My two cents for an indie comics artist…

Occassionally I get an email that I can’t resist writing a long reply to. If any of you have emailed me, you know I try to help ya out, buuuut with all the email I get I like to put people in the right direction as quick as possible. Hey, I got work to do. Well once in a while I just have to stop someone heading down the wrong path. Especially if I think they could spend months or even years pursuing an unlikely outcome. In this case, the dream of selling a paid membership to an online-only comic. And since this emailer hasn’t even gotten a hosting plan yet (and it sounds like page 1 hasn’t been drawn), I couldn’t help steering him clear of the cliff. Here’s part of my reply. Maybe it will help another…

I’m not sure what to tell you though about getting people to pay for viewing your comic online. Honestly I don’t think thats a good revenue stream compared to some other ways you can make money with your content being free. I think putting banner ads above every page of the comic would get you as much money as trying to sell a monthly subscription. A yearly subscription to a paper comic is what? Like $30. So for an online-only, indie comic artist, you’ll probably be hard pressed to even get $24 a year (or $2 a month). And remember this is an online comic, so comic-collectors won’t even be getting a collectible paper copy. Even a $1 a month subscriptions could be tough. So lets fast forward 2 or 3 years of investing your time in this. Best case scenario, I think you are looking at 100-200 subscribers IF your comic is incredible and has picked up some kind of internet buzz. Which is tough. So 200 subscribers is still only $200-400 a month….

.

But if you sign up for a Google AdSense account, you can get maybe 50 cents to $1 per click on ads you serve . So if you draw a page a day, post it free, you’ve got a much better opportunity to make even more money. If you get a loyal fan, they might come to the site every day. Or at least once a week, and click 5-7 pages to work back on the strips they missed. Each page loaded will serve up an ad, hopefully a different one each time, and you’ve got a chance to make some money on your work being FREE. So you get the advantage of more money AND more exposure for your work. And nothing against your work, because I haven’t even seen it, but no matter how great it is, you’ll have a hard time getting it seen if its not free.  But if you just build a strong following, you can make money.

.

Did I Marty McFly this kid or what. Set right the wrongs of a future where he’s working his butt off to make a monthly paid comic for a handful of his friends that subscribed?  I hope so.

If anyone else has some great ideas for revenue streams for someone with free daily content,  post ‘em up!

Using stock photos in a project?

Yay or nay? Anyone feel like thats a cop out or what?  Well I’ve used some stock illustrations in my apps. I’m not the worlds greatest illustrator, so at times I’ll go search a site like iStockPhoto for “inspiration”. And if I find its easier, and affordable to buy the art that inspires me, I’ll do it. Just check the licensing so you know you’re paying enough to use it properly.

So I got an email today from iStockPhoto advertising a new collection of art that is pretty cool, CSA Images. Most of which looks like it could have been hanging on the walls around Don Draper’s office.  Here’s a brief bit about the collection…

Established by Charles S. Anderson, the CSA Images collection began in the 1970′s. CSA Images is now one of the most extensive and highly awarded collections of graphic illustrations and design elements in existence.

Over the years, CSA has created countless original photographs, illustrations, and design elements along with seeking out and acquiring entire collections of original art from copyright owners. All told, CSA has spent hundreds of thousands of hours creating, commissioning, curating, and purchasing images in addition to researching millions of historic materials for rights clearance.

I’ll post up some ones that really struck me. And here’s a link to all 5671 …

Force Perspective…Backwards.

Wanna know what that looks like. Check out this amazing video. Give it 20 seconds, and your brain will start to melt a little. And no, there’s no CGI trickery here…

Here’s how its done…

 

Ancient Aliens Comic Strip Tutorial and TONS of Vector Art!

 

Brian Zaikowski is back with another great tutorial. Again covering Comic Strips, but if you liked his last tutorial, I’m sure you’ll dig this one too. AND as an added bonus he’s including an entire poster’s worth of royalty free vector art. That means you can do whatever you want with it! Put it an app, game, whatever. You can see the entire poster of what’s included by clicking here. You’ll get that exact file in vector art form, and 89 files of the key characters in their own Adobe Illustrator file. This makes it a lot easier to import the art into Flash or another program. Interested!? Here’s the sales page!

Also my student Shane just told me he got an app in the store after watching our Flash-to-Mobile tutorials, so if you’re interested in checking out his App, go to ShapeViz.com . He built a great looking Guitar Fretboard Shape Trainer!

Noteworthy update to the Wave Attack Game Template….

…you’ve already been emailed new links if you bought this Starter Kit or the iOS Development Series . The second Xcode template is now a spaceship type shooter game. So it adds a scrolling background, particle effect, more enemies, and a few other slight mods to the code.

Also I JUST found out (like 10 minutes ago) my first student has got an app in the store using this template. Congrats Derek! Here’s a link to Wizard Warz

Another student app makes it to the store!

Alright seers, CartoonSmart student Gabriel has gotten a great looking new app into the store! Congrats. Hopefully he used his own app to foresee a future where this sells well. Good work!

Ebook Starter Kit now available as a standalone purchase (or free if…)

If you’ve already bought my iOS 6-Session tutorial course, your download link page now has a new zip for this Starter Kit. It includes many overview videos explaining how to setup this ebook (which you already knew if you watched the previous session courses) but it also includes some extra videos which cover sound fx, buttons, and particle FX. All things that can be used to tell your App Reviewer that your book is worthy of inclusion in the actual App Store (or they may tell you to rebuild it as an iBookStore product)

And if you’re not interested in learning much about XCode but you want to build an iOS Ebook, well here ya go! You can now purchase this EBook StarterKit and only learn what you need to know to get in the store. For the most part, the guide videos are pretty short, and the initial setup is darn easy (just replace the existing images “page1.png, page2.png”, and so on ). So yes, this is definitely for beginners to XCode and app submission. Just be sure you’ve got a Mac to develop on!

Optimizing Flash for the iPhone or Android

So I guess all I talk about on this blog is how to make apps now, but hey, that is kiiiinnnda the future of things for us illustrators, animators and web developers. And I’m sure I’m not the only one steering you toward app development, if you aren’t already, so by now hopefully you’re getting the hint. But this is good news for anyone not on the Mac (or just resisting learning XCode), Jeremy Hicks has returned with the beginnings of an epic course in Optimizing Flash for the iPhone (or Android). I have to keep reminding myself to write “or Android” when describing this tutorial, because writing less-bloated code is better for any mobile device, but I feel like this course is iPhone specific because Jeremy just went through hell and back to forge his Flash-made iOS app, Yin the Master of Yo, into the smooth-running application it is. I’ve played the app many times now, and it runs faster than anything else I’ve seen on the iPhone that Flash has packaged up. And for a buck, you can see for yourself too. Think of it as a $1 tip for sharing some of what he knows for freeeee….

… but that video is only the first 45 minutes of a MUCH longer course where Jeremy reveals all his newfound tricks. The tutorial focuses a lot on optimizing Actionscript 3 (as opposed to teaching the basics) so for those of you already familiar with AS3, you’ll be surprised how you can completely trim the overhead out of the language and get your app running at 40-60 frames per second. And aside from just the code, you’ll see how to create sprite sheets and do everything possible to make a fast app.

So stay tuned for details on the rest of the course. Actually we have a few more hours in the bag, so if you’re really jonesing for what’s already been recorded, post a comment and maybe we can do a pre-release type sale. Enjoy.