image from The Art of Veiling, by yours truly

There have been posts before (I think) about how to go about creating a world, especially when it comes to fantasy settings. You’re supposed, if you want to do it right, to build everything that makes up the world in ...

The Businessman, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

I have a certain level of disdain for people who believe that comics and art in general are merely hobbies. When I was much younger and on the receiving end of advice from many well-meaning grown-ups, the word “practical” and the phrase ...

Welcome back, gang! Er, can I call y'all “gang”? Is that too informal or too assumptive about your willingness for complicity in my extra curricular activities? Eh, too bad. Once you're in the gang, there's only one way out. Now, while you're letting that sink in ...

Deep in the forest lives a pale, white squirrel (that might not be a squirrel at all) and it instills fear in the hearts of the country folk who believe it to be an evil beast. The prince of the kingdom has vowed not to marry a bride until the ...

To me this is one of the most fascinating elements of storytelling. The idea behind Chekhov’s Gun is to employ parsimony in the information comprising a plot and content: If something isn’t essential to the story, just don’t include it. Little by little, it became more “if ...

I was not anticipating the long lines and large crowds for Black Friday this year, but my shopping haul from this past weekend was delightfully fruitful. I decided it was time for a “Treat. Yo. Self.” spending spree (Tom Haverford-style from Parks and Recreation).

I played a lot of video ...

No matter what the genre, plot and general tone of your comic, death always is absolute.

Or alternatively, death is used as a very efficient comedy device (if anyone remembers the numerous ways Dirk dies in Dragon’s Layer). Unsurprisingly so, I think, since real comedy is based on tragedy ...

METAPHORROR

Hey, they're always tellin' me to recycle!

Last Halloween I did a breakdown of four categories of horror. So I've repurposed it here, images and all, to talk about the metaphorical nature of horror.

Horror is perfect for metaphor and allegory. In fact, a horror story is ...

(From the desk of kawaiidaigakusei)

Here is a little treat to celebrate the first week of Autumn. I wrote this version of “The Webcomic Artist Manifesto” in the Fall quarter for an art history class on Dada. A Manifesto is a public declaration used to incite or inspire a group ...

-Guest Post written by Prototype

I believe webcomics authors are often too eager to mimic our paper print cousin. We try to make our comics as close to a normal issue as possible with format and length when we in fact should embrace the stuff we can do better. We ...