nny
Dreamer
Posts: 18
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Post by nny on Sept 2, 2009 15:33:24 GMT -5
How many months worth of comic should we have in advance?
My artist and I have about 4 months so far.. and were wondering if that's enough?
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Post by Lore on Sept 2, 2009 17:14:29 GMT -5
It depends on how many times you plan on updating a week. 4 months is fantastic, whether you're updating once a week or five times a week. That means a tremendous buffer and that's really what you need to not slowly go crazy...or kill each other. But some miracle Erika and I have making making comic ends meet "check to check" if you will. I tend to finish my part by monday sometime and she finishes the colors by tuesday and goes up tuesday night/wed morning.
But be aware, if you do have a large buffer, you could become lax and before you know it, the buffer gets eaten up and you're starting over at drawing that week's comic the day before it goes up again. A plan I've used successfully from time to time (oh, if only i'd stuck to it) was, while the comic updates once a week, i draw two comics a week. So at the end of the first week, you have one extra comic in the bag. At the end of the second week (when you draw two more and the other one gets posted), you have two comics in the bag. After three weeks, you have three buffer comics. It's a way to get ahead without feeling overwhelmed while deciding to draw five comics in two days. That never works and leads to burn out.
It also helps in cases of sickness, injury or lack of enthusiasm. Instead of rushing a crappy filler, you still have weeks of comics to get your out of whatever funk you're in. We personally hate fillers and have used as few as possible because of this, but we HAVE had to use them because our buffer died.
So yeah, definately plan ahead. And with 4 months, you're in terrific shape. ::Envies you're backlog::
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Post by MalkavianMarine on Sept 12, 2009 12:48:58 GMT -5
Question... What is your level of satisfaction with comicgenesis? I finally decided to get off my cowardly arse and start mine up.
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Post by Erika on Sept 12, 2009 23:21:01 GMT -5
1) We've been pretty happy with comic genesis. It's free, which is important to us. Sometimes you get what you pay for, but once we figured out how to use the site, the hiccups have been few and far between. You DO have to code your pages yourself. Neither of us know HTML, but my brother does, and thus, he does our code. The downside to THAT is that when we want to make site updates, we have to wait on his schedule, which is why they don't come that often.
2) Lordy be, I wish we had four months of backlog. That's absolutely smashing. Echo everything Lore said about being complacant and slowly eating up said backlog.
3) General starting a comic advice the first: Stick to your schedule! Nothing will frustrate readers faster than constantly skipped or late updates. Maintaining your backlog will help in this, but even if something really stupid happens and you've got NOTHING, at least put up some filler. Give people something to look at.
4) General advice the second: When people find a new comic, a lot of them will go back through the archive to see if they like it enough to keep reading. They'll lose interest if there's nothing in the archives. I recommend posting a comic a day for awhile before your offcial launch to build up a little archive to catch people's interest.
Im sure there's more, but it is late and I have the tired.
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Post by MalkavianMarine on Sept 13, 2009 7:13:28 GMT -5
Im gonna post a pilot, to assess everyone's reaction to the comic. Dammit, I was hoping I didn't need HTML skillz
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Post by Erika on Sept 13, 2009 9:21:43 GMT -5
When you're going through all the startup stuff, look at their templates. I'm not sure how they work, but it's a start.
What exactly do you mean by posting a pilot?
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Post by MalkavianMarine on Sept 13, 2009 16:57:47 GMT -5
Like a pilot episode of a TV show...
Like you said, post everyday to get interest out there, yada yada...after the "pilot" is over, I will try to assess what is liked and disliked and make minor adjustments accordingly. The spirit of it won't be changed, I am still going to tell my story the way i want it told.
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Post by Erika on Sept 13, 2009 19:14:31 GMT -5
I do in fact know what a pilot episode is. But how are you trying to transcribe that idea to a webcomic? How many strips will be in it? WHERE are you going to get this feedback?
It took months for us to get a forumite who wasn't a friend we bullied into joining. You can ask friends for critisism, and if you have artist friends, that advice can be invaluable. But it does not make a good litmus test for whether your internet audiance is going to pick it up. This sort of thing grows very slowly.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't pay attention to your readership and adjust your work accordingly. You should. Readers will give you ideas of how to guide your story that you could never come up with on your own. But banking on early feedback, good or bad, early on is like starting a business that depends on getting good sales in the first few months.
Instead, just DO it. Do it for you and get it out there and hope that people like it. Run your concepts by people you trust to give you honest feedback. Do it assumming that you're the only one who'll ever see it. Then you get to be happily surprised if you get fans.
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Post by MalkavianMarine on Sept 13, 2009 21:17:15 GMT -5
I guess your right, I didn't even take in account for that Do it assumming that you're the only one who'll ever see it. Then you get to be happily surprised if you get fans. I smiled while reading that. |
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Post by Masoob on Dec 2, 2009 16:55:10 GMT -5
Who was the first forumite you didn't bully into joining?
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Post by Erika on Dec 2, 2009 22:52:08 GMT -5
I looked this up when this thread was new, and now I've forgotten. But it might have been you.
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