Messages

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/01/27/comics-why-piracy-is-not-responsible-for-ruining-comics-op-ed/

Nice design.

I think you could harden the edges of the font to make it more striking.

The blurb font/colour doesn't fir the rest of the design, and the blurb itself is too long for a poster.

Another model to consider is a group blog.

I was harping on about this in another thread but www.act-i-vate.com started out as a livejournal blog.

I think there were 5 creators (or creative teams), they took one weekday each and posted a page a week.

So five different webcomics, but one blog for readers, and something new every weekday.

I think when a comic reached an end of chapter-ish point they would post compilation posts of all pages so far for easy reading in one place.

Act-i-vate now have a nice fancy website, loads of creators and comics, and have a few books in print.  (Some of these lads were already published to begin with.)
http://www.txcomics.com/ did something similar

I'm not suggesting you follow that model to where they are now, but I thought as a starting point it was a great idea.  New comics supporting eachother creatively and benefiting eachother by being a mutual draw for readers and having a single site with very regular updates.

Do you know other small press creators who are also starting new books?

You know, alot of webcomics just start out on blogs...

You could try just opening up a free wordpress blog (www.wordpress.com) and post pages as you do them (try to keep a schedule... whatever you can manage.)

If you start to build a following you can move at a later date.

Main thing is not to let all this technical stuff hold you back from doing the important stuff... the comic!

Edit: wordpress.com free blogs would not let you install the comicpress system, but you can simply post the pages as blog entries. Set it to show one post per page. The next and back links will be automatic. You can easily add a link at the top that brings you to the first page.

Godaddy are overpriced for Domain registry if you also want private registration (that your name and address aren't made public)

I'd suggest namecheap.com for domain registry

Also, it's a good idea to use different companies for your hosting and domain registry as it will make it much easier if you find you need/want to change one of these.

I use nearlyfreespeech.net for hosting... they only charge you for the storage and bandwidth you use. I get basically no traffic to my site at all (it's just a side project I mess around with out of interest) and it costs me about EUR5 a year.  No idea how much it would be for a site with small steady traffic but you could have a look at their forums and it might give you an idea.  If your traffic picks up over time you can always move host.

Maybe not for other people going through the same sort of thing.

Autobio comics are more about emotional resonance than any sort of action.

Hi Shark,

I've dealt with some mental health issues... depression for a few years in my teens, nothing as bad as how bad it felt at the time but the experience offers me some minor understanding, or if not that, at least empathy for those who have dealt with or continue to deal with worse.

I also took a fair amount of drugs for a few years, culminating in about two days of severe hallucinations and two weeks of hearing voices.  And yeah, this is very different again to what you get, but in the early stages it was very real... senses of dread - someone's definitely coming up the stairs -severe paranoia, extrapolating every sound into an interconnected story of something outside that's coming in - voices in background noise - distant music that's not really there.  Wasn't so bad in the latter half of it because I had done research and knew it was drug induced and knew there was a good chance it would just go away.  At one stage I was hiding in the garden shed with a big kitchen knife so Bret Ewins story resonated a bit, even though nothing happened with me.

I worked in a newspaper printing press at the time and made the mistake of telling a few people I was hearing voices - especially in the hum and drone of the press. Word spread to the printers who hid in the press towers and called my name as I passed wankers.

(btw, I'm not suggesting that anyone elses problems are drug induced)



Anyway, the following isn't "half-arsed advice"... it's just a suggestion, and not one that is supposed to help anything...

You like writing comics... do you think you could write a comic about your experiences in dealing with all this?
Have a read of this post calling for more writers to deal with contemporary issues in comics.
http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php/topic,34896.msg647160.html#msg647160

It could be something that could help with mental health awareness.

FLCL is mental!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaPCgMCYef0&feature=related

Also, Tekkon Kinkreet is brilliant... and the Manga is even better.

What I'd really like to see is an Irish/UK webcomics initiative, along the lines of what http://www.act-i-vate.com/ did. (Quite a polished looking site now but they started out with just a blog and a page a week each from a small number of creators.)

It would be great if more small press creators should put their stuff online free - viewable via a web interface and downloadable as pdf/cbr - get as much exposure as possible.

For example, does Future Quake Press make any money from Zarjaz or FutureQuake or do they just breaking even and are doing it for the love of it?
It would be cool to see FQP turn into a scifi and toothfic webcomic collective.

Or maybe a skype chat. You dont have to use the voice aspect of it, so people without a mic can still participate, and people who want to talk/play music still can.

Skype is available on most platforms

Anyone going to this again in February?

I've moved from Ireland to Swansea for college so I'm looking forward to this.

I haven't read it but Paul Grist's Mudman is a new British-created superhero (not sure if the character is a brit)



I'd like to see more web-to-print series like Avatar were/are doing with Freakangels/Crossed

Would be great if 2000AD sponsored something like this but I don't see that happening.

Still though, if the creators can afford work on the side and still keep a decent schedule it could definitely still work. Maybe launch a kickstarter campaign once there was enough material for a printed book.

There's loads of great talent in the UK small press and it would be great if they could afford to do something more longform.

Will Kirkby - Tuktuk


Mark Pearce - Ronin Dogs

1st (3 points) - Prog 1729, Flash, James Mackay

2nd (2 points) - Prog 1734, Anderson, Garry Brown

3rd (1 point) - Prog 1748, Sinister Dexter, Tiernen Trevallion

If it was just for the art, I think Henry Flint could have knocked one or two of these out, but as covers these are all nice and striking.  If I'd never heard of 2000AD and saw all this years issues laid out, these three would probably be the ones I'd pick up first.

Thanks to the wonder of twitter, someone's translating it already 

Hi everyone,

I'm grasping at straws here, but have left this quite late and am looking for help.

I want to submit my short film to Alcine
http://www.alcine.org/inscripcion/europeanshortfilm.php?idioma=2

But I need to include Spanish subtitiles.

I've tried google translate, but on translating back the results were unusable (if hilarious).

I would massively appreciate it if anyone here, fluent in Spanish, could help.

(it's less than 300 words)


Thanks

Brian