My resolutions:

... I don't have any! I don't think I've ever managed to keep a resolution I made this entire decade, although "I swear to uphold and defend the Constitution etc, etc" might count!

Nah, I kid. I'd like to resolve to be more productive. This is the last three months of my twenty-somethings, and I really have not much to show for it. At least creative-wise, in my mind.

Not going to say bad things or good things didn't happen. Just that I realize I am not getting younger.

Short Day, End of Eras

Today is the shortest day of 2009. It's also the day news broke that the Crosbys killed Keen. Good. They had been killing it for years.

I've been on-again off-again cartoonist wannabe for 9 years, and a voracious reader, and the one thing I learned is, like everything else, cartooning has politics. Shit storms go all the back to the Yellow Kid and they got more press when things hopped online, simply because the buck no longer stopped behind syndicate memos and cartoonist associations. They became very public, and often personal.

Keenspace, and later Keenspot was instrumental in the same way all hosting sites are - they are the gold pans that hold flakes of precious metal. They are the Sunday comics section of internet, where good and the bad are presented along ads for what have you, and god bless capitalism. It was the portal where brave new pioneers of webcomics could cut their teeth, and then get the freaking hell out.

Why out? Because Keen, from what I gather from survivor accounts, is a little like being on a runaway truck that's about to collide with a series of tubes. It's not a business run, it's flung like crap to a wall, seeing what sticks. And now, it's cutting and running on the people who made it great in the first place - its cartoonists. That is, what cartoonists they haven't alienated to the point of breaking off and starting up on their own.

I don't claim to be an 'insider'. I love webcomics, just like I loved the comic strips I read as a grew up. I don't claim to be a cartoonist, either, because there are people who are, and have worked long and hard to get there. Some of those people used Keenspot for hosting, and they are being cut loose, so the people who ran things into the ground can work on their personal projects.

Professionalism in any industry needs to be kept at some kind of level, particularly when so many others depend on you for so much. Instead, it's being used as a personal playground, and when the game started getting too rough, you're taking your ball and your best friends, and going home. Or in this case, kicking everyone ELSE off the playground. And then acting surprised at the resulting fallout. I won't even get into the name-calling aspect, or how you treated some really nice people rather poorly for poorer reasons.

This is a shitty thing you're doing, Keen. Not for shooting the shaggy dog, but for leaving its corpse for other people to clean up.

Long Cold Winter

Wow... so... I kind of fell off the drawing wagon for the last two months. Not a huge surprise, seeing how it's not the 'How I made good with Art' blog.

The last couple of months have been a combination of me finding odd jobs here and there and dealing with stress - the usual bullshit excuses I tell myself when I realize there's a layer of dust of my sketchbooks again.

Eh, no matter. I am past the point of hating myself for being me. Just gotta get back into the groove.

In other news, I am going to kind of expand this blog to other stuff other than just my art. I've been toying with some other projects lately, and this is as good a place as any to log them.

Resolved to get this blog frequently updated again. I have been hesitant to really get into any personal shit, but recent events have got me pissed and punchy.

Hour 3: Rebooting from the Road

I did some sloppy inking last night. I was pretty stressed over the 12 hours prior to it, it looked terrible, and to top it off I lost it in the shuffle of trying to find my wallet last minute before going out for pizza and a movie. So we'll skip it and start the hour fresh.

I stayed overnight with my friends (I don't ride my motorcycle after dark), and ended up taking the long way back home this morning. I took a mountain pass and hit up a small town diner for breakfast, and I took my sketchbook and a pen inside and made my hour worth of drawing memorable.

Actually, it was funny, as the woman at the counter seat next to me noticed and complimented me on my art, which in more halcyonic days would have made my head swell. Instead, I explained what I was practicing and showed her how I did it, and it led to all those heads. I am pleased that I did them completely from scratch!

Tonight I will continue drawing.

BLARG I AM D-

It's cool, it's cool. I have a couple more pages done, need to scan them. The dinner I worked at tonight caused me incredible amounts of stress that I shan't get into. I will resume my vigil in the morning.

Hour 2: AND THEN I WENT TO BED

Ha, fie on you, 24HCD! I am going to get a few hours of sleep. BUT! Here's hour two of my vigil, such as it is:

Oh, Q... - Page three is me getting into some... I dunno, SOMETHING. Angry Sax is turning into my unofficial avatar, slowly. Almost makes me wish I was the one who created it.

Page Four - Eh, some faces of Lyster that kinda... meh. I teetered into the realm of Loomis figure drawing.

Loomis Day: Hour the FIRST!

In interest of saving your poor browser the trouble, click these here links!

Page one: 'warm up' - In which I doodle some random faces, and come up with Charles Manson, an old elf, the nice lady receptionist at the VA hospital in Albany, and the asshole poacher from "Rescuers Down Under", I guess.

Page two: '"blook" practice' - Loomis calls the basic circle with lines a 'blook' to which noses, ears, cheeks, and chin can and will be added - which Loomis recommends is done roughly in that order (hence my odd "head down" comment there)

So far so good - I am actually on my fourth page now, I forgot I had to post these!

24 HOURS (worth) OF LOOMIS

Yeah, the third of October is 24 Hour Comics Day. Like always, I nearly missed a webcartoonist 'holiday' mostly on the account that I am not really a webcartoonist, just a big kid playing as one. BUT, rather than let THIS year's slip away like the last... well, how many years they have been doing it? Okay.

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, I AM GONNA DO 24 HOURS OF COMICS HAHA (sorta).

Yeah, I have other plans in the next 24 hours. There is a dinner being thrown by my American Legion post that I can't miss, because those pots don't scrub themselves, kids. BUT, rather than make it all or nothing, I am just going to do 24 hours WORTH of comics (in other words, non-consecutive) within the next couple of days, which will allow me to fulfill my Kitchen Patrol duties AND have me sleep deprived enough to make my date on Sunday nervous. Oh joy! It'll be practice for next year's, I guess.

So, what I am going to do is study out of my Loomis books, and draw for an hour (or hours) and post the results of each hour here. I want to see if I can squeeze 24 posts out within three days, starting... shit, I better get started. :V

Tools of Yestermorrow

Since I began college and my mind started lusting for drawing a webcomic without doing any actual effort, I also began acquiring an embarrassment of things that I would use once, then sporadically, or neglect them altogether. I have a German technical pen set that I bought in an Kurdish shopping mall during my tour there. I have a pristine, never used ink pen and a set of nibs. I have some vellum still in its unopened box, hailing from my days as a drafting student, 9 years whence.

To be fair, I have moved from place to place many times over the last decade, and for one year, out of the damn country. Shit gets churned under after a while.

Gotta inventory them all and get usin' what still works. Tools don't make the carpenter, however.

Importance of the Spotless Mind

I have a sick habit of completely wasting my 'downtime'; I'd rather cram any creative output in between doing other things, particularly the income generating kind. I am awesome at multitasking, a trait that has only grown exponentially as I add more and more potentially time wasting online pastimes, such as IRC, forums, tweeting, Google Reader,and a whiny blog about how much I fail as a human being (perhaps you heard of it). Earlier in 2009 I fell off the MMORPG wagon and revived my WoW subscription, which I managed to let lapse a month ago. I can't begin to tell you how much of a good move that was.

Mind you, this is online. Offline I am involved in two other organizations (of one I was elected commander), am trying to get more involved in yet a third. I slowly increased my physical activity this year and as a result have lost nearly 30 pounds. Hobby wise I have taken up interest in beers and wine (and the home production thereof), in hiking and photography (tried to start a blog about that, too), and of course, cartooning.

I'm not rattling off this list to complain how little time I ever have in a day - if you wonder how I manage to do any of this effectively the blunt truth is that I don't. Yet, much of my sudden burst in productivity through self-management, I realize, stems from finally getting treatment for depression and the ilk. And it also has to do in part of slowly regaining my focus in life.

The other week I finally got around to cleaning out my roll top desk and it struck me how much crap I own. As a life long pack rat, I picked up a lot of physical baggage over the years, the emotional meaning behind each object has faded, if not disappeared entirely. But, as I will post a little later, I am also finding a treasure trove of tools I squirreled away.

Loomis meets Lyster's cheekbones...

Now applying some of what I learned here to Lyster (LIE-stir), the erstwile hero of my main comic. Upstate has undergone scores of changes since a lot of people last saw it, especially with some of the character designs. Lyse's hair, for example, acts a lot more like real hair, and his jawline has slowly gotten squarer.

At heart, of course, he's the same. In fact, he's getting closer and closer to the bipolar kung-fu hippie I picture in my mind everyday. I'm trying for a good balance of 'goofy' and 'serious' Lyster - boils down to 'ridiculous' and 'not-so-ridiculous' looking, really. It's not perfect, but like his hair, Lyster has more realistic cheekbones than before. It's significant, to me at least, that I'm learning how cheekbones actually work to shape a face, as opposed to imitating them.

... so comes the Autumn of Loomis

I ended up taking some advice from some other artists and downloaded the works of an artist named Andrew Loomis, who was an illustrator from the early 20th century, or the 'pre-photoshop-filter' era if you will.

His books are long out of print, and his family won't publish them in the foreseeable future. Despite this, the books remain an excellent source for beginning artists, or in my case, horrible ones trying to start over.

I'm taking it slow, starting with 'Fun with a Pencil' and work my way forward. Already, it's helped make some more expressive, if a little creepier, faces.

Three years ago today I debuted the previous version of "Upstate" which only lasted a year before I gave up on it. Writing was half the problem I had with it, so much so I ran myself into a literary corner; so many sins I've improved upon since then. But the real monkey on my back has been the art.

Hopefully this is the way to pry that damn simian off once and for all.

So Ends the Summer...

Almost three months since my last post, and there's too much to tell what went on during them. Let's leave it at there being some major changes in my life and in the lives around me, but not to the point anyone died or got a criminal record.

Oh, and I bought a motorcycle. More on this later.

At any rate, life is settling back into something that resembles stability for me, and things are starting to get accomplish again. I have a clean desk, a distraction free-work area (sometimes the previous two are even the same thing at once) and as of yesterday, an expanded set of shelves for my books. I'm dangerously out of excuses why I never draw things.

Speaking of, while not an entirely dry period of arts, I have come to a bit of an epiphany about my skills as an artist - I have more to 'unlearn' than I suspected, to purge myself of all the damn shortcuts I've built up over the years. It's time to start taking this seriously, or stop trying at all.

Of Fever Dreams and Getting Down with the Sickness...

For the last three weeks, I've been suffering from one kind of illness of another; on top of that, allergies. Other than having the bulk of my energy sapped, I'm in good spirits. I am actually getting organized.

Going to be out of town for a couple of nights, but I'm taking my sketchbook. See you in a few.

How to Fail Art: Procrastinate!

So, I skipped updating for nearly two months as research for this post.

Okay, no I didn't. I'm a procrastinator.

It really struck me home recently, just a few weeks ago visiting a friend who had a table at MoCCA. I told her proudly that I was working on my comic again. She looked at me and said, "no, you aren't." Damn her, but she was right. I'm a procrastinator.

One of the biggest inner demons I possess is my ability to stonewall ANYTHING to death. Seriously, if only it were just me procrastinating at drawing. My life has been a series of events that never quite fully took off, and there's a point where the cause of it all just can't be chalked up to mere laziness. I have an adult case of ADD with a mild case of depression, and recently I've been getting both treated via my veteran's benefits. For the first time in a decade, I'm on medication; I'm happy to report that it has indeed begun to help me in a big way. On medication, it's akin to being able to swim without a huge weight tied around your neck, but even off medication, I still managed to 'swim'. So no excuses here, now: even on meds, I'm still procrastinating!

You can take away all your problems, remove all distractions, obstacles, and still, still, Fail Art. All you have to do is just never get started again. It's a problem that's not unique to me -life happens, and many choose to go out and have an actual life. I'll update the comic later, no problem! And that blog about failing at art? All in good time!

Many, many webcomics die because they just lose steam and never get updated again. Or if they do, it's very half-hearted, or a short lived burst. Such a cartoonist may be lazy, or they might have good reasons for skipping out on updates, but either way without a good structure in place to allow comics to be made and published at a constant rate, it boils down to a hard question: do you want to be a cartoonist, or are you just going to keep playing as one?

It's a question I'm asking myself tonight, on the seventh anniversary of my first attempt to put a webcomic online. And I'm going to reply 'I'll give it another shot. I'm done procrastinating!'

Throwing weight around my glass house...

Had a busy week at work, not to mention some truck problems to hash out. Now I am back at work making a terrible webcomic. And a terrible blog about terrible comics.

Quick like, and lest you think I am going to use this blog to constructively criticize other people's webcomics, I'll link you to the recent failed incarnation of my own webcomic, Upstate!. I started the run in late 2006 and it lasted a year of spotty updates, to about 80 comics. I really have come a long way since then, to the point where my old comics here make me flinch. It's certainly not required reading, but it's a treasure trove of many common mistakes and general failure. I prefer to use them before I use someone else's webcomic as examples, where possible.

The earlier run of Upstate!, which also updated poorly from 2002 up until 2004 (when I was activated and sent to Iraq for a year) will be uploaded somewhere at some point, and also used as fail-fodder. I can honestly say that the Upstate! I am working on currently is a completely different animal than my first two tries, although they share characters. It's not something I am ashamed to share, if it helps people out.

How to Fail Art: Expect Easy Money

Hah, how about those Penny Arcade boys, eh? After ten years, they've built up an empire based on making fun of the video game industry's shortcomings (and using a lot of variations of the word 'fuck'). 'Shoot,' you reason, 'I could do that, too!' So you lick the tip of your pencil, fire up your pirated version of Photoshop, and begin cranking out comics about a subject you are passionate about: gay furry pride. After securing some space on a site about drunken ducks or nations of webcomics or what-have-ya, you create a bare-bones page, slap up some ads and a paypal button, and wait for the avalanche of micro-payments to push your wagon onto Easy Street. 

Two years later, you're still working at a Taco-Bell, and the closest you get to recognition at a comic convention is because your table in the artist's alley happened to be next to a panel room. What happened?

Before I get into why, I would remind the reader that I honestly don't claim to be an expert on making a successful webcomic – only on what hasn't worked for me. If you're looking on a resource that has tips on how successful webcartoonists got that way, I can heartily recommend the book “How to Make Webcomics” as it's chock full of helpful advice. But both the authors and myself agree that success almost never happens overnight, and when it does it's usually not the enduring kind.

I consider comics such as Penny Arcade, PvP Online, Shortpacked, WIGU, and Schlock Mercenary to be both popular and successful AND one of the main sources of income for their creators. Scott Kurtz's incredibly funny comic about his dad (interspersed with comics about some kind of gaming magazine office and a troll) updates like clockwork even while he makes ads and cartoons an' shit, while Schlock Mercenary's Howard Taylor has consistently updated every day for EIGHT FREAKIN' YEARS. Shortpacked's David Willis and WIGU's Jeffrey Rowland have rolled the success of an earlier series into their new projects, which shows both the importance of a cartoonist's reputation and the loyalty of their fans. And in Penny Arcade's case, the writing is still fresh and funny after ten years, and I hear if you click off the main page, they even have a comic! (I kid, because if my own art improved as Gabe's has in ten years, I would probably not be writing this blog.) In every case, it took YEARS of work for their creations to show a profit, and usually had (or still have) another job to support themselves.

Personally, I never got to the point where I felt comfortable asking for money for my own poorly drawn webcomic. However, I have noticed that there are webcomics of similar quality – or worse – that have no problem with asking for a hand out so they can continue drawing a comic about superheroes whose powers seem to be being drawn disproportionately, or perhaps they'll have a donation bar in order to get a wallpaper of some badly drawn anthropomorphic characters having casual sex or whatever. While I do not begrudge these people for trying to live off of their talents I do think that I, as a consumer, should be given a product that is worth 'buying'.

Given a filthy hobo selling chewed up, dirty looking pencils from a tin cup versus a slightly less filthy hobo selling clean, unmarred ones, which one do you think people are going to want to give their money? Sadly, to the drugstore down the street where you can get pencils that have been ultra-sanitized – but we'll get to webcomics versus traditional print strips in another article. My point is that the cartoonists making a living from their trade got there over long and often bitter years of personal investment: time, and above all – patience. Accept that you're going to be in for a long haul if you are serious about making money webcartooning. The bottom line is that there are no shortcuts.

Defining 'failure' (or 'success'!)

Before going any further with this venture, I think I should clarify what I define as 'failure' and 'success', particularly when applied to a webcomic and its creator (or creators).

Failure in webcartooning is failing to eloquently express yourself - and satisfy people - with your creation. It could be anything from being unable to grasp basic art concepts (like me), to being unable to deliver on your promised updating schedule (like me), to just plain having the wrong attitude or approach to a problem (or maybe you're just an asshole).

Success, on the other hand, is much, much harder thing to define. For instance, a person might start a webcomic just for fun. They have a hobby and they write and draw about it. They pay expenses out of pocket, perhaps putting up a donation button to defray the cost now and then. They offer a collection of the comic on homemade burnt CD's. Perhaps they pepper the comic with in jokes, as they intended it to be viewed by a private circle of friends. The other 99.9% of the Internet has no idea what's going on, and attempts to look deeper have only caused insanity. The name of this comic, by the way, is Gene Catlow.

Others might be like me, and have a story they'd like to tell, or like to make people laugh. They find telling that story or creating humor to be satisfying. As their fan base slowly grows over time, they might supplement donations with selling a mug or a t-shirt with their characters on it, or an in-joke their fans would enjoy.  They have book collections made, and they actually sell. Before they know it, they get asked to cons and have overweight men ask for sketches of favorite characters (if they're lucky, maybe its THEIR characters being asked for, instead of Supergirl having sex with She-Hulk, or worse). It might even come to a point where the income they make would allow them to quit their day jobs and have their quality of life remain above poverty level, almost. I am pretty sure that these two cartoonists are good examples of this.

And then there's those who begin a comic with commercial success in mind, hoping that they'll be earning five figured salaries by the end of the year and an apparel line featuring their wacky anthropomorphic stand-in dancing to the tune of a poorly turned catchphrase. And if you think that is how successful webcartoonists actually became successful, you might want to bookmark this blog now. Granted, there are cartoonists who have become commercially successful, but have relied on terrible artistic shortcuts such as blurred photo backgrounds, stock expressions, and misguided attempts to step outside of genre by clumsily introducing tragic events into the lives of zany characters (hypothetically speaking, of course). It's possible to be 'successful' and still be considered a failure by the most damning litmus test of them all - your audience.

My point is, is that while it does not take much for a webcomic to 'fail', 'success' is defined by how much effort and commitment a cartoonist puts forth - and how they roll with the punches. And maybe you can also define success by the number of satisfied customers you leave behind.

How do I fail art?

So, a blog eh? Not like there's too many of those on the Internet! This is another one.

Call me SamDoug. I'm an amateur cartoonist, and to be honest: I have a ways to go before I can even call myself 'good' at it. I've had issues and stumbling blocks along the way, but the short story is I really, really enjoy cartooning, and I really, really want to get better at it.

This is a blog about what NOT to do if you want to be successful at webcomics. I can safely say my last eight years of webcomicking have been rife with failure; I want to pass that experience to you, dear reader. Everything from common drawing mistakes (I and others have made) to unrealistic expectations (I and others have made) will be covered here. It's my hope that aspiring cartoonists can use it to make their work more enjoyable to read. Failing that, at least to  not suck.

I also consider this a journal, to track both my own successes and failures as I attempt to bring my own webcomic, Upstate!, back to life. Its creation and its several unsuccessful runs will be dissected here, as it's a wealth of examples of what not to do with a webcomic. I'll be posting examples of my current work as well, so I can drag my skills kicking and screaming to the next level of enlightenment, via what assuredly will be witty, engaging feedback from you, the reader.

Comics are important to me. Artists such as Will Eisner, Walt Kelly, Murry Ball, and Bill Watterson have all shaped my life, in various ways. Now, there is a new generation of cartoonists in the making: some good, some not so good, and some terrible. It is this blogger's wish to help you avoid, if nothing else, being a terrible one.

- and so it begins.