#79, and a Convention Pamphlet Contest!

[insert obligatory link to the comic here]

Who wants to have a hand in crafting this year's convention pamphlet?

Hang on, what convention pamphlet? In previous years I've done several leaflets, which then get passed around at some of the various conventions I go to. Prior to now they've just been an easy way to show off my artistic skills, but since it's still a little early to start making huge books...

For quick examples, check out the bonus section. The one you'll be helping me with looks most like the four-by-four special!

Since we're nearing the end of the current storyline and I'm sure an awful lot of you have been itching to get some answers, I'm going to do the simplest thing I can think of and give you some. Specifically, for the week between the end of this storyline and the start of the new one, there's going to be daily updates of the bonus comic variety, where you can write to the contestants (and perhaps certain other characters) on the comic and hopefully get some useful responses back.

Yes, that's six special updates to help pad things out. I'm expecting at least 4-6 of those will consist of our contestants answering your questions . . .

. . . but of course, they can only answer them if you provide them.

Ways to Enter Your Questions:

1. On the Forums! If there's not a Contest Thread already started by the time you get there, go ahead and make one.
   
2. Email Me! No, seriously, this works. Just don't ask me anything regarding \/1@GR@ and you should escape the spam filters.
3. Blog Comments! Well, this IS a contest post, so it'll hold onto them just fine. If you choose this route though, please provide a way for me to contact you later in case I need your mailing address (see below)
   
4. Twitter! If you're going to go this route, PLEASE reply (so it starts with '@lastres0rt') or Direct Message so it doesn't get lost in the feed.
   

Winners not only get their questions answered, but they'll also receive a free copy of the otherwise print-exclusive pamphlet once they've been printed up as a token of my appreciation.

Non-winners can still get the pamphlet mailed to them as well, but they'll just have to pay a little cash for their copies in a quaint ritual known as "retail". :-p

Not all questions will be answered, obviously; some might take too long for a simple strip, others might spoil the plot, and a few might even just not be good questions . . . so the more entries I receive, the better the bonuses (both in terms of the strips themselves AND the final pamphlets) will be. Heck, the print version might even be in color if enough people enter -- let's say 50 entries total to guarantee print color.

Fame, fortune, and fandom-snark awaits! Enter today!

#78 up, and just in time too!

Well, that's it for the bonus updates... as always, please direct rampant speculation and "OMG!"-type comments to the forums.

In the meantime, I'm still scrambling to recover my buffer, so... g'night, folks!

#77, And Summer Plans

Thanks to a few generous folks, we've had a bonus update this past week -- here it is again, just in case you missed it -- and after this current one, we'll be having another bonus update coming up Wednesday as well.

(Oh, and there's another $20 sitting around on top of that to count towards bonuses... Just, please, wait at least a week to give the buffer a chance to recharge.)

Thanks go out to those who've already offered suggestions on what else I should be working on this summer besides my buffer. If you're a little slow to reply, don't worry, I've not made any hard decisions yet.

The REAL hard one's already been made, anyway.

I've joked about it before in private conversations and otherwise, but summer's not vacation time for me so much as it is time for me to recharge the buffer. Quite literally, running this comic is a year-round job, and as such, I've found the best way to deal with it is to treat the summertime as my internship for the comic. And considering what this entails -- strip development, merchandising, advertising, and conventioneering -- it's no mystery why this stuff needs the extra attention. (Webcomics as a serious venture? Who'd have thought?)

For the long-term health of the comic (not to mention a real face-first lesson in running my own business, which let's face it, this is), it's something that I want to do. And if nothing else, it'll make my own plans for the future go a whole lot smoother.

Wish me luck.

BONUS UPDATE - #76 up! (Oh, and Would You Kindly...)

So something's up, all right...

While I plan on having plenty of time to work on the comic, I want to make sure that everyone who reads the comic gets something worthwhile for their efforts... Thus, I'm asking you outright what you'd like to see.

You're welcome to suggest anything you can think of (no guarantees that it's doable, though...) but here are some ideas I've been kicking around lately;

• A "Encyclopedia Galactica" section of the site to help fill in some of the story gaps and little details that it'll just take too dang long to get to if I wait around to get them written in.
• New wallpapers (as donation incentives or otherwise)
• New Last Resort merchandise / commissionable items (Difficulty level - No t-shirts!)
  
• Faster Updates (this is my default, but be warned, I'd rather be on time once a week than falling behind with twice a week, so this won't be happening for a while if it's even possible.)

Comment below with suggestions. Oh, and worth note; this isn't a vote, but if enough people speak up... well, I know when to take a hint!

TWO Bonus Updates You Won't Want to Miss!

Looks like someone decided to donate after all... enough to make it a pair of bonus updates, in fact. Check back this upcoming Wednesday (as well as next week's Wednesday!) to see the new pages.

... And I hope that you all enjoy them because that'll just about wipe out my buffer until I have a chance to draw more actual pages. Oy.

#75 Up!

One more week for me to go before I jump back into "Comic Time" (and not a moment too soon, because I enjoy seeing the comic pages in advance almost as much as you do!), but it looks like we've got a cliffhanger going into this next week.

Wish me luck, folks; things are about to get interesting around here.

Creating Comic Characters: A Primer

" . . . Oh dear God, it's a Mary Sue."

Sometime yesterday after 1:00 PM I said these words, upon the realization that a new character of mine (whose details I won't get into right now if only because one, it'll ruin the suspense, and two, if I actually SAY anything about Character X it'll be taken as the Word of God) was just . . . built up too much. Safe to say, Character X is being rebuilt as we speak.

Creating characters may be one thing -- and the details of which are covered in so many other tutorials online -- that it's worth detailing how a comic character differs from, say, a character you might come up for a written story of yours, or a role-playing game. The differences?

• Ease of Illustration - If you plan on drawing this character over and over (and OVER) again, it ought to be something that is easily-enough drawn if you expect to be able to keep drawing at a particular speed. Granted, the more you draw a character the easier it gets, but it's still a problem if your character happens to have several features that are not easily drawn -- elaborate masks and tattoos, large wings... if it take too long to draw, you've got a problem.
  
• Visual Originality - Okay, great backstory aside, how do they LOOK? A common sin of most video games who think just altering the faces of their characters is originality enough, the easiest way to check if you're doing it right is the silhouette test. If your bodies are too similar or the hairstyles are too confusing, this will highlight most problems. If you don't do this, you get posters like this one where the only reason I can tell one blonde from another is by the clothes. And even that doesn't get me too far.
  

(Yes, Adam Hughes, I know it's not your fault you get stuck with trying to make DC's intellectual properties look unique, but come on, man . . .)

• Visual Appeal - This should NOT be confused with sex appeal lest you draw all your women with the exact same size breasts. Visual Appeal, rather, focuses on the aesthetics of drawing the character; regardless of how attractive or "disgusting" a character is intended to be, they should still have a general degree of characterization that makes the character appealing somehow. A good example of "ugly" creatures with great visual appeal are the movie-monster archtypes; the mummy and Frankenstein's monster might not be the type of creature you want to run into in a dark alleyway, but they still retain a certain level of charm about them.

A lot of this comes down to the artistic skills available as much as everything else -- if you spend huge levels of time drawing all your characters, ones with actual tricky parts might not be that much of a stretch -- but in a comic story, not hitting all three of these points results in lots of problems.

• Not remembering that a character should be easy to draw will only slow down your ability to draw pages, leading to burnout.
  
• Not designing visually unique characters means that readers will confuse them for each other way too often. (In recent pages, for example, Nate and Vince have been getting confused for each other -- familial relations aside, it's a sign that I need to tweak them a little further to prevent future issues.)
  
• Not designing characters with a certain visual appeal in mind means that readers don't get the characters at all... and thus your efforts end up in vain.

At the heart of all of this is that you still have to create great characterization, but comic characters need that little bit of extra effort. What sort of character details do you think are important?