Happy New Years (And What Are Your Webcomic Resolutions for 2005?)

Well I was planing to post this in my newsbox next week but I guess I’ll give the special sneak preview here.

My major resolution for 2005 is to begin to work more seriously on developing my skills as an artist. Up until now my comic has only managed to survive on my skills as a writer. I’ve had absolutely no art training and for the most part I hadn’t really drawn anything since I was a little kid. I pretty much gave up drawing when I went into highschool and concentraited all my artistic efforts on music (which has become my career). I had regretted that I didn’t draw anymore and then a couple of years ago I decided “you know, it was fun to doodle when I was a kid I’ll bet it’s still fun to doodle now”. I picked up a pencil and started doodling and sure enough it was.

After doing a webcomic for three years I’ve gone from not being able to draw worth shit to becoming somewhat compitent with a pencil. I’m still a long way from being able to call myself an artist but I’m at least moving in the right direction. For 2005 and five I resolve to stop taking shortcuts in my work that hinder my upward progression as an artist.

I have goals as far as comics go that are beyond my current simple 4 panel gag-strip, as beloved as Ghastly’s Ghastly Comic is to me. I have bigger and more meaningful stories to tell that will better showcase and flex my skills as a writer. Unfortunately I’m held back because I don’t feel my skills as an artist are advanced enough to do my stories justice. I really want to get to work on these other projects so I’m going to work a lot more on improving the artwork in GGC.

I’m going to stop using the excuse “well it’s only a gag strip so the artwork doesn’t really matter that much” to justify my laziness.

I’m going to stop using the 2 dimensional “Charlie Brown and Linus at the wall” shot I use of characters at the bar I’ve used as a setting for so many of my strips.

From now on the panels will be drawn with 3-D perspective and camera angles in mind.

From now on my panels will have detailed backgrounds and gradient/pattern fills will only be used on extreme close-ups or in instances where they’re used to express emotion.

From now on I’m going to practice drawing more outside of just drawing my 4 comic panels.

From now on I’m going to be much more bold and confident with my own personal artistic experimentations particularily in the use of non-computer based art tools.

My goal for 2005 is to bring my art skills up enough that I’ll feel they’re good enough for the productions I’d like to take on in 2006.

I also resolve to take the financual end of my comic more seriously which will mean amoungst other things getting rid of Cafepress and doing some real merchandising. This will mean more work, but also more money. Cafepress does make things easy and every month I get a nice cheque from them for the swag that sells but let’s face it. Cafepress merchandise is shit. Not only that but my cut of the sales is shit. I could be doing better for myself as well as offering my readers better products by investing some time and money into properly merchandising my properties. I really need to get off my ass and try to make this happen.

I also resolve to continue a resolution I made towards the end of 2004 not to let the douchebaggery inherent within certain elements of the webcomic community get under my skin anymore. A lot of the politics and pety bullshit was really starting to suck a lot of the fun out of webcomics for me and dealing with other people being jerks was really starting to turn me into a jerk as well. From now on I resolve to ignore the asshats. Let people say and do what they want. I can rebuttle when neccessary but there’s no need to let any of it get me hot under the collar. Just accept that sometimes even nice people can be jerks and leave it at that. As for the people seem to make it their careers to be jerks, well sucks to be them really. I’m not going to let anyone else’s douchebaggery get in the way of me having jolly good fun and producing the kind of work I want to produce. I’ll save the drama for my writing ,but not within GGC. That comic is always going to be a gag strip, I’m not going to turn it into a melodrama as sometimes happens when artists grow tired of writing comedy. No, if I get tired of writing comedy I’ll just end GGC rather than turn it into something it isn’t and shouldn’t be.

I also resolve to try and stop leaving things on my comic until the last minute and then rushing it to make the deadline. I know this will still happen from time to time. I have a house, career, family, and active social life to juggle along with the comic, but I’m really going to try and spread things out over the week so I’m not rushing on Saturday to get the comic done for Sunday.

I’ll also try to have even fewer filler strips than I did last year (hey, all things considered I didn’t do too bad in 2004 filler wise).

6 Comments

January 1, 2005
scarfman

I’ve resolved to try harder to have fun with my artwork while I’m executing it, because it’s better then.
January 1, 2005
StatusNil

My own resolution, besides three ambitious projects I’m keeping secret for now, and keeping up my weekly comic ‘The Grim DotCom’, is to set up a webcomics-convention in The Netherlands (in the fair city of Tilburg), named ClickBurg. I’ve already been working on the site over the past month, and currently the people organizing it with me are working hard to get as much finalized about the convention (like location, pricing of stands, additional entertainment, etc. etc. etc.) as possible and I will try to get the word out about this as much as possible. Unfortunately, most of the site is currently in Dutch, but I’m considering building in multilingual support somehow.

If webcomics are to be taken seriously as a medium, the medium has to emancipate and be brought under the attention of a wider audience – which is one of my main motivations for this convention. I realise most of the people here aren’t geographically very near The Netherlands, but if you’d like to come (wether to participate or just as audience), you’re very welcome to: the convention will be on Sunday, May 1st, and you can contact us through the ‘contact’ button on the ClickBurg site !

Happy New Year everyone !

René van Densen
January 2, 2005
Ghastly

Well I was planing to post this in my newsbox next week but I guess I’ll give the special sneak preview here.

My major resolution for 2005 is to begin to work more seriously on developing my skills as an artist. Up until now my comic has only managed to survive on my skills as a writer. I’ve had absolutely no art training and for the most part I hadn’t really drawn anything since I was a little kid. I pretty much gave up drawing when I went into highschool and concentraited all my artistic efforts on music (which has become my career). I had regretted that I didn’t draw anymore and then a couple of years ago I decided “you know, it was fun to doodle when I was a kid I’ll bet it’s still fun to doodle now”. I picked up a pencil and started doodling and sure enough it was.

After doing a webcomic for three years I’ve gone from not being able to draw worth shit to becoming somewhat compitent with a pencil. I’m still a long way from being able to call myself an artist but I’m at least moving in the right direction. For 2005 and five I resolve to stop taking shortcuts in my work that hinder my upward progression as an artist.

I have goals as far as comics go that are beyond my current simple 4 panel gag-strip, as beloved as Ghastly’s Ghastly Comic is to me. I have bigger and more meaningful stories to tell that will better showcase and flex my skills as a writer. Unfortunately I’m held back because I don’t feel my skills as an artist are advanced enough to do my stories justice. I really want to get to work on these other projects so I’m going to work a lot more on improving the artwork in GGC.

I’m going to stop using the excuse “well it’s only a gag strip so the artwork doesn’t really matter that much” to justify my laziness.

I’m going to stop using the 2 dimensional “Charlie Brown and Linus at the wall” shot I use of characters at the bar I’ve used as a setting for so many of my strips.

From now on the panels will be drawn with 3-D perspective and camera angles in mind.

From now on my panels will have detailed backgrounds and gradient/pattern fills will only be used on extreme close-ups or in instances where they’re used to express emotion.

From now on I’m going to practice drawing more outside of just drawing my 4 comic panels.

From now on I’m going to be much more bold and confident with my own personal artistic experimentations particularily in the use of non-computer based art tools.

My goal for 2005 is to bring my art skills up enough that I’ll feel they’re good enough for the productions I’d like to take on in 2006.

I also resolve to take the financual end of my comic more seriously which will mean amoungst other things getting rid of Cafepress and doing some real merchandising. This will mean more work, but also more money. Cafepress does make things easy and every month I get a nice cheque from them for the swag that sells but let’s face it. Cafepress merchandise is shit. Not only that but my cut of the sales is shit. I could be doing better for myself as well as offering my readers better products by investing some time and money into properly merchandising my properties. I really need to get off my ass and try to make this happen.

I also resolve to continue a resolution I made towards the end of 2004 not to let the douchebaggery inherent within certain elements of the webcomic community get under my skin anymore. A lot of the politics and pety bullshit was really starting to suck a lot of the fun out of webcomics for me and dealing with other people being jerks was really starting to turn me into a jerk as well. From now on I resolve to ignore the asshats. Let people say and do what they want. I can rebuttle when neccessary but there’s no need to let any of it get me hot under the collar. Just accept that sometimes even nice people can be jerks and leave it at that. As for the people seem to make it their careers to be jerks, well sucks to be them really. I’m not going to let anyone else’s douchebaggery get in the way of me having jolly good fun and producing the kind of work I want to produce. I’ll save the drama for my writing ,but not within GGC. That comic is always going to be a gag strip, I’m not going to turn it into a melodrama as sometimes happens when artists grow tired of writing comedy. No, if I get tired of writing comedy I’ll just end GGC rather than turn it into something it isn’t and shouldn’t be.

I also resolve to try and stop leaving things on my comic until the last minute and then rushing it to make the deadline. I know this will still happen from time to time. I have a house, career, family, and active social life to juggle along with the comic, but I’m really going to try and spread things out over the week so I’m not rushing on Saturday to get the comic done for Sunday.

I’ll also try to have even fewer filler strips than I did last year (hey, all things considered I didn’t do too bad in 2004 filler wise).
January 3, 2005
Agatha_Marple

I resolve to use “douchebaggery” in a complete sentence at least once.
January 3, 2005
Ghastly

Douchebaggery is indeed one of the coolest words ever. I fully have to give credit to IanJ for giving me the word. It’s most fun to say with a stuffy british victorian era accent.

“I will say good day to you and your foul douchebaggery, sir!” Harumph!
January 4, 2005
goonigoogoo

I resolve to some day finish reading Ghastly’s post

Comments are closed.

Happy New Years (And What Are Your Webcomic Resolutions for 2005?)

Xaviar Xerexes

6 Comments

Recent Comments

Meta