Friday, June 17, 2005

happy birthday, show me the money!

Happy Birthday Bif

Well, we've been creating our funny cartoons for one whole year now. Once a
week for twelve months we've produced a funny cartoon. Or at least, we like
to think they are funny.

We have learned an awful lot in a year. So where are we and where are we going?

Well, for one thing, I like to think we have developed a style. We experiment
a little here and there, but I think we have a recognisable and coherent style
throughout.

We have also developed a following of some description. It may be small, but
we see the same faces popping up to comment on a cartoon from time to time,
which means we have what we like to call fans.

For now, it is this proof that our funny cartoons appeal to people that has
kept us going. However I won't deny that making money from our endeavours would
be something both Bif and I would embrace.

Funny Cartoons as money makers

Our funny cartoons are produced on a shoestring. We have no budget and we make
no money. We enjoy the making of them, but we would like to make money from
them eventually. Unfortunately we do not have, at this time, a workable business
plan.

However, it is early days. I say this because although we have been going one
year, it is a sideline for both of us. Something we devote as much time as we
can to, but the 'day jobs' have to take priority. For this reason, perhaps we
have not investigated with enough vigour how we can begin to make money from
the creation of funny cartoons.

What are the options when it comes to making money from funny cartoons?

Well, the most obvious options are:

• Paid syndication
  
  


• Merchandise
  
  


• Advertising
  
  


• Subscriptions

Paid Syndication

Paid Syndication is notoriously difficult to land. I think we can rule this
one out until we are far more established.

Merchandise

Merchandise is probably our best option, but how to approach it? What products
are best suited to funny cartoons such as ours? And how does one distribute
merchandise? Café Press is probably our best option at the moment, given
that we operate on no budget and have no distribution network. On the other
hand, I have yet to be convinced that anyone can eak out a living using Café
Press as a means.

• T-Shirts - I wonder are our cartoons a bit too complex for t-shirts.
  Simpler designs are probably much better t-shirt sellers. However we may begin
  to design BifSniff-based simple t-shirts in the future as a test.


• Calendars - I think calendars are a good option. This Christmas we intend
  to try to sell a BifSniff calendar. Probably using Café Press.


• Greeting cards - Also a good option. I think some of our cartoons are
  very well suited to cards. Again, same issues of distribution etc apply. Also
  Café Press only have the option for a pack of six cards of the same design.
  A variety pack would probably be a better option…


• Mugs - I have a BifSniff mug and I think it's great. However I have no
  idea if mugs like these are a saleable item!

Advertising

Is there money to be made from advertising on websites, yes, probably. But not
much. As you may know this is an ongoing debate and click fraud is a huge issue
right now, which leads me to wonder whether there is any real money in advertising
like this. Even if there was real money to be made and it was a viable option,
we would need a lot more traffic to generate any real revenue.

Subscriptions

There are possibly various subscription methods we could explore, but again,
we would need to be a lot more established, I think, before someone would consider
paying for our content. Also, I'm not certain that anyone has really proven
the subscription route to be viable either.

So where are we?

So where does that leave us?

Well, for any revenue generating plan to work it's obvious we will need to increase
our traffic and therefore become more established. That's our primary concern
I think.

After that, well I feel there must be other ways to generate revenue from funny
cartoons that we just haven't thunk up yet. I am confident that myself and Bif
will invent some truly innovative revenue generation model that will be the
envy of the industry. So keep your eyes on this space.

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Funny Cartoons - how we make 'em

Well, I get so many questions about how I create the visuals for a bifSniff cartoon thought I thought it important to explain it to him. Them.

There's no rocket science here or anything, it's just for the record as it were.

First off Bif emails me the text for the cartoon. In this case it was as follows:

Two guys - crucification scene - one's saying 'I spy with my little eye something...'
The caption reads "Since cards were out of the question, there really wasn't any other way to pass the time."

Usually I get a mental image from Bif's text straight away. Sometimes it takes a bit of thinking through, and sometimes the final image isn't really quite what I pictured first off, but in this case it was straightforward. I got an image straight away and the final cartoon was pretty true to that image.

The tools I use for the cartoon creation are:

• Adobe Photoshop
• Macromedia
  Flash
• Wacom tablet

I have set up a template in photoshop and a template in Flash. I do all the drawing in flash. My flash template is simply a movie with the stage set to roughly 2575px x 2730px. This large stage size allows me to export the final image as jpg and import into photoshop as a high res image.

My photoshop template is to handle the text as I wasn't happy with text exported from flash. So all captions are added in photoshop.

So the first step is to open up the Flash template and start sketching - I make sure that pressure sensitivity is turned on and use the brush tool to sketch. This gives a more hand-drawn look as the brush now responds to pressure giving varying line thickness.

Step 1

First I sketch a very rough idea of what I have in my mind.

Step 2

Then I create a new layer and begin to refine that rough sketch, adding more detail and fleshing out the idea. At this point you can see I begin to add the expressions on the faces too.

Step 3

Once I'm reasonably happy that I have the gist of the drawing right I can hide the original sketch to see where I am and refine further if necessary.

Step 4

Once I am completely happy with the refined sketch I start on what will be the actual drawing on yet another layer. Using the refined sketch as a guide I carefully trace what I have already, creating surer lines and more definition.

Step 5

The sketch layer can now also be turned off to show the final drawing. Which just needs to be coloured.

Step 6

Using the fill tool I add the basic colours. I always fill white for skin tones initially - you'll see why in the next step.

Step 7

Once the basic colours are in place, I create a copy of that layer - so I now have too identical layers with the drawing and base colours. On the top layer I add refinements to the colouring. On this layer I usually select an area and use the 'paint selected' option to paint shadows and highlights and other bits and bobs. Mostly I use colours at 30%-50% so that the original base colour shows through. I have found this gices a more subtle effect. For skin tone I use a pink or orangey tone at about 25%. Over the white of the base colour it creates a nice tone. Then I increase the percentage to about 50% for the shading.

Step 8

At this point it's just a case of seeing what's missing for the final image - in this case the sky, some shading on the hill and the speech bubble. For the speech bubble I add a guide layer and put in the text so I can tell how big it needs to be.

Step 9

Export from Flash as a jpg, lash it into the photoshop template add the words and voila - one BifSniff Cartoon completed. Oh and as you may have noticed I usually play with the colours a little once I'm in photoshop. Otherwise they'd be a little bit garish. Usually I desaturate a bit - sometimes that's enough sometimes more tinkering is needed.