BenPaddon.co.uk

On Sunday I completed the design for the business cards I’ll be using at this year’s Comic-Con:

It’s nice and to the point, I think. I’ve ordered 1,000 of them, that being the minimum order for the local company I’m using, and I imagine that realistically I’ll use 100 of them, if that. Still, it’s always nice to have the cards. It makes me feel marginally less unprofessional. Besides, if nothing else I can pop ‘em in as a sort-of “With compliments” card when the first Jump Leads book comes out. Or something.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but the foreword for the book is going to be written by Kris Straub. There’s a lot of crossover between our fanbase… wait, no, let me rephrase: Jump Leads’ fanbase is made up almost entirely of fans of Starslip Crisis, which isn’t a bad thing. He’s been quite vocal about how much he enjoys Jump Leads, so I’m looking forward to what he’ll wind up writing. Kris is a top bloke, and he’s been remarkably tolorant of my presence on these precious Intertubes. Maybe one day he and Tauhid will finally rise up and trample me into the ground.

On Wednesday night I recorded an interview with the wonderful guys at the GigCast, where we talked about Jump Leads, Ghost Hamster and PodWarp 1999, amongst other things. You can listen to the podcast here, if you’re interested.

Remember that “webcomic dumping ground” idea I wrote about earlier today? I’ve only bloody gone and done it.

This morning Paul Southworth this tweet about today’s Ugly Hill:

Today’s comic is what happens when I don’t feel like I have an outlet for any other ideas. Wish I could do it more often.

That got me thinking: What if there were a website where cartoonists could put up such strips? Think about it - a daily webcomic with different comics every day by different people, for those occasions where they come up with an idea that doesn’t fit into their own comic. Somewhere to put ideas that might work for one or two strips, but probably couldn’t be sustained over a long period of time.

Say Krishna comes up with a funny idea for a strip about zombie proof-readers. One quick joke, one quick strip, but it doesn’t quite fit in with PC Weenies or Uncubed. Or say Jim wants to take a break from Outsider and do one or two quick little three-panel strips about a Leprechaun Pimp. They could draw a strip and send it on to this site, and then it gets put up in a few days as that day’s comic. One day you’re seeing Jim’s Leprechaun pimp-slapping someone, the next you’ve got Krisha’s zombies lamenting the number of spelling errors in their latest document. A different comic about something different every single day, forever.

I’m seriously considering setting this up. GhostHamster.com is going woefully unused at the moment with no sign that Eric and Jeremy are interested in actually getting around to launching it, so maybe I’d stick it there. Or maybe I’d set it up as something new. But it’d be interesting to see what people think about it. I’ve already had some positive feedback on Twitter.

Any thoughts?

In an attempt to make my blog seem as mundane as possible, I’m now going to talk about my posture.

Those of you who listened to Saturday’s edition of The Program with Kris Straub might recall a very brief discussion about how photogenic I’m not. Kris mentioned that he’s seen photos of me and I always seem to be slouching, which is something I’ve been vaguely aware of now for a long time. I’m 6′ 4″ and a lot of stuff - door handles, bathroom sinks, elevator buttons, etc. - seems to have been positioned lower than I require it to be. Plus I like to keep eye contact with the people I talk to, so if I’m walking and talking to them it’s easier to simply lower myself down so that they’re not looking up my nose. That and it’s less intimidating. Also I’m scared of heights.

However, Kris is right and I need to be less slouchy and more upright and awesome. That’s been my goal this week - stand tall, walk proud (I narrowly avoided the urge to write “Walk Hard”), etc. I’ve been pretty successful save for the fact that since I’ve been keeping myself upright my back has begun to ache and, as I mentioned above, everything seems to be just out of reach. It’s annoying, to be sure, but I imagine it’s something I’ll get used to.

In other news, I had lunch with Dino Andrade on Tuesday. For those of you who don’t know, he is (amongst other things) the voice of Skull on PvP: The Series, and the founder of geek dating site SoulGeek. He’s also a good friend and a top bloke, and I’ve been wanting to work with him for a while now. Fortunately for me he wanted to work with me as well, and he’s decided I would be the perfect guy to produce and co-host Radio SoulGeek, the official SoulGeek podcast. So lunch was mostly us talking about what we want out of our respective futures (there appears to be a fair amount of overlap there, which is nice) and planning the format for the podcast. It’s all looking incredibly promising and I don’t want to give away too much but besides the usual stuff - Geek News, Interviews, music, all of which will be delivered in a unique, fun way - there’s some really cool stuff that I don’t want to go into too much now for fear of ruining the surprise. I can promise you that it’ll be available to everyone (not just SoulGeek members) and, assuming we do it properly, it’s going to be a must-hear podcast. Whee!

There’s also some very cool stuff happening with Jump Leads in the near future but I definitely want to keep that one to myself for now.

Anyway, that’s enough from me for the moment. I have work to do!

Euan has “redubbed” the latest PvP strip. I’ve posted it up over on SkyScraper, our collaborative writing blog. Enjoy!

I want to do another webcomic.

I’m obviously not abandoning Jump Leads, so don’t worry about that. I’m constantly writing scripts, constantly coming up with ideas, and that story is far from over. No, I’m very much feeling the need to work on a more traditional three- or four-panel “slice o’ life” comic. Something a little more close-to-home. Something semi-autobiographical.

And I want to draw it myself.

Yes, I know, I hate everything I draw. But I want to get past that. I want to break that barrier and try to get myself to a state where I am once again happy with my cartooning. I have no understanding of anatomy, no real grasp of technique, my style is wobbly and any hands I draw look like shit, but I want to give it a go again. Two years ago I decided I was too frustrated with my art to continue working on Fried, and I decided I wasn’t good enough to do Jump Leads. But I want to break that cycle. I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough to bring Jump Leads to life (and just as well really, as JjAR is doing a much better job of that than I ever could) but I reckon I could get myself to a place where I can say, “Alright, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Hopefully I’ll have something more concrete for you in the near future.

Now that my Jinxlet Adoption Certificate is framed and on my desk at work, I figured it’d be a good idea to share some pictures. Click to embiggen.

We are now one month away from the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing, and I am terribly excited. I’m also ever-so-slightly nervous. Jump Leads‘ first convention. Lawks! Fortunately I won’t be alone - Euan Mumford, formerly of Rooms, will be there; JjAR may well be there depending on how quickly his passport application is processed; and then of course there’s Rowan. He’s a friend of the family’s son, and for some reason he absolutely adores me. I’ll only be in England for a week and a half and I know he wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t see him somehow, so I’ve made arrangements for him to be at the Thing with me as well. Fun, eh?

I was also hoping to be at the San Diego Comic-Con in July, but there are a number of problems there. Firstly, Dino has informed me that the Waiting List for exhibitors at Comic-Con is long. Insanely long. Immensely long. So long, in fact, that Dino had pre-registered SoulGeek as an exhibitor for the ‘08 event at the end of the ‘07 event, and even he is on the Waiting List. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the chances of being able to book a hotel room for San Diego in July are slim. I’d have better odds of winning an Olympic Gold Medal for swimming, and I don’t see that happening in my immediate future.

The word “Bugger” echoes around the city of Los Angeles. Dogs cock their heads. Birds scatter. Babies awaken from their sleep, crying and unsettled.

Something may well change in the immediate future, but for now it looks very much like I won’t be going to Comic-Con at all. Not as a visitor.

A thought occurred to me a couple of weeks ago concerning a gripe I have with most modern scifi, and originally I was just going to post here on my blog. Then I thought, “Well, why not record a podcast? I haven’t done one in a good couple of years.” Then I remembered that recording podcasts is so much more fun when you have someone to discuss these things with. So I sent an email out to a few other scifi Webcomicry peoples, as well as to some of my writer buddies, to see if they’d be interested in recording a podcast where we can talk about writing for scifi.

The end result? We’ll find out this Sunday, when I’ll be recording a podcast with Tauhid Bondia, Jim Francis, Mark Mekkes and Tom Truszkowski. I have to confess, I’m a little excited. We’ve spent much of the past week or two throwing ideas around for what we’re actually going to talk about, and we have a rather cool list of items that I think is going to give us plenty to discuss. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

The recording will likely end up on each of our respective websites, but I’ll pop it on here as well. I hope you enjoy listening to it when it’s ready.

I want you to read this advice given to a young webcomic creator over on the HalfPixel forums, by someone who apparently has an unnatural imbalance in their fingers:braincells ratio:

Some final advice. Stop listening to people on the internet commenting on your comic. Go find and adult whose advice you trust and show them your comic. Explain to them what it means to you and ask them for their advice on your art and storylines.

Maybe it’s just me, but I usually like to seek advice from people with the Knowledge. Dismissing “people on the internet” as people not to seek advice from means you’re cutting out a lot of people who could provide some valuable insight - maybe even people who have struggled in the same areas. It’s perhaps naive to believe that just finding some adult from somewhere and asking them for advice will yield the best results.

This is exceptionally true when it comes to things like Webcomics, when people like Scott Kurtz, Kris Straub, Dave Kellett and Brad Guigar giving out weekly advice in Podcast form. When people such as the dozens of talented webcomic creators, writers and artists who hang out on the HalfPixel forums are contributing constructive criticism. These are all “people on the internet”. Is it a good idea ignoring them, when between them all they have hojillions of years’ worth of experience?

I’m not saying that makes them infallible, but I am saying it gives their words some weight - whether they be on a web page, on your iPod, printed in a book, or given to you in person. Just finding “some adult” isn’t going to help if the adult doesn’t know bugger-all about what they’re giving advice about. That’d be akin to me giving out advice on Sheep Herding.