Tidbits

Yeah, 'Tidbits', now you can see why I'm not covering the problems below in this post.

I'm been writing a 3-part piece on The Changing Face of Minicomics on The Forbidden Planet International Blog. The first part is in relation to some discussions we have had on The Comics Journal Forum about minicomics and the second part features comic work by Gerry (Sister Mary Dracula) Mooney* and Bill 'Stik' Greenhead's World of Cow cartoons. The third part will have details about price of producing your own comic, or making use of POD.

Go to Gerry's Mooneyart site for details. The 'sistermarydracula.com' site is not there yet, and it's a really irritating add that traps you on the site and won't let you back-button out (I hate that!).
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I was talking with Playboy cartoonist Mike Lynch about roughs. I send roughs to publications and Mike sends finished cartoons, you can do either, as long as the Cartoon Department you're sending to doesn't insist on one or the other.

Just to clear things up, because 'Literally Hundreds of People'* have emailed me about how 'rough' my roughs are ( those of you familiar with the code here know that probably means I've had one email). Of course I'm tempted to say my 'roughs' are 'dead hard; really, really, rough', but they are pretty close to being the finished article - it's just that because they are still pencil drawings, and not yet inked, I can change the parts the Editor might want changed, more easily.

If no changes are required, I don't actually have to ink the thing, I can adjust the drawing on the computer to darken the pencil lines to very black and the grey pencil-smudged ares to white. But I really like inking.

Of course some publications can, and do, publish the pencil drawing, and I think, at times, that it looks better than the inked one because the pencil work really is a sketch of the idea as it happens, rather than a cold-blooded execution of a commercial idea; if you get my drift. Put it this way, it's more spontaneous.