Olaf's comics blog

Yesterday, VG wrote an article about how much media coverage the various Norwegian political parties have got so far this summer. Not only is Fremskrittspartiet (FrP) the party with the most media coverage, they also have twice as much media coverage as their biggest competitor. The article goes on to say that they don’t have as much media coverage as other hot topics like Michael Jackson, but that’s a juxtaposition everybody would lose.

Today, we learned how they manage to be so big: they have nine temps working this summer, responsible for reading all newspapers and making sure that they answer anything relevant.

My own political views are very far away from those of FrP, but in this case I would have to say that they are the smartest party in the country. What they do here is so important and so basic that I would have expected everybody to do it. Instead of shutting down completely, they have people working on making sure the party’s voice is heard throughout the summer. And since journalists generally have less to write about in the summer, it is perhaps the easiest time of year to make your voice heard. Don’t forget that.

That goes for webcomics, too.

(Yeah. I managed to take a political article and twist it into a webcomics case. If you’ve read this blog since the beginning, you shouldn’t be surprised.)

When running a webcomic, you’re often pretty much on your own. You probably do all the writing and drawing and coloring and lettering and HTML and marketing yourself. So if you take a vacation, there’s nobody to fill in for you. Of course, never taking vacations is not a good option in real life — no matter how fun your profession is, you need a break every now and then.

So don’t skip the vacation completely. But before you take that vacation, think ahead. Even though you leave the website for a week or two, there’s no reason your webcomic should do the same thing. What happens if you stop updating for two weeks? Well, some of your readers will get bored and stop reading. There are only so many comics one has the time to read every morning, and if you stop updating it’s very tempting to cut you off the list. You want to avoid that, to keep the readers you already have.

This week is San Diego Comic-Con. A lot of my favorite cartoonists are going there, but that doesn’t mean they leave their websites unattended for a whole week. Thus, they don’t lose readers either. Follow their lead, keep your website active even though you won’t be there yourself, and your readers will thank you for it:

• Most webcomics scripts (I assume) have a function that lets you publish your comics ahead of time. Do you have a buffer? (Everybody should have a buffer.) Well, just set your script to publish strips from your buffer automatically, and you have an updated webcomic.
• There’s also a chance that the script you use lets you publish blog posts ahead of time. If your blog posts are as general and rarely-up-to-date as mine (while I link to news articles in this post, it wouldn’t make much difference for my message if I didn’t), it’s worth checking out.
• If you don’t have a buffer, consider making one. Look at your schedule. In the weeks before your vacation, do you have the time to sit down and make ten extra comic strips? If it seems possible, do it.
• Do you have many friends in the webcomics world? If publishing your own stuff while on vacation seems impossible, consider fishing for guest comics from friends. That way, while the real comic stops for a few weeks, there will still be fascinating updates every day to make your readers come back. Just remember that they need time to be able to do this, so don’t ask around the day before you leave. Also, remember to be polite and help them out when they ask you for a guest comic in return.
• If all of the above fails: What about making guest comics for yourself? Search your drawers for unpublished material. Do you have a three year old storyline that you never published for some reason? Put it up now. Did you make a 24 hour comic last year which you haven’t published anywhere yet? Use it. Do you have a couple of minicomics lying around in the drawer that you’re kind of proud of? Well, publish them. Did you draw a ten-pager specifically for your last album which you intended to never publish online? Well, if you really don’t have anything else to fill with, consider publishing it online anyway. It doesn’t necessarily even have to be the same comic … anything is better than leaving your comic without updates for weeks.
• Do you have an active discussion board? Or does your comic get tons of comments? Ask a friend to moderate it while you’re away. Remember to buy something nice for your friend while on vacation.
• I strongly recommend that you leave the computer at home and don’t stress too much about what’s going on with your webcomic while being away, since the purpose of vacation is to relax. However, if you have your cell phone easily available and you know that the comic will be updated at a certain time every day, it doesn’t take many minutes to write a short tweet about it.

Yes, your webcomic is free. Still, people prefer to follow webcomics with updates. Don’t let that ruin your vacation, but think ahead. Just because you need a vacation doesn’t mean your webcomic does.

Oh, and as a last note, I’ve also seen the argument “why should I update in the summer, when all my readers go on vacation?”. Well, your readership numbers will drop in the summer, but not as much as they will if you don’t update at all. For those readers missing the updates, that’s what you have archives for.

(Thanks to @iAndersH for posting the Twitter link that made me aware of this.)

Making comics is not just a matter of writing and drawing the perfect sequential art. If you can’t get people to read your comic, it doesn’t matter if it’s Eisner Award material or garbage. And while there are many really expensive ways of promoting your comic, I strongly suggest that you check out the free ones as well. It may be because of my education, but it seems that a recurring topic on this blog will be recommending the use of social media.

Let’s break it down and look at one big channel at a time. Today: Twitter.

This Friday, I wrote the following tweet:

I should really start to follow more people in my own timezone. All the good tweets occur while I’m sleeping. (Okay, ALMOST all.)

But after writing that, one thing has occured to me: Out of the 46 people I follow, 22 are Norwegian. And I also follow Swedes and Danes. So why do I sometimes get the impression that everybody I follow are Americans?

Well, to be obnoxiously rude and arrogant: Because they are better tweeters. Not just because they tweet more, but they tweet in a way that makes me care. I want to follow them on twitter because it feels as if they have a lot to say. I doubt that their lives and their comics are extremely more interesting than their Norwegian counterparts. But they manage to make me care anyway.

I’m by no means an expert, and this blog post is solely based on what I personally like and dislike. But here are six things you should think about when setting up and using your Twitter account.

Link to your website/webcomic from your profile. It may seem like a trivial tip, but this is very important. Not because you’ll get tons of visits that way (I don’t know if that’s the case), but because it is a great way of letting people get to know you right away. Twitter nicks are often hard to decipher, and if your name is a common one, people will use your homepage link to figure out who you are. And if you put up a link to your webcomic here, your fans will go “HOLY CRAP THIS IS THE JOHN DOE, THE CREATOR OF ‘FRANK DOORKNOB’!”, and people who have never heard about you will have a look at your webcomic to figure out what impression they should have of you.

Tweet frequently. This one is hard, because it involves figuring out which parts of your life is worth tweeting about. Well, check out what the cartoonists you love tweet about. Read the tweets of Scott Kurtz, Jeph Jacques, Kate Beaton, Gabe, Tycho… Check out their Twitter feeds. I don’t know why, but these people manage to tweet frequently without boring me. Most likely, many of the people you follow do the same thing.

Twitter is not RSS. There has been situations where I’ve considered following someone on Twitter, and decided not to because *all* their Twitter updates were information about new blog posts. As I was already subscribing to that person’s (or in this case, institution’s) RSS feed, the tweeting didn’t give me anything I didn’t already know. Don’t let your Twitter account be an exact copy of your RSS feed. And don’t update only when you have a new comic out or a new shirt in the store. You should let your followers know, of course, but let them know what’s going on at other times, too. Check out the tweets of Jeph Jacques — he tweets every time he has a new comic up, but he also lets his followers know about the process that’s leading up to the finished comic. If the comic is late, he’ll tell us why. And when he’s not working on his comic, he’s tweeting about other things he’s doing. Don’t make your Twitter feed an RSS feed.

Twitter is not your personal diary. And by that I don’t just mean that you shouldn’t write your credit card number or post erotic photos there. What I mean, is that you should do your best to keep your tweets interesting. Do you love your girlfriend? That’s sweet. Do you love Jesus Christ? Okay. But I’m not interested in hearing that ten times a day. The people I follow on Twitter rarely mention their spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends, and they never tweet about their religion. Sure, there’s nothing wrong in mentioning how much you love your wife every now and then, but she’ll probably appreciate it more if you tell her to her face.

Follow people. Follow other webcomics creators. Search for your favorite cartoonists on Twitter, or find them through their websites. And try finding not-very-famous webcartoonists, too. I’ve experienced that people have started following me, I have checked out their website, and bookmarked that website because the comic made me laugh (that’s you, @EQComics). I still have no clue how he found me, but he did, and he got himself a new reader that way.

Link to your Twitter account from your website. Twitter has widgets that lets you keep your readers updated on what you tweet about. Get your existing readers to follow you on Twitter by giving them your Twitter link. You’ve put a lot of effort into making each of these readers to find you. By getting them to follow a frequently updated Twitter account, you make sure that they don’t *forget* you.

These aren’t the top six tips to using Twitter. I don’t even know if all of them are that great. But all social media have two rules in common: Use them, and use them right. That goes for Twitter, too. I’m still trying to figure out the hows myself, so I’m not the very best of help here, but I’m trying. And you’re doing yourself a great favour if you do the same thing. Twitter won’t make you famous overnight, but it will help you promote your comics when you learn how to use it.

There seems to be a computer program or a website for everything. Some of them are innovative killer applications, others… not exactly useful. The past few days, the only topic in local newspapers and the biggest topic on Twitter has been Google‘s Chrome OS. While I can’t say I understand the whole “Hey guys, we’re making a new OS that’s really going to kick Microsoft’s ass, because it’s free, and it’s based on Linux” philosophy, Google’s innovativeness is somewhat fascinating. Facebook and Twitter are great examples of popular websites we can’t live without anymore — according to a recent survey, 43 % of all Norwegians use Facebook regularly. Saturday I quoted Brad Guigar’s July To Do-list, where one of the points was to not forget using Facebook and Twitter correctly to promote your comic. I guess most webcomic artists out there know how important that tip is, eh?

The reason these applications (and others) are so popular, is because they fill a demand. People want to be able to connect with their friends. People want to share what they’re doing with the world in 140 characters or less. People want a new OS based around the world of the web. And you can probably say the same thing about all popular software applications: Microsoft Word is popular because people need a program to type letters and reports in (of course marketing matters, too: The reason MS Word is more popular than Word Perfect is because people want the same format as everybody else, and Microsoft has the best marketing). Programs who fill demands rule the world. When I created Nettserier, it was an attempt to fill the demand for an easier way for Norwegians to publish their comics online. What I actually created, without being aware of it at the time, filled another demand — the wish for an online comics community in Norway. Of course, Nettserier is no killer application, but it’s still more popular than I would ever have expected when I launched it — because there exists a demand for exactly this kind of service.

So, here’s what I wish someone will come up with next:

I want to see a computer program that will convert written text into comics.

If this already exists, please let me know in a comment. If not, read on to hear more about what I want from such a program.

But to specify: I don’t want the program to turn the script into ready-for-publication comics, of course. But rough sketches. Storyboards. Something I can show off to an artist and give them an exact image of how I picture a scene in my mind.

When I write comic book scripts, I normally use the same standard phrases over and over. It wouldn’t be a big problem for a computer to interpret them and convert them into images. Especially if I don’t need to show those images to anyone except for artists and editors.

For instance, take a look at this rough comic strip script (it’s not an existing strip, I made it up for this purpose, but you get the idea):

Picture 1: Larger picture. A sunny meadow. Frank and Jane are having a picnic. Frank is sitting under a tree, happy. Jane, standing, is annoyed, looking at the ground. There are ants all over the ground.

Frank: Boy, you’re an excellent cook, Jane!

Jane: I just wish there weren’t so many ants here!

Picture 2: Darker. Close-up on Frank, worm’s-eye view, now angry, holding a machine gun and firing towards the ground repeatedly.

Frank: EAT LEAD, ANT BASTARDS!

Picture 3: Same scene as picture 1. Frank is happy again. The ants are gone and the ground is filled with bullets. Jane is shivering with fear.

Frank: There, much better!

Jane: You freak me out sometimes, you know that?

Not a very creative script, but you get the idea. So, I want a computer program that can look at this script and turn it into a rough strip I can show to my artist. Why? Well, perhaps how I vision Frank’s rage in pic 3 doesn’t come out clear enough in the script, and the artist will draw it in an entirely different way.

The software would first look at the script as a whole, count the number of frames and assume that I want this to be a comic strip, so it displays a comic strip to me. I could, of course, click a button to change this to a full-page graphic novel format if the situation requires it.

The first sentence of picture 1 is “Larger picture”. Based on this, the program would make the first frame perhaps twice as big as each of the other pics. If I don’t like the size of it, I can grab the gutter and slide it back and forth until it satisfies me.

The strip takes place in a sunny meadow. The software could have a large archive of stock backgrounds, find an appropriate meadow, and put that in here. I imagine that stock art, both backgrounds, characters and objects, could be saved as three-dimensional objects so that it’s easy to rotate them and so on. The information I give later in the description will help the program figure out what to do with the backgrounds, as well. The sentence “Frank is sitting under a tree” tells the program that there has to be a tree in the frame. If the program has several meadows to choose from, an icon under the frame would indicate that I can click there to change the background. Finally, the single word “sunny” tells the program that this should take place in daytime, and that the weather is nice.

Now, the next sentence would offer the program some problems. As I only write “Frank and Jane” without further introductions of what they look like (I could do that, but I’m too lazy to do that in every strip), the program is capable of understanding that they are characters, and based on the names that they are male and female, but it will probably input stock characters that look nothing like what I have in mind. No problem — I can click on the character (either directly in the strip or on the character’s name in the script) and pick another design. I imagine that the program could easily hold tons of generic character designs more than good enough for my use. Also, it doesn’t have to be difficult to make small changes to these generic designs. For instance, if I’m writing a seven-volume graphic novel about a young boy with glasses and a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead, the program wouldn’t have something that specific in stock, but I could easily open a wide selection of scars (or acne, or warts, or birthmarks) and drag the desired scar right into my character design. And then, I could save the character as Frank (or Harry, or whatever), and the next time I write a comic about Frank, the program will recognize the name and use the same design for him. And of course, if I write about a character with a name that sounds nothing like a character name (for instance, if my character is named Stapler or something), the program may not understand that it is a character, but then I could just right-click his name in the script and choose “this is a character”.

As the program knows that this takes place at a picnic in a sunny meadow, the characters would get clothing suited for that activity. Here, too, I can click on the clothes and change them if I don’t like them. But what if I don’t like the positioning of the characters? What if I feel that Jane is standing too close to the picnic rug? No problem — I can just click and drag them to the desired position. Of course, they will be bound by gravity unless I specify that they shouldn’t be, so I don’t have to worry about putting them down three feet above ground. I imagine that unless stated otherwise, the starting position of the characters in each frame (and in the upcoming frames, how the scene is rotated) will be based on the order of their dialogue balloons.

Of course, expressions would be a very important part of such a program, and the various degrees of expressions would make it difficult to give the characters only a given set of stock expressions, so that would have to be more complex. In Making Comics, Scott McCloud describes how all feelings can be made by combinations of six primary feelings, and he’s written in his blog about how these primary feelings can be mixed and matched in easy computer programs. Something like the Grimace Project would be the perfect tool for facial expressions in such a program. I’ve told the program that Frank is happy, which possibly could be translated into “80 % joy, 0 % all other feelings”, but if I disagree with these settings I can easily right-click Frank, choose “change expression”, and drag those sliders a bit. That would be perfect for Jane — her “annoyed” face could probably need a little added disgust. Just as important as the facial expressions would be the body language — here I imagine something Spore-like, letting me drag and rearrange those elbows, knees, hands, feet, shoulders and butts until I have the expression I want (but again, the software should make a decision based on what I’ve written in the script, I only need to rearrange these things if I’m not satisfied).

Objects in the frame would be added based on what I’ve written in the script: There’s a picnic here, and there are ants on the ground. Piece of cake. And then it would just have to add the perfectly-sized dialogue balloons, and the first frame is done. And if I write dialogue balloons with way too many words in them (I tend to do that), the program could give me a warning about it and ask me if I want to change it.

For frame two and three the whole thing would be a lot easier. I have already told the program where we are and what the characters look like. In frame three I’ve even said that everything except for what I’ve specified should look exactly like picture one. All in all, this program will turn my script into a visual representation, and it will take me a lot less time than it would take me to sketch it myself.

What’s the purpose, you may wonder? Why don’t send the script directly to the artist, or draw a rough sketch of it? I could do that, of course — that’s what I do today. And many comic book writers do their own artwork, so the market for such a program could be limited. Still, I believe that such a program would be a great asset for comic book writers because it would force us to, even more than today, think visually.

Like I said, I often write dialogue balloons that are way too long. When using a program like this, I would be made aware of that mistake and learn to change it. I also wouldn’t make comics containing things that just don’t work visually (for instance, a small frame with fifteen characters fighting in it) because I would get the visual before even sending it to the artist and figure out that it didn’t work.

The picture description and the content of the dialogue balloons would not be connected, so if Jane points towards a bus and says “Look! A bus!”, the bus won’t actually be shown in the frame unless I also mention it in the picture description. That could perhaps make me realize that I’m doing the classical mistake of letting the images and the words tell the exact same story, so if I choose to show the bus in the frame, I can change Jane’s line to something more interesting.

And how many times haven’t you heard writers and artists fight over how “This wasn’t how I pictured it!”? Well, giving the writer the opportunity to show exactly how one pictures the frame on paper would get rid of 99 % of those arguments. Of course, the artist may still want to change things, but then at least he can give the writer a call and ask him if that sounds good to him first, instead of assuming that this was what the writer wanted in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong: Using such a computer program would be a terrible way of making comics. But it would be a wonderful way of making scripts for comics.

So if you know anyone who’s making something like this, please let me know about it. The market shouldn’t be too limited — there are tons of writers who could use such an application, especially if one manages to get big publishers like Marvel, DC or Egmont involved. And it shouldn’t be too difficult to tweak such a program into doubling as a great program for making storyboards for movies, either.

Obviously, since I’m no expert, everything I describe in this blog will be a lot more difficult and more expensive than I imagine it will be. But I know that I would buy it.

In case you weren’t aware of it, Brad Guigar is every webcomic cartoonist’s best friend. Being the creator of always hysterical Evil Inc. and editor-in-chief of (and main contributor to) the best source of webcomics how-to out there, webcomics.com, Brad loves helping people out on their webcomics.

One of his ways to do that is that every month, he jots down a to-do list that he encourages all webcomics creators to follow. Here’s his July-list, containing great tips like:

• answer your pile of un-answered e-mail the first Saturday of the month
• use social media like Facebook and Twitter, and use them right
• use the upcoming holidays to build your buffer (of course, over here where we don’t celebrate July 4th and have no San Diego Comic-Con to go to, there aren’t many holidays in July, but it’s a great tip for next May)
• back up your hard drive (how many of us didn’t need a reminder for that?)
• review your ads, and replace them with something more valuable if they don’t make you money
• update your comics blog a lot (Brad suggests three times a week)

Brad also gives a great list of tips for San Diego Comic-Con. Since my statistics reveal that most of my readers are Norwegian, I doubt many of you are going there, but most of the tips work just as well for other cons as well, so take a look at them and keep them in mind for this September’s Raptus.

I have one comment to the last bullet point: While it’s a great tip, I strongly recommend that you base your update numbers on how often you update your comic. Don’t update your comic blog twice a day if you update your comic only twice a month. That will only make your readers wonder why you don’t use that blogging time on your webcomic instead (especially if your blog posts are as long as mine).

If you haven’t already bookmarked Webcomics.com, do it now. (Congratulations on the new design, by the way!)

Tomte has now announced that he’s giving up comics because he feels that people don’t appreciate his works. The reason? He’s been told that his latest album, Lys over Jessej, has sold only two copies so far.

Perhaps I could understand him if that was true, but he’s looking only at a small part of the full truth.

Where does this number, “two copies”, come from? From his publisher’s webshop. So the album has sold only two copies through the publisher’s webshop. That’s bad, right?

Not necessarily.

First of all: Kelpie is a very small publishing house. It’s run by one man on his spare time. Many of the comics and other publications Kelpie has printed in the past, manager Tommy Kvarsvik has literally printed on his printer (though, to his defense, many of them came in new and professionally printed editions when he realized it didn’t work). In a way you could say that Lys over Jessej is Kelpie’s most serious publication so far, but you get my point — we aren’t talking about Marvel or DC here.

Second: This webshop is not the only way to buy the album. It can also be bought at at least three different comic book shops (Outland in Oslo and Trondheim, and Seriebutikken in Sarpsborg), and Kelpie had a stand at Oslo Comics Expo last month. I’ve also bought some copies of Lys over Jessej for my own webshop (even though I’ve been too busy to actually publish it there yet). So obviously, Kelpie has sold a lot more than two copies, and I know so because I’ve bought ten of them.

Third: For many webcomic artists, I’m sure the webshop is the most common way they sell their comics. But Lys over Jessej is not a webcomic. It is a never-before-published science fiction story — from an artist mostly known for his horror stories. I know that if I wanted to buy this comic, I would prefer to find it in a local shop so that I was able to have a look at the comics before paying for it (the price? 50 Norwegian kroner — almost eight US dollars — for thirtysomething pages). And since the publisher’s website lists all the places where the comic can be bought, it is easy to find such shops. Also, if you buy it from the webshop, you have to pay for postage. I’m a big fan of shopping online, and I’m sure I’ve bought more comics on Amazon than almost anywhere else, but this is a small, Norwegian underground comic which is not well-known from the web, and for that kind of comics, comic book shops are still the way to go. Now, if the artist had a webshop, sales numbers there could be higher, as people wanting to support him would do that. But basing anything on the sales numbers of the publisher’s workshop is useless.

Forth: Even though Tomte says the opposite in his blog post, this comic has *not* been heavily marketed. Yes, Kelpie had a stand at Oslo Comics Expo, but anyone who wanted to buy the comic there would buy it there — not go home and order it from the webshop for a price which including postage is 50 % higher *. And the album got a favorable review at Serienett. Apart from that, the album has been mentioned in a couple of blogs and forums and in Tomte’s Twitter feed. Okay, it’s a start. But it’s not enough to expect to sell. Before this album, Kelpie’s webshop hasn’t had any new publications in ten months, so people won’t check this shop for new publications regularly. In other words, there are no real customers to talk about until you attract them, and when that’s the case, one needs a lot more marketing than Kelpie has done here.

I think that comics is supposed to be an activity you enjoy, and if Tomte doesn’t enjoy making comics anymore, I support his decision to quit. But basing such a decision on sales numbers from the publisher’s webshop is just naïve.

* Errata: After writing this I’ve been made aware that shipping in Kelpie’s webshop is, in fact, free. Well, that’s great! But it doesn’t change the fact that most people seeing an album they want on a convention probably will buy it there and not go home and buy it online. I’ve also been told that the album sold eleven copies at OCX, not including sales to comic book shops. So for a comic which the artist wasn’t there to sign, I’d say the sales numbers were decent.