Well, I haven't posted anything substantial lately, & that's for a variety of reasons. Mostly I've been tied up with renovations & odd jobs around the house, which is a valid excuse, but only to an extent. I've had time to draw & such but I've been using it to go fishing myself instead of making toons about it (maybe I should start doing both at the same time, could probably hammer out a few drawings when the bite is slow). Lastly, I work at a University, so since we've been on our summer "down time" schedule, it's a bit tougher for me to find a corner to hide in & draw at work. During the summer all three of our buildings operate out of one spot, so there is an overabundance of chiefs & relatively few indians, & while there's not much to do, you always have to look busy...
Anyway, today I got hit with a creative spark that I haven't felt in a while. I can't say what brought it on, but I hammered out rough sketches for 8 still panel strips! Some 3-4 panels & some just single's. They are VERY rough right now, but it won't be too much work to tighten them up when I get home. The important part is I'm pretty happy with all the gags, & I may have deveolped enough of a concept to make a series out of with a couple of them. While it will also be loosley about fishing, I've got a few strips focusing on a father/son duo in which the father, while mostly a responsible parent, finds great ameusement in teaching his son all about the things he can get away with when mom's not around. It won't be entirely dedicated to father/son stuff, I've already got a couple just involving Dad & his buddies, but I think it will be a theme that pops up more often than not.
I've been wanting to do some still panel strips for a while now, & I'm glad I finally started. As I've learned from my pal Rob Campbell, still panel strips are a great way to get frequent content on our sites & are much quicker to produce than even a short animation (especially for us one man studios out there). This helps bring return traffic to our sites, which is always a plus, keeps fresh content available, and working on a couple still strips can even be a nice break from several hours of key framing :)
All that said, I'm excited that I actually started creating again, & I will have a fair amount of stuff to show in the near future. I haven't decided how/if I'll space out the releases of each toon, but I'll worry about that when I finish them. Anyway, keep checking back, I promise there will be fresh material soon!
Cheers for now
Thursday, June 21, 2007
When creativity strikes
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5 comments:
It's about time....Glad to hear you are drawing again and doing less home remodeling work. Let me know if you need help with the display reader. As to releases, that's always the hard part but the best approach is to build up a back log of strips and then start a weekly release schedule. My daughter does a web comic and she is currently 17 weeks out in front. This is useful for many reasons, first it maintains frequency of content delivery which is critical to holding audience attention. Secondly it means that when you need some vacation or personal time you can take it and not lose momentum. So get about six weeks out in front and then start publishing them a week at a time while you keep building your back log. The whole battle to building and sustaining a fan base is frequency and quality of content. It takes both.
That's probably the best approach, Hopefully I can have another day or two where the ideas are flowing like they were yesterday. That will get me a good head start for sure.
Thanks alot for the display reader, I didn't even open it yet, but I will have time to check it out tonight or tomorrow.
Here's a question back to the release issue...All of my strips don't flow together. Some have the same characters & work as a story, but others are just single panel "Far Side" style comics that have nothing to do with father/son stuff or fishing. I guess I could just release those sporadically & take a break from the continuous storyline approach. Either that or make them two separate toons if I can come up with enough material. Who knows...
Do it Rocky and Bullwinkle style... Just sandwich different toons in a package. First one of a series followed by alternating weeks of a second series or a one shot followed by the main series again. Like R&B episodes followed by Fractured Fairy Tales and Dudley Do Right and then Back to R&B episodes. As long as you have something funny and entertaining every week the fans will stop by again and again.
I understand the deal with how many irons you have in the fire at work and home and fishing.
Personally, if I had to pick between drawing and riding my chopper I'd be out riding my chopper.
But JK is right, content is king for us, and the more often we have new stuff, the more likely we are to hold an audience. I learned recently about Google analytics, which lets me track viewer loyalty, visits, geographics, and more stuff than I really know what to do with. Like every shot I've taken at tracking my traffic, I get results from every other method I use, so I'm never really sure what's actually going on, but it's worth getting a look at.
indeed, & I think I'm getting there. Or at least getting to getting there...I don't know, but my neighbor & I got talking & he had a bunch of ideas for strips that a friend of his was supposed to draw but never did. He ran a couple of the jokes by me & they ranged from decent to hysterical, so I said I'd take a crack at doing the artwork. God knows I need the practice, & it will also be content for the site & hopefully the beginnings of some kind of portfolio. If that actually pans out then I can start thinking about looking for some freelance work & I'll have something to show that will hopefully justify being paid for this stuff.
Whatever happens, I shouldn't be at a loss for content once I start releasing strips. Between my ideas & my neighbor's sock drawer full of his jokes, I should have enough to keep my arm tired for a quite a while.
I'll check out the stat tracking stuff too, although I get confused enough looking at my adsense reports. I'll worry more about tracking my traffic when I actually have some, I've already noticed the drop-off from the spike the tutorials gave me.
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