the fourth episode of #ComicFuel I was reminded why I do this. Sure, this episode is WAY too long ( cough-2hoursand14minutes-cough ), but who cares? I got to sit down with my friend and answer some student questions and talk about how to practice art. In my ideal retirement scenario I would spend every day doing this.
I was reminded that MakingComics.com is the purely “good” thing that I have in my life. For me this is the one sacred space in this whole universe where everything we do is just good. We aren’t always active, or on time with our products, and they aren’t always produced with the kind of quality I’d like – but at their core they are good. We’ve made decision after decision to not turn this into a project that will go anywhere (i.e we are staying here for good). It isn’t a startup business – it is a public service. That is what makes it “good”. It hasn’t been tainted by the threats of being economically unviable – because it isn’t.
I thought I was done after my 2 hour session with Adam. Then…
Holy MOLY, what a whirlwind of amazingness it has been in the time between the release of episode 1 of Comic Fuel and Episode 2! We have had a thousand people download and listen to the episode and I have enough questions that I have to wait for another four episodes before I can put out another call for questions. Wow.
In this episode, episode 2, we’ll discuss project management, the comic creation process, coloring comics, penciling comics, and hosting comics online. The questions came from places like Ireland, India, Brazil, California, and Indiana. For legit #comicfuel we’ll hear about why we do art from Stephen McCranie, transitioning into fame and what is at the core of what artistry is really about from “How I Met Your Mother” actor Josh Radnor, and we’ll also hear about the art of really listening by famed audio producer Chris Watson.
Questions answered in this episode (jump-to specific question times listed below)
How many pages should a comic issue be to be printed?
How long would it take to make a comic by yourself; scripting, storyboarding, art and lettering; and self publish it?
How do you keep up momentum on making comics?
How long does it take for a comic book artist to make a comic book?
What is the step-by-step process I should go through to choose colors that will look good?
What kind of colors can i use?
Am I just not being patient enough with myself, or am I trying to fit too much, too zoomed out, into one panel?
What websites are best for starting to post a webcomic?
Another big announcement is that I spent a lot of time this month creating the Comic Fuel Podcast Wiki (http://comicfuel.wikidot.com/) which will serve as a repository for all questions, notes, and links that are mentioned in the show. Check it out. It took me FOREVER to make, but I’m really proud of it.
So you want to make a comic? That’s great! In fact, that’s exactly what a class full of students down at Chula Vista High Tech High wanted to do. And after designing an extensive curriculum, Making Comics Worldwide CEO Patrick Yurick, and incredibly handsome Editor-In-Chief Kevin Cullen, decided to bring all of you burgeoning comic creators into the mixture by giving you the opportunity to follow along with the Graphic Novel Project (GNP) students step by step through this blog! (more…)
In this edition of #TalkComics, I met up with Keiiii (four i’s), author and artist of the amazing webcomic, Heart of Keol. An incredibly beautiful webcomic, I was eager to peek into Keiiii’s process and how her Korean heritage plays an enormous role in the telling of her epic story.
In this month’s Self Promo Sunday Recap for September we asked the following questions over in the Underdog Facebook Group and got some great answers. Check out the responses!
And if you want to participate in the monthly event, just join the Facebook group and keep your eyes and ears open during the first weekend of every month, which is when we hold Self Promo Sundays. (more…)
This week’s #TalkingComics Underdog Spotlight takes aim at Evil Leprechaun Penguin Productions (known as ELPP to his friends and family) and his smorgasbord of comic projects. With such a variety of comic ideas to draw from, I was interested to see where he found the momentum to keep each project updated so regularly! (more…)
Keeping with our new feature in the Underdog Facebook Group, we held another Self Promo Sunday last weekend allowing folks to share their url with the community. Yet again, it was a huge success! The idea behind this is to give everyone the chance to plug their link in an fun yet organized manner. On the first Sunday of each month a special thread is opened up in the Facebook group where people can post their link, but in order to do so they have to answer 3 questions. The thread is then taken down after 24 hours so it doesn’t keep getting bumped up in the group. We then copy the content into a blog post so nothing is lost.
If you would like to participate in next month’s Self Promo Sunday, simply join the Underdog Facebook group! (more…)
