Time for Love Mart Prep

On Feb 8, 2024 at 6 pm EST, feel free to lurk while I work on prepping for Love Mart, a one-day event at Handmade Toledo!

Don’t forget about the Zine Club Pledge Drive still running on Kickstarter! You have until Feb 14 to join and get exclusive rewards.

To get free phone wallpapers and other goodies, join my email newsletter

I’m available for commissions!

If you want something for personal use, start on the public Commission board

🎨 Tools Used:

  • Streaming – StreamYard
  • Mic – Blue Snowball
  • Drawing – Clip Studio Paint

👏 THANK YOU TO MY CLUB SUBSCRIBERS! 👏

To get your name added to this list, join the Fan Club.

  • Eileen M.
  • magicalgirlkyra
  • All Unka
  • Raiden
  • Ella Q
  • Andrew Balch
  • Adam Vazquez
  • Maya Smith
  • Pat Jade
  • JessicaMcIntosh
  • RPZ
  • Bryce Bargar

And thank YOU for watching!

You. Are. Awesome.

Lurking and Working on LGBTQ Pirate Comics

Today at 6 pm EST, feel free to lurk while I work on The Legend of Jamie Roberts and other art for this LGBTQ pirate comic.

Don’t forget about the Zine Club Pledge Drive still running on Kickstarter! You have until Feb 14 to join and get exclusive rewards.

To get free phone wallpapers and other goodies, join my email newsletter

I’m available for commissions! If you want something for personal use, start on the public Commission board

🎨 Tools Used:

  • Streaming – StreamYard
  • Mic – Blue Snowball
  • Drawing – Clip Studio Paint

👏 THANK YOU TO MY CLUB SUBSCRIBERS! 👏

To get your name added to this list, join the Fan Club.

  • Eileen M.
  • magicalgirlkyra
  • All Unka
  • Raiden
  • Ella Q
  • Andrew Balch
  • Adam Vazquez
  • Maya Smith
  • Pat Jade
  • JessicaMcIntosh
  • RPZ
  • Bryce Bargar

And thank YOU for watching!

You. Are. Awesome.

Happy Holidays! Here’s a Free Desktop Wallpaper

Happy holidays! I have here a free desktop wallpaper for you to download – fit for the season.

Now, full disclosure, my Fan Club peeps got the first download. (They also get a ton of other exclusive wallpaper downloads as thanks for their pledges.) This one in particular, though, I went, “This is too cute – everyone should have it!”

So here’s the link to download it from my Ko-Fi shop…

For 2024, I want to offer monthly freebies to folks much like this offering. These freebies would include phone wallpapers and hi-res coloring pages. If you would like to get freebies next year, sign up for the email newsletter! The freebies will be shared there.

To get exclusive phone and desktop wallpapers (and early access to my webcomics to boot!), be sure to pledge on Ko-Fi and become a Fan Club member! If Ko-Fi isn’t your speed, you can pledge directly through my Fan Club Page.

Oh! You can also watch how I drew this wallpaper by checking out two videos: This one shows the pencils and inks while I talk about my Inktober social media experiment…

And here is an archived live stream where I show the coloring process!

That’s all for now. Happy Holidays, and I’ll see you in 2024!

Be safe. Because you. Are. Awesome.

The Final Hours of Jamie Roberts, Volume 1 on KickStarter

We’re in the FINAL hours of The Legend of Jamie Roberts, volume 1 on KickStarter.

If you haven’t heard:

The Legend is the story of Jamie Roberts and their two best friends treasure-hunting with a stolen map in a land full of magic.

The story is a long-running webcomic project, but now…

  • We’re getting chapters 1 through 4 (plus bonus material) in one book.
  • The KickStarter launched to get funding so the book can go to print.
  • We reached our initial goal! And now we’re SO CLOSE to our next stretch goal!

Interested in getting the book? Back it soon – the campaign ENDS MARCH 27 – that’s THIS SATURDAY.

Rewards for backers include, but are not limited to:

  • Books!
  • PDFs!
  • Stickers!
  • Campaign-exclusive minicomics!
  • And more!

If we reach 50 backers, I’ll add new bonus material to the book: sketched versions of Chapter 5’s first 3 to 4 pages. Will you be our 50th? Or even our 51st?!

Broke? Share this post, or the campaign link (tinyurl.com/jamie-v1) FAR AND WIDE!

Thank you for your support however you show it.

You. Are. Awesome.

Writing for Comics 101 – Making Pages You Can Actually Read

In today’s lesson of Writing for Comics 101, let’s talk about making pages you can ACTUALLY read.

How do we do that? By not packing the pages with an obscene amount of dialogue.

Or at least, if you HAVE to keep so much dialogue, how to pace it out so it’s not a word brick.

This technique is something discussed in more detail in Making Comics by Scott McCloud, so what I’ll do for today’s post is share my mistakes so you can learn from them.

Let’s take a look at this page from Seeing Him, written by Kia Crawford and drawn by me:

seeing him transgender webcomic page 25

To be honest, there’s a way to get the information across that we need, without using a fuck-ton of dialogue.

We could:

  • split this between two pages,
  • condense the banter,
  • condense the backstory drop,
  • change the page layout,
  • change the balloon layout,
  • or any combination of these.

At least past me had the sense to split the dialogue into separate balloons. That way the page felt, at the time, a little less like a word brick.

This is me spit-balling some ideas right now on how to fix this page of Seeing Him: we could change the camera focus in the second and third panels, to cut away to framed photos on the walls. Those photos could showcase the history of the venue. With that edit, we can split the dialogue up some more, re-frame where the speech balloons sit, and make the page feel like less of a collection of talking heads.

Compare this page to The Legend of Jamie Roberts, page 65, written and drawn by me.

the legend of jamie roberts genderqueer lgbtq pirate adventure webcomic page 65

Here, I let the space breathe and tell the story for me, without so many words.

Whether you can draw or not, comics are a visual medium. Let the environment and scenery describe for you what words could not.

If you have questions, or need feedback, let me know in the comments. I’m happy to help.

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

You. Are. Awesome.