publicity stunts

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I call random people and tell them to read my comic. They usually end up calling me back and thanking me for improving the quality of their lives.

[Cope]

I usually end up getting a call from the crazy anti-telemarketing lady when I try that.

[Ida]

I have my own, private telemarketing staff. Who are all cats. Beat THAT.

[Sortelli]

Lots to cover, hope you don't mind this being scattered.

If you can't be bothered to write coherently, I can't be bothered to give a damn what you have to say. This also applies to your comic.

[KODAMA]

Well.. back when I ran a private Ragnarok Online server..
I would do this thing where I'd go and make a bunch of posts on another RO server's forum, and then when my post count reached about 100 or 200, I'd change the link on my signature to go to my own private server's website instead of my homepage. I did this on a few website, and my player count jumped from an average of 5 to 20.


:p so what I think I learned from this, other than the multiple bannings I recieved from every forum I did that, is that the best way to get any kind of following is to recruit people who are already sort of into whatever you are doing. I guess perhaps I should start being active in megatokyo and machall forums to lure some readers from there to read my very skippy comic.

[McDuffies]

whatever. can i tell the mod to bite me here?

Try.

[Packrat]

talent? none to speak of... (magic in production, management or sales)

skills, maybe. kinda dubious most mornings.

hence the pub-stunt thread. this is an ad driven media... and talent is secondary to people actually hearing about your stuff.

sorry, MY stuff. same deal for music, etc. every see a top twenty list of
fav rockers? Ever wonder why there aren't that many classically trained musicians there?

(stars, techs and propaganda. I START with the issue and work backwards to characters, conflict and resolution. [Sorry if that's too deep for ya. have another crayon.])

ah. A sandwich board oughta do it. Had one shopping center manager who was a favorite of a lead face... he made two or three appearences a year on the 6pm news.

IE: usual hyposy. free opening times was great till his place failed at it, then EVERYBODY really needed to be shut down.

hitting his place would raise a (instant) fuss and pos'bly air time.

press release time, i guess. If a get a decent idea.

packrat

[Sortelli]

this is an ad driven media... and talent is secondary to people actually hearing about your stuff.

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. The reason no one reads what you write is because they haven't heard about it yet. That will hold off the dreadful realization that the problem lies on your end a little while longer, and after that doesn't work anymore you can always turn to substance abuse.

OR, you could learn to talk TO people instead of AT them, and trouble yourself to actually make a working website and figure out the basics of character design, dialogue, punchlines, font, computer coloring, penciling, inking and storytelling.

What, exactly, have you been doing for the past ten years if your current level is to scribble unreadable nonsense in MS Paint and sit in the middle of a crowd asking yourself why the world doesn't beat a path to your door?

[Linkara]

I have my own, private telemarketing staff. Who are all cats. Beat THAT.

I secretly bribed all of your cats to promote MY comic, instead.

...And I have squirrels on my staff who form dance teams in an attempt to entertain and promote my comic. I pay them in nuts.

Without the nuts there would be squirrely wrath.

[Jpac]

I have my own, private telemarketing staff. Who are all cats. Beat THAT.

I secretly bribed all of your cats to promote MY comic, instead.

...And I have squirrels on my staff who form dance teams in an attempt to entertain and promote my comic. I pay them in nuts.

Without the nuts there would be squirrely wrath.

I tried to bribe the same cats but my staff was previously made of chinchillas. The cats ate my little darlings and told me if I told anyone- oops

[Prettydragoon]

whatever. can i tell the mod to bite me here?

Try.

That's not much of a publicity stunt, really. There's nobody here but other webcomic artists. You should try it on some forum that is aimed at a more general audience. Like Something Awful.

[The Neko]

I guess if you're wanting negative attention, that should work.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I am full of coffee.

Food is in me. Many a good sanwhich eaten by my person.

Dump now, I must take.

for great justice.

[Rcmonroe]

publicity is KEY. layla (eric clapton) sat buried for YEARS till he released it under his usual name. THEN it took off.

This statement is erroneous. "Layla" (the original, Derek and the Dominos version) was a staple of AOR radio throughout the 70's and early 80's (and probably later, but I wasn't really paying attention after that). I have no idea what the sales figures were but no matter how you define buried, the word just doesn't come close to applying here.

Clapton's later acoustic version may have been a bigger hit (at least in terms of sales) but the original remains the definitive (and no doubt more influential) version.

So there you are. And I don't even particularly like Eric Clapton.

[Dburkhead]

If you can't be bothered to write coherently, I can't be bothered to give a damn what you have to say. This also applies to your comic.

[Packrat]

etc.

what have I been doing for the last ten years....

i'll ignore the logic of the last statement on pub vs talent. Unknown genius is proverbial, etc. I CAN quote lots of industry people who mention 'their big break' and it usually comes down to getting ad-time in a mag.

but a few things come first. Unless you're WORKING in the industry, the chances of your becoming a successful independant are mimimal.

same as music and the arts generally. Dunno if grants count... but SALES and work come before big break.

the big break is media time. face time, etc.

lemme see, the last ten years...

got tired of winning coffe mugs, t-shirts and having scroungers ask for material. I was getting about 50% placement rate with zines for SF and cartoons. no money.

The local pros uniformly lost or stole submissions. Depressing when 100% of your 30 nice cardboard drawing go missing again,
and your story ideas end up coming out under another by-line.

Avoid them if possible, eh? in 96 I discovered some of the charity cons wanted membership before giving away freebies. I decided to concentrate on writing... and tossed a zine out every few months to cons. furry, sf, fanansty, etc. with cartoons.

strickly seasonal, i'm afraid. Holloween, christmas, valentines, st pats, july first.

(wanna try a christmas story? Big market and man, is it saturated with entries.digital people need 'em. AND most want total rights, so like glossy.. (mags. discover, hustler, the new mags) avoid 'em if you can.)

Sometimes tossed 'best of' at world-cons, it depended on the feedback i got that year

Young boys liked the 'girls in black leather' stories. ick, phoo. yuck.

did some checking. (calgary CONvention, was one place) 20 iss's per con, about 10 get picked up. You really needed to be there. or ask that they get stuffed into goody bags.

oh, locals HATE satiries on locals, by the way. trust me on that.

I've gotten oh, 200 some odd cartoons here now. traffic is a function of how much i spam ads out. truth.

thinking weird publitiy stunt, but not enough interest in the strip yet.

MOST cartoons are disguised hate campains. Doonesybury, dilbert, cathy are examples. MOST tv is pardoy by the same guise.

looking at tools for OTHER methods of production and generally hate them. modelling (blender, ie) is modelling and not drawing.

i use gimp and kick it up 200%. I know the stuff's primitive. (So I'm not tony millionaire) but i like BC too.

it'll take about twenty minutes to make a LONG cartoon with sprite kits.
and it'll suck. (AKA rocky+bullwinkle 15 frame a sec stuff). The ipod / telephony new wave seems to be bombing. crash and burn broadband?

google wants copyright weirdness for posting there. avoiding them.

anything else? I poke around. If it's a burn or they ignore me, I avoid 'em. Or they scream they can't keep up. The popular stuff I won't do on a regular basis, as i don't like it.

you want this stuff at your own speed, it seems. I'd rather have you ignore it, thanks. I have purposes for doing things this way.

deep, dark, hidden purposes...

Bu-wa-ha-ha-ha!

packrat

[The Neko]

God your writing is annoying.

[Princess]

It makes me all tired just reading it. You need a Engima machine/rosetta stone or something to figure it out

[TellTaleHeart]

At least he uses white space. Try to imagine that post as a solid block of text.

[Packrat]

It's the lack of a personal pronoun that makes the posting distinctive.

ego-manics beware? ego-centrics are welcome, thou.

I think that this is fine.
Jane, (whoever she is) likes it with more drama.
Boom went the bomb as supper started.

"Honey," i grumbled, watching the gore spatter over the walls, "I don't WANNA go to mars."

s'true. Skipping the NAME of the character makes it difficult to read.

GUESS YOU'LL HAVE TO IDENTIFY WITH SOMETHING ELSE THEN, HUH?

packrat