Happy New Years to you all. I am not big on resolutions for myself but this is the 3rd  I’ve done for www.dontfeedthegeek.com Check out last year’s post here.

   Let’s take a look at how I did on 2010′s goals for DFTG:

Goals for 2010

1. Increase traffic. Duh. Success. With the exception of December every month was an increase in traffic. It looks like I almost tripled my traffic.

2. Participate more in the webcomic community and find new heroes to follow. Success. I met many new cartoonists and fans of webcomics. Some of the folks I “met” I only met virtually, but still made new friends and heroes.

3. Publish a book. I’m close to finishing this one. I just need to finish some original art that will only be available in the book. And then have the guts to spend the money to do it. The mock ups look decent so far I must say. I hired Krishna to do the cover and that looks fantastic. In this case I want people to judge a book by it’s cover. I was hesitant to have someone else to do the cover but I see many examples of far superior artists have someone else design the cover, I had the good sense to ask Krishna to do it. Success. My book is out at the beginning of the year. The reaction was decent just like the end product. I learned a lot for next time. Buy the book here.

4. Have a table at least 2 expos in 2010. Fail. In 2010 I still only made the one expo, DWEX in Plano Texas.

5. Get more mentions on other sites, positive mentions. 2009 was great as I “met” many great cartoonists who actually looked at my toons and some even had good things to say. Success. I was mentioned, did a guest comic for another site, got reviewed, and was mentioned on a blog.

Goals for 2011:

1. Create at least one comic book. My next book will be a more traditional comic book style. I found where I will have it printed. If it looks good a may do more than one with different themes.

2. Have a more successful comic expo. I did OK in the last expo, but I was too laid back. I need to self promote better. Hopefully, I’ll have more products to sell.

3. Double my web traffic.

4. Start a new B&W comic. I have some plans for a new strip I’m trying to develop. If I do it, it will be kept simple and will be more about the writing. I can tell you it will be more focused on family humor. I’m trying to secure the URL I want for it and it is available in January hopefully. So I won’t give the name just now. I want to keep it simple enough so I can produce it faster. Right now my full color DFTG toon takes 3 hours minimum and usually much longer. I will still be doing DFTG for those that actually read it now.

5. Master Manga Studio and step my comic’s style to a professional looking art. This is my most ambitious goal and the hardest to achieve. I’m getting closer but not sure I’m close.

Let’s get back together one year from now and see how I did again. happy New Year. I hope your coming year is your best and that God blesses you and your family. Thanks for reading this year.

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     My first book has arrived. I ordered my book through www.instantpublisher.com and they had it to me within 10 days. I must say I’m very happy with the end product. The cover was done by my interweb buddy Krishna Sadasivam and it may be the best part of the book and really sets the tone. The book is B&W with some color pages and a total of 60 pages. The price of an all color book was greater than I was willing to pay. I think the B&W and color mix works well though. I was very worried of the quality of the final product so I did a short run. I had also not heard of any other cartoonist using Instant Publisher. So far everyone who has seen it has been very complimentary. I highly recommend Instant Publisher, they were great to work with. They have a great utility on their site to do a price quote that is fun to play with the variations. If you are considering a book at least check out the price generator.

   My plan is to sell these at the upcoming Dallas Web Comic Expo. I have not really put much thought into how to sell them on my webpage. I know I can create some options to use Pay-pal on my page but honestly have not investigated that much. I’m not sure if the demand will be high enough to put forth the needed effort. I suppose I could just deal with people who want a book one on one for now. Maybe have them put the money in Pay-pal and then I’d send the book? Again, I think I’ll wait and see what the demand is. I’ve actually sold several copies and had some readers “pre-order” the book so we will see how it goes. I hope they sell well enough that I have to make another order right away.

    Regardless, the process has been a lot of fun and I learned a lot. If I do another book, I’ll do a much better job. I hope this one does enough sales to justify the next book. The price of the book is $12 but I may sell it cheaper at DWEX as a promotional thing. The nice thing is my investment is not high so if I sell half of the books I can break even. I think considering my webcomic, breaking even is a lofty goal.

   Here are some pics, I’m wearing my “hacker” shirt for today’s photo:

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     Matt Stout of the hilarious comic Big Sandy Gilmore sent out a call to some of his interweb cartoon buddies asking for some guest strips for his finals week coming up in May. I jumped at the chance and planned on doing one eventually. I guess I must have gotten inspired quickly because the next thing I knew I had the comic done well ahead of schedule. I sure wish I could do that for my own webcomic but oh well. It was fun to draw other folks cartoon characters. I did a guest strip a long while back for a guy in England to benefit Make a a Wish but I was new to the webcomic thing and it was not as good as I think I’m capable of.

     Matt was going to use my comic and others during finals but now has decided to spread them out. I know how it is, if you have a buffer of any kind it is hard not to go ahead and use it. So I guess Matt is on the hook to do some posts during final week now. Anyway find the comic I did for Matt here. It was fun and I hope it looks good enough for his usual fine work. I see web cartoonist ask for submissions for guests toons but I hesitant as I”m not sure my style fits theirs. It was cool that Matt asked me specifically, so in theory he knew more or less what to expect. I hope other cartoonists ask me for submissions in the future, it sure was fun.

    If you don’t read BSG regularly now, go ahead and bookmark or subscribe to his feed now. It’s worth it and  family safe and still manages to be a little edgy without getting vulgar as so many webcomics will do.

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I just started playing with some new animation software. I have a project I’m working on but as a quick exercise I wanted to do a animation with lip syncing. My web buddy and fellow wanna-be cartoonist Bo Lumpkin(as if that’s his real name, it isn’t actually) www.Bolumpkin.com does some funny cartoons and videos. i decided to take one of his old videos and his character and animate it. It was fairly easy once all the components were draw. Drawing 10 different mouths shapes took a while. I use Anime Studios Debut and I liked it a lot and recommend everyone at least try the free trial that is interested in animation. The only complaint I have is there was no built in tool to make the video web ready. It took longer finding a way to reduce the file size of the default sizes. Anyway I hope to do more of these as well. Like I said the Bo Lumpkin, www.bolumpkin.com , really lends itself well to this kind of animation.

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With the beginning of the year I thought I’d go back and look at last year’s resolutions and see how well I did. I also inclded my goals for 2010

1. Create or have a great logo created for Don’t Feed The Geek. Result=Success. Krishna Sadasivam @ pcweenies.com did up an excellent logo/banner for me.

2. Stick to a solid schedule. Until now I have been fairly random on my postings. Result=Success. Except for a week of illness I have published new toons every Tuesday and Thursday.

3. Do these toons with more professional techniques and get better. Result=Mixed. While I think there has been some improvement, I need to go much further.

4. Increase traffic to this site. Result=Success. (marginal) Traffic is up from the previous year and the schedule helped a lot.  I still want to see bigger increase, but I’m mostly pleased. I even picked up a few fans if you can believe that, and no they were not related to me.

5. Create the story line comic I have been planning, finally! Result=Fail. I started it but no where near being ready for anyone to see. I may abandon it and try a different story.

Goals for 2010

1. Increase traffic. Duh.

2. Participate more in the webcomic community and find new heroes to follow.

3. Publish a book. I’m close to finishing this one. I just need to finish some original art that will only be available in the book. And then have the guts to spend the money to do it. The mock ups look decent so far I must say. I hired Krishna to do the cover and that looks fantastic. In this case I want people to judge a book by it’s cover. I was hesitant to have someone else to do the cover but I see many examples of far superior artists have someone else design the cover, I had the good sense to ask krishna to do it.

4. Have a table at least 2 expos in 2010.

5. Get more mentions on other sites, positive mentions. 2009 was great as I “met” many great cartoonists who actually looked at my toons and some even had good things to say.

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    When I first started doing a web-comic I naively just emailed various web-cartoonist I admired. Most went unanswered and unacknowledged. However Krishna Sadasivam of www.pcweenies.com and www.uncubedthecomic.com answered me right away. Not only did he respond he took the time to really answer my question.  He is hands down the most approachable of the best know web-cartoonist.

   That was a while back and over that time my admiration for him has only increased. So yesterday when I got an email from him with “fan art” in it of my main character, I was just down right giddy. I’m still just amazed the he took the time to do it and it really looks amazing. After last week doing my first comic expo and receiving Krishna’s amazing art this week I feel like I have arrived finally and belong here in web-comics. I’m even in the earliest stages of planning a short run book by the end of the year.

   Krishna, thanks again. You made my day and then some.

   To all my web-comic buddies out there. Jealous much?

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    This Saturday November 14th I’ll be doing my first expo to promote my this website. The is the first time they are holding the Dallas Web Comic Expo, you can find for information at www.dwex.info

   I’m excited and nervous and not fully sure what to expect. If it turns out to merely be an event I get to hang out with a lot of web cartoonists that will still be worth it. I had some swag made up to sell and give away. I have several version of a mini-comic made up to give away. I also had some mouse pads and t-shirts made up.  I’m probably going to sell the t-shirts for $10  for the show. I’ve not come up with a price for the mouse pads, mouse pads just aren’t used like they used to be.

    I have some shirts I may just give away and may end up doing the same with the mouse pads. Just to see if anyone is reading this I have a few things I will give away to the 1st 3 people that come up to me and give me the code word “aardvark”. If you know me you don’t qualify, sorry. I’ll give them a small care package of things, some are things that I won’t be selling.

     This is a low quality picture of some of the swag I have and a sneak peak at my banner.

   I have an idea of which shirts will sell and which won’t, maybe none will. I guess we will see. I have shopped around and have gotten some great deals over the last few weeks on this stuff so I don’t have a lot of money invested. If I break even I’ll be happy. Heck, I’ll be pleased just to get some stuff in people’s hands that promote the site.

   So I’m prepared to have some fun and I know the guys putting this show on have put in a lot of work and we are all grateful. Thanks guys! See ya’ll at DWEX.

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   Ever since I heard about dwex.info I tried to talk myself into doing it. DWEX is the Dallas Webcomic Expo on November 14th.  It’s the first year for it so my timing may be good, if it were one of the big shows I know I would not be able to talk myself into going. It’s ironic that there is a cartoonist who is not doing it because it is in it’s first year, and that is one of my reasons for doing it.

   Brian Powers of liltoon.com and I will be sharing a table so that also makes it easier. I don’t have any merchandise to sell but I’m putting together some mini-comics to give out. I also need to come up with some sort of banner I guess as well. It’s going to be fun getting ready for it, let’s just hope my head can get around it by then.

More to come.

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  We have a small water garden in the front flower bed. Thursday’s toon will go into more detail and there is a cartoon to go with it. We found the 3rd male toad tonight. It is really cool, especially considering the world is losing frogs and toads in rapid numbers. Some species are literally disappearing from one season to the next. They seem OK for now in our little suburb. Here is an animated version of part of tomorrow’s toon.

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I got a kick out of doing this, so I thought I’d share it. I used open source programs for this while thing. I used Paint.Net to draw it, CamStudio to capture it, Windows Movie Maker (not really open source), and of course WordPress and a plugin to post it. I may do more stuff like this. It’ll probably be cooler a more detailed drawing. The cartoon I’m drawing in the video can be seen at http://dontfeedthegeek.com/2009/07/09/how-was-your-week/

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