Creative Futures - Building an Audience.

Building an Audience -John Alison.-

 Web comic creator and artist to Bad machinery. John Alison is self taught and successful. His work has improved from hard work and trial and error. His growth was slow and a grind, but the pay-off can be good if you’re dedicated. I’ve learned not to expect too much from Mr Alison's talk, never assume you’ll be a big hit and take what you can get with dignity. (The amount of dignity is entirely up to the individual.)

Consistency is obviously important in your art . Even if your style is inconsistent, be consistently inconsistent. At least you’ll have an excuse for it when folks start to criticize. However, try and make friends and contacts with as many people as you can. It never helps to be a jerk since you catch more flies with honey.

When you catch friends with honey it’s better.

Because flies have no money.

When I create my own website I will remember not to put anything behind a pay wall. The internet is a breeding ground of free art, music, animated gif and, regardless, people will find a way to pilfer it anyway. Best to offer your comics and illustrations out for free.

Then sell it on t-shirts and in books once the readers are addicted.

Once you become more popular the option for advertising is a practical way towards attaining some free cash.

There’s also a question of trust between you and your readers. If you double cross them in any way you run the risk of losing an entire fan base overnight due to the fickleness of many comic fans (We’re looking at you Marvel, DC and Manga fans.) A drastic change in style may scare off those who get used to a certain way of drawing from you. This however cannot be helped all the time. Without change we grow stale and dull (and marketable) but I have no doubts that some fans will stay with you at the very least.

I believe that a certain level of interaction with fans can be highly beneficial. Making and keeping friends among the audience can be engaging and allow your readership to grow. A good example of this is Lauren Fausts ‘My little Pony, friendship is magic’ Yes, it’s a very girly show for girly little girls. Yet has amassed a huge following. A mixture of great character design, execution and audience participation has made it, literally, take over the internet. It’s managed to do this by not having too serious a tone. It’s far easier to sell something light hearted. The more serious your work becomes the harder it will be to sell.

On the technical side of creating a comic/anything (be it for publishing with a company or online via a web comic) it’s important to remember the basics. Good composition and pacing. Making sure the pages can be read properly is vital. Make sure at least you can read it properly without having to double back and reread anything. If you do, change the layout or text because if you can’t read your own work, somebody else will find it impossible and leave. Try and do things right from the start. It may be a little difficult to know what that is, but persevere. Learning what not to do is just as important as anything else.

And you won’t get any of their delicious money.

It’s important to always experiment and have fun. Like with the legibility, it’ll be almost impossible for a reader to enjoy themselves if you, yourself are not. There’s also not much point carving out a career doing something you don’t like regardless, if you wanted to do that, the dead end job you left might have suited a bit better!

It’s important to make friends and contacts with those who do work similar to yours. I’m personally interested in writing and research into historical fiction and making friends with a writer in that medium gave me such self confidence. Having an outlet for discussion is very important. Ideas flow freely and enthusiasm rises when you share a common footing with somebody. It’s especially important if the thing you’re interested in is obscure. A shared interest can even cross cultures, making a friend from a Slovak, Canadian or Frenchman. They can be great for lodgings at conventions and the bonus of sharing information and feeding off each other is a great feeling.

Lets not be hasty though. Searching out interesting people who like different things to you is just as vital. It broadens the scope of all your boundaries. Allows for discussions and informative arguments to arise and might just teach you something. Making friends with all sorts is a valuable skill to have. One that can make a person very happy. Just be careful not to be too hasty and jump into dangerous situations.