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April 23, 2005

The QBlog Saturday Comics

By QBlog in Humor

I love developing regular features for this blog. Monday Reader Mail was developed as a way for me to share some of the comments that get sent to my inbox. QBlog Radio allowed me to play music to a small audience and then recently evolved into a Podcast. And who can forget the zany Farcical Help Desk or the helpful and occasionally insightful Blogging 101 series? Of course I should mention DeVos Speaks even though it has yet to find a regular publication schedule. Toss in a special project now and then (like March of Perceptions and Quixtar BackBone) and you're looking at a full-featured blog.

So what would possess me to add yet another regular feature? Demons!!! Lots and lots of demons! ;o)

Actually, I just enjoy the challenge of making this blog more interesting and appealing to an ever-growing audience. And this newest feature, called "QBlog Saturday Comics," is a way for me to tap into my tiny "creative reservoir" and publish something that's fun and a little silly.


QBlog Toon


I've constructed a little Q & A to introduce this new feature and answer questions you may (or may not) have about QBlog Saturday Comics.

Why Is The Artwork So Bad?
Great question. I'm an amateur cartoonist and have been drawing pretty regularly since childhood. However, my medium of choice is paper and pen, not PhotoShop and a mouse (or trackpad). The challenge for me was to devise a way to get some toons onto the blog as quickly and effortlessly as possible. I considered drawing and scanning, but that can take a lot of work and the scanned results usually need to be touched up in PhotoShop anyway. Of course I could use Illustrator and create some nice, scalable vector toons but again, that takes a lot of time. Yes, I know my way around Illustrator but I'm definitely not an expert.

What I settled on was a set of guidelines that enabled me to create the comics quickly and effectively but were restrictive enough to explain the crude drawings. And keep in mind, crude art doesn't necessarily indicate a lack of talent as Sam Brown expertly demonstrates with Exploding Dog.

Guidelines?
The guidelines I came up with are pretty simple:

  • All Toons must be 300 pixels wide and no taller than 900 pixels and no shorter than 300 pixels.

  • All Toons must be drawn totally in PhotoShop (or some comparable computer graphics tool)

  • All drawing is done freehand with either the paint or pencil tool. The pen tool is not allowed.

  • Color, pattern or gradient fills are prohibited.

  • The only allowed graphics are word balloons, thought bubbles and narrator boxes. Everything else must be drawn entirely freehand.

  • Text may be written in a font. Drawing text is not required.

  • The drawings may be scaled as necessary

Didn't You Just Rip Off Exploding Dog?
No, not really. I'd say that Exploding Dog serves as inspiration and you'll definitely see similarities in style but each QBlog comic is an original.

But They're Not Funny
Yeah. I'm not Scott Adams or Gary Larson so don't expect your sides to split from laughing at these toons. I'm not sure any of the toons will be funny but if you have a winning idea you want me to draw, send it in and I'll see what I can do.

Scott McCloud Says...
Some of the QBlog comics will be single panel and I know that Scott McCloud (and others) would argue that technically, single panels aren't comics — they're cartoon drawings. Yes, I've read Understanding Comics and I don't disagree but for communication purposes I'm sticking with the term "comics" even if they are single panel.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry. It's not that important.

Can I Submit Comics?
If you'd like to submit your own comics to be published here just send a GIF image to comics@webraw.com. Be sure you follow the guidelines or the submission will be rejected.

That's about it. Hope you enjoy this new QBlog feature. I know I will.

Comments (1) TrackBack (0)

Comments  

Hey, just checking in; haven't been here in a few weeks - things are slow, no big debates or arugments.

Good luck with the cartoon feature. B-Toad has a good one on his site....

Posted by: df | April 24, 2005 4:00 AM





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