#webcomics weekly

[thecomicon]

Webcomic Weekly: Farts - Nigel Auchterlounie's Twitter Sitcom

Webcomic Weekly: Farts – Nigel Auchterlounie’s Twitter Sitcom

Webcomics Weekly – do we really need to explain what it does? This week… Nigel Auchterlounie’s Farts – a simple and simply brilliant webcomic tale told on his Twitter of two old ladies who run a cafe. Yep, that’s it. Nothing more. But that doesn’t make it any less funny.Continue reading

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[thecomicon]

Webcomics Weekly: 'The Boötes Void - A Comics Trip Of Many Dimensions' By Stewart Moore

Webcomics Weekly: ‘The Boötes Void – A Comics Trip Of Many Dimensions’ By Stewart Moore

Webcomic Weekly, doing just what it says right there in the title, one webcomic, every week. This week, The Boötes Void – A Comics Trip of Many Dimensions by Stewart (SK) Moore/Booda Von Boodstein. And this one is wonderfully, brilliantly weird, full of so many different things, layer upon layer upon layer and then even more. Strap in for a trip to The Boötes Void.Continue reading

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[thecomicon]

Webcomic Weekly: 'Sarah's Scribbles' Brings The Joy And Absurdity

Webcomic Weekly: ‘Sarah’s Scribbles’ Brings The Joy And Absurdity

Webcomic Weekly is Comicon’s weekly look at, well, webcomics. Did I really have to explain that one? Anyhow, this week it’s one you’ve most likely seen all over your social media feeds, all too often uncredited – Sarah’s Scribbles by Sarah Anderson.Continue reading

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[evil-inc-comic]

Merry Christmas! Here’s a gift.

If you're a fan of Webcomics Weekly, here's a little Christmas gift for you. This is the fourth (and final) episode of the popular podcast that is brought to you by the campaign to fund my book, The Webcomics Handbook. In it, Dave Kellett, Kris Straub and Brad Guigar look back on the year that was -- and make plans for next year. Plus we debate which is the better crowdfunding option -- Kickstarter or Patreon. That turns into a discussion of the effects of doing the same comic for more than a decade. New projects are beckoning... but how to return the call? Finally, we wonder aloud... Have we become the old men we used to laugh about? The answer ain't pretty.

You can listen to Webcomics Weekly using the player above...

...on the Webcomics Weekly Libsyn site...

...or download it on iTunes.

The post Merry Christmas! Here's a gift. appeared first on Evil Inc.

[whoisvox-blog]

The New Newspaper

I was re-listening to an old episode of the podcast "Webcomics Weekly" on Friday when I had a kind of epiphany about newspapers, and it gave me an idea for how I might design a periodical for this "new form" of the medium. A little explaination on what created the epiphany: the episode I was listening to is called "Print vs. Web" and is a recording of a conference call that occured between a number of high-profile cartoonists. The entire thing is somewhat painful to listen to because I definitely consider myself on the "web" side of that (potentially false) dichotomy, and the arguments from the print side are... somewhat hard to believe. The de-facto leader of the print camp is a guy named Ted Rall who has a long history of butting heads with Scott Kurtz (the de-facto leader of the web camp). At one point the discussion turns to the potential future of the comic strip medium, given the fact that newspapers are in the middle of a steep decline and are projected to survive... well... not for very long. Ted interjects, "I think newspapers are going to bounce back," to which all of the webcartoonists respond with several minutes of deafening laughter. I've laughing along with the web cartoonists ever since I first heard that episode in early 2011, but this time I tried to seriously consider what Ted was saying. He keeps talking while the others laugh at him. I'm paraphrasing here, but this is the point he makes: "Throughout history people have said that mediums would die: TV was going to kill cinema, etc. But everytime something new has come along the older medium has readjusted to take advantage of the thing it can do that the new medium can't provide. Newspapers are going to transform from what they are now, but they'll realign and find a new market." This was the first time I ever really decided to consider this thought, but once I let go of my desire to mock Ted's optimism I honestly started to imagine how newspapers might function in the future. One of the biggest reasons newspapers are failing is because there is a fundamental shortcoming in their basic business model: if you want to be informed of recent news, a newspaper cannot compare to a news website in terms of either accuracy or speed (the website can report on a story within seconds of when it happened, and can even revise stories as more information becomes available or if they made a mistake). If something groundbreaking occurs tomorrow morning, the newspaper likely won't be able to report it until the next day, etc. This fact alone had convinced me that the newspaper was on its last legs... but what I didn't think about was the fact that "news" might not have to be the primary purpose of reading a newspaper. Consider how many non-news sections a newspaper contains (comics, horoscopes, advise columns, etc.) Now consider what sections are often the most popular... they're the same! I don't see people reading newspapers on the bus anymore, nor do I hear much about people subscribing to newspapers to have them delivered to their house. The main places I see people reading newspapers are in restaurants and in waiting rooms; and those people are usually playing the crossword puzzle or reading the comics or an advice column. Now consider the fact that most newspapers are dealing with their shrinking profits by eliminating most or all of their "secondary offerings" like comics and games! In this context, eliminating these features seems an awful lot like how eliminating your market budget during the depression: all the companies that cut marketing in favor of products suffered, while all the companies the doubled down on marketing flourished. It seems like human nature to elimimate the thing that helps your business the most. So why not go the other way? Make a daily paper that has some comics, some games, horoscopes, and a few columns...and nothing else! Not only have you made something that deals exclusively in what people actually read, but your whole paper has drastically decreased in printing cost because it's about 2 or 3 pages as opposed to... I don't even know. I honestly think this kind of thing could be pretty successful, especially if you eliminated the typical newspaper-box distribution method and solicited exclusively to restaurants, cafes, and even doctors offices. I think I'll try and prototype a few issues of this and see if I can find a cheap way of printing a limited run of them as a test. I'll make a post about it if I make any progress.

[brotherhoodoftheslice]

Kris Straub's junior high memories in this Webcomics Weekly episode reminded me of stupid things I did in high school.  Namely, the time I agreed to take home a friend's photo and redraw it in pencil for a birthday present.  It started going around the school, and within a week complete strangers were coming up to me with their photos.  I'd spend all night meticulously recreating them in graphite -- who knows how many I did -- but could never work up the nerve to ask for compensation. 

My first payment for a drawing?  A bottle of shampoo.  Really CRAPPY shampoo with glitter in it, the kind you "pay" someone with just so you don't have to have it on your counter any more.  The teachers forced me to take money for their drawings, at least.