Sam and Fuzzy Q & A: Surprise Edition
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"How long have you known where you wanted the story to go? Writers sometimes talk about stories taking on lives of their own -- so do your characters still surprise you sometimes?" -Lauren
Compared to some of my other webcomics cohorts, I definitely fall on the "plan everything obsessively in advance" side of the spectrum. (You can actually hear me yammer on about this on this episode of the Writing Excuses podcast, and hear my friend Jeph talk about working with a more freestyle approach in this one!) But even so, there's still room for charaters to surprise me... particularly minor characters who weren't a major part of the broadest early story planning.
Jess Star is one good example. When I introduced her, I didn't really think of her as being especially morally dubious. She's such a light and goofy character! But it seems like she'll go along with pretty much any scheme she's being employed to participate in without a lot of qualms. (Actually, I feel like I once read an interview with Jeff Smith where he said the same thing about Smiley Bone.)
"I have started to write a story, and I have realized that the story is better told in a visual format, than a written one. And I can't draw. This is not a question of desire or skill, but a result of a childhood injury. As a result, I am writing to you, one of the few web artists I know of, if you know any starting artists, who could possibly help." -Maxwell
I don't actually have a good answer to this question, Maxwell. But I thought I'd post it anyway, because I get asked variations of it quite frequently! I hear from a lot of creators looking for comics collaborators... usually writers looking for artists. Unfortunately, I don't have any great advice about how to do it. I've never worked with an illustrator myself, so I don't know much about the process of finding one.
In general, it does seem like there are a lot more writers looking for artists than the reverse. I think it's because the drawing half of the process is a lot more time consuming than the writing -- writers can (and generally do) work on multiple projects, but illustrators can usually only keep up with the workload of one regular comic at a time.
But of course, it's not impossible! It's probably just a difficult search. Sorry I can't be more helpful! Good luck finding your future collaborator.
"Are you going to do another stream when you draw more Halloween pictures? This last one was the first of yours that I saw, but I really enjoyed it!" -John
I am not sure! I do want to draw a few more, but I'm not sure exactly where it's going to fit into my schedule yet. I might be drawing them spread out, doing individual pieces between other work, which wouldn't work out for a stream. But I'll try to do at least one more stream event before the end of the year!
Incidentally, there are now only 9 of the original batch left unsold! You can check 'em all out here.
That's a wrap for this week, team. Come back on Monday for more exciting Bonus comics!
-Sam Logan
