Reader comments.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

People have asked me, but not enough so far that it's really become an issue.

What did start to get annoying, though, was when a few years ago I wrote a book that was kind of based off of my own experiences in high school, but all of the stories were my own made up stories and the characters, while loosely based off of people I knew, were still my characters. Some of my RL friends read it and it was a bit bothersome when people would ask "Who am I in the story?" "Am I in it?" Because, well, yes, I suppose you are sort of in it, this character is sort of a mix of you and so-and-so... but no, you are not in my story. It is, after all, my story.

I played along with it but it became a little grating after a while.

[RobboAKAscooby]

People have asked me, but not enough so far that it's really become an issue.

What did start to get annoying, though, was when a few years ago I wrote a book that was kind of based off of my own experiences in high school, but all of the stories were my own made up stories and the characters, while loosely based off of people I knew, were still my characters. Some of my RL friends read it and it was a bit bothersome when people would ask "Who am I in the story?" "Am I in it?" Because, well, yes, I suppose you are sort of in it, this character is sort of a mix of you and so-and-so... but no, you are not in my story. It is, after all, my story.

I played along with it but it became a little grating after a while.

Yep I get that one with my writing - friends assuming they're in the story or I based so-and-so on them.

[Terotrous]

I think the closest I got as far as reader comments go was K-Dawg repeatedly telling me to update.

[McDuffies]

Kinda throwing back to what Aerones mentioned, how does everyone feel the reader/friend's comment of "Oh you should put me in your comic!"

I never got much of that, possibly because I never pimped my comics to real life friends too much.
What I am getting is people pitching me ideas about comics. "Funny thing happened to me yesterday. You should make a comic about it." What people usually don't realise is that it takes a completely different kind of story to make a good comic, than a kind that makes a good anecdote.
Most unpleasant were a few situations where people were trying to pitch to me serious, long-term collaborations where, like in Princesses case, I would do all the work. The idea of these guys that I would somehow benefit from collaboration with them even though I've been doing comics for all my life, whereas they just decided to jump into the field a few days ago without ever even reading more than a few comics, is insulting. One of those was my cousin, about 50 years older then me, whom I wanted to kick in the face. He said "This story is so good that you'd surely win all awards". Yes, um, no egomaniacs please.

What I'm also getting is, when people see me sketching a person they usually ask who am I drawing. For some reason, people never assume that I'm drawing from imagination, noone in particular.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

What I'm also getting is, when people see me sketching a person they usually ask who am I drawing. For some reason, people never assume that I'm drawing from imagination, noone in particular.

Oh, that's a joy as well.
"Hey, who's that you're drawing?"
"Uh... I'm designing Frank's... uh... I mean, you see, I have a webcomic, and, so this is, yeah this is one of the characters, so..."

so I usually just
"Hey, who's that you're drawing?"
"Aw, nobody in particular."
"NOBODY? HAW HAW HOW COULD YOU JUST DRAW NOBODY"
"Heh heh. Oh did you get a haircut?"

just change the channel. just change the channel on 'em.

[Spaceprincess]

I had one ex friend tell me my comic terrible only because I didn't want to work on his idea anymore (his idea being a comic I did all the work on and he took most of the credit for, but thats a long story)

this sounds like a great story
i understand completely if you don't feel like telling it
but just putting it out there
it sounds like a great story.

we used to work together and he had the idea to do a comic about the people we worked with, I know real original. there were some crazy people and some funny stories so all we had to do was put into comic form. we'd brain storm then he'd write some plots and I would draw them, and often rewrite them. for about 7 months I really put a lot of effort into and would track him down to get scripts and a submission letter. I sent it out to several different outlets, at my own expense for printing and shipping. after that my interest had waned and i started doing my own comic. I still did some of ours but the stories he was writing were less and less funny and not at all based on the true events that we had start out doing. I had to rewrite everything and had to keep bugging him about scripts, I asked that they be typed and he would had me a yellow legal pad with rough plots and pages of dialogue that couldn't possibly fit. or he'd hand me a rough sketch and say "see what you can do with that". I think the last straw was him handing me one his daughter had wrote about her and her brother. it had nothing to do with anything. by then I was tired of it, I had showed it to someone else and they flat out told me it wasn't funny. I realized it was really a lot of in jokes and other people didn't find it amusing. one day I showed him my comic and he told me "it's terrible but what we got is really something" which he would always say. I think he thought we we're gonna make millions off of it.
I put it on the shelf for almost a year and in the mean time he hadn't done anything. He claimed to know a guy at the local paper but always said we needed to working on it more. so I decided to make another attempt I told him it would have to be a weekly strip but he insisted that it should still be daily. I redrew the first 6 and showed him, I asked him to rewrite some dialogue for it since we were starting over. those pages sat on a clip board untouched for 9 months. At that point I wanted nothing more to do with it and told him so. he said he wanted to buy me out I said if you can sell it then we'll talk money, so far I don't think he has made any effort to try and sell it or produce anything more. that was the last he said to me about it but would tell my brother and his GF that he couldn't understand why I didn't want to do it cause "we really got something" and my comic would never go anywhere.
I don't think he could understands that it wasn't a good idea or he thinks that it's my fault for him not being successful.
I had put a lot of effort into it, he put minimal but he would always be quick to criticize everything I did but never seeing anything he did (which wasn't much) as being less than perfect. I did a joke one way and he insisted that I " just do it my way, my ways funnier, no do it my way" after a while I figured if I'm going to put in the effort I might as well do what i want and actually enjoy it.
It was tough working with him on the comic, he would tell me to work on it but would never give me material, when we would meet to write ideas he would talk about everything else, he keep going on how awesome it was going to be but never tried to promote it. he supposedly knew web designers who were going to make us a site but nothing came of it. I found Comic genesis because I was going to try to at least put it on the web.
he could be a fun guy, he was funny and I liked working with him. I think my abandoning the comic was what started the decline of our friendship. he really pissed me off and I haven't spoken to him in over a year. He still works with my brothers GF so I get some news.
any ways the lesson I learned is never work with a partner. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had a bad experience with making a comic w a friend.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Wow.

I'm sorry that you wasted all that time and effort At least you learned something though.

[Aerones]

Kinda throwing back to what Aerones mentioned, how does everyone feel the reader/friend's comment of "Oh you should put me in your comic!"

Perhaps I am too touchy, but I've grown to really hate it. I'm an artist before a writer, so working on plot/script/etc. is always difficult for me, so when I stumble across magical comicplot leprechaun gold, I really want to stick with it. However these people always seem to overlook the fact that comic writers (or any writer really) spend a long time on writing and put so much effort into it, yet think it's so easy for you to comply and easily write them in. I mean, you can definitely write them in. It's so easy.

Frustrations! I have them. I might also be incredible biased.

I don't do a slice-of-life comic, so I haven't really had that problem. If someone asked me to put them in it I'd probably just say "OK, but you'll have to be a voiceless character who dies horribly in an accident in the background." Because I could do that.

[McDuffies]

I don't think he could understands that it wasn't a good idea or he thinks that it's my fault for him not being successful.

The biggest problem with all those people who just want to become comic writers out of the blue, they rarely realise that writing is a skill that has to be learned just like drawing. Actually, you know - you've probably been drawing since you're 10 or so, and have had not only hundreds of drawing classes or books behind you, but you've also learned all those little lessons that are neccesary for an artist, including:
1. Receiving criticism and taking something useful out of it
2. Realising that you're always subjective about your own work
3. Knowing competition - what kind of comics are out there, where you stand on the scale when it comes to quality, what is popular etc
4. Knowing how industry works, details about distribution, promotion and all that
5. Knowing that talent means very little, that most of art is about work you put into it, and that artists aren't magical beings who just have "it" while normal humans just don't.
6. That ideas mean very little as oposed to all the work that is needed to put them to reality
And so on and so on. But a person who wants to jump into comics midway (probably because he knows someone who draws or has heard of comicgenesis or something like that) has no perspective of his work, of how his work stands compared to other comics, or even if his great idea is just an overused cliche. And yeah, they always think that they know better than you.
I'm also annoyed because I have too many of my own ideas to get to work on them... why would someone think that I would rather work on theirs? (Oh yeah I forgot because theirs are better and will be popular which is of course the only reason why I'm doing comics)

[Yeahduff]

5. Knowing that talent means very little, that most of art is about work you put into it, and that artists aren't magical beings who just have "it" while normal humans just don't.
6. That ideas mean very little as oposed to all the work that is needed to put them to reality

That might be overstating it.

[McDuffies]

5. Knowing that talent means very little, that most of art is about work you put into it, and that artists aren't magical beings who just have "it" while normal humans just don't.
6. That ideas mean very little as oposed to all the work that is needed to put them to reality

That might be overstating it.

I don't think so. Every human being with normal motoric and visual abilities is capable of learning how to draw, yet so many people believe that they can't because they "don't have talent". The way I see it, work, practice and proper learning program can get you far, and perhaps talent can speed the process up or maybe take you a bit further, but it's not something decisive in whether you'll become a good artist.
As for 6, I really think that the premise of the story doesn't account to much, that the way how it's told is much more important and that's the deciding factor in whether a standard buddy cop show turns into something good, or the greatest idea ever turns into a cliched soap opera. People who never worked on a comic tend to underestimate how much effort and time it takes (without exagerating, it's not working in a mine, but it's not a walk in the park either). Sometimes people think that all the work that goes into planning, writing and drawing a comic holds as much weight as coming up with an interesting idea while you're taking a bath.

[Bustertheclown]

Frankly, I don't understand how talent has become some sort of a bad word. We are not all equal in all tasks. We just aren't. It's not how our brains and bodies are wired. I'm not going to pretend that I'm good at something I'm not, just because I practiced enough to not fail at it, and I'm not going to pretend that others are good at the same things I am, just because they work really hard at it. It's just not how it works. Good is not the same as passably able.

[Spaceprincess]

Wow.

I'm sorry that you wasted all that time and effort At least you learned something though.

well i think if I hadn't done that comic I may never had starting doing my own. and I learned a lot from the mistakes I made doing those comics.

Frankly, I don't understand how talent has become some sort of a bad word. We are not all equal in all tasks. We just aren't. It's not how our brains and bodies are wired. I'm not going to pretend that I'm good at something I'm not, just because I practiced enough to not fail at it, and I'm not going to pretend that others are good at the same things I am, just because they work really hard at it. It's just not how it works. Good is not the same as passably able.

yeah, most people can learn techniques and skills but there are things that can't be taught and talent makes up for that. but talent without hard work isn't very useful. to be successful you need both.

6. That ideas mean very little as oposed to all the work that is needed to put them to reality

yeah, just having a funny idea or some funny stories doesn't mean it will translate into a funny comic. that was the problem we had. we had funny material but we couldn't really capture that humor in a comic format

[Yeahduff]

You're not gonna accomplish much if you're not willing to work for it. But not everyone can write Hamlet. You can toil forever on a tired idea but it will never be much more than a finely crafted bore. Some people get it and some people don't and never will. Those are the breaks.

The larger point, that people tend to underestimate what we do, I agree with. But all the push-ups in the world ain't gonna make me Tyson Beckford.

[Terotrous]

Good is not the same as passably able.

I'd be quite pleased if someone described my art as passable.

[K-Dawg]

I think the closest I got as far as reader comments go was K-Dawg repeatedly telling me to update.

I'm still waiting you assclown!

As for reader comments myself? I need more, it fuels me! But I don't expect nothing as I have been so sporadic with updates for the last few years.

[Terotrous]

I think the closest I got as far as reader comments go was K-Dawg repeatedly telling me to update.

I'm still waiting you assclown!

I actually finished one comic, but I kind of don't remember how to update my site anymore.

[Bustertheclown]

I forgot how to update my site, too! Then, when I started updating again, I had to relearn everything.

[Nanda]

I forgot how to update my site, too! Then, when I started updating again, I had to relearn everything.

Ha! It's so true. I just wanted to put up an image that my sister had given me on "Ugly Girl," and it took me at least 5 minutes and several tries to remember how one even goes about doing such a thing.

[McDuffies]

Frankly, I don't understand how talent has become some sort of a bad word.

When it became a catchword for some people to keep calling themselves artists without a thing to show up for it, and for other people to rationalize why they aren't good at something.
And since it's art, what you consider passably able, someone else will probably consider great.

You're not gonna accomplish much if you're not willing to work for it. But not everyone can write Hamlet. You can toil forever on a tired idea but it will never be much more than a finely crafted bore. Some people get it and some people don't and never will. Those are the breaks.

There isn't even such singular characteristics as talent. You can't say that Satrapi has the same thing that enables her to do her art as, say, Brian Bolland; one is capable of drawing intricate photorealistic drawings, the other creates crude but very vibrant drawings. They are both good artists in their own rights, yet fans of each would call the other one talentless hack.
At best talent is a huge set of characteristics that makes one more able to do something than the other, and those characteristics differ from one artist to the other, and in the end it doesn't matter whether those characteristics are applicable to art, it matters how good you channel them into art. Like, to be an artist you have to have a rich imagination, but if you don't, you can focus on autobiography and became Harvey Pekar. To write Hamlet, you had to had both intuitive knowledge of psychology and observation, and skill for manipulating words and many other things, and if you want to call all those things appearing in one person a talent, then so be it, but it's a fact that many people who possesed completely different set of abilities achieved the same level of greatness.