Facebook Backs Off
The NY Times is reporting that Facebook is backing off of its recent new TOS and returning to its former one for the time being. Still for those of you posting original material there — good idea to read those TOSs carefully.
New Facebook Terms and Conditions a Problem?
Consumerist posted about changes in Facebook’s Terms of Service agreement that became effective on 4 February: Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”
The big change apparently being that Facebook now claims rights to your content even if you drop off the service: “You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.”
I haven’t had a chance to dig into the details but if you’re using Facebook to post your original content it’s certainly a good idea to read the terms and conditions carefully to know what you’ve agreed to.
Help with tutorials on Manga Studio
Selfish request: I just bought Manga Studio Debut 4 and started playing around with it. Does anyone have any links to relatively good tutuorials (video or just webpages) on the basics of using it — things like the toolset, inking, word balloons, etc. I’m trying to sort out what it’s good at versus plain ol’ photoshop.
We Salute You President Valentine!
It’s a two-fer holiday weekend in the U.S. of A so if Valentines Day gets you down be sure to get into some Presidentin’… or something. I thought I’d throw up a link to a comic from Neil Cohn that was released near a previous Valentine’s Day — it’s titled A Love Story (not to be confused with Love Story or Al Gore…)
If you’re more in the mood for a Presidential webcomic you can’t go wrong with Thinkin’ Lincoln.
WEBCOMICSTOCK and some other news
CONVENTIONS
Later in March of this year be sure to make it to WEBCOMICSTOCK — okay they’re calling it Webcomic Weekend but really it’s gonna be like WEBCOMICSTOCK. Actually I don’t think any of us are old enough to appreciate that lame pun so maybe Webcomic Weekend was a better choice after all. Go check out Gary’s post for the most currentest-y details to date on this soon-to-be an oh-yeah-I-was-there kind of event.
HALF PIXEL (minus Scott Kurtz) hits Katsucon in Arlington VA this weekend.
Scott Kurtz writes about his experiences at the recent New York Comicon.
Tom Spurgeon reports that the exhibitor information for the next MOCCAfest is up on the web.
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Many folks are linking to the now-finished long form webcomic Bodyworld. With good reason – great read.
INTERVIEWS
CBR has an interview with Brendan McGinley who created Hannibal Goes to Rome which was on ZUDA.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 BLOGS
Heather Massey has a good post titled "Dear Publishers, Girls Read Comics Too."
Copyright Follies #327
Ryan Sohmer, creator of Least I Could Do and businessman-Canadian style is in the news, taking a stand against the Writers’ Guild of Canada (of which he’s a member) because of its proposal for ISPs to pay content creators for new content produced in Canada. Techdirt has more about it here.
Walter Issacson (who used to be the managing editor of Newsweek) has been making the media rounds suggesting that newspapers should charge for their online content and voila! newspaper industry woes are solved. Techdirt has a breakdown of why this micropayments-pie-in-the-sky is just not going to work for newspapers either.
I think it’s a pretty safe bet that the AP’s claim that Shepard Fairey’s iconic portrait of Barack Obama is a copyright infringement of an AP photographer’s work is going to fail. (here’s a link to Lawrence Lessig’s post on it – he’s likely to be representing or advising Fairey in the matter.) It just seems pretty obvious that it’s a transformative work. In any event Fairey has preemptively sued the AP. How does this relate to comics? Not by much but given the rampant repurposing of copyrighted material in some webcomics (I’m looking at you Super-Sprite-Pixel-Party!*) this is the kind of case that’s a real world example of trying to draw lines between infringement and truly transformative work.
Experiments in Webcomics: #117
Journalista! points to a comic that uses some kind of slideshow application. It’s basically a demonstration comic making the point that despite the "slideshow" aspect it’s still a comic. While I’m sure this has been done before with other code/applications underneath — to the extent this approach is a non-techie-friendly thing to use, maybe we’ll see some interesting comics based on it soon.
All The News I Should Have Posted This Morning
Thanks to our cover artist for February – Leroy Brown, creator of Ice Cubes. Also thanks to this week's sponsor, the webcomic title Charliehorse. The sponsor slot is still open for next week – going cheap! 🙂
Two new interviews up this week – one with the creators of Erfworld and one with Bryant Paul Johnson of Teaching Baby Paranoia.
LETTERING
Nate Piekos has a post up on typographic conventions in comic lettering. Very informative! (h/t Boing Boing).
INTERVIEWS
Comix 411 has an interview with Norm Feuti creator of Retail, which is syndicated by King Features and a webcomic, Gill, which debuted toward the end of last year.
Como Se Webcomic?
Olaf Moriarty Solstrand has an interesting article considering the costs and benefits for creators in non-english speaking countries to use english in their comics.
Motion Comics
Todd Allen has an article on the history of "motion comics" (yeah they've been around longer than that recent Watchman effort).
JUSTIFY MY HYPE
Dark Horse is debuting a webcomic in the Star Wars universe containing a prequel storyline to an upcoming videogame, Star Wars: The Old Republic.
RANDOM CATCHUP COMIC READING
Just finished Jessica Abel's Life Sucks graphic novel (published last year by First Second) – I cannot rave about it enough. A great, novel twist on vampires (Dracula meets Clerks) with great pacing and really sharp art. I was a little disappointed with the ending but not that much.
American Erfs: Rob Balder and Jamie Noguchi
Erfworld is a hilarious adventure comic set in a world that seems to operate according to the laws of a role playing game like Dungeons and Dragons. The main character Parson is from our world and he is suddenly thrust into the world of Erfworld in the midst of a titantic battle between various factions. It's funny on a lot of levels. Yes you will probably laugh more and longer if you've ever played a role playing game but even if you haven't Rob Balder's wordplay and Jamie Noguchi's artwork will still entertain you.
Rob Balder is well known to many webcomic creators and readers for his work on Partially Clips, a satirical comic that uses clip art. He's also a musician and an associate editor of the fiction and fandom 'zine Nth Degree. We interviewed Rob for ComixTALK once before back in 2004. Jamie Noguchi currently has a day job as a self-described "multimedia monkey" for NASA and used to work as a colorist with UDON Entertainment. He also illustrates various things including Erfworld and hopes to someday move into doing full time illustration.
I've known Rob and Jamie for years now – I met Rob initially at SPX and have hung out with both at local Washington Webcomics meetings. They both strike me as passionate about comics and story-telling and I was not at all surprised at the success of Erfworld. I got a chance to interview them by email about the state of Erfworld and plans for 2009.
Interviewing Bryant Paul Johnson
Bryant Paul Johnson is the creator of the long-running "semi-historical micro fiction" webcomic title, Teaching Baby Paranoia. I met Johnson at an SPX several years ago and I've always enjoyed reading his wonderfully smart, intellectually wacky comic. It's a bit like reading the history of a much more interesting world than our own. He also created a limited comic series for ComixTalk titled The Antecedent that might be described as semi-historical micro nonfiction and often illuminated many interesting parallels between American history and our recent era under that Texas yankee who used to be President.
I was really happy he was able to do a cover for us last month and than an interview now. Especially interesting is an update on the graphic novel titled The Lower Kingdom that Johnson is working on along with a preview of its first chapter.
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