By
Ed Wiens, creator of GLitcH! computer comics, September 2004
As
I mentioned in the first article, I never really intended to become
a cartoonist.
It was just something I did. Draw funny
pictures, that is. But the idea that someday I would be drawing
little squiggly lines in little boxes outlined in black ink on
a daily basis and getting paid for it, never entered my mind as
a possibility.
That changed as soon as I created the main
GLitcH! character.
The first time I drew my little computer
character I knew it was something unique. I had never seen a cartoonized
computer drawn in this way before - with the eyes on top of the
monitor and the inside of the monitor being the mouth. Usually
when local businesses such as "Crazy Sam's Computer Hut"
or "Mentally Unstable Sid's HiTech Stable" or "Labotomized
Larry's House of 'lectronics," etc., used a cartoon of a
computer, it was always the same way - with the face drawn INSIDE
the monitor (I think Alphabits cereal's character is drawn this
way too.)
What amazed me was that no matter how much
I distorted the monitor by making it curve up to smile, down to
frown, it still worked as a monitor as well as a face.
I then used the mouse as a kind of hand,
for more expression - it sort of waved around frantically when
GLitcH! was talking or pointed at Norb, the human user, to emphasize
some insult or accusation. Again, I don't think anyone had ever
done this before.
By the way, my brother-in-law gave me the
advice when he saw the cartoon character that I should draw ANOTHER
face on the mouse. I think I know what he was going for: the mouse
as a separate character to interact with the computer. But the
fact is that a mouse is attached to a computer by a cord. It would
have been as weird as that old comedian who drew a face on his
hand which he then ventriliquized so he could have a conversation
with himself. Not my style of humor. Also, I realized that people
tend to project personalities on their computers - especially
computers that malfunction. I don't think anyone projects a personality
on a mouse. So, the mouse became a hand.
I worked on this while I sat in front of
the TV at nights. Do you realize how much time we North Americans
spend watching TV? It's the perfect opportunity to do a little
creative work though. I filled a large sketchbook with ideas,
scribbles and tests. When I've gone back and looked at this sketchbook
I see crude, almost unrecognizable GLitcH! character drawing studies,
but that was the point: to test and stretch the character as far
as possible to see what it could do.
When I got down to putting GLitcH! into
strip format, I first did a little research on the various methods
out there (by this I mean I bought a few newspapers and then measured
the strip formats). I also read a few books on cartooning. A good
one was "Your Career in the Comics" by Lee Nordling,
published by Andrews & McMeel.
I then tested every media I could find for
drawing, lettering and inking. Some people swear by using a brush,
which I admit gives you a wonderful varied line that has much
more energy to the strokes compared to the uniform line from a
pen. I could never get a brush to do what I wanted though. Couldn't
feel the paper through it. It was like painting in air because
you have to hold it such a set distance away from the paper. What
worked best for me was a dip pen (not without its problems as
well).
I drew and drew and drew some more. I began
stacking up sheets of cartoons and before I knew it, I had about
sixty cartoons and still didn't feel like I'd done more than scratch
the surface of this topic. That told me I had a chance to take
this a bit further.
I prepared a book of cartoon samples. I
scanned my cartoons and put them three to a page. Since all the
artwork was digitized, I could print off copies whenever I wanted.
I also changed and tinkered with the text, arrangements, and choice
of cartoons inside my book. To make it look a little more elegant
than a bunch of laserprinted sheets stapled together, I bound
each book by using a small rivet tool to pop small rivets into
two holes that I created by stabbing an awl through the stack
of paper.
One more item: I developed a folder for
all this information. I created the artwork for the folder and
scanned it and layed it all out on the computer. It was one piece
of art to be silkscreened onto sheets of card that I bought in
bulk from a paper supplier (the paper was Cornwall 12pt. Coated
one side.) I chose to silkscreen, because I didn't need that many
copies - I believe I had 150 made up, and to this day I think
I still have about 75 left. If I'd chosen to do this with offset
printing, the cost would have been much higher as small runs aren't
economical. The folder was silkscreened in two colours. Each time
I needed one, I would have to sit down at my light table and carefully
trim each one out of the sheet, score the folds, and glue all
the flaps. It was time-consuming, but again, I didn't have much
money and had only slightly more time.
The end result was a professional looking
package: a folder that housed my cover letter, my book and my
card. Later on I would start to include my on-going newsletter
that presented the latest publication that GLitcH! had appeared
in as well as the ever-growing circulation numbers. I believe
that Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, refers to this type of thing
as "shameless self-promotion."
I mailed copies of my package to every newspaper
in the local area as well as a couple of the big national ones.
The response wasn't terrific. Generally there was either no response,
or a politely drafted rejection letter.
A local newsletter with a circulation of
a couple of hundred was very interested - if the cartoon was free.
Fine with me. GLitcH! was finally in print.
The next response came from the Edmonton
Journal. The business editor phoned and left a message on my answering
machine. "I love it and I want it. Give me a call."
This response both thrilled and terrified
me. After meeting the editor, I found he wanted the strip to be
published once per week, not daily which let me relax somewhat.
It suited me fine. I wasn't sure how I would manage a daily strip
anyway along with full-time work and my wife expecting our first
child.
The paper sent out a reporter who interviewed
me. The article accompanied the first strip installment. A local
television station then showed up and wanted to cover me for their
weekly business/entrepreneur program. A major telecommunications
company then called and asked about the strip and GLitcH! subsequently
appeared as an entertainment feature on a yellow-pages website
for Alberta. This was followed by GLitcH! appearing in other provincial
and national yellow-pages websites. (I should mention that some
of these calls came after I had sent them my package first. They
weren't calling out of the blue).
The telecommunications company also asked
for GLitcH! in several of its newsletters. One was an IT newsletter
for techies and they kept asking for strips on specific details
of operating systems. "You know - really hilarious stuff
like protocols, firewalls, XP110G transducers- stuff like that."
It became an extremely busy time. For a
period of two years, I woke up each morning at 5:30 a.m., had
a shower, and then started drawing and inking for about an hour
before heading off for my regular job. I would create a new strip
each day. I would spend my lunchhours pencilling in new strips
and ideas and when I got home I would spend another hour or so
scanning and prepping my strip to be sent out by e-mail. It meant
adding about 2 to 3 hours of extra work each day. It was hard
but I had a system and knew that if I stuck to it, it was possible.
(I can sense that many of you people who commute in large cities
aren't very sympathetic if you spend the same amount of time each
day sitting in traffic!)
Although GLitcH! never appeared as a daily
strip anywhere, I had to create a new one each day because I had
worked out a number of exclusive deals with my various clients.
Here's how it worked. Nobody was willing
to pay enough to have GLitcH! totally on an exclusive basis. By
this I mean where GLitcH! would ONLY appear in one newspaper or
one website (although I tried to get a group deal together with
a newspaper chain, there was no interest). So, I arranged that
my different clients had exclusive individual cartoons. They would
get brand new cartoons that were unpublished. Although I could
republish (or syndicate) them in other papers, it was only allowable
after a certain time period - after one year or a couple of months,
depending. This way, everyone was happy, but I was still very
busy, although after a while, when I was republishing cartoons,
I discovered how nice it is when you get paid again for a strip
you created a while ago. If you can sell a strip a number of times,
the value of the time you invested begins to grow. What originally
amounted to about $10 per hour would now double and triple. Ahh,
the magic of syndication.
The extra money was really needed. But cartooning
was never about money and certainly income from this little sideline
fluctuated widely. But it also led to interesting and exciting
possibilities such as my association with a Hollywood talent agency
(see Article 2: Hollywood:
GLitcH! and the Glitz.)
What was the most difficult during all this
was keeping the contracts going. The process of keeping in touch
with everyone, making sure they're happy, and keeping the contracts
renewable took a lot of work, and I was definitely reaching my
limit. Too many balls in the air, as they say. This is where I'd
say the value of a major syndicate would have been appreciated,
because you CAN do it all yourself, but only to a point.
Finally, my work would culminate in the
publishing of my first book of cartoons, "How do you START
this thing?" in 2001. The title related to a new computer
user trying to start a computer AS WELL as a cartoonist wondering
how to get a career in comics going. Details on this venture,
as they say (just who is this "they" and why do they
keep saying things?), is
another story.
Ed Wiens
