Design Meme

Top 10 Webcomic Resources

Adding to the the section on tools and workspaces I wrote for the Webcomics book, here is my list of the top 10 webcomic resources.

Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud
A comic book about comic books, and an incredible resource for anyone working in the graphic arts. Understanding Comics provides numerous insights for how to structure your comics.

DrawingBoard.org
Some of the best illustrators on the web post their artwork on this message board, and the numerous drawing challenges provide a great opportunity to improve your artwork and get feedback.

Strathmore Sketchbook
Everyone has a different type of paper that they like. I’m partial to Strathmore, and find the sketchpads fairly economical while giving much nicer drawing surface than whatever I’ve got in the printer.

Sakura Brush Pen
The organic and variable line weight of a brush, with the convenience of a pen. A brush pen won’t spill, and is cheaper than most ink and brushes.

Blambot Fonts, by Nate Piekos
Tons of comic lettering fonts for dialogue, sound fx, and titles. Each month two new fonts are added to the catalogue—and one of them is free for independent comic book creation and non-profit use!

Adobe Photoshop
Most web hosting companies limit the amount of bandwidth your website can use each month. Making sure your webcomic images are properly optimized is an important, and often overlooked step in online publishing.

Wordpress
A free blogging system you can add to your website. Having a blog is a good way to keep your webcomic readers informed, and makes updating services like Google and Technorati a lot easier. Some web hosting companies even offer wordpress to all their users.

Google Adsense
A great idea for making some extra income from your webcomic, signing up for google adsense lets you put ads on your website based on your specific content. Visit DJ Coffman’s thoughts on making money with your webcomic for more advice on advertising.

Comic Book Legal Defence Fund
News and information about comic censorship in the U.S. If you’re thinking of making an edgy or adult themed comic, this may be a good resource for you.

Coffee
Whether you get your fix from Tim Horton’s or make it at home in a coffee press, this is essential. Use with caution.

I’d be interested in hearing from other artists about webcomic resources they’d add to this list.

Tags: books, design, tutorial, web, webcomic
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Hortence is the Ugliest Pumpkin in the World

Jeff McCartney and I have been teaching web design at the University of Guelph-Humber this fall. It’s been a good semester and I’ve enjoyed seeing the class move from (mostly) never having published a webpage to setting up their own blogs and publishing their portfolios. I wanted to share a rather unusual assignment from one of Jeff’s students…

Hortence is the ugliest pumpkin in the world and Bill Coleman is a funny guy. Make sure you keep going until the last page, and let’s hope Jeff gave Bill a good mark on this.

Update on the new site: I’ve been adding more 301 redirects for broken links, and I’m hoping they’re all in place now. Anyone who was finding broken links to older articles should be able to find them now.

Tags: design, spooky, web
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Moving the blog archive

I’ve been moving the archived blog entries over to the new site. While it would make sense to use some type of XML export / import process to move the data the old MovableType database no longer runs well enough to make that possible. That’s not a criticism of MovableType—I’m still very pleased with it. It’s just that the Perl / Berkley DB environment I was running it under wasn’t ideal… and now it doesn’t work.

Looking back over the archive of the past 3 years I can really see that I’ve gotten more comfortable with writing—although I’m still much more concise than I’d like. I still have to force myself not to condence my blog entries too much. Some of my earliest posts weren’t even worth moving over. One entry was literally this short:

Blambot’s Nate Piekos offers a wide range of high-quality comic lettering fonts.

Wow. I type about as much now when I’m adding a bookmark to del.icio.us!

Actually, it’s del.icio.us that inspired me to expand the number of categories I’m using for the site. I’m now using them the same way I use tags on del.icio.us. I think that might help technorati work with the site as well. The benefit to you, is being able to find whatever you’re looking for a bit more easily—whether it’s a tutorial or what I’ve written about webcomics.

Updates to wordpress continue—the Captcha on the comments pages is now gone, and I’ve added a plugin to generate a Google Sitemap.

Tags: designmeme
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