Avoid convention theft

I was exhibiting in Artist's Alley at Baltimore Comic Con this weekend. Sometime Sunday afternoon, my neighbor, a novelist who was working one of his first comic conventions, suddenly made the realization that his money bag -- containing his entire revenue for the weekend, had been stolen. He had set the bag on the table as he was making change for a customer, and, after trying to make change for the next customer, realized that the bag had been lifted.

We tend to get so caught-up in the camaraderie and fellowship of a comic convention that we tend to forget that there are always a few bad apples in every bunch.

So I thought this might be a good pace to assemble some tips for preventing convention theft. I'll start with a few of my own. Feel free to add to the list.

Saturday Deep Dive: Drawing Kids

Todays dive into the deeper archive of Webcomics.com dates back to Sept. 14, 2011, when I discussed drawing children.

Drawing kids involves a little understanding of human physiological development. The drawing below represents a fairly typical progression from infanct to adult. If you were drawing realistically, these proportions will serve you well as you try to represent believable characters at different ages.

Read the entire post and comment there.

Friday Archive Dive: Auction Your #1 Artist Edition

Today's Archive Dive is from September 17, 2013, when I shared a tip on handling Artist Editions.

Ready for another post from the "I'll make mistakes so you don't have to" file?

Comment under the original thread.

Social Media Hot Seat: Love is in the Blood, Daddy's Day, Rival Angels

For this round of Hot Seat critiques, I wanted to focus on social media. I attribute a huge portion of the success I had with my recent Kickstarter on the effect of social media. It's how information gets passed around, and I think it's worth spending a little time discussing.

So here's the three criteria I focused on:

• How easy was it to ascertain the social-media presence of the comic/creator?
• How easy was it was to share links to the content on social media (outgoing social-media).
• Did the main social-media feed of the creator (incoming social media) feature a good ratio of content to commercial? 

I gave each a score on a five-star scale, with five stars representing the best possible outcome.

As always, this is just the beginning of the discussion. Members are encouraged to take this as a jumping-off point to a deeper discussion of the topic.

Love is in the Blood

Daddy's Day

Rival Angels

The Best of Webcomics.com, August 2013

If you're not a member of Webcomics.com, here's some of what you missed last month.

Site Posts

Mailbag: How many comics should be in my buffer?

Tutorial: Customizing navigation buttons in Comic Easel (or ComicsPress)

Social media image guide (What size should your image be to be displayed on different social-media sites?)

Social-media Hotseat (critique series)

Promotion: Investing in Yourself

Tutorial: Adding Jetpack's social-media icons directly under your comic.

Jetpack's "Photon" -- what it is and why you need it

Ten things you can do to improve your webcomic ... right now

Fix your broken links! Why it's important and how to do it quickly.

Exclusive member Benefit: Sandbox for Comic Easel Regularly $15 (free for Webcomics.com members), this software helps you change the colors of different elements on your site ... without CSS!

Chicago Comic Con Q&A: I hosted a panel at Chicago Comic Con in which I fielded webcomics questions for an hour, this is the audio from that talk.

Twitter cards: What they are, why you might want them and how to implement them easily.

Taking credit cards online

ComicsPress 4.0 After several years, Philip M. "Frumph" Hofer has released a massive update on this ubiquitous webcomic content-management system. Here are some important details that you need to know -- PLUS, Frumph fields live Q&As.

Private Forum

Using 3D models

Customizable WordPress themes other than ComicsPress?

Fulfilling digital rewards

Major changes for Scribol

Tag cloud page for WordPress

Jerry Seinfeld on writing jokes

New ad networks to replace PulsePoint?

The 60-minute business plan

Windows 8 / Cintiq 21UX issues

How many ads is too many?

Customizing Comic Easel

Manga Studio 5 ex

Bristol board recommendations?

App recommendations?

Yoast SEO plug-in for WordPress

New POD printer Litho Ninja review