Friday Archive Dive: Convention Checklist

Today's Friday Archive Dive discusses Convention Checklists -- and featured Robert Khoo's checklist for Penny Arcade appearances. Besides the checklists (three others shared their own personal lists) there was an incredibly useful piece of advice from Mr. Khoo that is amazingly effective at predicting the amount of change to bring to a convention.

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Coming Apart at the Themes

I'll bet just about everybody has at least one good cartoon in them.

After all, every now and then, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn.

But we're not blind squirrels, are we? We're cartoonists.

And that means we have to be nuts on a regular basis.

From my experience, I can tell you that it helps to have a theme to fall back on when the creativity fails to crackle.

Whether you're doing a dramatic longform comic or a gag-a-day strip, a theme that works for you can help you iron out the bumps between moments of creative genius. A good theme contains a number of touchstones that you can count on to get your own personal creativity kickstarted. It's the central engine of your comic.

This post describes the qualities of a good comics theme. It also discusses ways in which a theme can be used to generate ideas. Log in to read the entire post.

Great news about Longform Comics and Webcomics.com!

Since re-launching this site in January, one of the most common questions I get has been "Will this site help me if I do a longform comic?"

And the answer is an unequivocal yes.

Because the vast majority of what we talk about here applies to all webcomics -- regardless of genre or categorization.

Want proof?

Check the RSS feed.

Here's an overview of what we've discussed so far this month (mind you, these are only the site posts -- not the Private Forum which features intelligent discussion of almost every webcomics-related topic you could imagine):

What Is Your Time Worth?

What is your time worth? Figuring it all out can take a little soul-searching (not to mention wallet-searching), but the time spent can make things really simple when it comes time to suggest a price for your involvement in a project.

Word balloon Aesthetics

Word balloons are so common -- so freely accepted as a part of a cartoonist's visual syntax -- that many of us haven't given the subject a whole lot of thought. It's time to look at word balloons again for the first time. This post discusses several methods of incorporating word balloons into panels and creating graceful, natural-looking word balloons that communicate clearly.

Convention Dish: ConnectiCon
Subscribers who have attended a particular convention in the past, are invited to share a detailed review for others who may be considering it.

Salvage those New Years Resolutions
New Year's Resolutions tend to flicker and die within six weeks of the ball dropping in Times Square. So, how about you? Resolutions are like wishes. They feel awfully good when you make them, but they don't actually accomplish anything. This post discusses how to make practical strategies for success.

Friday Archive Dive: Word Balloons - Three Common Mistakes
Today's Friday Archive Dive is from June 2, 2009. It discussed three common mistakes people make with their word balloons.

Don't Flattr Yourself
This post dissects the sales pitch of Flattr and discuss it piece by piece. It's concept will be discussed and an overall review of its usefulness will be concluded.

Weighing Opportunity
Comic contests, solicitations to have your comic reprinted in a magazine, offers to run your comics on other sites... It would be nice if opportunity actually knocked. This post discusses ways to judge different opportunities based on bullet-list-style breakdowns that help separate the good ones from the scams.

Good news / bad new on digital-marketing budgets

According to a recent survey, companies will be spending more on digital marketing (by an average of about 17%) in 2010. In this post, we'll look at a breakdown of where the money's going and what it means to webcartoonists. What are they doing that follows advice from 2008's "How To Make Webcomics"? And how can webcartoonists benefit from the trend?

Glossary of Contract Terms
This post features a list of terms commonly used in the kinds of legal contracts that a webcartoonist might typically be faced with. Each of the terms is explained, and links to further information are provided.

What Is Your Time Worth?

As is the case with the vast majority of the information on this site, this is an issue that you'll need to grapple with whether you do a longform comic or a gag-a-day strip. Like so much of what we do here, this is an issue that goes across the board: What is your time worth?

Figuring it all out can take a little soul-searching (not to mention wallet-searching), but the time spent can make things really simple when it comes time to suggest a price for your involvement in a project.

This post describes how to determine your "baseline rate," and provides several examples of applying the rate in real-world situations. Log in to read the entire post.

Recurring payments

A quick note about subscriptions the Webcomics.com.

As you know, a Webcomics.com membership sets up a recurring payment of $30 per year. So as long as you're an active member, your PayPal account is billed $30 annually.

Of course, you're not locked into anything... you can easily cancel that recurring payment at any time.

Please understand that once a payment is cancelled, it cannot be restarted. And, after your year is up, if you haven't re-upped your subscription -- either through the recurring payment or manually, your log-in will be de-activated.

If anything ever happens -- like your recurring payment hits and you realize that you want to unsubscribe -- drop me a line and we'll get everything worked out. You will never get "stung" with a subscription fee if you don't intend to be a subscriber.

Your participation in this site is of the utmost importance to me. And I take it very seriously. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to let me know. :)