How do I get myself into these things?
Thinking out loud on twitter, I said how I was thinking aloud that newcurator should have a weekly comic strip. Some kind of simple sitcom interlude.
Well, too many people liked the idea.
So I had to take it more seriously. After a weekend of thinking, I’ve come to some conclusions.
1) The idea of a possible four-panel strip about museum volunteers has something about it to work as a plot.
2) I cannot draw.
3) I’ve not been able to design some kind of stick-figure style that I can use to get over this.
4) I do not feel right asking people to help with this.
I know what I want it to be like. Think about Diesel Sweeties by the excellent R Stevens. That style means he doesn’t have to make a brand new strip every other day, he can copy and paste the characters and make minor adjustments (Well, he could. Truthfully, I have no idea how he works). Something like this means I could concentrate on writing rather than spending lots of time drawing features on character faces.
Look at Zero Punctuation by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw. I love how this looks. It’s essentially stick figures, but there’s a style to it (that I’m in danger of ripping off if the early drafts are anything to go by). Again, simple, circle hands, circle heads and a variety of eye expressions. Some cutting and pasting and it looks good.
Oh, and don’t suggest stick figures. XKCD.com has all that sewn right up.
So, I’m screwed. I can write the damn thing, just no way to make it. I experimented with characters with QR codes for heads. It didn’t work.
To everyone who came back with suggestions or offered to help. Thank you every much, but I’m just not sure. Several people recommended programs or websites with comic book templates. This is instantly sticky. The main reason I haven’t completely ripped off Yahtzee is because I don’t want to get sued and maybe want to make a t-shirt. I’ve looked at them and didn’t feel the copyright issue was solved.
Massive thanks to the artists to offered to do something, but again I’m not sure. This is for a few reasons. Nobody will get paid, except maybe me and Google ads and possibly a T-shirt (which again throws up problems). I remember early ArtFridays. People were busy, which is fair enough, but some weeks I couldn’t get 20+ artists to get me an image of what they’ve done.
No, I would need to do this myself. I don’t feel right asking someone to commit to it every week with very little going back to them. Especially when they’ve got better things to do.
I did toy with the idea of an “open source” comic. I write the character descriptions, biographies and the scripts, a small online community do one-four panels each. Again, have no idea how this would work. It could probably be an interesting experiment, but what happens when nobody does anything for a particular episode?
So… I can only ignore this for now. I’m going to concentrate on the writing part and see what happens. Don’t expect anything soon.
Have you discovered Comic Life? True, is the redheaded stepchild of true “comics”, but you don’t need to draw to use it.
http://plasq.com/products/
I would also need pictures of people…
EDIT: and $25
It can accommodate photos/art. If you’re on a mac, it will pull jpegs from iphoto library, and you can drag and drop them into the layouts, add text blocks or bubbles, etc. Is how I make mine.
Thought CL had a free version…