In accord with the week, when so many people are looking back on 2009 and making plans for 2010, I decided to make a short list of what I’ve learned about cartooning this year.  The learning never really stops, but these are the highlights:

1) The web, with its short and wide screen ratio, affects comic composition.  Simply put, tall panels, especially those that extend below the “fold” don’t work well.  If the reader has to scroll down, and then scroll back up to read the episode, it’s confusing and diminishes the reading experience.  For the web, wide panels stacked atop each other work the best, producing what in print comic is called the “widescreen” format.

2) When possible, every episode should end with a cliffhanger.  If you can’t swing a real cliffhanger, then end the episode on a question.  You can’t always do this, but it’s a goal.

3) Drawing armatures or stick figures is not a crutch.  For years I thought the old stick figure drawing technique as seen in “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way” was for beginners, that it was better to practice a sort of life-drawing from your mind’s eye.  Now I know that it saves time and makes composition easier.

4) Contours are way more important than interior details.  Indeed, if you are drawing small, or simply want to tell a story, contours are enough.  Having said that, I love detail, so I still do a considerable amount of interior rendering.

5) Colors should compliment inks, not compete with them.  For a long time I painstakingly painted every panel in Photoshop; indeed, if you turned the line art off, the colors were almost finished paintings in their own rights.  Now, however, I think a simple gradient that doesn’t compete with the line art is better and perhaps more elegant.  Really, I think a digital painting underneath a fully rendered line drawing is overkill, muddies up the picture, etc.

6) Nowadays, when I ink, I make a point of closing off all my lines.  This makes it much easier to flat the page in Photoshop.

7) When it comes time to print your comic, all the full bleeds and black or colored borders are a pain in the butt.  It’s much easier to format your comics if you don’t do those things.  It made “Johnny Saturn: Synns of the Father” a real challenge.  That’s why I pulled back on those tricks.

I want to learn at least this much again in 2010!

Scott.

“Johnny Saturn” 1 through 9, plus the “Johnny Saturn Pinup Gallery,” all are now available as downloadable PDF’s at Drive Thru Comics.  Better yet, all these downloads are .99 cents each!

I’m also rebuilding our in-site store, making hard-copies available of “Johnny Saturn” 1 through 9, the “Johnny Saturn Pinup Gallery,” and “Johnny Saturn: Synns of the Father.”  By the time you read this, the store should be completely updated.

Thanks! Scott

Benita and I will be appearing at Wizard World Chicago, August 6th to the 9th, in Artists Alley at booth 4604.  We’re no long against the back wall, but near the front of Artist’s Alley, so keep an eye out for us.  Johnny Saturn no. 1 through 9 will be available, as well as the “Johnny Saturn: Synns Of The Father” trade paperback.  If you’ve never met Benita and me, now is your chance to drop by and gab with us–we’re not shy!

Can you believe it’s already Wednesday?  Where the heck did the week go!  Sheesh.

We got in a fresh new shipment of our trade-paperback, “Johnny Saturn: Synns of the Father,” today.  We are expecting our shipment of Johnny Saturn no. 9 any day now, but very likely this week.  This gives me a warm heart.

Yesterday, I helped Benita run a fabric and dye seminar at the Huddleston House, a historic inn built along the old National Road (US 40) in the 1840’s.  I wasn’t involved in any of the teaching aspects of the day, but I got to help keep the fires going, and I drew some pictures for kids.  I also snuck into the nearby barn and did a quick sketch of an original, un-restored Conestoga wagon.  I expected such wagons to be somewhat crude: I should have known better.  These boat-shaped wagons were built along exacting lines, with hundreds of specialized wood and iron parts.  The men who built this thing would be building high performance cars if they had been born in our time.  If you want to see pictures of Benita and me in action, and read a report on the day, please go here.

As an artist, I’ve noticed that I have gradually changed all my standard tools this year.  I’ve gone from drawing with 2H leads to 3B leads, and I’ve switched from Hunt Crowquills and G Pens to Windsor & Newton Series 7 no. 1 brushes.  I also bought a small cabinet, which I subdivided into long six compartments per drawer, and into this I put all my markers.  “Hi, everyone, my name is Scott Story, and I’m a marker addict.”  I have an obsession with tools that make black marks on paper, I guess.

You’ve by now probably noticed the knife that plays such a big role in the current Johnny Saturn storyline.  It’s based on a real knife, one I found in stack of old car parts in our garage when I was about ten years old.  I had always imagined it to be a World War II GI’s knife, but I’ve been cleaning and sharpening it, and I found an inscription on the pommel that says “Ontario NY, 1-1969.”  This knife is still in very sturdy condition, and the pommel is solid, unlike the modern survival knives that hide a compartment full of miniature implements.

Scott.

Thanks to everyone, and I do mean everyone, who bought graphic novels from us this week–We’re delighted!  We’ve still got enough copies to fill existing orders, and most of them will be going out in the mail tomorrow. The way things are going, I foresee making future Fridays our packaging day, and Saturdays our mailing day.  In any case, we’ll be ordering another batch of graphic novels, and we should have those late next week, I believe.

As far as the folio sized, regular comics go, we still have copies of all the issues except the black&white preview issue.  These are first come, first served, and we don’t intend to do second printings on them.  Get them while the getting is good!

Calanders and sketchbooks are sold out. The response has been a steady demand for them at shows and appearances, but they are gone now.  I haven’t made a personal sketchbook since 2006, but I just don’t foresee the time to make a new one for a while.

Scott.

I want to remind you that the current sale we are running, to commemorate selling out the first run of our books, that we are including a free sketch card with each copy of “Johnny Saturn: Synns of the Father” that you buy from this site.  These sketch cards are completely original handmade art, such as these (Shown at actual size):

OK, change of subject.

I was recently asked how long it takes to make an episode of “Johnny Saturn.”  My stock answer is nine hours per episode.  I’ve arrived at this estimate the following way: 8 hours to pencil the page, 6 hours to ink the page, 4 hours to color the page, and up to an hour to letter a page.  For convenience sake, let’s round that off to the nearest even number, 18 hours.  Since each original page is made up two episodes, the individual episodes take about nine (18/2=9) hours.

We post three of these episodes a week, amounting to about 27 hours of work per week, or more than three traditional work days (plus change).

Obviously, we do this comic because it’s a passion: I love drawing and creating comics, and Benita is a natural storyteller.  But, why else?

One answer might be that this ongoing schedule to keep producing quality work on a timetable helps us produce a lot of material for printing.   Another answer might be that we love presenting our story as it comes out, and interacting with readers.  Both would be true.

I would also ad that there is a tremendous level of satisfaction with actually doing something creative, and keeping up with it.  We prove that we aren’t simply dreamers, people who plan to get around to doing something creative someday but never do.  We have something tangible to show for our efforts, and that is psychologically huge for us.  When readers actually get the subtleties in the story, or figure out what we are up to, or come to care for our characters, the emotional pay off for Benita and I is huge.

I’ll end this by writing something that should be obvious to creators of all kinds: Using the imagination at a high level is itself a pleasurable experience.  The more you use the imagination, the stronger it gets and the more pleasurable it gets.  You could probably enjoy this benefit by engaging in highly developed daydreaming, but it’s so much better to have something to show for it.

Scott.

Today’s blog is part production blog, and part “What’s going on with Scott and Benita” blog.

Item: We sold out of our first print run of “Johnny Saturn: Synns of the Father,” and we just got a new shipment of books in.  To celebrate this, we are going to include a free sketch card with each purchase of the book within the next thirty days.  The card will include an original piece of art by me, done in whatever medium catches my attention, and whatever Spire City character I’ve got an itch to draw.  It’ll be random, and one-of-a-kind!

Item: “Johnny Saturn” has just joined the Web Comic Planet Collective, or WCPC!  This is not a traditional collective, or exclusive from our memberships in the fabulous Palace In the Sky (I love this group!) or Graphic Smash.  Instead, WCPC is more of an alliance of webcartoonists joined in the common goal of promoting our comics, a think-tank of outside-the-box thinking to take our comics to the next level!  This group was founded by personal friend and webcomic activist Phil Hofer, aka Frumph.

Item: I’m putting together a formal Stumbleupon group, a pooling of webcartoonists who will Stumble each others’ work on update days.  If we can gather a good number of these online cartoonists, then our Stumbleupon influence will greatly increase and all members will benefit.  If you are a webcartoonist and possibly interested in joining such an effort, please email me for details.  If you are comic reader, please be invited to Stumble all the new episodes and blogs as they come up on Johnny Saturn, using the Stumbleupon icon that comes with each new post.

Item: I’m happy to announce the arrival of the Graphimancer, my new website devoted to my illustration and fantasy artwork.  If you are interested in hiring me as a colorist or inker, please contact me.  I’m also available for cover work, and digital painting.

Thanks! Scott

I’d like to remind everyone that Benita and I will be attending the Woodcarver Retreat this weekend, hosted by noted horror writer and supernaturalist Bob Freeman.  Many of you might remember Bob as the writer for the “Johnny Saturn: Synns Of The Father” forward, and an old hand in the indie comic world himself.  Benita and I will speaking about the differences of writing for comics, as opposed to writing for prose.  We won’t be covering many of the fundamentals of storytelling and writing, because those in attendance are skilled prose writers in their own right.

Inked in marker, and roughly water colored, this was a proposed cover for the trade-paperback, “Johnny Saturn: Synns of the Father.”  This wasn’t bad, but it came nowhere near the attitude I wanted to capture for graphic novel’s cover.  It had good foreshortening, but overall it lacked in dynamics.