Doodling For Free

Click on image to enlarge.

How to annoy your dogs. (Besides clipping their toenails.) Put on their leads and head out the door for the morning walk. Lock the door and remember that you forgot your hat. Drag canines back into the house; get hat. Out the door, once more. Decide you need a warmer coat. Back in the house. And so forth...

I'm debating starting a free web comic (serial, not Rat Dog related). I don't post my fiction online because it seems a rather desperate and amateurish thing to do. (And there's First Pub. Rights to consider.) Even if it's just to a non-pro market, I want money for my stories. Besides, I just don't believe that many people read online fiction.

But I do read web comics. Perhaps because of its inherent graphic nature, the web seems well-suited to comics. When I was a kid, I was told comics weren't real "reading," and had to sneak what few comic reads I could. The cool thing about being my age is I don't give a shit what the lit-snobs say. Comics/graphic novels are a valid method of storytelling, and difficult to do well.

But I've got decades to make up. A web comic is a hell of a lot of work, but being busy forces me to get organized. And it would be a great way to get input as I learn the trade. The creator of EarthSong Saga has some great advice for starting, including the suggestion to get a backlog of panels drawn in advance. And I still need to finalize character designs. So the start of any series will be a few months away. For the first story arc, I want to try to adapt an existing short story to graphical format.

Hmm.

[/self-indugent blather off.]



Have a great Thursday.
P.K.