Max Riffner

The Parlor

My weblog work journal.  »Archives  »Links

Reflecting on Adulthood

The author in the winter of 1996 as a freshman in college.

Doing a lot of reflection lately on my life since going to college, and where I am at now. I can’t say it’s been bad at all, but it isn’t exactly what I wanted. Making some goals, planning some big changes. The major ones right now are shedding physical clutter (I threw out 9 bags of clothes that I never wear) and getting back into yoga/meditation.

Of course, there are probably 5,000,000 of these types of posts floating around the Internet right now…

Recent Work: Webcomics World

ComicSpace recently launched a new ad network for webcomics and comic bloggers — Webcomics World. Here’s the gist of it from their announcement:

“The idea is simple,” says Joey Manley, CEO of ComicSpace. “There’s only so much money you’re going to make with an automated solution like Google AdSense or AdsDaq. At a certain level of popularity, you need a real salesperson out there making the best pitch to the biggest advertisers for you. We already have a professional advertising sales team. We’re able to take the big meetings, and make the big pitches. And now, any webcomic artist or comics blogger can essentially hire our team, and be included in those meetings and those pitches – and participate in those deals.”

Joey Manley contacted me in October to do an illustrated media kit for the new venture, featuring cartoon versions of Josh Roberts and Joey himself. You can see the work here on the Webcomics World site. I’m excited it’s out in the open now. I really believe that in the coming years, ComicSpace is going to make a real difference for cartoonists. Also, and I can’t stress this enough: I’ve been a creative professional for over 13 years now and have worked for a lot of clients. Joey Manley and ComicSpace are perhaps the best client I’ve worked with. If that is any indication on how they run their business, it’s a very good time for cartoonists indeed.

Waimea

I linked to this the other day on Drunk Elephant Comics, but I wanted to point it out here: Waimea is a new serialized online graphic novel written by Kevin Church and illustrated by Michael Dake.

A couple reasons why I wanted to point it out. One: it’s good! It’s both written and illustrated well, with gorgeous color. Two: I wonder if this is how longform webcomics should be serialized — one update consisting of a large chunk of pages. It seems to be working well for FreakAngels. Each update is 5-7 pages and comes out on a regular weekly schedule. Waimea is going to be releasing updates bi-weekly. The effect is nice — there’s enough story there to get a satisfying read and it’s enough to remember. It’s the main problem I have with releasing longform work a page a day: it’s too easy to forget where you are in the story (which logically doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I’ve experienced it myself as a reader and as a producer). Releasing chapters seems to be a better reader/user experience.

You can also browse through the Parlor archives.