protags of new comic. pages going up one by one on Patreon, planning to launch webcomic site early 2022

lady-writes:

princeofsparkles:

netfliximab:

real people being partially closeted or ambiguous about their own sexuality while making Gay Art is not queerbaiting

Real people figuring out they’re queer through the process of making gay art is not queerbaiting either

#real people not telling you everything about themselves is allowed

bigbigbigtruck:

Iron Circus Pajama Pride comics stream

Streaming with Amanda, @bluedelliquanti, me, Ovens, and more for the adult comics segment of ICC’s Pajama Pride event! I’ll be working on early pages of my new webcomic, Shot and Chaser.

Hey!

I’m in the virtual artist alley at FujoCon (www.fujocon.com) June 11-13!

Fujocon is free but is by registration only, so if you wanna join in, register before 23:50 US Central June 10!

I’ll be streaming and sketching (link will be in the artist alley Discord channel) and this is gonna be the only time since 2010ish I’ve offered sketch commissions. Pop by if you wanna watch, or get peeks at my new project or whatever. Hope to see you there!

This one, I design for me. All the physical attributes from dudes I had crushes on up through college. Permanent 5 o clock shadow. Big angular honker. Looks like he’s been dead 3 days. This is pure author appeal because it’s my story, MINE

also he’s so terrified of being a burden to his loved ones and feels such deep shame at his shortcomings that he would literally rather die than ask for help. this is not projection at all

This one I also design for me. Soft. sweet. soft and sweet inside and out. good boy. worn down but not cynical. self aware but not self absorbed. After surviving fundamentalist evangelical trauma he finally has built the courage and ability to properly prioritize his needs in a healthy way at 35. Deeply cherishes his friends. love. soft. so soft.

also a total dom in the sack

streaming some sketching. Minor possibility of NSFW so be aware

twitch.tv/ekweaver

Me: ahhhhhh I’m making this new story just for me and I can be as free and lazy and indulgent as I fucking want ahhhhh so liberating
Also me: time to take a giant fucking brain-breaking crash course in meteorology

Streaming some sketching

oursaviorkellinquinn:

ATTENTION

If you see this you are OBLIGATED to reblog w/ the song currently stuck in your head :)

SHY LITTLE FROG

SINGIN ALONG TO THIS FUN TUNE

helioscopepdx:

We are heartbroken to say goodbye to our beloved friend and colleague Jesse Hamm, who died yesterday morning. Jesse was a cartoonist, an illustrator, an essayist, a mentor, and an educator. He was funny, brilliant, and generous and we miss him terribly.

Jesse was occasionally active here at https://hammpix.tumblr.com/, but you can find a lot more from him online on twitter at his personal account https://twitter.com/jesse_hamm, and his art advice account https://twitter.com/Hamm_Tips.

We also recommend “Carousel,” his monthly column on the art and craft of comics at the Comic Con International website. https://www.comic-con.org/toucan/contributor/jesse-hamm.

A number of Jesse’s essays and tip collections are available on Gumroad: https://gumroad.com/jessehamm. Purchasing these is an excellent way to help support his family in this difficult time.

missjamiekaye:

Preorders are open!! I’m getting an enamel pin made of my precious Bean! This is also to raise money to help pay for the dental work she needs.

 If you’d like a Bean of your own, snag one by CLICKING HERE

Help my pal raise cash for her kitty!

‘Cause it’s the first of May, First of May,

Outdoors and six feet away

rosalarian:

I spent ten years building up a following on Tumblr. I had 30k+ followers, great engagement, it helped my career thrive like nothing else. I could quit my day job and live off the fan base I’d accrued.

Then, their policies changed. Half my work was no longer allowed. People left the site in droves. I left too, for awhile. I came back to a ghost town. I still have 25k followers, but I don’t think more than 10% are active anymore. I’m followed by ghosts. Same with DeviantArt, although I was never quite as big there, and I’ve been gone so much longer.

This disallowed half of my work was never allowed on Facebook in the first place, or Instagram, but their algorithms are such that my stuff rarely makes it to anyone’s feeds, and if I post a link to where people could actually pay me for my content, it’s hidden unless I pay for it. Patreon swept my work away to a dark corner where no one could see it unless I personally guided them there. Twitch is so strict you can’t even show bare feet. The death of Google Reader means nobody follows RSS feeds anymore, so I can’t direct people to my own site.

So there’s Twitter I guess, where I can post whatever I want, but again, algorithms. But more than that, I don’t have the energy to build up a following once again on a site I don’t own that can delete my career on a whim. The thought of spending time jumping around through hoops for attention just to have it taken away again has stripped any motivation I had to try.

The internet has been gentrified. All the small cute houses and mom & pop shops have been shut down and replaced by big corporations that control everything. I’ve been making webcomics for twenty years, and at the start, the internet was a beautiful wild place. Everyone had a home page. It was like having a house and people came to visit you and you would visit other people in their houses. Now, we don’t visit each other in personal spaces anymore. It’s like we have to visit each other in the aisles of a megamart. Everything is clean and sanitized and the weirdos who made the internet what it was are no longer welcome. No space for freaks anymore.

People still ask me for advice on how to break into comics, and I don’t have any wisdom because I don’t recognize the internet anymore. I don’t feel comfortable working within its boundaries which seems to be getting smaller and smaller and smaller. None of the tools I used when I started exist anymore. They’ve been replaced by things I don’t know how to use. I don’t think I could break into comics today. 2002 had so few barriers compared to now. You might have started on Keenspace, but you could reach a point where you could break away to your own site and people would go to it. Now, you start on Webtoon or Patreon and I guess you just stay there? It feels so much like owning a hardware store for years and then having to go work as a cashier at the Home Depot that put you out of business. I’m looking at my career trajectory and it all points to being a Wal-Mart greeter with uncontrolled arthritis.

I don’t want to make “content,” I want to make comics, I want to make art, and I want to do it in a space that is mine. I’m not sure there’s a place for that anymore.

“People still ask me for advice on how to break into comics, and I don’t have any wisdom because I don’t recognize the internet anymore. I don’t feel comfortable working within its boundaries which seems to be getting smaller and smaller and smaller.”

This, 100%.
I don’t know if the old model (build your own site, hope people read your comic there) will work at all any more, but it’s the only one that gives the artist complete control, so it’s what I’m sticking with for the current project.
For shorter and adult comics, I just straight up go print-only or paywall-only now, both for ROI and for my safety.

Things have changed so much, both for good and bad, but the flattening of content platforms and the increasing dependence on algorithms are some bogus garbage.

things are pretty hard right now but I think it’ll get better in june.