A Webcomic Experiment

So, this whole webcomic thing has been pretty fun. I’m digging the creative process of developing Arkham Polytech and sharing the development in near-real time, although it is kinda frightening sharing what amounts to first drafts with the universe. But the hope is after twenty or so strips, and the accompanying feedback loop, I’ll end up with something people like, and that I’m proud to draw on an ongoing basis.

So far, after a month, been able to keep a once-a-week update schedule. The drawing/digitizing/posting process is still taking about three hours a strip, mostly because I’m still figuring out what tools work best and experiment (right now it’s hand-draw the scripts, scan into photoshop for cleaning, import into illustrator for vectorizing, coloring, lettering). If I can get that process under two hours a strip, I’ll bite the bullet and go to two-strips-a-week.

Bunch of non-strip work I still need to do — need to put together a character page and need to build audience. Building audience is the tricky part… being good alone won’t generate page views (and it’s far from being “good” yet). Have to build word of mouth, and start participating in online comic/writing communities, which for an anti-social beast like me (with a  day job and a novel in progress) might be a chore. But then again I might like it. Guess we’ll see.

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