email newsletter Archives - Kelci Crawford, Comic Artist

October 17, 2019October 16, 2019

The Email Newsletter is BACK!

The email newsletter is back, and I’m happy to introduce some new things to it!

I had put the newsletter on hiatus for a few weeks because of a fatal design flaw in MailChimp’s system. This design flaw deleted all of my subscribers, with no way of putting them back on the list.

So I deleted my MailChimp account, and started shopping around.

It took a little while to find a good substitute – for a hot minute I was afraid MailChimp had monopolized the free email client market.

But I found two services: Moosend and MailerLite.

I tried to make Moosend work, but it kept rejecting every email I tried to use. See, when you send emails, you need to specify who the sender is. And Moosend kept rejecting every. Dang. Email. That I wanted to use.

“This email is from a free client.” “This email is invalid.” Bleh bleh bleh.

So I didn’t want to dick around with them.

After a little more research, I found MailerLite.

And, for what I need it for, MailerLite has been working marvelously.

It’s a bit of a curve for me to get used to: it has different terminology and layouts than MailChimp. And I had been using MailChimp for like 3 years. So it’s still a process to unlearn MailChimp’s clunky-ass design and use MailerLite.

That said, now that I’m getting the hang of MailerLite, it’s smoother to handle than MailChimp. I also have zero fear of accidentally deleting all of my subscribers. And that’s worth everything right now.

Now that the email newsletter is back, I can bring in some new ideas: like exclusive offers for folks I meet at specific events, and even a Patreon-only newsletter.

That said, here’s the thing:

If you were on my email list before, odds are high that you got deleted. My back-up files were very limited. Not everyone was able to get back on.

So.

If you would like to get email updates from me once a week, you can re-sign up at this link.

If you’d rather not, that’s ok too. There’s still Facebook, Instagram, Patreon, and this blog.

(But newsletter subscribers get the news first when I launch KickStarter campaigns. Plus I make announcements of my convention appearances on the newsletter.)

But whatever choice you make is the right one.

That’s all for now. Thank you for reading!

You. Are. Awesome.

January 17, 2017

Going Creative Full-Time: A Game Plan

It’s time for strategy.

So due to circumstances outside of my control, I’ll be leaving my day job (or, if you prefer, my day job will leave me) by February 23rd. However, it’s looking like it may happen sooner than that, but I digress.

Now, I COULD get another day-job… But the day jobs around me that are available are full-time (leaving me no time for comics) OR part-time, minimum wage jobs. My losing my current day job is just a bit painful because it was part-time and paid higher than minimum wage, a rarity in today’s world.

However, considering how well my making comics was doing, to the point where the day job was getting IN THE WAY… I thought, “Screw it. Let’s make comics and art-making a full-time gig!”

So, what to I have to do to make this transition easier? Continue reading “Going Creative Full-Time: A Game Plan”

October 4, 2016October 3, 2016

How You Can Help

There’s a lot to look forward to this month – from Thoughtful Dinosaur books to the launch of The Case of the Wendigo on October 18th, and more illustration updates for the Patreon page.

All of this storming creativity has made me realize…

I need to quit my day job… soon-ish.

See, I work at a craft store as both cleaning person and person who stocks shelves. As it turns out, sweeping, mopping, and cleaning the bathrooms of a 10,000 square foot store and then climbing up and down stairs moving 100+ pound boxes of books, rocks, and glass is REALLY exhausting work. And there are some days, especially recently, that feel like the job wants to pile MORE work on me for a multitude of reasons.

So… yeah, I’m going to start looking for opportunities in other avenues. I want to take it easier on my body and find some things I can do to make that happen.

How can you help? Well, here’s some ways presented in an “if-you-then-you” format.

Continue reading “How You Can Help”

July 5, 2016

How I Use Reference Images in Thoughtful Dinosaur

Thoughtful Dinosaur is a comic I’m making for newsletter subscribers and patrons on Patreon (until I can collect all the strips into one book). It’s the story of a young dinosaur fresh out of college and learning how to be an adult.

It draws a lot from my own personal experiences, and as such, I include lots of references from my early post-college days. This includes locations like a downtown park in Sandusky, OH, shots of malls from Arizona, and other locales I have photos of.

However, I don’t directly copy from photographs. That’s not the point of reference photos.

Reference photos (at least, how I use them) are more for nailing down the layout of a location. For example, in the Thoughtful Dinosaur panel above, I used the reference images and my memory to lay out where the trees and the walking path were laid out. The lighting scheme in the comic panel was drawn mostly from memory – I have a vivid memory of one morning walk I had, in which the sun was just emerging from cumulonimbus clouds in such a way that it was gold and warm. I wanted to capture that feeling with the colors in this panel.

Sometimes I’ll use reference photos for colors and lights. I didn’t do that so much with this panel, but sometimes, if I want to illustrate how light refracts off a surface (like, say, sunsets), I’ll use photo references.

I hope this gives you some new ideas for your own creative endeavors. Thank you for reading!

You. Are. Awesome.