15 + 18 points
Stripping by Wetdryvac
October 3rd, 2014 1:00 PM
In which I accidentally re-uptake a 22 year old project by starting a project that might run equally long: !Fortune.
This is one of the projects that caused me to more or less vanish from here for three years. Granted, most of the time was on the road on contract, but this... this has been my bloody nemesis. In 2004 - ten years ago - I got introduced to web comics. A sheltered life, I tell you. And I thought, "I can do that." I was not what one would call initially correct about this.
My art style, as it turned out, was about as far as one might expect possible from comic format while still remaining art. Likewise, no web comic tool-set seemed to work for me. I wanted scheduling, uniformity, the ability to upload-and-release-on-time an entire batch of images - I fall into the, "Create like crazy and have a week's lie down after," School of art.
The complete obsession with research didn't help. 22 years ago, you see, I'd written up a seed set. 2700 seeds for... articles, books, comics, or whatever struck my fancy. Projects and I tend to have a long and often kamikaze relationship. Thus, I'd start sketching a seed and look up a detail element. Three days later, I'd have pretty solid knowledge about some esoteric subject and no comic panel.
That wasn't OK.
Three things changed. I got better at layout passes between Illustrator and Photoshop. I found a toolset to host and schedule web comics. And I found a way to combine my daft research habits with comic creation. The rules looked like this:
1) The research must be on a seed subject, however tangentially related.
2) The research must cover out-of-copyright material with something a derivative work can be made from.
3) The layout must (almost but not quite always) work in monochrome.
4) It must be properly credited.
5) It must be of press quality, such that I can sell prints. (Worst decision of my life on the face of it, but ended up teaching me a *lot* about nearly a dozen different print and product providing companies)
6) All comics must be in the same format.
The result was this...
And the public place in this case - until I fix the printer and behave even less sanely than usual - is the official !Fortune webcomic. Releasing M/W/F, I did the math: If I keep up with production, I have material for the next 15 years, and it looks like I'll be able to.
My favorite one to date:
So I'm going to keep at it. For the next ten years. The next fifteen if I'm able - and by then, well - 2700 seeds in 1992? I bet I can manage more.
Web Toolset: Wordpress + Google Analytics + WebComic plugin
Software Toolset: Illustrator + Photoshop (Thankyou, o benefactor, for allowing me to keep that when the company I was contracting for went under)
This is one of the projects that caused me to more or less vanish from here for three years. Granted, most of the time was on the road on contract, but this... this has been my bloody nemesis. In 2004 - ten years ago - I got introduced to web comics. A sheltered life, I tell you. And I thought, "I can do that." I was not what one would call initially correct about this.
My art style, as it turned out, was about as far as one might expect possible from comic format while still remaining art. Likewise, no web comic tool-set seemed to work for me. I wanted scheduling, uniformity, the ability to upload-and-release-on-time an entire batch of images - I fall into the, "Create like crazy and have a week's lie down after," School of art.
The complete obsession with research didn't help. 22 years ago, you see, I'd written up a seed set. 2700 seeds for... articles, books, comics, or whatever struck my fancy. Projects and I tend to have a long and often kamikaze relationship. Thus, I'd start sketching a seed and look up a detail element. Three days later, I'd have pretty solid knowledge about some esoteric subject and no comic panel.
That wasn't OK.
Three things changed. I got better at layout passes between Illustrator and Photoshop. I found a toolset to host and schedule web comics. And I found a way to combine my daft research habits with comic creation. The rules looked like this:
1) The research must be on a seed subject, however tangentially related.
2) The research must cover out-of-copyright material with something a derivative work can be made from.
3) The layout must (almost but not quite always) work in monochrome.
4) It must be properly credited.
5) It must be of press quality, such that I can sell prints. (Worst decision of my life on the face of it, but ended up teaching me a *lot* about nearly a dozen different print and product providing companies)
6) All comics must be in the same format.
The result was this...
And the public place in this case - until I fix the printer and behave even less sanely than usual - is the official !Fortune webcomic. Releasing M/W/F, I did the math: If I keep up with production, I have material for the next 15 years, and it looks like I'll be able to.
My favorite one to date:
So I'm going to keep at it. For the next ten years. The next fifteen if I'm able - and by then, well - 2700 seeds in 1992? I bet I can manage more.
Web Toolset: Wordpress + Google Analytics + WebComic plugin
Software Toolset: Illustrator + Photoshop (Thankyou, o benefactor, for allowing me to keep that when the company I was contracting for went under)
1 + 1 in terms of rabbits
The very first item in the *fifth* attempt to build the comic run, and the fourth style variant attempted. It's here that I stop going insane and say, "That! That's what I want!" And run around showing the same folks I'd been driving insane with stuff like this for ages.
A boy and his earthworm
It was with this comic that I realized this was going to work long term - that I'd be able to keep doing this for years, and that the comic-creation process was helping with the madness resultant from three years of stress and other work.
