Tips for Getting a Kickstarter Fully Funded

The following blog entry appeared on Dan Miller's 48Days.net site, where I am but one of many hundreds of members. It's a great place for creative people to meet and discuss ways to further their careers and I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't, yet. Anyway -- I was delighted by the response to this post so much that I've gone ahead and made the entry public. You all might also be happy to know that among other things, I'm currently writing a book about this subject. More on that, soon!


In February, I launched a Kickstarter for my newest comic book endeavor, "Sylvanna". I was only seeking $3,000 and with the work I'd already put into the project, I fully expected it to be successful in the end. What I didn't expect, was for the project to be funded in less than 24 hours from its start, and to more than double its original goal by the end. Here, in a nutshell (hey, I have to save some of this for the eBook!) is how I did it:

• I built up some hype. Before the Kickstarter launched, I told everyone I knew about my intentions. I made a website, I posted on forums, and I engaged everyone on my social media networks, letting the masses know that I was on the verge of crowd-funding my new comic series. I did this for about a month before launch, in fact. Some people make the mistake of launching a crowd-funding project and then reaching out to potential funders. Understand that you lose precious time (and therefore backer money) when you do it this way. Give your audience time to get their finances together and to budget so they can get behind you 100%.
• I used my "unfair advantage". I'm a known artist. Well, almost! I'm known to a very select and elite group of people who grew up in the early 2000's reading Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics, which I was a penciller for. This audience, for as young as the people were when they first saw my published work in those books, is very loyal. I have fans who have become friends, and some whom I've never met, who are excited to support whatever project I'm doing and especially if it taps into the same reasons they loved my work on Sonic. Needless to say, these fine folks were more than happy to contribute to my Kickstarter, and all I needed to do was make them aware of it and give them time to contribute (see point one). You may not have this kind of background yourself, but it's worth asking -- what is your specific unfair advantage? Understanding that there truly is no such thing as an unfair advantage (unless you are acting unethically of course!) is sometimes the first step towards taking the best advantage of it.
• I considered my audience. Knowing that the people whom my project appealed to most were very likely to be young and unable to afford the bigger rewards, was key in not only considering what rewards to offer, but at what level of investment they should be offered at. To that end, I had rewards as low as the $1, $5 and $10 marks, where each was guaranteed a very cool set of prizes for their contribution. This also played into how I advertised, and where. I set up some banner ads before starting my Kickstarter, which were posted on forums and comic sites that people of this age group were known to frequent. It's been said before but bears repeating: Knowing your audience is everything, so make sure you're doing your research so you can market effectively.
• I set a reasonable funding goal for my project. I didn't need a million dollars to launch a webcomic. Frankly, I have had webcomics launch on zero dollars, before. Most people who came before me in this arena, in fact, were looking for far less than $3,000 for their Kickstarters to take off. I risked being called out for this in the worst way possible if I'd asked for an insane amount of money -- and that was people not backing me because they saw me as funding my wallet and not the project. Be aware that the modern consumer is savvy and will check to see that you're not being unreasonable with the amount of money you claim to need for your given venture. Too, Kickstarter and IndieGoGo have rules that prohibit "fund your life" projects. Do your research by checking out similar projects, first, and determine exactly how much you absolutely need before you launch. Don't forget to factor in such things as shipping and hiring costs.
• I had some great rewards... And when I say great rewards, I mean desirable on all levels. Sometimes people who crowd-fund only throw the bare minimum of rewards, or irrelevant rewards at their backers. Things like buttons and bookmarks don't cost a penny, sure, but do they offer much incentive to back the project by themselves? Of course not! You can beat the crowd by giving out cool stuff that people will actually use, and not the least of these is the finished product itself. You should not be afraid to up your costs by throwing in extra value, either! Offer scarce items, or limited editions. Some of my most popular prizes were in fact, those which cost very little to make, but came autographed and personalized. People love things that are once-in-a-lifetime offers so don't be stingy in promoting those!
• I made all of my channels aware of the launch date. And when I say all of my channels, I mean all of my channels and all of my team's channels, and all of my friends' channels and all of my family's channels! It's not as much work as you think! If you have a place where people gather to interact with you, you simply must put out the APB on your upcoming project. Post to those forums, send out social media updates, and alert your real-life friends of course! Since I'm an artist, I did a number of "promo pieces" which were viewed in my more popular galleries online, which happened to mention I would soon be launching a Kickstarter to fund a project which the given piece of art centered around. This drew tons of interest! If you're a writer, you may consider doing the same with your blog, or a musician could easily promote through a Youtube video! It's wide open, and you should leave no stone unturned when it comes to letting people know that you're in crowd-funding mode.

So if you're considering a crowd-funding project this year, or sometime in the near future, I hope this helps you! I encourage you to go for it and I shall keep you all posted on the progress of my new eBook in this arena, as well. Best wishes!

Making Comics: Artist Tools

When I was younger, getting comics wasn't something I'd say was a chore, but it was certainly a task. When you're in small-town Pennsylvania, your nearest anything is often a good half-hour drive out of town, so getting a hold of anything as exotic as a new issue of a comic book becomes something of a ritual. These days, if you want a new issue of something, it's often as easy as opening iTunes and waiting for it to download. If not, then you can go online and read a webcomic or find a synopsis within a review if you're particularly lazy and/or broke.

Things certainly have changed when it comes to how we access and consume comic books, but the same can't really be said for how the comics themselves are created. And that goes for digital comics and webcomics, too.

Here then, is a run-down of some popular tools needed to create comics then and now:

The Canvas - Your basic 11x17 cold-press bristol board was the standard comic book sketch pad back in the day, and for many of us old-heads, that's not changed. In the olden days, publishers would sometimes send you complimentary boards if you were working on one of their books, but it's certainly more common to request the artist purchase their own. I like Blue Line Pro boards which you can order online, but Strathmore makes tablets of 24 boards, some pre-lined, specifically for comic books, which you can purchase in stores.

It's worth mentioning that these days, it isn't necessary to have a physical canvas to work on at all, if you have a drawing tablet and know what you're doing with a graphics program such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. Indeed, and especially with the increasing trend of publishers requiring artists learn to be pencillers, inkers and colorists all in one, some illustrators prefer to work entirely on the computer.

The Drawing Tools - Pencils and pens were the order of the day back when I started doing comics professionally (and that was a decade ago, already. Yeesh!). Not much has changed here either, when it comes to yours truly, at least. As I've said in countless blog posts before this one -- I am a pencil snob. I like a .05 lead in a mechanical pencil the best, and I prefer to work with Staedtler Mars pencils and graphite. For pens, I like Pigma Microns and the oldschool Rapidograph pens you have to load with ink. Some inkers prefer working with brushes and quill pens, as well.

Naturally, techniques aren't staying exclusively traditional in this arena. Vector programs like Adobe Illustrator are excellent for making sleek lines when inking, digitally. Here again, all you need is a tablet, a computer, and the program itself. And, bonus, with Illustrator's pen tool being so versatile, I can say from personal experience that it's not impossible to do some inking with a plain old mouse and forego the tablet requirement entirely!

The Colors - I knew more than a few colorists, back in the day, who were having great success painting colors onto their comic boards using gouache and watercolors. I knew far more who were using Photoshop to color their comic boards, however. It and programs like it are still standards to this day for this reason.

What's interesting about colors, to me at least, is noticing a trend of artists going back to the old ways of coloring a piece of artwork, and this sort of resurgence into using paints, markers and inks. The reason for this is, I think, better scanners, software and printers capable of picking up and recreating the delicate nuances of such media. Many artists, I'm sure, simply prefer to work by hand as much as possible, and some stories just lend themselves better to this more analog approach.

The Typography - One of the many points of fascination within my portfolio comes from the abundance of old Sonic pages that contain hand-lettered text. These are wonderful little treasures, and I would go so far as to call them relics of an age gone by. You simply don't see hand-drawn type any more as computers have become quite good at making good-looking typography.

It wasn't until I was acquainted with some exceptional letterers that I myself started to pick up a few things about the nuances of typography within comic books and how those things should be handled. It's unfortunate, but with the ease of  creating text in the computer age, we've lost a bit of the art. So while it's a simple task to put words to comic these days, it's by no means easy to do it well. Checking out a few comics printed some years in the past with hand-drawn letters is, I think, essential to achieving great results with text created by computers.

Whatever your personal preferences and tastes, doing artwork and incorporating design that is both nice to look at and fitting of the work should be your goal. Don't be afraid to try new things... or old things, for that matter!

The Worst Things Good Parents are Teaching Creative Kids

This past week on Twitter, I lamented the fact that I might soon have to place a banner on the Gloryhound Website that read, in big red letters and 72 point font:

"Don't Go to College!"

I think that would be a pretty huge tragedy. Still, with the costs of education rising to out-of-control proportions and ill-prepared students walking into interviews without the stuff they should have gotten in school to show for all the money they spent, I wonder. And I worry.

Having looked at the issue as someone who's been in the art industry both as an illustrator and a designer for the last decade, I think we need to rearrange some of the common misconceptions out there about taking a job in the creative fields. I believe some of that starts with teaching parents what kinds of conversations are okay to have with their kids who want to get into industries that involve visual art, writing and music.

Here are but a few things that I've heard well-meaning parents tell their kids:

• You need to go to college for art and the opposite: Art school is a waste of money. These are both very narrow viewpoints on art school in general. Speaking as an art school graduate, I can say if you have a child who is skilled at drawing -- and pay attention to the word skilled, here, because your kid can't just draw every once in a while on the margins of his books at school and be expected to get an enjoyable career out of it, then art school is an excellent resource. Please don't be that parent who sends their child off to art school because they needed to go to school for something.
  And that's another horrible misconception - if you're telling your kids that they have to go to school, then it's on you if they don't end up doing anything with their lives, mom and dad. Sorry. The fact of the matter is, art school is not a waste of money for kids who have real potential to become artists. Be careful, because college recruiters are some of the craftiest salespeople out there and will gladly tell any schmuck he has what it takes to be the next great designer. Don't buy it if the child doesn't love it, because it is expensive.
  
  And that brings me to my final point on this matter: If you've got a gifted kid and they deserve a good school, make sure they can afford it. As it is with any field, school doesn't guarantee a job. It's the work you put in, after you get the degree, that counts. It's the portfolio you've put together. It's the drive you have to go out job-seeking and doing freelance. It's not glamorous for those first few years and creative jobs are often some of the most competitive. But if there's hustle, a job will be found.
• You will never make money with your art and/or you will make money after you're dead. It can seem to be a scary thing, especially to parents with kids fresh out of school who are still lingering around the house. It's important not to get into this mentality that says there are no good jobs to be found in creative endeavors. I've been working for 10 years and the whole time, the economy was never good.
  
  Aside from landing 9 to 5 jobs, artists have a unique and excellent opportunity to become freelancers, which is in my opinion, where all the money is, anyway. It just takes more work than landing a job. I encourage every artist who is new to the game, to take a hard look at their portfolios and then take time to fill them with pieces representing the art they'd love to do. It's especially true with art school students, that a portfolio could become cluttered with any old assignment to show off versatility. But versatility can sometimes be a crutch. Showing that you know how to do one thing and do it better than the competition is at the heart of any business, and when you sell yourself, your portfolio should always be reflective of that one thing you can do exceptionally well. Maybe it's illustrations of pin-up girls, and maybe it's laying out postcards. Whatever  it is, seeking work you love and doing it to the best of your ability is how you make real money as an artist.
• You should do that project for Aunt Sally for free. Yes and no. I find it interesting that many of the people who proclaim artists aren't marketable are the same ones who request artists work for free.
  
  Look, there are a million websites out there which already cover this problem far better than I could. Here's the bottom line: If you're an artist, and even if you know someone, and yes, even if they're family, you should probably be charging money for your services. In the end, it's always up to them, but it's good practice for the kid to start setting expectations to be paid for their hard work. And more than likely, Aunt Sally will be only happy to pay.
• If you do art as a job, you will hate it as a hobby. Simply not true. If anything, you should be encouraging your child to look at what they're already doing as a hobby, and as a parent, help to guide them into a path that will use the thing they find themselves doing for hours on end, as a means to earn a living.
  
  I hear you saying, "But Dawn, where will my kid find work as a concert pianist?" and I truthfully don't know. But I do know that concert pianists make a bunch of money and some might even be doing it right in your home town. Seek people out who can get the child started in that direction, and let them know what to expect and how to go about it as a career. An apprenticeship is ideal, if you can get one.

 

Perhaps if we start here, there will never be a need for me to put that banner up on my website. And that's good, because I sure hope there never will be.

How to Get Work as an Artist

I’m tired of seeing resumes on my desk. If you’re an artist and you’re trying to get work, why are you sending me a resume? More to the point, why did the fancy school on your resume not teach you to submit a portfolio?

Don't get me wrong - I’m a proponent of art school, and I’m also a person who went to an art school. But still, I’m worried for the kids going to art school and what they’re learning about selling themselves or perhaps more aptly, what they're not learning.

To the point, if you’re an artist and want work, at minimum, this is what I need from you in order of most important to least:

• A portfolio - Preferably one that's online, which showcases 10 - 15 pieces of your best stuff. Catered to the job you're going for, of course. In other words, don't send me a bunch of stationery if I'm hiring you to be a web designer. I want to see your web design work first and foremost. Feel free to sprinkle in a little of what you can do with print too, if you feel it's great.
• A way to contact you. I honestly can not tell you how many times people forget this, or they give an unreliable phone number or email address. Make sure we can get in touch and that, if you're serious about the job, you are either there to answer your phone or able to call me back within 24 hours. It's called being professional.
• A cover letter which tells me why you’re a fit for the job and something that’ll intrigue me about you as a person. Assure me, briefly, that you have the skill set I'm looking for and so long as your portfolio looks great, I'll happily bring you in for an interview.

The resume is almost optional. If you’ve had work before, and certainly if you’re going for a managerial position, I will definitely want to look over your credentials. But if I’m hiring you as a staff artist? I want to see what you can do, and we can then talk about the ways you go about doing it.

“But what about all the programs you need to know, like Photoshop and InDesign and don’t you want to know if I am using a Mac or a PC and, and, and…” No! Shush! Bad!

I do not care if you know Photoshop or not, if what I’m hiring you to do does not specifically cite Photoshop as a necessity. Macs and PCs are becoming more similar by the day, so I no longer worry about dragging a Mac native into a PC office – there are ways to make a great artist comfortable in any computer environment and from my experience, it’s worth the investment if you’re phenomenal.

The fact is this: There are ten thousand ways to make beautiful art or amazing designs and all I want you to be doing is working at your best. If I am looking for a designer and I want him or her to create a business card template which can be sent to a printer, then I assume he or she will know how to follow a spec sheet and create something lovely that is also of the correct format and file type that the printer requires – nothing more, and nothing less. How it’s done is none of my business, so long as it’s done.

Too, the time before a job interview is a great time to showcase your creativity. I love people who think outside the box when they submit things. I once got a portfolio that looked like a menu. Another person sent me a DVD with portfolio and a short, well-done movie about himself in place of a resume. Brilliant!

In the end, if you’re an artist and you think you can just follow the crowd when it comes to applying for work, you are going to get left in the dust. Reach deep down into your creative pockets and bring forth something that is truly you, and I guarantee you’ll not only find a job that fits you well, but one that’ll be worthy of your skills.

How to Write (Good) Fanfiction

I've been asked when I was going to cover this topic, so without further ado...

You may think good and fanfiction can't be in the same sentence together, and if you look at some of the stuff people post online (My Immortal, anyone?) you may have a point. However, many people enjoy writing fanfiction, myself included, and it's been that way for years even before the Internet. Some of these unofficial or non-canon stories are well-loved by fans and there's no reason you yourself couldn't pen the next great fic to go down in fandom history.

In a very broad sense, we write fanfic for many reasons:

• We are looking to practice our writing or get started as a writer.
• We feel we can do a good job of writing in a world which we love.
• We simply get inspired to tell stories not seen in the actual canon.

Fanfic is not for the weak of heart -- people, even those who claim to be easy going about such things, will defend their own ideas of a popular tale, quite feverishly. But that shouldn't discourage you! You can learn many things from writing fanfiction, and not the least of these is learning to handle criticism gracefully.

Through writing, you will also learn what it feels to love what you're writing about. This is a very key element necessary in creating original works of your own. And of course, you can and should learn the basics of setting up scenes and characters for your own ideas, which fanfiction can teach you how to do.

When you write fanfic, you should write what you want and how you want, because there's no better use of fanfiction than to test the waters of reception for any given idea. If you are going to be a serious writer, you would do yourself a disservice following the popularized "rules" of fanfiction, such as pairing your original characters with actual characters, creating powerful characters, or alternate realities. You should simply strive to write characters in situations you would find fitting to them while keeping the whole thing interesting and enjoyable to your audience. Many of the best fanfics out there are the ones that don't follow the rules.

Still, you should try to follow these basics, as always:

• Use proper grammar and spelling
• Stick to one style of writing. If you're going for 3rd person omniscient, don't switch to first-person mid-story.
• Try not to make the whole thing one big porno. At least add some feelings and conflicts and stuff.
• Don't write "drabbles"... you cheater!
• Write as if you were gonna' sell the thing (but stop short of actually selling it)

And one last but very important item:

• Don't publish your fanfic if the author of the original work has expressed that they do not appreciate it.

Feel free to fanfic to your heart's content, but with one big word of caution: the minute you really start to enjoy the process of writing is the minute you should start considering penning some stories of your own. That is something you can be truly proud of and who knows: maybe people will soon be writing fanfiction of your stories!

Why Inspiration is Your Friend When Writing

If you're a writer, you've probably had this happen to you: You're sitting around, engaged in something as far from creative writing as possible, when it strikes. Inspiration! The thing that never comes when it's called and all too often comes when there's nothing to be done about it.

For as bad with timing as inspiration is, it's still our friend, regardless. Too, it's important to deliver on your inspiration right away, or at least, as soon as possible. Why?

• Something happened to inspire you. This likely means you're in a "good state" to write. If you can manage it, pull away from your current project and start acting on your inspired thought. Keep a journal and write it down, if nothing else.
• There's no guarantee you'll remember your awesome idea later. And that goes double for still being inspired when later finally comes. Don't waste any of it!
• Understand that inspired thought is rare and wonderful, even if you don't know how to use it right away. Again, write it down. A way will be found.

Sometimes people will come to me and complain of writer's block, but they have a million great ideas "saved for later". Don't be tempted to do this with your inspired thoughts. There's no guarantee of a "later" if you're stuck on the beginning of something! See what ways you can work with your inspired thought right now! When later comes, so will other inspirations, and you can use them, then. I say this too much -- don't fall in love with your first draft, and in a nutshell, this is why.

When inspired thought comes to you, don't squander it! Get a journal and log it, keep thinking on it, and as soon as you can, get writing!

Creative Writing From Start to Finish - Part III

We've come to the final part of our series on creative writing today, and I certainly hope you’ve enjoyed the journey. Since we’ve gotten through concept development, outlining, story structure and writing, it’s on to the last steps: timelining, theme weaving, and editing.

 
You might consider this the boring part of the tutorial and quite frankly, there was a time where I would have agreed with you. Nonetheless, the things we cover in this portion are equally, if not more important than the things we talked about in the last two chapters. And I promise, I’ll try to keep it all interesting. In fact, you may even enjoy it.

 
Writing timelines is a skill I always recommend people develop if they’re going to tackle a story, and especially one that is told in multiple parts or will otherwise be quite long and detailed. I don’t always save doing this for the end, and will often start timelining in the same instance that I pull my first story concept together, and work on it throughout the whole process. In general, my timeline isn’t finished until I’ve put significant work into my story, already, so there’s never a bad time to do one.


For a decent timeline, you’ll want to lay out major events of your plot, theme(s), and the actions of each of your major characters, in parallel lines along a span of time – the beginning and end of your story. When starting out, you may have a timeline that looks as simple as this:

But more than likely, you’ll finish with one as big as or bigger than this:

Whatever you end up with, your timeline has one purpose – to keep complicated plot points in line with one another. As you write your timeline, you will begin to see things line up in ways which may lead you to a theme, or two, which could help tie your story together.


Themes are sometimes credited as the glue of a story, since they do such a nice job of unifying things. At its core, a good theme is simultaneously the lesson and inspiration we get through reading and one of the best ways a reader can make a connection to our real world from one of fantasy. The main theme supports the plot. As with many things, themes are best if kept simple and able to be described in one sentence. A good theme may be as simple as “If we work hard and stay optimistic, we can achieve anything.”


The best way to define your theme is to read through your writing and see what kinds of ideas have already tied themselves together. It’s very likely that you’ve placed a theme into your story without even realizing it. Working with the above example of working hard and being optimistic, you may choose to emphasize a point in your tale when a character achieves something through hard work, in an especially poignant fashion. If you find an instance where a character does not get what they want through hard work, you may keep it as a conflict or re-work it so it better fits your theme.


There are artsier themes, as well, and you may choose to keep them secondary to the main theme. Themes revolving around the rising and setting of the sun, change of seasons, and other such things are in this vein. For example, you may choose to align each of your characters with a season, and when your summer character has her moment of glory, you may choose to depict it happening on a hot day in July. Themes such as this are wide open, and serve as nice little extras your audience will appreciate if done well.


Your final phase of writing will come with the editing process. As we’d discussed in the last entry, you will want your story to be moved along in a way where each scene is set up to show off a character trait, move the plot, or both. Everything else is fluff and should be discarded.


Let’s think of an example scene where two characters are conversing. One character may reveal she’s looking to have more adventure in her life, thus revealing something about her character and setting up a major plot point where it is assumed she will soon be on some epic journey. Her companion may state that he’s traveled to a place full of wonder and excitement, revealing something about his character in turn, as well as taking the next step into the plot. It’s very tempting for beginning writers to start a scene such as this with the two characters talking about the weather and what a nice day it is, but unless the weather is a factor in the plot or a character’s future actions, our audience doesn’t need to know too much about that stuff and it can be left out.


Finally, as you review your writing, you want to make sure you’ve done a good job of showing and not telling. What I mean by that is, it’s easiest to simply state that major plot points are happening as they happen, and give away the objective of characters by equipping them with dialogue which states specifically what it may be – but it’s hardly interesting.
 

Check your work and read over it. Are things too obvious? Do you leave room for your audience to imagine once in a while? Did you find yourself writing more of “the full moon was out” and less of “faint rays of light glinted off of broken glass, providing the only illumination to the ground”? Now is the time to fix little nuances such as these and make them more interesting.


One last word on editing – if you’re doing a professional job, pay for a professional editor. You will be glad you did.


So that wraps up our little course on creative writing! I hope you’ve enjoyed and I hope you’ve learned something in the last three weeks. There is so very much more to cover on this subject than what I’ve given you here, so I recommend you look into books and other articles on the subject as you continue to grow as a writer.


Remember – there’s no better way to learn how to write than to start writing. Stay creative, until next time!