Kelci D Crawford

April 14, 2014

Validation’s Book Cover…In Progress

Please excuse how late this update is today, but I’ve been drawing up a storm.

Most recently, I’ve been drawing up some ideas for Validation‘s book cover:

…And I threw in a little Rubber Duck: The Reckoning (I still want that to be a real movie).

These are just some initial ideas for the book cover, front AND back. Christian and I haven’t reached a decision yet.

I kept them loose and stick-figure-like because I just want the idea across. I’ll save the tight rendering for the final choice.

What do you think? Which do you prefer?

April 13, 2014April 13, 2014

Vacation is Over, and Now…

Believe it or not, despite the daily blog updates, I was actually on a little vacation this past week.

My mom flew in to visit here in Arizona, so I was spending some quality time with my family, including some time at the San Diego Zoo:

2014-04-07 12.08.15 — I saw my first panda! They’re smaller than I thought they would be.

There’s also been a lot of movie-watching. I recommend The Great Gatsby but NOT The Wolf of Wall Street. The former is what the latter wishes to be.

I also recommend The World’ End. It’s fascinating and hilarious, and the ending really got to me. It’s a movie that sticks to you, in a good way.

Today’s my last day of vacation. Tomorrow, I’m back to the drawing board!

And now that I’m not on RedBubble anymore, I can focus on making new art and comics for Storenvy, Validation, Johnson & Sir, and the Free Comic Book Day event at the library (date, time and location are on the sidebar of this blog).

I’ll do my best to update this blog everyday (hey, I’ve been doing pretty good so far). There will be sketches and works in progress for the projects this week, and I also want to do a series of posts about the making of my comics. Writing, layouts, sketching, inking, colors…

So keep checking back!

And for an inspirational photo of the day, behold a shade nook under a tree:

April 12, 2014April 11, 2014

Why I Left RedBubble

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I had an account at RedBubble, a print-on-demand place for artists to share their work and make a mint with their art printed on stickers, phone cases, T-shirts, postcards, etc.

I had an account with them a few years ago, left, and then last year or so came back to them. I wanted to try and get more involved in the community, see what other artists had to offer, and try to actually sell something.

RedBubble is not the first print-on-demand art site that I’ve tried. Years ago I had an account on Zazzle.com, which was by all accounts a failure. The upload system they had was clunky, their storefront systems even more so, and I didn’t even know they had forums (much less how to get to them) until after I left.

Of the two, RedBubble was far superior, though there are still some things lacking that made me leave today.

First, while their storefronts (or profiles, however you want to view it) are nice, they’re not customizable. At least you can sort your works into collections like T-shirts or Fanart, which helps. It just isn’t what I’m looking for.

Second, the people looking at my work on RedBubble were…other people on RedBubble. The website is large, but it’s pretty insular. Everyone knows everyone and if you DO make sales, it’s likely the buyer is another Bubbler. That was the case with my friend Melanie.

Third, though it was relatively easy to share your work on things like Facebook and Twitter, it’s not that much of an improvement. Again, RedBubble is pretty insular, and people outside of the site don’t know what it is.

Fourth, I wasn’t selling ANYTHING. For over a year.

I admit I didn’t market it very well. Even most of my readers will be like, “Woah, you were on RedBubble?”

Honestly, though, I’ve had WAY more success on Storenvy. At least there, I average one sale a month and I would love to boost my sales even more. I can customize the store AND decide what I sell. Win-win!

So, thanks RedBubble, but you were not for me.

Unfortunately this means you won’t be able to get the T-Rex Sissy Fight as a T-shirt…FOR NOW.

(I’ll look elsewhere and if I find a good printer, pre-orders will be coming. Watch out here on the blog, because that’s where I’ll be posting the news!)

If you want to visit my Storenvy store, you can click here or click on the “Shop” link along the top of the page.

Thanks for reading. I hope you found this helpful!

April 11, 2014April 4, 2014

The Story Behind Johnson & Sir

I love making Johnson & Sir.

And not just for the T-Rex Sissy Fights.

Or the Noodle Trees.

Or Sir’s Sirness.

Sir_What_Sorcery_Is_This — I REALLY want this to be a thing on Tumblr.

I love Johnson & Sir largely because of something that most readers don’t know about until today: the story behind why it exists.

Originally, Johnson & Sir started with my little sister and me hanging out and playing Jak II.

There are bad guys in that game called Krimzon Guards (which are pretty much elf police because everyone in that game was an elf or a talking beast). The fun part is, when you’re making Jak stand idle in the street or you’re just being bored, you can overhear the Krimzon Guards talking to each other and being bored.

My sister and I started to have fun with it and we spit-balled our own made-up dialogue between two Krimzon Guards, whom we called Johnson and Sir. And it was Johnson’s job to make Sir’s life as miserable and odd as possible. At that time, any time I drew them, it was a running gag that you would never see Johnson’s face (kind of like Wilson’s hidden face in the show Home Improvement).

Also Johnson cross-dressed. A LOT. And hit on Sir any chance he could.

For a few years, it stayed as an inside joke between my sister and me until I went to college. It was there that I shared the idea with my roommate, and then we went nuts with it and developed Johnson and Sir even more. There were insinuations of scandalous affairs, dry humor, the works.

Over time, my roommate moved out, college happened, and for a while I forgot about Johnson and Sir.

UNTIL ONE DAY…

It was in March of 2013. My older sister was in town for a few months until she could move to Arizona (long story). And by that time, I was dating Marc the Boyfriend for a bit. All three of us decided to go out to lunch together and just hang out.

While there, not only did I make Marc the Boyfriend giggle at the banter between my sister and me, but we both ended up talking about Johnson and Sir with him.

It happened a little like this:

Me: I’ve been thinking about getting into webcomics, but I don’t know what to make.

Sister: Dude, you should make a comic about Johnson and Sir. That shit cracked me up.

Marc: What’s that?

So afterward I sketched a few character designs, got a few ideas for strips from my sisters, and then Johnson & Sir was born.

JohnsonandSirPromo4 — Some new characters were added over time, too.

Although Johnson & Sir has gone through a lot of changes in art, the humor is always there, and I hope it stays that way.

If you would like to read it (and you should, because it’s ridiculous and fun), you can start reading it here.

And then you will be part of a wonderful, fantastic inside joke.

April 10, 2014April 4, 2014

Abandoned Projects: Drawn Silly

Oh boy this is an OLD one.

Today’s project feature is my (very) old journal webcomic, Drawn Silly.

Way back in 2010 (oh god that was four years ago as of today)…

As I was hanging out with the college Cartooning Club and talking about webcomics and the possibilities within them, I started to wonder how I could get into this webcomic thing.

At the time, journal webcomics were either emerging or had been around for a short time, and I went, “Oh I could do that!” So I did.

I liked this project so much at one point that I made prints of one of my favorite pages:

Click the image to get to the page where you can get a print of your own. (YAY subversive advertising)

The problem? I never updated it consistently.

It also got to a point where I wasn’t excited to work on it, and I felt like I had nothing new to share. That, and college got more intense and there was some personal drama going on with one of my ex’s.

So I stopped the project the semester after I started it.

HOWEVER…

Within the last few months, I’ve been considering getting back into journal comics, but making the art WAY simpler (i.e. no markers or colors, so I can more easily update daily).

Though I won’t lie, I’ve been considering starting it again, largely because my older sister is encouraging me to do it if only so she can co-star in it. For a while the project was called Adventures with a Bipolar Sister.

Over time, her diagnosis changed from being Manic Depressive to having Borderline Personality, so that title fell by the wayside.

If I DO move forward with the idea, we both decided it should be called Adventures in Adulthood, because adulthood is FRACKING WEIRD and I want to have as much fun with it as possible.

I still really want to make it. Would you read it?