I had a reallly great time at the Stumtown Comics Fest ( http://www.stumptowncomics.com/ ) last weekend. Almost every talk i attended was awesome and useful. Met a ton of cool people. Handed out a ton of cool business cards. smoked a ton of cool cigarettes. Was a little sick, and got about 5 hours of sleep spread over a 3 day period. (bleHgh). It was great. 🙂
I’m planning to write up the experince as a “lesson” for the Solid Fuel Studios website (which will have tons of lessons on various business-building topics, someday soon. Promise.) The highlight of the show for me was definitely having the first 6 pages of vidHero reviewed and critiqued by the editor for Dark Horse (Scott Allie). While it wasn’t what he was looking for, he offered some keen advice, and it was thrilling to suffer the anguish of having my baby critqued. He was a quiet intense dude, but very cool, and basically his advice was too loosen up the pages a bit and make it more approachable.
It’s suprisingly hard to accept and use advice, or deal with any sort of criticism from someone who knows what they’re talking about . A little voice in my head keeps saying “but but but”. (ie “but it’s supposed to have a ton of text, like a euro comic!” “but it doesn’t matter if you read the text bubbles in the wrong order, i double checked that each possible order still made sense” “but it’s supposed to be dense up front, so you’ll feel a breathe of fresh air later when the fighting starts” etc. )
But it’s clear that I shouldn’t try to explain away a professional’s free insights. (i didn’t say any of the above when he was reviewing, as i’m mortified of being yet another blind spot artist). I found the whole experience very titillating and heart breaking and exciting. And quiet. A little too quiet.
Can’t wait to see what people make of the finished comic! Currently, working on page 8. planning to rip through it and not look back, so something can be printed in time for the Olympia Comics Fest on June 7th. (but it’s pretty clear i’ll want to go back and try to unify everything at one point, such that no frame is left behind. quality/pride wise.).
Silver medal of the Stumptown experience goes to the “Monetizing Web Comics” session, which nailed every reason i started this vidHero project, and more.
posted by warren – currently up too late, having blown a few hours on GTA IV like thousands of other foolish russian-immigrant addicts across the country. Lordy but the game’s story is a great mix of scarface and … Eastern Promises? General Russian awesomeness?