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.

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!'

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.