Hey everyone! Living Space is now up on Kickstarter! Go here to go fund it! Please support and please spread the word about it!
Living Space follows the journey of a social recluse named Norma Abernathy. Her whole life is turned upside down when she finds out her mother has passed away. To find closure and attend the funeral, Norma goes on a road trip with two strangers, Shaula Wasem and Phoebe Gita.
This 130-page comic deals with themes of LGBT romance, mental illness, diversity, life transitions, and trying to live outside of one’s comfort zone.
You’ve probably seen Living Space around in comics like this:
If you like this and want to see more, please consider supporting my kickstarter and reblogging this around! Please help me put more inclusive art into the world! Thank you!
“Starsend” is the third of three short comics in a collection of positive and uplifting genderqueer comics that will be available for purchase in September.
Starsend is focused on an agender character coming to terms with their identity on Earth. Shout out to sinistraal who helped me formulate the initial concept behind Starsend.
When I posted the first Elsewhere University comic, I had no idea what it was going to turn into over the following months. The community that’s grown out of it - the stories and art and obscure bits of folklore and science, the fortunetelling asks and vague anon prophecies, all of it building on itself and branching into places that still manage to take me by surprise - has created a weirder and more wonderful world than anything I could have imagined. This comic is meant as a celebration of everything that’s grown out of the stories set in Elsewhere, and an expression of gratitude. I wasn’t even close to being able to include everything; the Library alone would need a dozen pages. For those whose works I did include, I dearly hope I did them justice. Words can’t express what this world and community have grown to mean to me, but I hope this comes close. Thank you so much, all of you. Keep making amazing things.
All works referenced below the cut, if you want to learn more about them!
Okay is a 16-page short comic about mindfulness and acceptance that I drew last year. You can support me by buying a high-res version of it with bonus art and sketches included! But since it’s part of my public portfolio now, I thought I might as well post it everywhere else as well. (All characters they/them) Read the rest below the cut:
Bringing this back around for World Mental Health Day! I’m a little late because I was on planes all yesterday, but Okay seems appropriate for the occasion. :>
Okay is a 16-page short comic about mindfulness and acceptance that I drew last year. You can support me by buying a high-res version of it with bonus art and sketches included! But since it’s part of my public portfolio now, I thought I might as well post it everywhere else as well. (All characters they/them) Read the rest below the cut:
Webcomics are roughly what it says on the tin: comics, which are posted on the web! So, are they just like comics in print, except online instead?
Kind of! There are a lot of comics online which are formatted very
similarly to print comics, and the reasons for this are varied.
Sometimes it’s because the creator intends to print them later, and it
makes this process easier if the pages are already laid out
appropriately. Sometimes it’s just because that is the type of comic
they enjoy reading, and which they’re inspired by.
So they’re like webtoons?
Yes and no. Webtoon is a brand name– a very popular brand, but just as not every can of soda is a coke, not all webcomics are webtoons, although arguably all webtoons are webcomics. They are, after all, sequentially illustrated and use many narrative conventions associated with comics (speech bubbles, panels, etc), and are published online.
But that’s far from the only type of webcomic out there! In the earliest days of webcomics, formats tended to be constrained by users’ bandwidth and limited monitor sizes, so simple art and layouts were a must, as well as small file sizes. But as technology improved and more people started reading and creating webcomics, people started to experiment and play with some of the options that digital formats have to offer. (In particular, use of animation, or of interactive elements such as components of the page that appear or change when a user hovers their mouse over a part of the graphic.)
During the run of the popular webcomic Homestuck, there were a number of updates whose content consisted of full-on video games within the browser screen, which would allow readers to use keyboard commands and mouse movements to control a sprite character and interact with an environment within the browser window, including dialogue trees with other characters, events, and so on. These were mainly coded in Adobe Flash, which has since ceased to be supported, making these games difficult to archive in playable form, but similar effects can be achieved with Javascript, as the popular stick-figure strip comic XKCD has used.
What do webcomics look like?
The style and format of many early webcomics were inspired by newspaper strips, and the daily posting schedule of a webcomic is a close approximation to the way in which newspaper serials were historically published, making it an easy fit. Some of the first webcomics to become widely read utilized this format, such as Penny Arcade. Many of these strip comics are comedy-centric, with each update being a new joke; sometimes, but not always, featuring a central cast of characters. Some comics used the format to branch out into longer ongoing stories, occasionally reaching beyond the comedy genre into fantasy or drama storylines, building dedicated and passionate fan bases as they went.
As the medium became more widely known, more and more different styles and approaches began to appear. For every genre or style of physical comic or graphic novel, there are now webcomics utilizing similar storytelling approaches. Some are inspired by western comic books; by bande dessinee or other European books; photo collages (fumetti), or by manga.
Some webcomics will release a single horizontal row of 3-4 panels in an update. Some may release a full page with 6-10 panels or more, filled with painstaking detail, Some may update with animations, or a single panel at a time almost like a storyboard. And still others use the infinite canvas of the digital screen to create a vertical scroll for the reader to read, which can contain the equivalent amount of content as 2-10 ‘standard’ comic book pages.
What kind of content or themes do webcomics contain?
Hoo boy everything under the sun, huh
Because of the nature of webcomics being without the need of a traditional publisher, the content created has an enormous range in artistic freedom. Many webcomics are more intimate, passion projects that take advantage of the flexibility provided without boundaries, making it an excellent outlet for anyone to create to their heart’s content. The stories vary from a traditional comic style approach with a long running cast and story, auto-bios from the artist’s experience, gag strips, animated games, and much more!
So, ultimately:
They are what they are! Webcomics are in the name, comics published on the web. Varying in artistic quality, format, content, and style, this medium of comic has a diverse range of stories and possibilities. With a large majority free to read, webcomics are both accessible and abundant!
