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Dogwood Fleet
Sep 14, 2013
Hey neat, Tokyopop is back! Let's all sign some contracts!


Luckily, a lot of people haven't forgotten how bad Tokyopop was/is to creators. Almost everything on twitter that isn't a press release is about people getting screwed over. News travels faster these days, I really hope that this doesn't hurt too many people.

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Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Dogwood Fleet posted:

Hey neat, Tokyopop is back! Let's all sign some contracts!


Luckily, a lot of people haven't forgotten how bad Tokyopop was/is to creators. Almost everything on twitter that isn't a press release is about people getting screwed over. News travels faster these days, I really hope that this doesn't hurt too many people.

Can you expand on this? I haven't heard anything before.

Dogwood Fleet
Sep 14, 2013
Please correct me on any of this, this is mostly reading articles and tweets. I'm just a spectator.

The very short version is that Tokyopop used to publish a lot of manga in English. They decided to branch out into 'Original English Manga' offering creators a chance at fame in exchange for signing over all rights to their creation and an abysmal page rate. The company crashed and burned in 2008 and lost the rights to most of their Japanese stuff, but refused to give or sell rights back to individual creators. They were mostly dead, but yesterday they made a big announcement at Anime Expo. They're launching a new mobile app that ,"One of the more interesting “Users keep the copyright and 100% creative control of their uploaded works.”

I've heard that they're going to be reviewing portfolios at SDCC.

Here are some bits and pieces of the old contract

Among them:

quote:

“MORAL RIGHTS” AND YOUR CREDIT
“Moral rights” is a fancy term (the French thought it up) that basically has to do with having your name attached to your creation (your credit!) and the right to approve or disapprove certain changes to your creation. Of course, we want you to get credit for your creation, and we want to work with you in case there are changes, but we want to do so under the terms in this pact instead of under fancy French idea. So, in order for us to adapt the Manga Pilot for different media, and to determine how we should include your credit in tough situations, you agree to give up any “moral rights” you might have.”

quote:

USING MEDIATION AND ARBITRATION If you and we can’t work things out after giving it the ol’ college try, we’ll each have the right to bring the issue to mediation in Los Angeles, California.

They mean that both parties have the right to bring the issue to mediation in LA specifically. If you're not there, you're SOL. Also if the issue goes to arbitration Tokyopop gets to use a private arbitration company, also in LA. So basically you're signing away your creative rights and legal recourse. It later says that they don't have to credit you for your work.

All of it is said in the most condescending way possible. By the way, there are a lot of artists who normally go out of their way to avoid bashing publishing companies out of professionalism, but I haven't seen anyone hold back here.

Kojiro
Aug 11, 2003

LET'S GET TO THE TOP!
http://www.comicsbeat.com/tolja-tokyopop-is-back-with-publishing-plans/ Good summation, with a lot of links to other articles.

Scribblehatch
Jun 15, 2013

I'm reserving judgement until I see all the legalese.

If they've changed their stripes, and care to erect a meritocracy, then all is well.

I do wonder why anyone would want to run this under the banner of Tokyopop, though.

Scribblehatch fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jul 3, 2015

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
Anyone who uses the name "Tokyopop" doesn't realize why its connotations are as poisonous as they are.

Scribblehatch
Jun 15, 2013

Could be an attempt at brandname exorcism.

Geekboy
Aug 21, 2005

Now that's what I call a geekMAN!
So, uh, don't be this guy:

http://www.theouthousers.com/index.php/news/132325-arthur-suydam-takes-up-4-tables-in-artists-alley-pisses-off-fellow-creators.html

RobinPierce
Aug 29, 2009

Yeah this is being talked about in every creator forum I'm a part of at the moment. What an absolute disaster of a person. I have no idea how the convention organisers aren't stepping up to stop him though, this wouldn't fly at any of the UK cons I exhibit at.

Follow up edit: I think what I hate most about it is that he's preying on artist's insecurities / conflict avoidance / counting on people being too nice to say anything. Half the people whose positions he stole this time had no idea they'd even been allocated those tables to begin with, mind you. This year he's shifted 3 A-list artists whose fans now had no idea where to find them because the show guide is now inaccurate. Horrid person.

RobinPierce fucked around with this message at 11:27 on Jul 4, 2015

al-azad
May 28, 2009



RobinPierce posted:

counting on people being too nice to say anything.

This did take place in Canada...

Seriously though, I don't know how this isn't bannable behavior at all the cons. It's not like he's paying them more money for more space and he can't possibly be generating 3+ artists worth of extra attendees to justify his table snatching.

Also his Wikipedia page got a little update, lol.

RobinPierce
Aug 29, 2009
The saga of Arthur Suydam continues: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/07/04/table-swipe-file-arthur-suydam-at-montreal-comiccon/

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
Did this guy attend any UK cons? His giant display rings a bell for me.

kefkafloyd
Jun 8, 2006

What really knocked me out
Was her cheap sunglasses
If someone pulled that to me with my rightfully paid for table and the convention didn't make it right, I would be flipping tables. That there be horseshit.

hell astro course
Dec 10, 2009

pizza sucks

This has to be one of the most confusing things I've ever read. I can't really even comprehend what is going on. Is this some sort of weird convention culture thing? I've never really done a convention. It seems weird if some guy takes your table you paid for..to do nothing about it, then complain on twitter. Is it the convention runners fault? Like..what?

I imagine this guy walking up to a person eating a hamburger, taking that person's hamburger, and starts eating it for himself. The now hamburgerless person just sort of lies down on the floor and tweets about it later. Everyone shrugs and agrees it was probably rude of that man to eat that person's hamburger, but what can you do? Nobody bothered to tell him to not take anybody's hamburgers.

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Space-Bird posted:

This has to be one of the most confusing things I've ever read. I can't really even comprehend what is going on. Is this some sort of weird convention culture thing? I've never really done a convention. It seems weird if some guy takes your table you paid for..to do nothing about it, then complain on twitter. Is it the convention runners fault? Like..what?

I imagine this guy walking up to a person eating a hamburger, taking that person's hamburger, and starts eating it for himself. The now hamburgerless person just sort of lies down on the floor and tweets about it later. Everyone shrugs and agrees it was probably rude of that man to eat that person's hamburger, but what can you do? Nobody bothered to tell him to not take anybody's hamburgers.

Many artists are shy and socially awkward, and just generally it takes some bravery to go up to a guy portraying himself as some kind of big shot and ask him to pack his stuff up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaching_experiment#.22On_maintaining_social_norms:_a_field_experiment_in_the_subway.22

Also

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/excuse-me-can-i-have-your-seat-please-6161057.html

Fangz fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Jul 4, 2015

RobinPierce
Aug 29, 2009

Fangz posted:

Did this guy attend any UK cons? His giant display rings a bell for me.

Not any of the big ones in the last few years, I would have noticed.

Thing is - these are all Guests. I do not believe any of them are actually paying for tables, but Suydam seems to feel he's entitled to more space than he's being given, and by drat he's taking it. What I don't understand is where on earth these 'extra tables' that the guests are being shifted to are coming from. Are extra tables normal things at american cons? I have never seen a stray table at a major UK con.

Kojiro
Aug 11, 2003

LET'S GET TO THE TOP!

RobinPierce posted:

Not any of the big ones in the last few years, I would have noticed.

Thing is - these are all Guests. I do not believe any of them are actually paying for tables, but Suydam seems to feel he's entitled to more space than he's being given, and by drat he's taking it. What I don't understand is where on earth these 'extra tables' that the guests are being shifted to are coming from. Are extra tables normal things at american cons? I have never seen a stray table at a major UK con.

Well, you sometimes get stray tables at UK cons, if they're less well-attended than MCM or something, but it's not like you can safely rely on there being three of them every single time, and frankly no con organiser I've met would put up with this.

al-azad
May 28, 2009



RobinPierce posted:

Are extra tables normal things at american cons? I have never seen a stray table at a major UK con.

I haven't been to Montreal Comiccon but it's about the same size as Emerald City and that con grew so large it takes up the entire 205,000sqft convention center. If there is a stray table it's probably not in an ideal spot. They generally organize guest booths so that they have prime walking space but now your fans are struggling to find you which is already disrupting the customers and that shouldn't fly at all.

The blame should fall on the con organizers who are not only aware that he does this, but they prepared back up tables for such an emergency as table annexing. I don't know how they weren't like "Buddy, move your poo poo by the next day."

Puppy Time
Mar 1, 2005


Space-Bird posted:

This has to be one of the most confusing things I've ever read. I can't really even comprehend what is going on. Is this some sort of weird convention culture thing? I've never really done a convention. It seems weird if some guy takes your table you paid for..to do nothing about it, then complain on twitter. Is it the convention runners fault? Like..what?

Reading the accounts by the victims, it seems what happens is that he shows up early and switches table signage, so the displaced artists assume there's been some official rearranging or miscommunication (not an uncommon issue), shrug, and go about their business. It took someone who saw the change happen to alert them to the shenanigans.

neonnoodle
Mar 20, 2008

by exmarx
I haven't been keeping up too much on some of this stuff -- are there online communities or other places where it would be appropriate to promote my new comic? For my last one I did Project Wonderful ads and got a fair amount of traffic that way from other comics. However that was 3-4 years ago, and I think there might be more adblocking now than there was back then on average.

I self-host the comic and have a dedicated Tumblr where I post each strip with relevant tags. Is there anything in the social-media-verse that I should be aware of?

GreatJob
Jul 6, 2008

You did a Great Job™!
Twitter's #webcomicchat hashtag every Friday and Saturday gets me retweets and favorites on a regular basis, and the majority of my referral traffic is from there.

I get most of my interactions through Tumblr and Facebook. Tumblr is VERY good for comics right now. I don't like Facebook very much but for some reason I am doing well there with hashtags and cross-posting into relevant communities.

John Liver
May 4, 2009

neonnoodle posted:

I haven't been keeping up too much on some of this stuff -- are there online communities or other places where it would be appropriate to promote my new comic? For my last one I did Project Wonderful ads and got a fair amount of traffic that way from other comics. However that was 3-4 years ago, and I think there might be more adblocking now than there was back then on average.

I self-host the comic and have a dedicated Tumblr where I post each strip with relevant tags. Is there anything in the social-media-verse that I should be aware of?

IME, Twitter is much better to spread the word about a new page than Tumblr, things just seem to catch more easily and you get more response.

I been thinking about posting complete chapters to Tapastic, but I'll wait until I have a few more of them.

neonnoodle
Mar 20, 2008

by exmarx


Hmm, OK. I have a Twitter for my artwork and such and I've been tweeting the comics as they are posted. What is the protocol for the #webcomicchat hashtag? Do I tag comic posts with that on a particular day? I don't want to spam people but I don't want to miss out on an appropriate opportunity.

Mercury Hat
May 28, 2006

SharkTales!
Woo-oo!



Finally got the next chapter pencilled out, now the easy part :).

painted bird
Oct 18, 2013

by Lowtax
Reminder that #makingcomics on IRC is still a thing, even though it's very quiet right now (because there are not very many people there). You should drop in and say hi!

I should make a Twitter for my art poo poo, I guess.

John Liver
May 4, 2009

neonnoodle posted:

Hmm, OK. I have a Twitter for my artwork and such and I've been tweeting the comics as they are posted. What is the protocol for the #webcomicchat hashtag? Do I tag comic posts with that on a particular day? I don't want to spam people but I don't want to miss out on an appropriate opportunity.

So far, casual #WebcomicChat happens Fridays and srs-bsns #WebcomicChat happens Saturdays. People will be posting with that hashtag, responding to the question prompts from the @WebcomicChat bot. Five questions over the course of about one hour, with a cooldown at the end.

But if that's too loose for your tastes (like me) you can use the Nurph app in your browser to have it organized into a neat little chatlog.

Don't worry about spamming, the more the merrier - some of these questions are really dry anyway. And note, it is #WebcomicChat with two Cs, which I often screw up...

John Liver fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Jul 6, 2015

GreatJob
Jul 6, 2008

You did a Great Job™!
It's set up with the intent to spam your webcomic and get exposure, so be as brazen as you want (but try to say hi to fellow webcomickers if they post something you like :))

McKilligan
May 13, 2007

Acey Deezy
Well, I finally got my first 2 pages up on that Naver comics competition, I've feverishly scrawling on the colors for the next couple, and goddamn it I'm going to pimp this thing out everywhere I can, so throw in a vote for me if you like what you see. Clicking that doesn't count as a vote, don't worry.

Polycalypse
Aug 7, 2014

McKilligan posted:

Well, I finally got my first 2 pages up on that Naver comics competition, I've feverishly scrawling on the colors for the next couple, and goddamn it I'm going to pimp this thing out everywhere I can, so throw in a vote for me if you like what you see. Clicking that doesn't count as a vote, don't worry.

You need at least 3 episodes to qualify for the next round, though.

I don't even know if mine will qualify because I cheated a little with the episode requirement.

Vanellope
Mar 26, 2015

I've just got pixlexia, okay?
Hey guys, does anyone know of a free (or cheap, like under $50) font suitable for webcomics that has accented characters such as á, ú, etc? I'm having a hard time finding one.

Haledjian
May 29, 2008

YOU CAN'T MOVE WITH ME IN THIS DIGITAL SPACE

Vanellope posted:

Hey guys, does anyone know of a free (or cheap, like under $50) font suitable for webcomics that has accented characters such as á, ú, etc? I'm having a hard time finding one.

Have you looked at Blambot? Most of their paid fonts have characters like that and they're like $20-30 usually.

Vanellope
Mar 26, 2015

I've just got pixlexia, okay?

Haledjian posted:

Have you looked at Blambot? Most of their paid fonts have characters like that and they're like $20-30 usually.

Oh wow, how did I not think of Blambot? Ugh. Thanks.

FactsAreUseless
Feb 16, 2011

Hand-lettering is awesome, hand-letter every day. And only color in watercolors. And don't put your comic on the internet. And actually just go be an art teacher in Ohio.

SexyBlindfold
Apr 24, 2008
i dont care how much probation i get capital letters are for squares hehe im so laid back an nice please read my low effort shitposts about the arab spring

thanxs!!!
Speaking of hand-lettering, does anybody knows of a template or software or thingie that can properly convert hand-lettering to font? I tried that one that requires you to write into a printed grid, but it's lacking accents and there's always one letter that fucks it all up.

neonnoodle
Mar 20, 2008

by exmarx

FactsAreUseless posted:

Hand-lettering is awesome, hand-letter every day. And only color in watercolors. And don't put your comic on the internet. And actually just go be an art teacher in Ohio.
This but serious.

Not everyone agrees with this dogma, but please hand-letter your comics. Fonts suck. They never kern right and they always look crappy. If you work digitally, you can use type as a guide to help you keep your lettering neat.

kefkafloyd
Jun 8, 2006

What really knocked me out
Was her cheap sunglasses
As much of a hand lettering enthusiast as I am, there's lots of excellent fonts out there that work very well—you just have to cough up for them. I often find that most bad lettering is not objectionable because of the fonts but because people make layout mistakes or ballooning mistakes. Lettering that doesn't make a cohesive layout and flow is a far more serious crime than a font. But I still enjoy a well-done, hand lettered dialogue comic.

I love hand lettering effects, and I still draw my balloons by hand. IMO, any bone-standard effects that are just fonts are very, very boring. That's really where font crimes come into play. But for your average dialogue balloons, I use an arsenal of fonts because the amount of time saved would be significant. I would rather spend more time making cool effects lettering than hand lettering every dialog balloon. But that's my trade-off and like everything in comics there's usually some kind of time spent prioritization going on.

sweeperbravo
May 18, 2012

AUNT GWEN'S COLD SHAPE (!)

neonnoodle posted:

This but serious.

Not everyone agrees with this dogma, but please hand-letter your comics. Fonts suck. They never kern right and they always look crappy. If you work digitally, you can use type as a guide to help you keep your lettering neat.

This is an awesome idea I'd forgotten about. Especially easy for people working digitally. Just make a layer with the typed text and then trace over it and then delete it. It's great for people for whom the rigidity and "separate element lookingness" of a font is really jarring next to a really rough, organic art style.

hell astro course
Dec 10, 2009

pizza sucks

neonnoodle posted:

This but serious.

Not everyone agrees with this dogma, but please hand-letter your comics. Fonts suck. They never kern right and they always look crappy. If you work digitally, you can use type as a guide to help you keep your lettering neat.

This is crummy advice. If you have time to hand letter and it suits your comic, go for it. I do think hand lettering looks nice, but if you want to produce content on a reasonable update schedule you have to make some smart choices about where to lessen your work load.

It's like saying every comic needs to be rendered in full color with shading, and never do monochrome.

Kojiro
Aug 11, 2003

LET'S GET TO THE TOP!
Agreed. Handlettering looks great, but for many of us it's a time restraint.

I will say that I've felt a lot better since I started handlettering sound effects, though, but those are rare enough to be not too huge an investment.

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Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
I do find it humorous that people keep warning others off of fonts that make things 'always look crappy', the way e.g. Gunnerkrigg Court does, into awesome looking hand lettering like, say Subnormality.

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