@schuyler_s on Twitter asked if I could do another theme week. Since I’ve already started the week with a pants strip I figured I’d just keep it goin’.
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Archive for ‘blog’
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Hello All,
Thought I’d give you guys a quick update on Bug merchandise:
T-shirts – My initial plan was to find a local shirt-making company, make a few designs, do a pre-order and make / distribute the shirts myself. But, after talking to other webcartoonists, I was advised that I wouldn’t sell that many shirts with my little bugs on them – not enough to justify the time and money anyway.
Disheartened, but not ready to give up, I looked into print-on-demand services. It sounded pretty good: I could offer tons of designs and it wouldn’t be so time-consuming. I showed other webcartoonists this new plan and they said the shirts were overpriced (and this is after I lowered my royalty). There’s no point in selling you expensive shirts that I make no money on.
Further disheartened, I’m going back to my original idea of making and selling the shirts myself. Now my plan is to come up with one design that I think would have the broadest appeal. I may come up with a few contenders and allow you guys to vote on them.
Book one – This is a little trickier.
I’ve never made a book before and there’s a whole lot to learn. Thankfully, I know a lot of great guys and gals who’ve done this before and have offered to help. But it’s still going to take me time to lay it all out. Plus, I want all future books to follow the same blueprint so they all match when they’re on your bookshelf. This has produced a lot of pressure on me to get this right the first time. That and my desire for perfection has made this whole process slow to a crawl as I measure once, measure twice, grab the scissors, get ready to cut, put the scissors down and measure a third time, go to bed, wonder if I should change the dimensions and re-measure. Stuff like that.
Plus, there’s one part of my webcomic I need to change before any books get published. It’s nothing too drastic, but it involves me and my trademark lawyer and I’ll leave it at that.
Thanks for being patient as I figure this stuff out.
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Quick update: I was hoping to have a Zazzle store all set up for you guys by today, but I’m not quite finished with it. So bear with me just a little longer. It’ll be up ASAP. After that, it’s on to book one!
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Hey! Do you guys like podcasts? I gotta podcast. Matt Forcum (cartoonist of the wonderful Robot Beach) and I get our geek on every week with the Geeks of Steel podcast. Click here to check it out. Matt and I have been recording these for over a year now and we’re pretty sure that some of them are actually funny.
Also, I know I’m rather late on this but I plan to have t-shirts available by this coming Monday. It’s taken me longer than I expected to figure out exactly how I was going to do this. Originally I was going to make and distribute the shirts myself, but I’ve decided the best way to provide you with the greatest variety of designs would be to go through a print-on-demand service. This is sort of my way of “testing the waters” in the world of merchandising. I’ll keep you guys posted.
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Hey, folks. Just want to let you know that I’m finally taking a much-needed vacation this week. I’ll be rerunning older strips this week with new commentary for every one, so at least you’ll get something that’s sorta new. Also – and this is the exciting part – not only will I be sipping highballs and (because I’m a total cheapo) playing video game demos on Xbox Live, I’ll also be spending this week working on creating t-shirts and assembling my first book collection. I know, this is long overdue and I apologize for dragging my feet in the merch department. Ever since I was a kid, I planned to work for a newspaper syndicate where they take care of all the merchandising. I never thought I’d be the one making this stuff, so I need to take a little time off to figure it all out.
I’ll be back next week with new strips, and with any luck, a t-shirt or two.
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Hey folks,
No new sketch this week, been busy. Also, I’m not sure that the Saturday Sketch belongs in my blog. Maybe I should post them on a tumblr site, or maybe Google +. Still not sure.
I’ve been thinking a lot of how I want this site to look and run. There’s some stuff I know I want to change (the navigation needs to be customized) and there’s stuff I want to change, but I don’t know what it should necessarily change into. I’d like to showcase other things I do (sketches, podcasts, etc) but I’m trying to figure out how I want that stuff displayed. If I knew then what I know now, I probably would’ve made the site more of a hub; a place where I hung all my projects on. Not that this site can’t be that, but it seems, I don’t know, kinda clunky.
I’m also working on a store. Yes! A real online store. Finally! A place for me to sell you things. I’ll keep you guys posted.
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Today’s sketch was drawn a little while ago when I went through my “gray phase.” I’ve gone back and forth on adding shades of gray to my comic. I know it’d help to distinguish certain things (shirts, bushes, doomsday devices) but I feel compelled to stick to good ol’ black and white. An artist that knows how to play with black and white (and I’m not one of those artists) can really make an illustration pop. That’s something I definitely need to work on.
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Okay, I got hung up this weekend and didn’t have time to do a Saturday sketch, so this is a Sunday sketch from many years ago. I still got tons of old sketches I did when I was still trying to come up with an idea for a comic strip. These two were from my “Maybe all animals” and “Maybe some dude in a suit” phases. I’m still unsure if I’ll post all those old sketches here, or take the good ones and turn them into bonus material for a book – and before you ask, yes, I’m still working on book one.
Also, I talked to Dan (the guy I got helping me with my site) and he said I outta put the “First” and “Latest” buttons back. I told him I was going to make custom buttons and didn’t want the navigation area to get to cluttered, but he still insisted that they should return. So you guys can thank him for that. 
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Hey folks,
Just wanted to let you know that I’m in the process of giving this site a much needed shake-up. I’m starting with the navigation buttons; getting rid of the unnecessary ones and customizing others. I’m also eyeballing those way-too-big icons in the left sidebar. Who makes their twitter link that big? Yeesh.
And, just for fun, I thought I’d start posting some of the sketches I do on the weekends. I’m interested to see if I can make The Saturday Sketch a regular thing. It won’t always be bugs either, though this week’s sketches are pretty much nutin’ but bugs. Maybe next week I’ll take requests.
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I finally had time last weekend to go through some old emails and found fan art that I received a long time ago, but never got around to posting. Shame on me. A portion of them are up in the Fan Art page. I’ll hopefully find time next weekend to post the rest.
Go check out the new ones. There’s some good stuff there.
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