Instead, why don’t you take a moment to enjoy the fine wares of Jon Rosenberg, cartoonist, soulkeeper, bon vivant, and my co-birthdayist? Buy something at his store! Support his Patreon, especially at the US$30 tier, where you get to argue with him on Twitter.
And if you’ve already argued with him on Twitter, pay him the thirty bucks, cheapskate.
Happy Birthday, you magnificent, cranky bastard. Hope it’s a great one.
Welp, it’s Cyber Monday, and there are sales o’ plenty, as well as some not-sales, but nifty merch nonetheless. It’s not all cybers, though.
For instance, Jamie Noguchi woke up today to find that he’s in the Washington Post, particularly in a story about Super Art Fight, the perpetually-bizarre art head-to-head where he’s a regular and oft-champion. It’s behind a paywall, so maybe you wait until the end of the week to read it, or maybe you could give the richest guy in the world a few bucks and subscribe.
To my mind, though, the big thing to check out is the reaction to a piece that hit Twitter over the weekend that argued indie comics shows are blatantly unfair to new creators, exploiting them to benefit big name guests. I’m not linking to the original here, because I think there’s a lot of subtlety in the position that is poorly suited to Twitter, and don’t want to cause the original poster any grief or pile-ons. The reactions that I’m going to point you towards have been measured, respectful, and thoughtful. Unsurprisingly, they’re from Jim Zub and C Spike Trotman.
Zub, as he frequently does, talks about the work and preparation that all aspects of a creative career require. The key part, I think was his conclusion:
At almost every show I see at least one a new creator who has spent a ridiculous amount of money, assuming their huge banner and flashy booth will provide them the big splash they need to ‘break in’, not realizing that these creative fields are a marathon, not a sprint.
Spike also emphasizes the skills one must develop to pick out which shows to attend, and the importance of right-sizing both your expectations and your career growth, but more importantly she pointed out that those starting creators have resources they can call on, like the Creators 4 Creators grant, which just so happens to be accepting applications.
And, not wanting to hash things out on Twitter, Shing Yin Khor decided to cut through the noise and just do something about it:
I don’t like having opinions on the internet much anymore. My opinion on the convention table cost issue is that we should try to create ways to make them accessible for those who need it most. Anyway, I’ve created a small microgrant ($200 x5) program.
You are eligible if: 1. You are a comics creator accepted to or intending to apply to exhibit at a 2019 show. 2. You have exhibited at fewer than 3 conventions or zinefests. 3. You do not have a published work with a major indie or traditional publisher (anthology work is fine).
It is intended for newer members of the comics community who need a bit of extra help to exhibit at conventions, zine fests or festivals. It can be used for costs associated with travel, lodging, tabling, and creating books and merch.
It’s an easy form. It should take less than 15mins to fill out if you have already been giving thought to exhibiting. This is a small thing. What’s gonna happen is that I’m gonna sit down with some trusted people in late December, and then PayPal or Venmo 5 good people.
And, because comics is full of awesome people, there’s been a knock-on effect:
It has only been 15 mins, but the number of microgrants we can actually offer thanks to some good people, is now 8! I don’t want to collect money (I don’t have the resources to organize it), but if you’d like to sponsor a grant and be matched with a recipient in Dec, lemme know.
You hear the woman — if you’ve got a spare bit of cash and want to help a just-beginning creator, let her know.
Spam of the day:
Hope you are doing great Today.I have a proposed BUSINESS ARRANGEMENT that will benefit both parties. This is legitimate,legal and your personality will not be compromised.Please Reply to me ONLY if you are interested and consider your self capable for details
Okay, bonus points for sending this one from Japan, spammers. Don’t usually see that.
When I saw the email from the good folks at the Cartoon Art Museum, I knew I had to talk about it. After, a story about why I had to talk about it.
Mark your calendars for a celebration with the Chuck Jones Gallery special guests and the Cartoon Art Museum as we ring in the holidays with a spotlight of original artwork from How the Grinch Stole Christmas showcased as part of our Treasury of Animation exhibition.
The Grinch, and not that Cumberbatch-associated abomination that somebody felt the need to make. When will people learn that the 26 minute original, starring Boris Karloff, June Foray, and Thurl Ravenscroft is definitive, and needs no reinterpretation? Particularly not a 90 minute long 3D animated version, but at least it’s got to be better than the previous abomination.
Ahem. It’ll be a week from Saturday, 1 December, at 6:00pm for US$8 advance/US$10 at the door, with CAM members free with RSVP. You’ll get to marvel at original artwork until 9:00pm, and I’ll wager there will be at least some cocoa and cookies (although probably not Who-pudding or roast beast). But there is one piece of artwork that won’t be there. It’s at the top of this post, or more accurately, a photo of it is at the top of this post.
Because it — the original it — hangs on my wall.
I mentioned a story, and here it is — at least, the short verion. When I got this piece from Chuck Jones’s gallery in Santa Fe more than 20 years ago, the gallery director told me about a previous customer who knew he wanted a Grinch cel, but wasn’t sure which one. He went flipping through the entire collection, skipping over such highly sought-after cels as full-body Grinches and horned Grinches¹. Suddenly, he stopped, pointing to one of the cels of the Grinch and Max on top of Mount Crumpit, and said That one².
She wondered about the choice — it’s a distant shot of the Grinch and Max, the sled is really the focal point, but wrapped it up. Finally she asked about his choice. He explained (and this is thirdhand, so don’t take this as a direct quote) I’m an aerospace engineer and I love this scene. If we assume the Grinch is about human sized — five and half, six feet — then those clumps of snow are
For all the lumpy, stretchable, rubber-limbed implausibility of Grinches and Maxes, for all the ways that the laws of physics were stretched to the breaking point throughout the story, Chuck Jones knew that at the moment of tension he had to make it feel intuitively correct and let us spend all our brain cycles on the danger and not have even a single fleeting nanosecond of whatever the physical world equivalent of the uncanny valley is.
That’s why there no need for any of the reimaginings or reboots. That’s why I’ll never admit that the Grinch has ever been portrayed by anything other than a single book and a cartoon from 1966. That’s why, if you’re in the Bay Area Saturday next, you should drop in and let us know how it feels to have your heart grow three sizes.
Spam of the day:
Based on the French play Cyrano de Bergerac STARRING JAKE SHORT, SARAH FISHER, BOOBOO STEWART, AND DANNY TREJO
Unless Danny Trejo is playing Roxanne, I ain’t interested. And screw you, PR shop, for having no unsubscribe link in your email, that’s why you end up in spam folder.
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¹ Me, I knew I wanted a Grinch-and-Max. Even in the 90s, damn few of those were still available.
² Not necessarily this exact cel, but one very similar to it, as we will shortly see.
I was of two minds about using that title, Join Us, because there’s only two ways to read it. Either it’s what you hear from creepy cult folk as they try to entice you into whatever their deal is, or else what you hear from a kaleidoscopic frenzy of Broadway circus folk in full Bob Fosse mode¹. And the thing is, what I’m talking about bears² at least a little resemblance to both of those.
Readers of this page will perhaps recall that on an occasion or two, I have had the distinct honor and pleasure of attending the Alaska Robotics Comics Camp in Juneau, and I may be a bit of a proselyte about it. Cult is possibly too strong a word for the intentional community that’s grown up around Camp, but there’s a depth of feeling and fellowship that’s realer than any church I’ve belonged to³.
And, since Ben Hatke will be there, there will be plenty of circus artistry. Seriously, any time he does a talk for kids and there’s room, he’s going backflips. He’s a skilled archer, and he’s been known to engage in fire breathing. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out he’s got mad trampoline, rope-walking, or trapeze skills. Dunno his opinions on Bob Fosse, though.
But you don’t have to talk my word for it; applications for Comics Camp 2019 are now open. A description of Camp is found here, a preliminary list of guests here, and questions are answered here.
As I’ve said before, I will return to Camp as often as the organizers are willing to have me (and should they decide that their curation of attendee backgrounds/experiences would favor one less white guy, I completely understand), and as a disclaimer, I sponsor one attendee’s fees besides my own because I’m in a position to do so. I figure the creative interplay that results will cause comics to be made over careers that otherwise wouldn’t, and I consider that to be a terrific investment.
Applications are due by 15 December, and you can find them here here (an abbreviated version is available if you’ve been before). Comics Camp and its associated events will take place 25-30 April 2019 in Juneau, Alaska.
Spam of the day:
Implant Dentistry
I swear, I read the word implant and my brain went some very weird places.
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¹ That is to say, vaguely menacing.
² No pun intended.
³ Brought up Methodist, seriously questioning by the time I went to college, where a lot of my fellow students were Born Again and that accelerated my exit from the realms of doctrine. I maintain Shannon’s Figure 1 is as valid an inspiration for a philosophical system to explain the universe and our place in it as anything, and it’s what I had in mind when I accepted ordination. Plus, I recommend that everybody officiate at least one wedding in their lives. As my friend Yakov (rabbi, cantor, mohel, and jazz trumpter) says, conducting a wedding for those you love is a mitzvah.
Leave it to Dave and Brad — sorry, I meant Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett and Brad Guigar¹ — to come up with a great new method to drive interest and support in their work. I don’t want to use the word scheme because it’s full of negative connotations, and this is actually completely above-board. But it’s got a hook, and it’s brilliant, and it’s got a means to extract more than the intended recipient is necessarily aware of, which is why the s-word is so tempting. Nothing else that’s brief and punchy that conveys those concepts, and so we’ll just have to do without.
Here’s the deal: join their Patreon at the US$5 level by [American] Thanksgiving, and get something awesome. In Guigar’s case, the full e-library of Evil Inc, ten volumes worth. It’s a great deal that costs Guigar probably nothing — the books are already produced, the back library probably sells negligibly compared to the latest volume, that’s five bucks he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, and with a download code, it’s even on the recipient to provide the bandwidth.
Kellett’s come up with a more intriguing offering — a 55 page compendium of the non-story pages to Drive, all material that you could read for free, but scattered through the nine year archive (which is distressingly linear and offers no ability to find particular strips quickly) (get on that, LArDK). They’ve taken a similar idea, but put two different spins on the execution.
Guigar will give you the chance to pull down the books any time between now and Thanksgiving, then it’s back to purchasing them like a chump. Kellett is offering the material in a form that will be available on the day of only, then it’s taken down; I think this will do a lot to deter the jerks out there that would load a relatively small offering to pirate sites and undercut the people that want it, but are maybe a little cheap.
Consider, too: you have to be signed up in the next eight days. A person that wants the book (and oh my, I want it — but more on that in a moment) but doesn’t want to really lay out that much over time might join Patreon at the US$5 level (or increase their pledge) knowing that they’re going to get charged, but cancel or revert their increase right after they get the goods. But in the meantime, they’re getting all the other stuff one gets at that level of Patreonage and then they even have another week-plus after Thanksgiving before the next end-of-month charge to decide — I like this.
That’s why this is a smarter play than having a one-day sale on the book set or offering the book for one day only; up to two weeks to get somebody used to the idea of being a Patreon, and you don’t have to decide to stop until after you’ve read a goodly chunk of ten books, or read the ultra limited edition bonus material² and then get sucked back into reading the whole damn story again. It’s the sort of thing that makes you really well-disposed to the creator and figure Well, I’ll stay at the five buck level for another month. He deserves it.
Hook. Line. Sinker.
Except it’s entirely benign. The value you get is far more than the fiver you spent, and any continued support past that is voluntary. Once, I was talking with Howard Tayler³ about a particular piece of work that he managed to get paid for three different ways and witnessed the fabled I got paid three-ee-ee ti-imes dance. I think that Guigar and Kellett need to work up their own choreography, because this one is in a league of its own. What they’re doing is getting the less-committed fans the opportunity to try out being more-committed fans, and charging them five bucks for the privilege of doing so.
In fact, I’m ready to get that book from Kellett myself except — I’m not going to.
Understand, I’m a tremendous fan of Drive, and all that he is (and via Tales Of The Drive, his guest contributors are) doing with the story and the universe it occupies. But (and I think I mentioned this once before, but if not, here goes) I have to draw an ethical line.
I buy a lot of comics and graphic novels — including via Kickstarter. I accept review copies when offered the opportunity to request them. My reviews are based solely on my reading of the work, and not on whether or not I paid for whatever I’m reviewing (and I count myself lucky to have mostly reviewed work that I honestly enjoyed from top to bottom, because I really dislike writing negative reviews … whatever Anton Ego may say, I don’t find them fun to write). So I have no problem either giving money to creators4, or accepting something I wouldn’t have otherwise bought.
But I draw the line at Patreon, because that’s where you start getting into the territory that I get access to material that not everybody gets access to. I think it’s also possible to influence a creator by having a financial stake in the support a career beyond that of purchasing a specific finished thing. It’s possibly a meaningless, pedantic line to draw, but I’ve drawn it. I’m not a Patreon of anybody whose work I may discuss here. So if you do cash in on the 10-volume set, or the Secret Book Of Forbidden La Familia Knowledge, enjoy them for me.
Spam of the day:
Lil Elf Paper Cutter
I read that subject line and all I can think of is David Sedaris describing Santa Santa in his brilliant Santaland Diaries: Oh, little elf, little elf, come sing Away In A Manger for us. He had a name Santa, and it’s Crumpet.
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¹ He’s dreamy.
² Never underestimate the nerd’s tendency to go for the exclusive premium packaging.
³ Evil twin, etc. Hi, Howard!
4 Often via the facilitation of the fine folks at TopatoCo, who celebrated an anniversary yesterday. Happy Birthday, you old building and loan marvelous collection of weirdos. ANd congrats on being the one 14 year old that isn’t terminally snotty about everything!
Vote, dammit.
And since I’m here, can I just say that it’s really impressive that when Jon Rosenberg puts himself into his comic, he always comes up with a different, inhuman hue for his skin, and that of his family? Check it, and also here (which could be zombie makeup, but he’s just tired, and Amy looks the same). It’s either a real dedication to his craft, or complete laziness and I am here for it either way.
Also: vote, dammit.
PS: New Perry Bible Fellowship. Fern’s a little bit more … mature than I remember.
Spam of the day:
PMP Certification
Man, I looked over that subject line too quickly and thought that the pimps of the world had gotten a petition through ISO or something.
Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin was tasked to attend the Quai de Bulles BD festival and report back. Please enjoy the approximately 2700 words he filed, which is beastly amount of work.
Just like last year, I had a great time at Quai des Bulles chatting with creators, visiting exhibitions, attending panels, and of course buying comics (Akileos did have the French edition of Stand Still, Stay Silent book one for instance), but the most interesting event was definitely this interview of Laurel which is transcribed at the end of the post: she had not signed her comics in France in the last 6 years, and so was eagerly expected.
I was able to chat with her at her booth on Sunday, and it had gone well: she and Adrien already knew they had made back their expenses, and she was glad to meet readers in this fashion again; she is not stopping, as she has more festivals planned even just this year.
One note: the meetup occurred on Friday, and this year the festival occurred outside of school holidays, so the auditorium was filled with school children (most about 10, some in the 14-15 range) which made for a very nice ambiance. Seriously.
[Editor’s note: FSFCPL has produced an account of the interview, but this should not be taken as a series of literal quotations. For starters, Laurel and Adrien should not be taken to referring to themselves in the third person.]
Present were Laurel and Adrien Duermael, interviewed by Arnaud Wassmer.
What is Laurel doing today?
Laurel: She has always wanted to do comics, and when blogs started appearing, she put online what she considered a kind of diary. It took off, and accumulated a community as it went on. She claims to have the first blog BD (French-language comics blog) as she started it in 2003, after which she was joined by Boulet, Mélaka, Maliki, etc.
What was her initial intent?
Laurel: First of all, her pen name comes from Laureline, her actual surname (which itself comes from Valérian comics). These days Internet and the web enable young newcomers to start out from wherever they are, without the need to enter an artist studio. She taught herself (she did not pursue studies beyond the Baccalauréat [Author’s note: equivalent of the A-levels/high school diploma]), and she wanted to do it from her childhood reads.
What kind of stories doe she tell? Why autobio?
Laurel: It’s not because she’s self-centered; since she started out with a blog, she fed it with daily life stories, and that continued into her books: the characters were already ready, and she could more readily count on her community to buy them.
Adrien: As time goes on, you fall more easily into an observer role, ready to take note of relevant situations.
Laurel: It doubles as a way to be able to recount these stories to their own children, when they will be older.
So the children are taken along in the ride. How to set the limit between what you can tell and what is too intimate, and in a related question, how much storytelling versus literal telling is put in the stories?
Laurel: Everything is true. But the matter of making the children uncomfortable? Good question … At the same time, they tell very ordinary things about them (doing the dishes, school grades), nothing really intimate, even the story of expecting her second child that she’s telling has nothing specially revealing.
Doesn’t she risk fanning jealousy between her children?
Laurel: Her eldest Cerise does have her own book series …
What about the animals?
Adrien: Squirrels were often used to for narration, especially to tell of negative events, express messages, that sort of thing.
Laurel: Indeed, to have the squirrels complain while telling what happened is a good storytelling technique.
Laurel is drawing on a tablet these days. Why?
Laurel: She worked for 10 years on paper, even when she put colors digitally back then she did it with a mouse… But when she started working on video games, she had to switch to a graphic tablet for productivity reasons: games need tons of assets, and drawing on a tablet avoids having to scan the original, clean the lines digitally, etc.
Nevertheless, it did require her 6 months to get used to the graphic tablet, then 6 more months to be really comfortable with it. The material (texture, etc.) is not the same, and you have additional latency before the stroke appears as well as an air gap; and that is without mentioning technical parameters to worry about such as file resolution. She does however appreciate the possibility to cancel: she often retries the same stroke 10 times in order to get a clean one.
Adrien: Cerise is more comfortable with tablets than Laurel is.
What are her graphical influences?
She was influenced by Pénélope Bagieu, also by games such as Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on Nintendo DS; for the last 6-7 years she has had her own style.
Which is very expressive.
Adrien: Indeed, and for the messages of Comme Convenu, this is very useful to convey them, like for animation.
Laurel: Nevertheless, she considers that part of her work to be in line with French-Belgian comics traditions.
Here we see some panels before inking.
Laurel: One important part of the panels is their size: at the beginning Comme Convenu was not designed for a book, but they instead considered going for a mobile app, and therefore every panel was the size of a mobile phone screen, with 4 of them fitting an iPad screen. Then they did a book with that layout.
Adrien: The application never saw the light of the day, and it was easier to design that way than to design pages for A4, then try and cram them in a phone screen.
But does this change the way you tell the story, how to think in term of story rhythm?
Laurel: She tried to think in terms of multiples of 4 panels, and then on a larger scale to have breaks on the story fall on Fridays.
Adrien: Though it is a single story.
Laurel: Indeed, so the breaks were sometimes cliffhangers to get readers to return the week after…
Why then publish on paper?
Laurel: She wasn’t even sure at the start whether she would get to complete it or not, but with readers coming in and comments, she was encouraged especially as it provided her with an outlet next to her difficult day job; it was nevertheless taking her 6 hours of work per page. When she proposed it to publishers, she was proposed 8000€ [Author’s note: of advances, though that is often the only thing creators earn these days) for 3 years of work: there was no way she was going to accept that.
Does it make a difference in the story if it is published online or traditionally?
Adrien: Regardless, it is important for them that this story was published on paper in the end, as he saw multiple video games he worked on virtually disappear (no physical artifact remaining) when they were pulled from sale: here something concrete will remain. But it makes a difference for it to have been prepublished on an interactive medium, such as the ability to be reacting to feedback when continuing the story (as well as fixing typos).
Is she feeling pressure from comments? How to take them into account without compromising her work? Are they mostly positive or negative?
Laurel: Most commenters mean well, but sometimes she is not clear, and in one occasion she took a lot of heat and tried to address that by inserting a new page … which got heated comments as well, with much less justification this time. She realized that people demand because they like the feeling of being in control, without it being necessarily justified. She trusts Adrien to tell her when she ought to change something or if commenters are out of it. Twitter is sort of an additional comment stream, but on it people may not necessarily realize they are telling her something that 50 other people are telling her about already: it is not harassment per se, but a close equivalent.
Why did you move to California?
Laurel: Adrien is a software developer. In many aspects when developing applications it is better to be on location to meet Apple, Google, etc. So they uprooted their whole life and left with Cerise in tow.
Adrien: One advantage is that he previously went on holidays there; nevertheless when they started the business while still in France, and they would deal with the European offices of Apple for instance, as a result their apps would be promoted in France, but not worldwide. Coming to California was also important for them to meet other businesses in the same sector.
Laurel: It really is a super area, she had the feeling of being in a series.
How did the environment influence storytelling?
Laurel: Among other ways, she met with people from Pixar, and their work influenced her drawing style, more so than the move from paper to graphic tablet; she was also able to meet U.S. comics creators, go to conventions, and in general open herself to many different aspects of the local culture.
Adrien: He noticed there an important tradition of “artisanal” graphical expression, such as in burger restaurant menus, or lettering in coffee shops.
It was not exactly smooth sailing, hence the origin of Comme Convenu.
Laurel: They had a work visa, meaning if they were fired, they couldn’t stay, and they did not have the means to move back to France, plus they did not want Cerise to have to move again just after settling in. As a result they ended up having to unquestioningly obey their boss, Joffrey. They are not holding a grudge these days, but they suffered a lot at the time, especially when Cerise was involved, as a result this story had to come out. At the time they thought that, besides making an app out of it, it could allow their partners to see their side of the story and perhaps make them go off their backs, but that did not work.
Adrien: When Comme Convenu started they were really at their lowest anguish point.
Laurel: They were very protective of Cerise, as a result this story is also a way to tell her about these events in a time-shifted fashion.
Why use comics?
Laurel: It is the way she expresses herself. And when publishers showed interest but only proposed her insignificant revenues, she went: I’m going to show them how I can do it by myself.
Adrien: They had heard of Kickstarter, so given the ridiculous sums offered by publishers, they thought they had nothing to lose by going with crowdfunding, so they went with it. They were going to go with Kickstarter when Ulule took notice of them and proposed their platform, which had some benefits but in particular that of being oriented toward the French-speaking market for instance.
Could you elaborate on the crowdfunding concept for our audience?
Laurel: So you put your project up on the Internet on a platform such as Kickstarter or Ulule. You must have something to show already, and you’re asking people to chip in. They asked for 9000€ (US$10,300 then) which would have allowed them to print the book (which would have cost US$15,000) using an additional loan, and if that sum is reached the book is printed.
For the second campaign it is claimed the goal was reached in 6 minutes.
Laurel: Having a promo video helps a lot for promoting the crowdfunding, she doesn’t like doing them at all but it worked. The first campaign collected more than 8000 pledges for as many copies of the book, much more than she would have been able to do with traditional publishing. She is not throwing them any stone, but there they are.
Here the audience can see her with the printer.
Laurel: It was a California company, Global PSD, recommended by another French-American creator. She tried to get involved every step of the way, and she managed to have goodies (stickers, etc.) put along with the books.
And here the audience can see pallets and boxes of books being opened …
Laurel: They had 800 books shipped to their home in order to sign them, and they assembled the bundles of goodies by hand, including Cerise.
And they went with crowdfunding again for the second book.
Laurel: That allowed them to keep owning all the rights to the book and use them as they like later, for instance for a digital edition. They own everything.
Adrien: As a team, they own everything. While for her other comics books, they ended up seeing them on apps without being told about it.
And now everyone can read it.
Laurel: They wanted it to be available for everyone on the Internet, people in the audience can go read the 500 pages right now if they want.
Now the audience can see some of the pages from the book …
Adrien: Their cat, Brume, is indeed useful here to materialize the question they were asking themselves: why were they allowing themselves to get exploited?
Now they are back in France. What’s next?
Laurel: Right now she is telling her experience of expecting a baby (and side stories) in California.
Adrien: First it deals with the adventures in a video game studio, then with expecting a baby, but in fact it is larger than that.
What is Adrien’s opinion on his drawn double?
Adrien: I do see myself in him, well OK I’m less scrawny, but in all seriousness I find myself well drawn. In that story we are together, after a few more years have passed I would like to read it again.
[Adrien exits stage left. Now the public is allowed to ask questions.]
Will she do comics in a different style?
For now she sticks to what she is doing, but she previously did about 15 books: classic Cerise books for instance. When she will be done with her current project, in about 3 years, she will see.
Is she considering doing prose?
No, she needs to draw; writing is a very different job, but it is true that Diglee and Maliki are managing it.
She worked with Adrien for recollecting their memories of the story, did she do the same with Cerise?
Yes, Cerise was able to show her viewpoint at the end of Comme Convenu.
Were scenes changed or interpreted differently?
The names were changed, that’s it, but of course there are exaggerations, such as the size of a spider, but the dialogs occurred as shown.
How much time did they stay in California?
Five years, they would have stayed but could not renew their visas, now they are located near Vannes as Adrien has family nearby.
Do they intend to make video games in the future?
They do have projects to that end, they love developing games. They are proud of making games without ads, interesting, pretty, and out of people who download them there are people who appreciate that and allow one to make a living out of it.
What takes the most time, the scenario or the drawing stage? Would you consider you would need help on the scenario side or the drawing side?
Before she did draw scenarios from others. What she finds the hardest is dialogs and the process of dividing the scenario into pages and panels; however sketching and inking she feels are faster and more pleasant, and she can do so while watching series anyway. However, she has to watch against losing concentration because of social networks. She would rather work with a scenarist.
Would she like living in the U.S. again?
She would love to; her two youngest were born in the U.S., so they could claim citizenship when the time comes, but it is harder and harder to come, lately her immigration applications were solid but rejected anyway, she is not entertaining too many illusions. They will be able to come the U.S. for holidays already.
What games did she work on?
With the warning that they may or may not be online any more: Grub, which is a kind of snake by tilting the phone, and Greedy Grub, which is a village management game. They recovered the rights to them and are preparing a release, including on Android.
Thanks as always to FSFCPL for his unerring sense of interesting stories and creators in the intersection of BD and webcomics.
Spam of the day:
Used by all military, police, fireman and astronauts personnel. So powerful it can over e miles of light It can protect you more then a knife or gun
It’s a flashlight. And what kind of threats do you think astronauts are facing that they need the flashlight that’s more powerful than knives and guns?
On the one hand, I have nothing but sympathy for creators who have found the last year-plus of Patreon to be haphazard and chaotic, and the slow rollout of Drip to not have provided a solution. The news yesterday that Drip is on the way out certainly didn’t help things, but there are two bits of good news in there:
I don’t know Baio, but I do know McMillan, and anything that he’s involved in, I am absolutely confident will be designed to present a playing field that is accessible to all, and sees the promotion of underrepresented communities not as an afterthought, but as an ethos.
So here’s what’s happening. For the moment, Drip remains as it is. It’s not a lot bigger than the initial 100 pilot creators, and Kickstarter appear to have recognized that it’s a service that’s very different from what they’re set up to do. To fix/change/redesign it is more work than starting from scratch.
The Andys have formed a new public benefit corporation for which Kickstarter is providing seed capital and access to the Drip code. When whatever the new platform is debuts, Kickstarter will help the Drip folks migrate. The focus of the new platform will be financial stability¹. Features, size, limits, even the name of the new enterprise are yet to be announced, but one very critical item has been stated unambiguously:
When asked whether LGBT content would be flagged as adult content, even if it is not explicit — a controversy that has recently erupted around Patreon — Baio’s response was succinct: “LGBT content is not inherently explicit or NSFW in any way.”
All in all, this is a remarkable turn of events. It’s not a spin-off, it’s not a sale or transfer or acquisition of assets; this is Kickstarter saying We’re going to get out of this business, but we’ve found people we trust to build a thing that handles this business — hopefully better than we’ve been doing — and we’re going to help them get started but we won’t have an ownership stake in it.
I can’t think of any precedent for a company giving up a line of business by paying somebody to develop a competitor/successor because it’s better for their customers. I’m dangerously close to admitting that a corporation² can engage in a genuinely altruistic behavior to the detriment of their own income. And yeah, it means another round of upheaval in a year or so, followed by another ramp-up period, plus whatever changes Patreon decides on in the meantime, but the end result will, I think, be worth it.
Now it just needs a name³.
Spam of the day:
Unable to view images? Click here
No, no, no, spammers! If you’re going to put up a link that tries to look like the one that Gmail has for displaying images, you have to a) match the wording, and b) do it before the Gmail redesign takes that option away for messages in the Spam folder. Too bad, you suck.
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¹ Which mission overlaps significantly with McMillan’s Liberty Foundation, launched last year during XOXO’s hiatus, but stalled since then. One problem: the name is pretty much guaranteed to make nonprofit recognition a pain, what with the IRS having a history of dealing with a bunch of bogus “nonpolitical” Tea Party-type organizations demanding nonprofit status, many featuring the word Liberty in their name.
Also, in the interests of disclosure, I have committed to donate a large chunk of money to The Liberty Foundation (or whatever it may end up being renamed) when it is ready to launch, but I have not received any inside information from McMillan on Drip II: Electric Dripaloo.
² Okay, a public benefit corporation.
³ I may have done some digging without coming to an answer. Relatively few states have public benefit corporations, and of those that do, that only one I could find with an easily searchable state government database of PBC registrations is Oregon, where XOXO happens to be located. No luck so far, though.
This weekend is the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo, one of the increasingly-common, increasingly well-attended, increasingly relevant, free (or near-free) comics shows that goes by Expo or Festival. MICE, as always, will be held on the campus of Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, at University Hall, adjacent to the Porter Square T stop.
Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of Lesley; Cambridge is across the river from Boston, and as we all know, Boston isn’t a big college town.
MICE has done a nice job of attracting webcomickers and webcomicker-alikes, and this weekend you’ll be able to meet the likes of Vera Brosgol, Tillie Walden, Tony Cliff and Rosemary Mosco (all of whom are Special Guests and will be in the main atrium).
In the exhibit hall, you’ll find Abby Howard (H94), Alex Graudins (H88), Nate Powell (E128), Jean Wei (A42), John Green (E115), Blue Delliquanti (H95), Jon Chad (D09), Josh Neufeld (D19), KC Green (D16), Christine Larsen (B86), Wendy Xu (A57), Dan Nott (B65), Zack Giallongo (E117), , Dirk Tiede (E122), Eric Colossal (E139), and Anne and Jerzy Drozd (E118).
A few clarifications: Ben Hatke was scheduled to appear, but had to cancel; George O’Connor will be at table H102, not George O’Connor; Nicholas Offerman will be at table D20, not Nicholas Offerman; the Center For Cartoon Studies will be at table E137; Matt Lubchansky will be repping The Nib at table H89; and it is entirely possible that Lucy Bellwood will be lured away from table E116 by boats. Shelli Paroline would be a notable local absence, except for the part where she’s the co-director of the show, and thus has no time to promote herself; if you see her at rest for ten seconds, be sure to thank her.
By the way, tables starting with an A are in the atrium, B tables are in the Bechdel Room, D tables in the Doucet Hall, and H tables in the Hernandez Room, all on the upper floor. The lower level is where you’ll find the E tables in the Eisner Level, as well as the Cartoonarium (where artists will be doing demos all weekend). Panels are upstairs in the amphitheater, workshops downstairs in the Eliot and Lesley Rooms, with the schedule here.
MICE show hours are a nicely humane 10:00am to 6:00pm tomorrow, 20 October, and 11:00am to 5:00pm Sunday, 21 October. MICE is free and open to the public.
Spam of the day:
Find Love With a Beautiful Russian Woman
And yet, you advertise yourself as Ukraine Dating Agency, not recognizing that Ukrainians and Russians are not the same. Curious.
Howard Tayler¹ has launched a Kickstarter for two — two! — books and has inadvertently run a sociological experiment. The campaign is for the 14th and 15th story arcs/print collections of Schlock Mercenary, Broken Wind and Delegates And Delegation respectively. Schlock Mercenary is famously One Big Story, and so a question occurred to me:
Given that the campaign is for two separate books, and that Tayler’s readers would logically want to read both of them before book 16 releases sometime next year, would anybody opt for just one book?
As of this writing (some eight hours after launch and 64% of funding goal achieved), the answer appears to be a resounding now. Out of 398 backers, exactly zero have backed either the tier for your choice of one book (PDF form) or your choice of one book (print form). There’s three people backing at the US$1 tier, which gets you nothing² but nobody wants just one. That’s some reader buy-in right there.
Tayler’s also done something very smart with this campaign. There have been lots of Kickstarts where early birds get the same reward at a lesser price as a reward for backing at the start of the campaign; Tayler — or more likely, his wife Sandra, who wrangles fulfillment — has inverted the idea by offering tiers of rewards spread out over a period of months. PDFs get sent in December, unsketched books in February, and sketched books in three batches of 400 each, in March, April, and May.
Tayler’s dealt with the possibility of damaging his drawing hand by sketching too many books in too short a time by a) limiting how many books may require sketches, and b) spreading them out; fifteen sketches a day over three months is a hell of a lot more reasonable than trying to do a thousand in a single burst of shipping over two weekends or so. Smartly done, Mrs & Mr Evil Twin! Smartly done.
In other news:
It’s next Tuesday, the 23rd, from 6:30pm to 8:00pm. CAM members get in free, US$10 for nonmembers, but a 50% discount if you come in costume. The Cartoon Art Museum, in case you’d forgotten, is at 781 Beach Street, part of Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco.
Spam of the day:
Prepare for a Hurricane Browse Portable Generator Choices
Got one after Irene, thanks. But that photo you’re running is of a power output panel of a generator that’s “portable” in the sense that it’s permanently mounted to its own trailer bed along with a 2000 liter diesel fuel tank. I ain’t trying to run an office building over here.
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¹ Evil twin, etc.
² But gets you in on the eventual Backerkit add-ons … which includes all previous books in the series.
³ Which is not to say that I didn’t laugh out loud back in ’92 in her debut episode when The Joker, lamenting that finally killing a guy he’d been tormenting meant he’d need to find a new hobby, prompted Harley to chirp Macramé’s nice.
