CH-CH-CH-Changes! Tiiiiiime to say good, Bry!

Hello friends,

Yes, I acknowledge that I have not updated this blog in a long while. There are reasons, and while a number of them have to do with me being lazy, I shall explain two of the more legitimate ones. 

Firstly, it just seemed as though there was more to talk about at the beginning stages of creating a comic. Conceptualizing, building, burning, and re-creating were much more rampant in the initial few months. After that, it was more or less a constant lesson of keeping at it over and over again. Maintaining your goal and keeping it's progress consistent is incredibly important, perhaps even the most important. But unfortunately it just became less and less fun to write and update about on this blog. I saw it as something that could quickly regress into sounding like a self-imposed adversity over something we choose to do (and love doing it I might add). 

Secondly, and in an more practical sense, the apparent inconvenience of having a blog separate from our comic has made me rethink the process. I'd much rather have our updates, musings, and ramblings conveniently located for all our fans to see right out our homepage. In light of this, I am happy to say that we are likely to have a new and improved website after almost exactly a year of this stripped down, amorphous blob of a site I created. There are a number of cool and significant changes that are in the works, and one of which is a more accessible, interactive, and constituent blog. I will probably keep this blogger site around for a bit more, but it's days of update and functionality are certainly drawing to a close.

Lastly, I wanted to report that we will be switching our update day from the wee hours of Wednesday night to Thursday. This is in part due to the fact that my grad school course load has me home at around 11pm on a Weds, but it is also in hopes that it will reduce our middle-of-the-week desperation in terms of comicking. We think it will be a good change, and we thank you all for continuing to read more and more, as well as put up with our occasional tom-foolery. Good night, and look for our newest page tomorrow evening!

Friends for Sale!

This is what happens when I draw something last minute. You can almost hear the dreams dying while looking at it...

The best thing you can do if you want to get a project going and growing is to make certain you're working with partners who are at least as motivated as you are. In my case, I think my heart would explode into a cloud of ash and coffee rinds if I tried to match Katy's workload this week. If you look at our update with this week. please take a moment to ponder that our wonderful artist completed that page in a DAY! A DAAAAAAAAAY! She has a DAY job too, ladies and gentleman!

We had a great deal of help as well. The Man of the Words Jim Cottage stepped in to set the type into the dialogue boxes for us this time. Because of this fantastical amount of effort, we were able to update in spite of a crazy work week challenging us to delay. Long and short, we love this comic, we love updating this comic, and we love to know you lovely people pay attention to our consistent updates. Another Wednesday is upon, so soon another update will be as well! BAAIII EEEE!

D&D Made Me a Better Writer (And Worse Human Being)

Hello team!

Today I wanted to talk about a significant influence in my writing that could be considered unique: Dungeons & Dragons. In the fourth grade, I read Lord of the Rings and the Redwall series during countless sessions of recess. The love of the fantasy genre was the focal point in inspiring me to write and aided in developing as a writer. When it comes to good storytelling, I owe a great deal of credit to dungeons and the dragons that may or may not reside within them.

After re-reading Lord of the Rings began render a diminishing return on feeling whimsically fantastic, I sated the thirst by forcing my friends to play D&D campaigns I developed for years to come. I'd like to say that I'm the type of Dungeon Master capable of pulling together a compelling plot that fully engages all those involved. That would be a lie however, and most of my planning would fall apart a few hours into the first session. It's almost impressive how quickly your friends will abandon a noble quest in favor of enslaving a boat full of orphans and throw a bard into a pile of burning lumber...

Anyway, when your characters are constantly changing the events of the story on you, it teaches you to be a more adaptive storyteller. If a player character's pet boar randomly kills a character essential to the plot, then you need to be dynamic and change the scope and spectrum of the plot (this is an actual example of what happened).

The same can be said for webcomic writing. Since we're more or less creating a comic every week at the moment, we can only plan out a panel so much. Though we have a completed script, there is a fair amount of condensing and rearranging; a lot of which is done as late as a few hours before we make the actual update. I still do a fair share of staring at the screen, but honestly the past few months of dialogue were cooked up relatively on the spot from my mind brain. It is by no means the ideal way to write, but it is often what ends up happening when reality flips over your breakfast table and kidnaps your son...wait what?

This quickened process is by no means a solitary exercise. After all, Dungeons and Dragons is contingent on teamwork and interacting with other players. Improv comics have a rule called "Yes, and..." that applies similarly. The idea is that to keep a sketch running, you affirm your partners idea and run with it as opposed to shooting it down in order to assert your own input. Most of the fun in a campaign comes from serving an event to the player, letting them take it in a certain direction, and then react accordingly. It's more interesting to work alongside the journey of a character than stomp them to pieces for deviating from the linearity of your story.

Just the same, Katy and I adapt each other's mode of storytelling to one another so that the plot frames the artwork, and the art in turn informs the dialogue. There is a lot of back-and-forth between the two of us as we work on each aspect. I find that our best panels come from a long-discussed compromise or a very positive sequence of ideas communicated between us.

Writing is bolstered by your experiences and your ability to recollect them, but it certainly helps to have an ability to pull things out of your brain on short notice. I'd say more than anything else, working within severe limitations can sharpen your creative skills quickly. I have D&D to thank for teaching me to create with otheres when time is a very limited.

When God Hands You Spiders, You Have a Hard Time Making Anything Due to Spider Bites

Avast ye readers of web-based comics!

As always, an enormous thank you to all those who follow our comic. We've had a very good half for this month in terms of content and views, which helps take my mind of the enormous bite a spider took out of me while a slept. In spite of said spider having it's way with me while I was unconscious, it's been a fast upward swing since the last post I made. I'm fully aware that I may have laid it on a little thick with that one, but it was the result of Google Analytics reporting that we had less than 10 hits for the month of February. Recently I found out this was a problem with Analytics itself and not the traffic we were generating; once I set up our originally primitive yet reliable traffic counter, it was immediately that our numbers were much better than what were initially reported.

Freaking out about a perceived lack of results isn't entirely negative. In the few days I thought we were in the toilet, I scrambled together a lot of updates and new avenues that I may have otherwise put off til later. I'm most proud of the fact that we were able to start using custom lettering created by our signtastic friend, Jim Cottage. Jim has an incredible amount of experience working on posters, signs, and lettering for consumer products. By doing so, he's able to conjure up very unique and evocative characters faster than a gypsy's whisper. It is pretty mind-boggling how much more comic-booky our panels look with a proper hand-drawn font.

Little by little, we're getting faster and more effective at creating. Please keep reading "After" as you've graciously been doing, because we're only scratched the surface of the story. We want to keep telling it! YOU CAN'T STOP US!!! (sorry)

Thanks again, and check out www.after-comic.com every Weds for new comics!

Don't be a Donkus!

In terms of our numbers, I'd have thought I would have been able to improve them month by month. When you take several steps back in terms of progress, it sometimes means you have to stop drinking gin and acknowledge the fact that you've been selfish with your time. It's easy to say I've quite a few pots stirring, but it's not like I have a monopoly on being "too busy". 

Long to short, I started grad school a month ago, and have also tried to counter-balance my basal state of anxiety with a load of exercise and broccoli. During the interval, I decided on my own that the comic was fine for a few weeks and concentrated on my own projects. I'm mentioning this because this is the equivalency of ignoring your day job and expecting to get paid. This webcomic more or less should be my second job, and letting it sit can potentially result in a marked drop in progress. 

Otherwise, we're at our 25th page and it is a'looking great! This comic isn't slowing down, and we haven't even scratched the surface. THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP IT!...sorry

After Music

Kablaaah!

I wanted a grabby introduction that would properly convey my excitement. Very recently, an old friend of our's, Bob Merkl, composed two songs that were inspired by our webcomic. What? The tracks themselves are pretty wonderful, but it's even more insane and humbling to know that we can act as a source of inspiration for anything. I've known Bob since I was twelve years old and he was in a band with my older brother. I looked up to all of those guys, as most younger brothers tend to, so this whole experience is kind of weird for me!

Check out both songs, After and Bird Lady. Also, Bob is an amazing musician, so check out his other work at soundcloud.com/bobmerkl.

How Not to Add Dialogue Good

This is how to bother your artist friend

Hey team!

So we're past 20 pages! Crazy! How did it get to this point!? I blame my parents, honestly, but we never imagined our first chapter would be as many pages as it's turning out to be. In the end it doesn't' really matter, it's just insane to think of how much story there is to tell. And what do you need to tell that story? DIAL LOGS!

We sometimes have an issue with fitting in character dialogue, especially when it is from a script that I wrote long before the page was drawn. Having a panel full of text isn't very aesthetically pleasing, and it can block out too much of the background and confuse the position and placement of the speaker. Simultaneously, it's easy to be precious about what you've written. I'm breaking a habit of trying to fit in the sentence exactly as it was written, and getting better at sizing up how much text can actually fit within a panel.

I'm a Wordsmith! (Not Really...)

WORD PLAY! 

Greetings friends,

I'm a tired person, but I'm also a writing person and as such I should post some relatively useful things. For today, I thought it'd be nifty to address the dialogue for our latest post. More so than any other piece of text or writing, the dialogue of our comic goes through more permutations than anything else. Some lines are now almost a year old, whereas others are as new as the day before yesterday.

It's getting slowly more efficient as we go along. Frankly, I'm still not that great at fitting the right amount of text/dialogue to a panel. This week in particular, Katy had just performed touch-up on the page this past weekend, so dialogue had to be written shortly before we posted. I ended up writing two different versions for the page below:

My first draft had Rufus singing a song by Ella Fitzgerald throughout the entire page, whereas the other draft had him complaining to himself. For the first two panels, we decided to stick with Rufus singing to himself, because frankly it seemed like Rufus was complaining anytime he was speaking. It was also a good way to show how mundane abuse from the Hawks has become for him, and fleshes out his personality a little more.

At the same time, we removed the song lyrics from the fourth panel. Rufus is supposed to be far away, and having his dialogue featured in a panel he is absent from would have been confusing. We cemented Rufus' proximity from the mob by using the last line of dialogue from my second draft. The end product is a six page panel that establishes the placement of each character with respect to one another, as well as gives some insight into Rufus' personality:

Happy New Fear!

Hey team,

Hope you all had some fun holiday times and finished this year with style, safety, punctuality, and courtesy! Katy and I had a brief window of celebration. Times were had, and now we're right back to webcomicking, working day jobs, and throwing knives at each other.

What I'd like to discuss with this blog update is the importance of a buffer zone for your comic. We have been able to release consistently thanks to the work horse that is Katelyn Amacker, but also thanks to the fact that we prepared as much as we could. This past summer, we wrote and drew like angry, workaholic dragons. From this effect, we have a reserve of panels that can be uploaded weekly while we work on future panels.

The other side of a comic buffer is that your story and art style may have changed slightly as time went by. Personally, we've had to play around with the sequence of some events; largely due to the fact that after about 17 pages we haven't yet had an action sequence. Originally, I had written prioritizing character development and establishing the setting. While that may work well within a novel or a printed issue of a comic, a weekly updated webcomic needs some interstitial moments of energy. Having flipped the chronology around a bit, we had to cash in some of our buffer panels early. However, it was still nice to have that option.

I'll be blogging more frequently as I've recently freed up some time for myself. Until then, I leave you with a late holiday gift. This is a gag gift my friends and I made for a Xmas Eve Eve party. It's long, and manic, but we enjoyed it and I hope you do too. Also, it gets a little dark halfway through, so I don't recommend it for small children...

Keep Going! Last Day of Comic Con and Beyond!

Ahoy Friendly Friends,

Below you'll find the last of our Comic Con footage posted. I realize it's a bit silly how long I've stretched it out, but in many way it still feels like the event was only two weeks ago. Honestly, it feels like we haven't slowed down since we started preparing for the convention. Putting out a weekly comic is a taxing process. Currently, we're a moment where a number of our prepared panels are several pages ahead. This means Katy is more or less going at a rate of making a page a week. Once she's finished, the page gets tossed my way so that dialogue can be written up in time for the Wednesday update. The quality is still good, and the motivation is still running high, but we are pooped by the end of every day.

Little by little, we're getting faster and better at this. I know a year from now, we'll probably look back in disgust at ourselves for how we're doing things now. In the nearer future, we are going to have some great action followed by a revealing look at some of our comic's backstory. During all of this, somehow we're also preparing for the holidays, working our day jobs, applying to schools, petting our pets, and finding some spare time to feel like human beings.

Anyway, with this final Comic Con footage, I'll be going into what Kid's Day was like for us at the event. Honestly, we didn't think we would gather much attention as our comic is geared to an older audience. However, there are evidently quite a few people who go to Kid's Day for business reasons as well as taking their children out for a larf. We had also given away just about everything we could, but our friend Jessica O'brien was kind enough to loan us her button maker. This worked out quite nicely, because BUTTONS ARE FOR ALL AGES!

Lastly, Brennan Lee Mulligan of the webcomic Strong Female Protagonist was kind enough to sit down for a brief interview. The comic is quite new, but has made a very impressive start. Brennan talked to us about the decision to create a webcomic with the artist, Molly Ostertag, offered insight into the advantages of a web-based comic, and what the experience has been like for them so far. Both were super nice and helpful during the event, and Strong Female Protagonist is an original comic with consistently high quality art, dynamic writing, and an engaging plot. You can and should check it out at www.strongfemaleprotagonist.com.

Thanks for following us! We'll continue to throw updates and comics at your faces!

THANKS FOR GIVING!

ENJOY THE HOLIDAY! We're certainly thankful for a break. Getting this last page up proved a little more time consuming than anticipated. Ideally, we wanted to post something Thanksgiving themed in addition to our Weds post. What you'll get instead is footage of a cat cleaning itself looped over and over again. YOU'RE WELCOME (sorry)!

I'VE BEEN PUTTING THIS OFF LIKE A DONKUS!

Hi team,

Been a bit of time since I've posted, hasn't it? That won't be the case any longer, but I'm also not a fan of the fact that it's been almost two weeks since the last post. We've had some extenuating circumstances that have kept me busy with other aspects of the comic: a hefty chunk of volume two has now been written, and I've been working on some new characters that I'm excited to one day soon see visualized. I'll be honest though, I've had to pour a lot of time into trying to see some grad school applications through. My hope had been to start school part-time this spring, but with the mail system and power having been punched in the face, it's been more difficult than I would have liked. There's still some aspects that remain unresolved, but I've done everything I can from my end. Now at least I can put more time into writing and updating.

That is enough about me and my pile of excuses. We are planning a special comic update for this turkey-based holiday coming up, and I've finally posted our footage for day three of NYCC. This video is much shorter, because I wanted to cut to the chase to an interview with Elaine Lee. Elaine was our wonderful table neighbor and comic con, and has been in the comic business long enough to have a lot of great advice and perspective. Relatively recently, her comic Starstruck has moved to a webcomic format, and in the interview speaks to what lead to that decision. Check the comic out at: www.starstruckcomics.com/. They've also done quite a cool thing by turning their comic into an audio book. Actors each read for an assigned character as though it were a play, and it's an interesting way of distributing the media. Enjoy the interview, and be prepared for some intense scenes in our comic in the near future!

NYCC Day 2...and a lot of other junk

Hello loyal readers!

Yes, I know, it has been a looooong time since I've updated this blog. Assuredly, I will carry that guilt with me forever. Our lack of correspondence has not been without reason. Two weeks ago, we moved into a new apartment. Unfortunately, we were without internet for a little more than a week. All internet priority shifted from blog updates to posting the actual comic.

This new apartment is great for the comic because I used to have to drive into Hoboken every weekend to work on something webcomicky with Katy. Now that we're roommates, our new home is also the headquarters for After-Comic.com. YEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHH! (You can all start break-dancing now).

We've also had some delays because, well, a crazy effing storm has rocked the east coast. Our house lucked-out big time, though I wish I could say the same for our neighboring cities. The intro was filmed early Monday afternoon, right before Sandy took a dump all over the new Yorks and Jerseys. The footage and audio are less than ideal, but there are some really great questions addressed and answered. I can release the  entire panel if people wish it.

Also, hurricanes may come and go, but we still update! Today is Wednesday, so page 8 is up for viewing. Thank you everyone for being so patient!

@_@ AFTER comic con

Comic con was a fantastic learning expereince. But it has been a very long two weeks. An amazing, draining, roller coaster of a time. I will better articulate our experience in the near future. Until then please enjoy a couple things I whipped up on the little bits of downtime we had over the weekend. One is a new sketch, THAT I AM IN LOVE WITH. The other is a pumped up version of my sketchbook cover. I promise, I will have an informative post out very soon. Thank you!

Comic Con Day 1

Hey team!

Jebus crust, it has been an insane week. Firstly, Comic Con was amazing. To put it colorfully, it is a bizarre, informative beast that swallows you entirely, chews you up, and spits you out; leaving you tired but very well-informed. As far as networking goes, Katy and I made a great number of contacts and managed to sell a decent number of prints. Here are some important pieces of info we gleaned from our time:

 1. There is a very friendly and knowledgeable community of artists and writers within the convention. Talk to anyone you can, and just be nice and open-minded. We learned so much about webcomics and working creatively in general from our neighbors in Artist Alley.

 2. Print LOTS of business cards. Seriously, print more than what you think you need; and after that, print even more! These will go quickly, and you never know when and where you'll meet an important contact. By the last day of the convention, we were right our email on the back of fliers because we had simply run out of sources of our contact info.

 3. Try to have as little of expectations as possible going into each day of Comic Con. Honestly, we thought Thursday would be a breeze and Saturday would be the most daunting. In reality, the exact opposite proved to be true.

 4. If you are selling or giving away prints/posters/etc, bring lots of bags! There is a lot of shit being sold at a convention, and your patrons have their hands full. A lot of nice people want to buy your product, but sometimes they just don't have the means to carry it around with them. Also, you want to make certain your art stays in good condition as they trounce about the show floor with it.

 5. Here are a list of items that we found to be a necessity when operating a table in Artist Alley:
- Bottles of water (I've been dehydrated almost the entire weekend)
- Tape (So many applications) - A lockbox (If you are selling anything, you want to keep your funds safe. I purchased a perfectly functional money case at Walmart for $10)
- Change (Also for selling merchandise. If you have a hundred dollars in varying bills than you will be more than prepared for giving customers change. This varies based on the scope of your sales of course.)
- Pens - Pads of paper (For artists, it looks good if you're constantly sketching while sitting at a table)

There is a lot more to be said of Comic Con, and I'll be posting further this week. I've also edited all the footage I took of each day and will be posting them frequently. Below is the footage from Thursday, and I need to preface it with a few things. Firstly, I thought I could film everything and then edit and post it later that night. This didn't pan out so well, which I'm sure you'll be able to tell by how tired and insane I appear. Secondly, most of the footage was obtained while my hands were almost completely full. I apologize for all the shaky camera work, and I assure you the other days' footage will be an improvement. That being said, enjoy:

(Yeah, aware of the fact that this looks like a survival video)

Hey team! Here's the good word: this week you get not one, but TWO PANELS! CAN YOU HANDLE IT!? In the spirit of all things comic and convention, we're doubling our post before we head for NY Comic just a small number of hours from now. Katy and I are functioning on abnormal levels of excitement and sleep deprivation, and are looking forward to unleashing that energy upon others at our table. Thanks for all the support!

Trials and Tribulations

Hey there, Folks. Tonight is Wednesday night (aka weekly update night). Bryant and I have been hard at work preparing for comic-con. Here is another poster that we will be handing out.

I am going to be completely candid with you all. This process is difficult. The hardest thing is not doing the work, The hardest thing is posting older pages (like the one I am posting tonight). I know I have already have already mentioned it, but I have quite a few pages that I have / am currently re-drawing.

But I cannot do that forever. SO I am releasing my pages that I created many moons ago.

I have also been devoting my time to promotional material (no you have NOT seen it all!) for the past month and a half or so (or  maybe an eternity...that is what it feels like). I am itching to get back to work on the actual comic.

I wish I could dedicate all of my time to this. If I could put as much love into each panel as I put into this poster, I would be a happy gal. The silver lining is that I am getting better and faster at this the more I do it.  It is an uphill battle, but at least I am going uphill. Thank you for following us. We hope to do you all proud!

The Challenge Has Been Issued!

I would like to offer a little challenge to everyone who follows this blog and might also be attending the NYC Comic-con (or if you happen to be in the area Oct. 11 - 14th). 

We will be posting posters that look like this around the area.

If you can find one that has NOT been defaced already, take a picture of yourself defacing it on face book or at after.comic@gmail.com and you will get a prize!!! (PRIZES ARE TBD. Feel free to make recommendations) Here are some examples:

PS
Don't get caught!

Stuff, and other things. (namely two additional thank you posts)

Hey, everyone. This is the finished I promised to post ages ago. I have been a bit busy lately, so this (posting a blog) was dropped on the back burner. I have a batch of posters for comic con that I will post soon as well. Yes, one of the privileges of following our blog is that you get to view some of our material before the others!

I have a few important "thank you" messages that were unfortunately omitted in Bry's last post. It was accidental, I assure you. I would like to thank Brett/Bert/Bort Wilshe, Alissa Dittamo, and Mr. Anthony Hansen for all of their help. Alissa has made a totally kick-ass logo for us! Anthony and Brett have generally been very supportive, and have also agreed to help us out with promoting ourselves at comic-con.

For your patience I feel you deserve more than what is included in this post thus far.

Here is a quick sketch for one of the posters and the image I might use as my bio-picture thing on the website.  Let us know if you have any thoughts on our work! Thanks again!

This last image is my possible bio pic. I think it is pretty accurate.

We Have a Webcomic!

Hey team, the website is up! I'm beyond souped! More souped than a soup-making chef even! Last night Katy and I met with a few helpful friends last night, and after a great deal of cropping, coding, swearing, and drinking we created http://www.after-comic.com.

Firstly, I want to point out that, if you wish to visit OUR comic, do not type in aftercomic.com. Our post-apocalyptic webcomic has a very important dash between "after" and "comic", namely "after-comic.com". In contrast, "aftercomiccom" is a site for cartoon porn. So, if you fancy our comic, then you should type www.after-comic.com into your URL.However, if animated pornography is more your angle, visit out site instead.

More importantly, Katy and I have put have put a lot of blood and tears into this project (Mostly Katy's blood. I'm in the tear department). However, the result of our efforts would have been a mess without the help, love, and support from our friends and family. And so, thank you: Dmitry Gimzelberg and Michael Shapiro for guiding us in how to make a proper website; Katie Terezakis for providing us with a great reference material and resources; Jessica Kizmann, who was responsible for creating the title design for our first chapter; Robert Bajor; Dan Scharch; Jessica O'Brien; Jim Cottage; Christine Cuiule; Matthew Vimislik; both our families, who have been nothing short of supportive throughout all of this business; and to all the random strangers who have taken an interest in our weird, little comic.

Go to http://www.after-comic.com! We're updating weekly!