Archive for May, 2005
Monday, May 30th, 2005
DJ “Yirmumah” Coffman, the backbone of PV Comics, is the latest cartoonist to leave that webcomic group. I share his sense of disappointment for a creative company that at one point seemed to have so much potential, and now seems to be ending not with a bang, but a whimper. On his blog, DJ talks about the genesis of comiXpress, the other comic-related company I worked on last year and how this took the momentum away from PV Comics.
Logan DeAngelis had asked me to help him setup the website and e-commerce system for PV Comics, and when he asked if I’d collaborate with him on this new project, a print-on-demand service for comics, I was enthusiastic – it seemed like a more profitable idea than PV Comics. People were reluctant to pay for online content, but afforable printing for indie comics seemed like a sure thing. I suggested calling it comiXpress, Logan registered the domain, I installed OSCommerce, and we setup a quick printing cost calculator. We didn’t really spend much time with a business plan or any formal business arrangements. In hindsight, that was a mistake.
I don’t have an MBA so I began reading some introductory business books, like Seth Godin’s Bootstrapper’s Bible (which I highly recommend). I started to realize that our basic business model had some serious problems and wouldn’t scale very well. In order to offer printing at such as low price, our profit margins were too narrow. The greater the demand, the more time and effort would go into printing the books with no room for increasing capacity. As months went by, the turn around time increased, and the backlog of print orders continued to grow. We were working hard, not smart. I started spending a lot of time trying to think of options to make comiXpress more profitable.
Around the turn of the new year, one of the big comic companies got in touch with me and asked about licensing comiXpress titles for development into movies. ComiXpress doesn’t retain any rights to the creator’s intellectual property—so there was no room to explore this without changing comiXpress to more of a traditional publisher model. We thought about giving people the option to be published by comiXpress which would be different from simply having their comics printed.
At the advice of my business advisor, before spending any more time developing business plans or making deals with other companies, I wanted to make my partnership with Logan more formal. Unfortunately, we couldn’t reach an agreement, and I decided it was best to cut my losses and stop working on comiXpress and PV Comics.
Rather than think of it as time wasted, I consider the work I did to be learning experiences in e-commerce, “virtual” companies, and the necessity for formal business plans and structure. It’s great knowledge to apply to future projects – both the things that worked and the things that didn’t. Everything I’ve read about business success says that it usually follows several other business attempts that didn’t work out—the key is not giving up.
Tags: webcomic
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Thursday, May 26th, 2005
To help you get started using the Comic Gallery script I released earlier this week, I’ve put together a zip file including an example PHP webpage, CSS file, supporting images for the CSS, and a directory with 10 comic images. Special thanks to Michael Heilemann for the webpage template, and Les Gilpin and Ed Furness for the comic.
Download
ComicGallery.zip
Setting up your Gallery
Unzip the file and upload the files to a directory on your website as follows:
- YourWebsiteFolder
- comicgallery.php
- example.php
- kubrick.css
- images
- Crusader01.gif
- Crusader02.gif
- Crusader03.gif
- Crusader04.gif
- Crusader05.gif
- Crusader06.gif
- Crusader07.gif
- Crusader08.gif
- Crusader09.gif
- Crusader10.gif
- kubrick
- kubrickbg.jpg
- kubrickbgcolor.jpg
- kubrickheader.jpg
- kubrickfooter.jpg
Visit the example webpage you setup at http://YourWebsite/YourWebsiteFolder/example.php and see the script in action!
You can now modify and/or rename example.php in your webpage editor, as well as replace the content of the images directory with your own webcomic or other artwork.
Changing the Settings
To change the settings for your Comic Gallery, open comicgallery.php in your text editor. The code at the top of the script includes the variables you can change to produce different types of galleries. Here are the variables and what changing them will do to your gallery:
- $imagedir=”images”;
- If you want to create a gallery from another directory, change this variable. For example if your images are in a comics subfolder you would change this line to:
$imagedir=”comics”; - $startimage=”first”;
- If you have a daily webcomic or other type of gallery that it’s important to always display the last image in the directory, you would change this line to:
$startimage=”last”; - $copyright=” “;
- By default, Comic Gallery does not include a copyright statement. Entering your name here will add “©Your Name” below the gallery:
$copyright=”Your Name”; - $creativecommons=” “;
- Adding a Creative Commons license for your work can help you both protect your rights as a creator, as well as allow other people to redistribute or build on your work. If you have a Creative Commons license, you can enter the link to it here:
$creativecommons=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”; - $divider=”·”;
- The default divider between your Back, Next or Numeric links is · which displays as “·”. To change the divider to something else, enter the code for it here:
$divider=”|”; - $arrows=1;
- The default setup for Comic Gallery includes arrows for navigating back and next through the images. To turn arrows off, change this line to:
$arrows=0; - $backnext=1;
- The default setup for Comic Gallery includes “back” and “next” text for navigating through the images. To turn this text off, change this line to:
$backnext=0; - $numbers=1;
- The default setup for Comic Gallery includes numeric links to each image in your gallery. To turn them off, change this line to:
$numbers=0; - $linelength=10;
- To change the number of numeric links per line in your galleries navigation, change this line:
$linelength=6; - $navplacement=”below”;
- The default setup for Comic Gallery places the navigation below the image being displayed. To place the navigation above the image, change this line to:
$navplacement=”above”;
Changing the Appearance
Comic Gallery generates minimal, standards based markup so you can easily control the appearance of your gallery using Cascading Style Sheets. For example:
#example { width: 500px; margin: 0 auto; text-align: center; }
#cg_img { height: 480px; }
#cg_nav1, #cg_nav2 { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; }
#cg_nav1 a, #cg_nav2 a { text-decoration: none; }
#cg_nav1 a:hover, #cg_nav2 a:hover { text-decoration: underline; }
#cg_credits { font-family:”Courier New”, Courier, mono; font-size: 11px; color:#999; }
#cg_credits a { color:#666; text-decoration: none; }
#cg_credits a:hover { text-decoration: underline; }
.cg_arrow1, .cg_arrow2 { font-weight: bold; } You can use these ID and CLASS names to create a custom style for your gallery, or just let the gallery pickup the default styles you’ve set for paragraphs, images and links on your page.
Tags: development, gallery, php, tools, tutorial, webcomic
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Tuesday, May 24th, 2005
ComicGallery was originally created for a subscription based webcomic site I worked on in 2004. I’m making it available under the GNU General Public License, which means it’s free software and you can use it on your own site.
This script will automatically create a gallery from a directory of images that you specify. It’s easy to add to existing webpages, and easy to modify the configuration of the script to produce a variety of gallery styles suitable for webcomics as well as other types of artwork.
Other scripts for creating more complex types of galleries exist, but they often take longer to setup, administer, and integrate into your site. This script can be included on your page with a single line of code, and uses minimal, standards based markup (XHTML) that can be easily styled with CSS to match the rest of your website.
Optional features include:
- Start with the first or last image in the directory
- Display navigation above or below images
- Back and Next links
- Back and Next arrows
- Direct links to each image
- Configurable number of links per line
- Customizable dividers between links
- Display the copyright owner
- Display a link to your Creative Commons License
Download
ComicGallery v1.0
The default settings for the script will create a gallery from files in an “images” subdirectory. You can easily change this and other script settings to suit your needs.
Let me know if you end up using the script on your site, and feel free to suggest any improvements.
Update
Comic Gallery Tutorial including an example PHP webpage, CSS file, supporting images for the CSS, and a directory with 10 sample comic images.
Comic Gallery version 1.1 is now available.
Tags: designmeme, webcomic
Posted in designmeme, tools | 1 Comment »
Saturday, May 21st, 2005
The talented Mr. Coffman mentioned that Keenspot, one of the more popular webcomic sites, has recently lost a lot of it’s artists as they decided to branch out on their own. I spent a lot of time working behind the scenes for a startup webcomic company last year, and I can understand some of the reasons they might have had for wanting go in their own direction.
There are a lot of people putting comics on the web, but I don’t have quite the same sense of a “webcomics industry” that some of my colleagues have. I guess it’s because there are so many different reasons for people’s involvement in that particular publishing niche. Someone wanting to sell online comic subscriptions will (or should) take a very different approach from someone wanting to build their portfolio.
For anyone considering publishing comics online, or at a cross-roads where they’re thinking about changing their approach, my advice is to spend some time reflecting on what you’re hoping to accomplish. WHY are you putting comics online? Like all projects, if you clearly understand what you’re trying to achieve it will help you choose the best approach to take, and avoid wasting time with things that aren’t really that important.
Do you hope to work in the comic industry? Do you think a webcomic is a stepping-stone to another field, like TV or Film? Do you want to have a very popular website where you can sell advertising, T-Shirts or plush toys? Is the message in your comic more important than the artwork or writing? Or do you just love making comics and hope to share them with whoever might enjoy reading them?
If you publish on a site with other artists, make sure your goals are compatible. If you’re considering joining a comic collective, be sure the other people involved have compatible reasons for publishing their comics. For example, if your goal is to get your comic syndicated in daily newspapers, you probably don’t want to share a website with someone who’s goal is to use comics to express radical political or religious messages. Jim Davis probably wouldn’t want to publish his comics on the same website as Jack Chick.
If you want a really popular website, writing and drawing a great comic probably isn’t enough—you might need to spend as much time promoting your work as you do creating it! That means choosing a good domain name, ensuring you have a well designed website, submitting your site to search engines, and being an active part of online discussions about comics.
Some of the more popular webcomics owe their success at least in part to their blogs, discussion boards, or interviews at comic news sites. Great comics can become popular without a lot of extras or promotion, but it will usually takes a lot longer—and might not happen at all. Consider whether starting a blog to go along with your comic will help.
[On the other hand, if it’s a site you’re sending to a prospective employer along with your resume, you might want to refrain from blogging about your increasing mental instability, disturbing rants about the hackers terrorizing you, or the bad luck with your love life. You might also think twice about the weird, creepy, pervy art you’ve got on your site unless it’s a weird, creepy, pervy job you’re applying for…]
The downside to having a popular comic website can be the large bandwidth bill that accompanies it. This is one reason many artists hope to join a comics collective. However, if your comics are just something for fun or your portfolio, you might consider a services like Deviant Art or Flickr which lets you setup an online gallery for free. These sites have the added benefit of making it easier for the large number of other people using the service to find your work.
If you choose to publish your comics on your own website, make it easy for people to read your comics by allowing them to easily click forward and backward through your archive, and possibly to jump to specific points whenever they want.
Since manually creating new pages for each comic can be time consuming, and coding dynamic comic gallery scripts can be challenging for most people, I’m going to make the comic gallery script I developed for PV Comics available later this week. This will be a free download to help you setup your own comic website… after you think about whether that’s the best approach for you.
More details on the free comic gallery script soon!
Tags: webcomic
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005
After writing yesterday’s piece on Star Wars, I found myself reading some reviews of the new film including a rather scathing review from the New Yorker. I also found an interview with Gary Kurtz, who produced Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, where he talks about his past work with George Lucas, and his thoughts on the new films.
It’s very interesting (at least to me) to read about the direction the films could have taken. Kurtz says he and Lucas eventually parted ways after Empire because he wanted the stories in the films to be more mature, and Lucas wanted them to be more simplistic. The original outline for Return of the Jedi had Darth Vader show a much greater depth of character as he sought to ally himself with his son in an attempt to undue some of the mistakes he had made. The film would have ended on a much darker note with a hard won victory that saw Han Solo dying, Leia having to leave to become queen of her people, and Luke having to go on without his friends to face the Emperor in future films. It would have been a completely different movie.
The summer I graduated from highschool I had a medical scholarship and was working in a research lab before going to University to study science, and eventually medicine. It sounds like a great opportunity, and it was, but I began to realize I didn’t like hospitals very much, and disection even less. This really worried me about the career path I was on. I was young, and I thought the most important thing was to find a career I really loved—after all, I’d be spending the rest of my life doing it.
I had found a second-hand book at the flea-market about the making of
The Empire Strikes Back. This was before anyone had really heard about new movies or special editions, so it was more a nostalgia thing for me than something that was part of current pop-culture conciousness. The book chronicled the various problems faced during the production, and the frequent disagreements between Gary Kurtz (the producer) and George Lucas (the executive producer) about the way the film was being made. I found it all very interesting, and thought making movies sounded like a lot of fun, especially when there were creative challenges to overcome.
After only a year in science, I decided to change my area of study, and became a film student in Toronto. I directed a few short films, worked on some corporate videos, and learned a lot about digital video and computers. The computer part eventually led to my current job as a web designer. It’s not hollywood, and it certainly doesn’t pay as well as being a Doctor might have, but it’s interesting. The relative newness of the Internet reminds me of the early years of the film industry, and I think that’s a good thing to be involved in. Obviously I couldn’t have planned out my career path back in highschool, as I’d never heard of the internet.
It’s only after reading that interview with Gary Kurtz that I realize Empire was a point where the series could have went in two very different directions. I think it’s a bit ironic that reading a book about the making of Empire was a factor in sending my life in a different direction as well.
Tags: film
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Monday, May 16th, 2005
This week marks the conclusion of George Lucas’ new series of Star Wars films, and while I’m not planning on battling through crowds of costumed fans to see it in the theatre, I figure I’ll eventually end up seeing it on DVD. Early reviews suggest it’s an improvement over the last two films which unarguably fell short of their potential, but the trailers leave me feeling a bit underwhelmed. It looks to be full of spaceships, lightsabres, shooting and shouting – and much darker – but I’m still not that interested. New dads don’t go to the movies as often, and I’ll probably only see one or two films in the theatre over the next six months. Star Wars is unfortunately not my first or second choice. If I want escapist fantasy, the new Harry Potter film seems a better pick. Actually, that franchise has been surprisingly well done, and I imagine it holds the same place in the minds of this generation’s kids as Star Wars did for mine.
Star Wars is one of the first movies I can remember seeing in the theatre. I clearly remember the TV commercials for it, and asking my parents all about it. My dad and I went, and it was a really big deal to me. We went to see all the films together, right up to The Phantom Menace. I somehow managed to get a spot at the front of the line for the first evening screening on opening day at one of the big theatres in Toronto. My mom and dad came in from out of town to see it with me and Catherine who I dragged along as well. My parents were technically the first in line when we went into the theatre. We were all pretty disappointed when we got out, and we didn’t bother seeing the next film in the theatre at all. My dad is gone now, which is another reason I think I’ve lost interest in the series.
Still, it’s fun to see everyone get excited by the end of the Star Wars saga, and the accompanying commentary and fan projects are often more entertaining than the main event. The effort that went into the Star Wars: Revelations fan film really impressed me, DJ Coffman’s Star Wars comics are pretty funny, and the guy writing Darth Vader’s Blog is doing a great job showing a softer side of the dark lord. The reviews of the new Star Wars are fun to read, ranging from the blindly enthusiastic to the bitterly disappointed. Some people, like my brother Kevin, have opted to write a review of the Star Wars they would have liked it to be.
Unlike a lot of people my age who grew up loving Star Wars, I guess I’m not really bothered about whether this movie will or won’t live up to my expectations. I’m content to remember going to see the first movie with my dad—a long time ago, in a country far, far away.
Tags: film
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