Friday Archive Dive: Color Theory Explained

Read a very well-written introduction to color theory -- in plain talk for people, like me, who could never quite grasp it.

Webcomics.com Gift-Giving Guide

We did this a couple years ago, and I wanted to try it out again this year.

Next month, we'll publish a Webcomics Gift-Giving Guide.

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Creating an automatic Send-By-E-mail Comic Mailing List

Given the popularity of RSS, social media and other ways of keeping track of our favorite webcomics, it's hard to believe that anyone would rather get their favorite comics e-mailed to them. I mean, that's what cavemen did in prehistoric times, right? But believe it or not, some of your readers would rather read their comics this way than follow an RSS feed.

And since it's pretty easy to set up an RSS-driven e-mail campaign through a service such as MailChimp.com, there's really no reason not to.

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Mailbag: Using "copyrighted" book titles

Q: I have a question about book titles. If I used generic episode titles as book titles would I have to worry about copyrights. I write an anime parody comic an wanted to use episode titles as the naming convention on my books. I'll steer clear of ones with character names of course, but I'm wondering about ones that don't have that. If I named a book "Kidnapped at the Hotspring" would that be a problem to the makers of Naruto?

As always, when I speak about legal matters, I'm honor-bound to remind you that I'm not a lawyer.

A. This is a question that comes up from time to time, and at the risk of being repetative, I'm going to feature this on the site because it underscores a fundamental problem I see with creators' understanding of copyright. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that this underscores a complete misunderstanding of copyright.

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Saturday Archive Dive: Buffering

Today's dive into the deeper archive of Webcomics.com goes all the way to the very beginning months of the site -- Nov. 12, 2008 -- when I discussed my conflicting feelings (then) about the importance of a buffer.

When I was visiting Seattle, I talked a little with Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins about their process for making Penny-Arcade. They don't approach things the same way that many of us do. In fact, I would say that when it comes time to actually create Penny-Arcade, Mike and Jerry really aren't working on a webcomic per se. They're just making Penny-Arcade. Whatever that is, however anyone who views it feels the need to label it. It is what it is, and their process bears very little resemblance to what I do on a daily basis.

One thing I was completely envious of was their utter lack of guilt over not having a buffer of strips...

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