I don’t particularlly think of myself as a “proper” webcartoonist. I come from the Punk Rock School of Doing Anything: experience is less important than enthusiasm, and finesse is unnecessary when brute force and loud noise will do just as well. That said, even though I don’t seek artistic perfection in myself I do admire it in others and I’m interested when people talk about they things they do to get better.
Scott Kurtz (PvP), Kris Straub (Starslip Crisis), Brad Guigar (Evil Inc) and Dave Kellett (Sheldon) are all cartoonists who are serious about cartooning. They’ve started a podcast called Webcomics Weekly where they talk about problems and give cartooning tips to aspiring webcartoonists. After listening to their first episode I learned that there is no way any of these guys are regular readers here — I am guilty of every single one of the “webcomic pet peeves” they discuss during the program. 🙂 I compound my transgressions in Episode 2, and dig myself even deeper in Ep3.
That’s beside the point, though… the four of them have some really interesting things to say about what people can do to make webcomics work. Some of it is general (i.e., don’t worry about how to set up your internet store when you only have three episodes in your archives) and some of it is very specific (i.e., suggestions on how to handle the flow of dialog in a panel, or perspective changes from one panel to the next, or the advantages of hand-lettering vs. computer fonts.
The recording is pretty clear (except for Dave Kellet’s line, which seems perennially cursed by connection problems) and it’s engaging listening. All four are good cartoonists with useful and interesting things to say.
Not that it’ll do me a lick of good. Drawing. Pfah.
