Going to Comic-con!!

 The title, and image above, say it all, but there's a lot more to it, of course. :0)

I'm going to Comic-con International... yes, THAT comic-con, and as an exhibitor!
The only people who have read the Ghost Pirate Skeletons of Three Craters Lake, besides myself,  are the fine people at Comic Con International.  Those wise and very esteemed judges of the Small Press Committee, after reviewing my application and the comic book, and comparing it to thousands of others.... have awarded me one of the few select Small Press Tables!

I'm stunned.  But very, very proud and excited! :0)

We're going to COMIC CON!!!!

So if Comic-con International found the comic book to be worthy, you probably will as well.  To see it happen, though, I'm really going to need that help I've been asking for.  Just like the telethons you see on PBS, we're having a fundraiser, and yes, you get some cool stuff for your money.  And unlike PBS, you don't need to pay an arm or a leg for a dvd or coffee mug.  Check out the fundraiser at the link below, and you can pledge as low as a dollar just to say that you support HappyGlyphs Comics and the fine work that we've been doing.

All pledges are appreciated, but remember, with Kickstarter, I don't get a penny unless we reach our goal. And the last day is less than a week away!  So please tell your friends who love comics made for kids of all ages.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/happyglyphs/the-ghost-pirate-skeletons-of-three-craters-lake


Thanks!    JOHN :0)

Making it Happen

The world is changing, and a lot of that is due to small businesses and how we run those businesses.  Funding has always been an important part of growing a business, and for years that funding was up to the local bank to start with, and eventually investors if you got lucky.  Today, however, funding can be a lot more personal, and a lot more interactive.  Yes, I am asking for financial assistance; at the same time, though, I want to give something back (cool prizes!), and, just as important, bring you the reader, and me the creator, closer together.

I'm not looking for a hand out... I am looking for people who believe in me, and enjoy my work, to come together to show that support, and have some fun while doing it.  I would like it if this Kickstarter of mine can be like a virtual party, where I can talk to old friends, and be introduced to new ones, and I can share my work with you and ideas for growth.

Let me be honest here...publishing is a difficult and expensive business, even for those with a line-up of marketing professionals and a string of best selling authors.  When one person, me, is running that business, well... the business runs you... ragged! :0)  Think about this;  I am the business, which means all products come from me, and it can take about three years to create a book.  Three years in which I need to rely on my previous books to finance things.  Fortunately, for me, I was able to build up a freelance illustration career which, while keeping me away from the comics, provided me a way to make an income while doing what I love... art.

When cartoonists ( or many other people) start out, it's necessary to build up experience.  I did a lot of work for free, and then for very cheap.  Luckily, my passion for my work came through here and there, and I was able to sell some of my cartoons, which then lead to bigger work. As a creator, though, creating characters that you hope will one day become icons requires more sacrifice.  I've practically given away a lot of my stuff just to get my name out there, but that can only last so long.  To stay in business as a cartoonist, the business must grow, and become more self-reliant.  Otherwise, I need to turn to freelancing full time, just to pay the bills.

In this day and age, a lot of us must reinvent ourselves.  I've given a lot of thought to what I want to be when I grow up, and the answer is, and always was, a storyteller.  Even in my illustration work, I try to bring life to each image, and have that image tell a story, and I love that.  However, I love even more drawing a black box and looking through it as if it were a window into another world... which it is!

That comic panel to me is a portal to adventure, where all those silly things in my head come out to play, and I love that.  More than anything.  So please help me to continue that dream. If you like my work, then please get involved.

The Ghost Pirate Skeletons of Three Craters Lake can be a last hurrah, or a new beginning.  It really is up to you, because frankly, the stories are here for us to share.  As much as I love creating them, they're a heck of a lot more fun when I can share them with someone.

Thanks for reading!  I'll post the link to the kickstarter below.  Please take a peek at it, and feel free to ask questions or just chat in general.  I look forward to seeing you there!

We are live!  And here's the link:   

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/happyglyphs/the-ghost-pirate-skeletons-of-three-craters-lake

JOHN :0)

These cool postcards and fridge magnet are just the beginning of the rewards
I've come up with to thank you for your support. :0)

The Unveiling! Join us. :0)

We are holding a special event tonight at the HappyGlyphs Comics facebook page!

I am unveiling the new cover for my forthcoming comic book, The Ghost Pirate Skeletons of Three Craters Lake.  If you RSVP to the event, you can check in anytime over the weekend to come and look at the cover art, and anything else I may post at the event.  More importantly, though, I should be checking in regularly this evening between 7 and 10 PM EST, so can answer any questions and respond to any feedback on a more immediate basis.

This comic book is a very important step in the development of HappyGlyphs Comics.  With this, I am going to attempt to get the book into comic book stores nationally, and with that attend as many conventions as I can next summer and throughout the year.  For a while now, I've been fairly low key, and mostly self publishing.  With this book I hope to gain more exposure, and therefore be able to move in a direction more in tune with my audience.

This is a big step to me, and very important to who I am and where I am going.  Please join me this evening, and let me know what you think about my work.  This launch also has a very important tie-in with my Knight and Day comic strip, as well.

I really appreciate your support!    JOHN :0)

PS While you are at the event, please 'like' the HappyGlyphs Comics Page.  So far this is the best place I've found to interact with my friends and fans, and share a lot of what I am up to in one convenient place.

Another Haunting Tribute!

Some time ago, a young lady I know, who relates very much to my character Iris from The Inquiring Minds, approached me with an idea.  She was proud that she had faced her fears, and finally went on the Haunted Mansion ride in Disney World, and loved it!  She then had her mom take a photo of her in front of The Mansion, posing as a hitchhiker.  What a cool idea, and she deserves all the credit for it!

Now, she's been adamant that Iris is based on her, and has requested that I put her in a comic strip.  After seeing the photo of her in front of the Haunted Mansion, and letting it simmer in my mind a bit, I decided to draw Iris in the same pose.  After all, I'm in the midst of writing and drawing the Knight and Day Family Vacation, in which the Knights go to Disney World. So, the illustration works for me, and at the same gives this young lady the proof she required that her and Iris are twin souls.

I am very happy to present the original art to her, to reward her inspiration, and very cool idea.

The illustration was based on her photograph, and then turned into a postcard, which I then made into a Knight and Day panel.  This is, quite fittingly, my 13th Knight and Day panel! Don't you just love coincidences like that?
All the best,    JOHN :0)

PS On my iPod?  Hugh Laurie, Let Them Talk
PSS How fitting that Iris appear in a tribute to the Haunted Mansion, since her fellow Inquiring Minds, Bobby and Albert, appeared in a haunting tribute last year! (Available as a fine print in our shop)

Keeping it straight: continuity

I've talked recently about how adding Snowie to Knight and Day has caused me a bit of a flurry in the writing department.  I had planned on introducing the idea of Iris wanting a cat into the strip, but hadn't gotten around to it. And while I was writing, rewriting, and pondering, real life handed me Snowie!

However, doing a comic strip the way I do can cause other continuity glitches, problems, etc.  Ultimately, my goal is to be syndicated, and have the strip presented daily in a newspaper, then collect those strips later for book collections.  Currently, I am not syndicated, which means most of my cartoon income comes from book and art sales, which is not enough to make the comic strip a full time job.  This also means that I am creating strips to be seen by an Editor first, an audience second.  This means that you, my friendly audience, don't get to see new strips every day, or even every week when my freelance work piles up.  I also spend most of my time doing gag a day strips, where there IS an overall continuity, but it runs mainly in the background.  You'd need to read a few weeks worth of strips to see how they all fit together.

As confident as I am in my work, I do realise that the syndicates may have lapses of error, where they may not see the potential of myself and my comic strips, and how well we could do working together.  Which leads me to plan B.

And here is my advice... always have a plan B!  When pursuing a goal like syndication, or trying to find yourself as an artist, you can get lost in the many directions that you can go.  Trying to find the one path to focus on is not easy, and not always practical.  So, to make your life easier, choose projects that pay, first, keeping in mind that those pieces will go into your portfolio, and also improve your artistic skills, and dealing with client skills.  Second, choose projects that if you can't use them in one place, use them in another.

For example, I work with Knight and Day since A) the strip has been very popular with people who have read it, and B) given time, I will have enough material to publish another book.  My first book is still popular, so creating another comic strip collection makes perfect sense. 

Of course, if syndicated, things may change, but as it stands, all these strips I have been doing will go into another Knight and Day comic strip collection, which I am already creating.  It's a blast seeing it come together, but that word continuity comes in again.  First, there's continuity with the seasons, so that summer strips must come together, and winter strips are all together, and now the Snowie storyline must be fit in to make perfect sense with the overall book.  Like Take Me Away From All This!!, this next book will read like a year out of the life of Steven and Amy Knight, so although most strips stand alone, altogether they will create a perfect 'whole', where we will see the characters grow and change and see just how much can happen to a family in a year's time.

I'm looking forward to it, but meanwhile, as the book comes together, I now have a timeline where each strip must fit into.

However, I've written several books now, and many cartoons, both with Knight and Day as well as The Inquiring Minds, of which Iris Knight is a part of.  So NOW I have to worry about what I write in a different way... the strips have to fit the continuity already established in my first books and comic books!

I think it's time I took the time to make a time line... which may save some time in the long run. :0)

All the best,    JOHN :0)

Cats and Continuity (updated)

So my last two posts have dealt with the newest addition to my home, and how I deal with such matters in my comic strip.  I'm talking, of course, about Snowie the cat, who has complicated my life tremendously, and yet has given me loads of comic strip material by joining the cast of Knight and Day.

I also mentioned how fortuitous her arrival was, since I was actually in the early planning stages of introducing the idea of Iris wanting a cat.  Of course, once I started asking for advice on facebook, everyone wanted Snowie in the strip, and so she was, the very next day.  The only problem with that was, with people enjoying the strips, I felt obligated to do more.  However, a cat like Snowie can't just magically appear in a comic strip.  Besides, she deserves an introduction, and her own little storyline, doesn't she?

And so I find myself going back and forth between brand new strips featuring Snowie and brand new strips introducing the idea of Snowie, and then Snowie herself.  Not to mention the backlog of other strips written and waiting to be drawn!  So please bear with me.  I'll post Snowie strips at the website, and on facebook, and post some pre Snowie strips here.  Soon, I hope, I will have filled in the gaps, and will either post the storyline on a special webpage, or save it for the next comic strip collection.

Hopefully for you, the reader, each strip stands alone, and yet fits into the overall continuity.  Kind of like reading someone's journal by flipping back and forth through the pages looking for juicy stuff. :0)

All the best,    JOHN :0)

Art Preceding Life, and Vice Versa!

[updated:  all strips added]



I posted last about Snowie, the latest addition to the Knight and Day comic strip.  When she arrived at my doorstep, I asked for advice from my facebook friends, and immediately got requests for her to join the strip.  Who am I to argue, I thought, and Snowie joined the cast.

Now, at this moment in time I happen to be extremely busy, what with the taxes, and a new freelance project, so I drew some Snowie toons from life, and what was happening.  Then, recently, I sat down with my project notebook to see my To Do list.  Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw that I was kind of heading in this direction on my own. :0)

Yeah, I know... it's hard to surprise yourself, but hey, I said I've been busy!  And besides, my project notebook is full of scribblings, sketches, and thoughts... many of which may never become cartoons.  Still, it was funny to find a page of notes for Knight and Day, all dealing with Iris wanting a cat, and getting... something different.  Funny, and useful!

This actually solves my problem of continuity, by giving me a transition from pre-Snowie to Snowie.   Eventually there will be another Knight and Day collection which, generally, follows my drawing order, but sometimes involves strips being shifted around for a variety of reasons, mainly that they make better reading in a new order.  Also, truth be told, I sometimes draw strips 'out of order', either because I need to draw a certain strip first so I can establish the scene visually, or just because one strip seems more fun to draw and I don't want to wait.

So, anyway, here are a few of those pre-Snowie strips.  Once we get these told, we can go back to telling Snowie's story.

Cheers,    JOHN :0)

PS By the way, if there is anything you particularly want me to write about, feel free to let me know.  I sometimes wonder if I should do more basic Cartooning posts, or more advanced?  Meanwhile, I'll try to keep a good mix. :0)

In Which I Make a Cool Pirate Video

While I'm holding off on cartoon news for the moment, I just had to share with you a cool little video I put together the other day.

Okay, so some of you are aware that I am slightly obsessed with Disney's so called 'dark' rides... an obsession that precedes even my first visit to the parks.  You see, long before there were Legos and snap-together kits, there was the model kit.  A kit that, no matter what the box said, required quite a bit of skill to put together and paint.  And I just love working with my hands!

Some of my many happy childhood memories involve putting together Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean model kits with zap/action!  The one I remember most is Condemned to Chains Forever, in which a pirate skeleton fights an eternal battle with an alligator that's trying to chew on his leg.  It's no wonder the comic book I'm working on is titled The Ghost Pirate Skeletons of Three Craters Lake, is it?

So, a few years later I have managed to get the same model kit, complete in it's box.  And now it will take me years to find the time to actually build it and build it right.  However, I had ten minutes free one Saturday morning, so over coffee I carefully removed the pieces from their sprues, and, like any good model builder, fit them together before any attempt at gluing. And being the show person that I am, I just had to video the attempt, and ad some animation to it. :0)

Please enjoy!

PS  As I kid I ripped the box open and started painting and gluing haphazardly until I had a sloppy mess that little resembled the picture on the box.  And I loved every minute of it. :0)

PSS If enough of you clamor to see more, I'll be forced to find the time to play, er... work towards making another video in this series.  Please? :0)

On my iPod?  Ariene Brunet, "Le pied dans ma bulle"    Nice!

Aiming High

Once upon a time, my advice to you was if you want to get your name out there, if you want to make a living with your art, you have to have things in circulation.  Today we set up websites and place drawings on a facebook page, but there are at least a million others doing the same thing.  The world is changing, but the previous way of doing things is still best, and that means mailing stuff out.  Illustrators should have postcards out to magazines, and Cartoonists should have stuff out to the Syndicates.

My career took off when I made it a habit of always having something in the mail, or in transit to somewhere, whether it was cartoon submissions to a magazine, or a short story, or comics to the syndicates.  Of course, once my freelance work took off, I didn't have time to follow these goals, but at the same time I didn't need to.  I was working, and sometimes making money, and that was where I needed to be.

However, my goal has always been newspaper syndication, and so I finally returned to that quest.  The industry is in a state of flux, but for me, that is where I need to be, and where I am sure my particular audience is.  For me, catching the brass ring of syndication will give me the focus I need.  In the years since my last submissions to the syndicates, I have been busy with my freelance career, but always cartooning at the same time.  As you know, one project is The Inquiring Minds comic book, The Ghost Pirate Skeletons of Three Craters Lake.  Loosely based on my comic strip, and begun in comic strip format, it is not something the syndicates would look for, being a storyline for one.  Since it is definitely a comic book project, I need to treat it like one.  HappyGlyphs can publish it, of course, but to get it into the comic book stores requires a lot of time and capital, and is a risky venture that requires complete dedication.  And so that project is on hold for now. 

I have also been working on my comic strip Knight and Day, and managed to complete my graphic novel 3 Knights in India, again, loosely based on the comic strip, but not syndication material.  Oddly enough, though, the graphic novel was serialised in the India Post, a weekly newspaper serving the Indian community, so for a while I did see my work in the papers, and was proud of that.  Still, syndication being my goal, I set aside time and created a new package of Knight and Day.  Some of these strips can be seen at HappyGlyphs.com and others at the HappyGlyphs Comics Fan Page on facebook.  Others will remain with me until A) I get syndicated, or B) failing that, I complete the strip on my own, and publish my second Knight and Day comic strip collection.

Another vertical comic strip: I love the freedom all that extra vertical space allows!

I worked hard to create strong strips that demonstrated well who my characters are, and created a package of material that I am really proud of.  Now, I just have to wait and see how the market is, and what mood the syndicates are in.  Once upon a time Knight and Day came very close to getting syndicated.  Bad timing made that dream fall through, but now it's an all new strip, and a different world, so we'll see what happens.

I've worked hard for this, and will work even harder if syndicated,  Wish me luck!  Sometimes a little luck can give you the edge you need. :0)

All the best,    JOHN :0)

On my iPod?  Nothing!  Ack!  Can't decide what mood I'm in today. :0)