Hi, I've just joined soulgeek after listening to Podwarp 1999. Great show. Anyway my question is: I'm starting a webcomic but I'm really unsure what kind of lettering to use. My main issue: CAPS or lowercase? Thanks.
Here are answers from both of us:
JjAR says...
Hmmm... interesting question.
I think that its all depends on what kind of comic you draw, specifically how much text it contains. If there are a long sentences in comic, I think it may be done in lowercase. If the comic contains only a short sentences, I think its better to make it all in CAPS. That is my simple suggestion :)
Personally, I almost always draw a text by hand and it was always uppercase letters. But the first letter in a sentence always been a little bigger than the others.
Ben says...
I think JjAR's spot-on. If you have a lot of text then having it all in caps just adds to the "wall of text" problem that some webcomics suffer from.
Of course, it's a very aesthetic thing, is the lettering - it depends just as much on the font you're using as the art and story style. Why not try experimenting with both before you put anything online? Letter a page in AllCaps first, then letter it in lowercase, and then look at the two side-by-side and see which one you think looks best. It doesn't hurt to have a fresh pair of eyes look at the two, either - consider running both examples by a friend or family member. Or, if you like, you could post the examples up in the Art or Creative forums here at SoulGeek and see what other members think.
Good?
~Ben
I'm a writer with what I think is a pretty funny idead for a Web Comic. The problem is I don't have an artist to help me with it. Can you suggest some where to find a good Artist?
Artists are an elusive species, and they seldom travel in packs of more than three. If you see any in the wild, don't make any sudden movements - you don't want to scare them away. Slowly and carefully, approach the artist with your hands outstretched and your body lowered into a half-standing-half-crouching position. When you are close enough, maybe a meter or two away, you are in the perfect position for a wild lunge. Get the artist in a headlock and administer the sedative...
Y'know, there's no real way for a writer to snag an artist. It's incredibly difficult to find someone who may be willing to give up their time for you. There are people out there who'll provide art for you for a per-page/strip fee, but I'm going to assume that you're looking for someone who isn't looking for some kind of immediate financial compensation. There are some places online where you might be able to find someone. DeviantArt might be a good place to start - they have discussion forums, and you might have some luck in the "Projects" board. It might also be worthwhile asking in some of the online communities you visit - gaming forums, webcomic communities, and what have you. There might even be someone on the SoulGeek forums willing to help you out.
Finding an artist isn't easy, though. I spent almost a year looking for an artist for Jump Leads, and I almost gave up before a friend pointed me in JjAR's direction. I dropped him an email - I didn't have anything to lose, after all - and he absolutely loved the idea. But if I hadn't been given JjAR's details chances are I would have given up and shelved the idea completely. I was incredibly lucky - I know people who have been looking for an artist for much longer than that with no luck whatsoever. People with artwork online are either professionals who aren't willing to work gratis, or hobbyists who draw what they want as the mood takes them and aren't too keen on the idea of drawing someone else's work on a schedule. You need to consider the possibility that you might not find an artist.
Don't let that paragraph of negativity put you off, though. There's no harm in looking, and there's certainly no harm in dropping emails or messages to people that you think (or hope!) might be interested. And if it comes down to it, there's nothing stopping you from investing in a sketchpad and some pencils and having a stab at it yourself. Good luck!
Congrats on Guru-dom! Okay, you guys do things a little differently from say Scott Kurtz or your average one-man webcomic. Could you describe the creative process of an arc of Jump Leads, from initial idea to final posting?
Thanks for the congrats, mysterious stranger!
There are five of us on the creative team - the four writers: myself, Euan Mumford, Andrew Taylor and Paul Varley; and JjAR, the artist. There's six if you include our Web Gorilla, SupSuper, who maintains the website and generally tries to make sure people can actually see the comic. He tends to throw his opinions into the hat every now and then, but hasn't written anything. Not yet, at least. I should probably ask him if he's interested..
Anyway, the five creatively-inclined members of the team all bounce ideas off of each other. I feel it's always a good idea to see what others think about something you're working on, and when you've got other people writing for the same characters that does tend to help. We'll share ideas, offer each other suggestions, post work-in-progress scripts, and discuss all sorts of things from important character and story development to whether Meaney and Llewellyn should ever change out of their Lead uniforms or not.
At the moment, we each write individual issues separately. By comparison, most American TV comedies are written by a team of people who sit around a table coming up with story ideas and throwing one-liners around to see who can make everyone laugh the loudest. Save for occasionally showing each other our work and asking for suggestions, advice, or general criticism, we don't tend to work together writing (which is not to say we won't give it a go in the future). It's important to note that we all have a unified idea of what direction we want Meaney and Llewellyn's overall story to go in, and that's something we're constantly discussing. Mostly, though, one of us will come up with an idea for an issue and then work on it. For example a couple of months ago I came up with an idea set on a parallel Earth which hasn't developed past Medieval technology, and I outlined the idea to the others first to see what they thought before I started writing it.
Once a script is written, it's made available for the creative team to have a look at. At the moment we have about five scripts sitting in the "queue", waiting for JjAR to begin work on them. JjAR works on an issue at a time, knocking out two beautifully drawn pages a week. As we writers are a bunch of unprofessional mugs who don't write actual comic scripts, it's up to JjAR to decide what actually goes on each page (I have offered to switch to a more comic-friendly script format and he's told me not to bother). He
inks the comic first, then he'll scan it in and colour
it digitally using PhotoShop. Once he's done that he sends me the finished artwork and the speechbubbles as two separate files, and I'll re-letter them using the preferred font. I usually take the opportunity to make any last-minute dialogue changes I may think need to be done, either because I don't like the way one of my lines has been written or because the line might not work quite as well anymore with the panel layout as it is. Once I've done that, the page is uploaded to the Jump Leads web server, ready for the next update.
So that's it. The advantage of this system is that none of us ever wake up on the morning thinking, "Oh bugger, I haven't written a comic for today" because we have a sizable pool of scripts to draw from, and one JjAR has a script he's set for the next few weeks until that issue ends. That's time we spend writing. I reckon that at the moment we have a good two years worth of written material.
