3 Takeaways from November

What was I thinking when I did some of this stuff? Well, almost as important is what do I think of it now, too.

Key takeaways
- multiple panels can aid comedic timing. Don't restrict yourself to only single-panel comics.
- give yourself the space for artistic expression. You need space to tell your story.
- hand lettering can give you the specific intonation in each word and letter, leading to a more specific reading of your text.

Here's the rough work before I went on to finalize them, and you can see it was still back when I was just folding a page into four squares and restricting the work to the size of a quarter page. I've moved on from this and think it's going to rememdy some of my observations on past "work."

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Holy Guacamole was an indecisive spinoff of the silly things Robin used to say to Adam West's Batman. No particular gag was especially poignant when I was writing it, but it was easy to come up with a few different punchlines to hopefully make it worth the visit to read them?

No, it wasn't very timely, but I thinkthe artwork matched the original title sequence on the television show. The framing worked out well, too. The concept of finding a moment when these expressions would be a fitting pun for Robin to use was the basis --perhaps there was something more creative to be done? Now I'm second-guessing myself.

I really liked this joke, but it didn't get the response I thought it might. I guess so long as I'm happy with it - - validation is nice, too, though.

Ahead of Schedule is kind of based on a conversation I had with another couple at a wedding a few weeks ago. They have two kids, one about the same age as our first, and we were just commenting on how "busy" our kids are before they're even two. We figured they reached the Terrible Twos early -- though I believe the consensus was:

"If you think THIS is bad now, just wait another eight months and you'll be WISHING he was only 21 months old again."

I feel like I should comment on each joke, but I don't really have much to say about Work Those Gluts. I think the punchline "Soon you'll be able to rip a phonebook in half with your ASS" has great potential to be delivered with great effect, but I'm not sure it was captured here.

This might have been achieved with a few more panels building up to the punchline? I'm interested in doing fewer single-panel jokes - - telling a joke requires timing, and a single panel is very limiting, even if they're much quicker to produce.

Finally, Nice of You to Join Us is another example of a joke I personally enjoyed a lot, but may not have translated to the masses with much effect.

First of all, I think it was a lot of fun to conceive how Beard-o might cope without his beloved ducks. Obviously it would lead to substance abuse - - and that's how this whole story arc developed. Drinking toilet duck and having a stupid hallucination was a fun idea, and being able to draw King St. from a completely different prespective (a bird's-eye view) was intriguing as well. Plus, it set up nicely into the payoff at the end of the arc.

I'm still struggling to get the lettering and the word-balloons to look the way I think they should. By using larger panels when I'm creating the gags (though this is before I started doing that) I've got more space to write the letters by hand, rather than relying on the word processer to do the work for me. I think hand-drawn letters is more the style I'm going for - though don't expect that to happen for a few more weeks, as other items in my production schedule are coming up.

Anyhow, thanks for reading. If you've got any questions about how things are going / coming along, drop me a line.

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Business Man @ Home

Something I learned that derived from my expansion in the Twitterverse is something I'd noticed for a while, but never really took the time to investigate. Reddit.

I knew OF it, but didn't know what it meant to me, or any of these dumb strips -- but I did notice that on "publishing dates," people I follow on Twitter were very vocal about "Up voting" their work. It seemed like a certain coterie of them were heavily involved on the Reddit site, and I perked an ear to the idea.

Just this week I went to the site, set up an account, and searched around just a little. I posted about three items onto the www.reddit.com/r/webcomics page and before too long I had, believe this, like tripled my regular traffic.Which is definitely impressive - - plus, commenting and feedback seem to flow much more fluidly on Reddit than on a blog or website page.

So it's been an interesting journey to see how content reacts to being in a space where people specifically go to share and view and comment on webcomics.

Here are some of the rough "before" drafts of some of the recent Business Man @ Home strips:

On a related note, it's opened my eyes to the possibilities of sharing some of the more "Business related" strips I've had (specifically business man @ home) on the LinkedIN feed, as well. As far as the tracking is concerned, the first topic I posted received 20 views and the next about 11, so there's another bunch of eyeballs that weren't checking them out before, too.

Better Offer
The art of the sales pitch / negotiations. I wish I was in the "negotiating" phase with my toddler. He's not speaking or really listening yet, so you still have to just go with the flow and do whatever you can to satisfy is wants (which you'd do cheefully, except for when he "wants" to lift the cat up by her hair, or climb shelves or go for a 25-minute walk every hour, on the hour).

I'd imagine this'd be a wasted skill on a At-home dad, if they were a CBA pro.

Social Media Campaign
This is a nod to my old job where there was a recurring interest to get more involved in social media and creating campaigns with the content we were producing. Successful social media campaigns are often random, unexpected and fickle beings, and most of the time we were just eager to sharpen our skills to get another one going.

I just imagine that business man would miss the excitement of sharing new developments with followers, and would likely be eager to jump back into the online milieu. 

Profits
Hey, running a business is hard. You've got to scrape together everything you've got to turn a profit, and digging through couch cushions would be a great way to add a little coushioning to the balance sheet.

Climbing the Corporate Footstool
This was intended to be a "climbing the corporate ladder" gag, but ... I don't think it realized the concept's full potential. In any case, damned toddlers will climb ANYTHING!

As always, if you have any questions or comments on what's up with any of the Capers, Chickens, Business Men or Advice, drop me a line and I'll be happy to answer your questions.

Thanks for reading. 

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