DivaLea: Have You Hugged Your Internet Today?

Gather round, and I'll tell you how much making comics sucked before broadband connections, fast computers, scanners and Google mail.

I remember the days when I'd do a comics job that required reference, and the publisher would FedEx it along.
And FedEx some more.
And FedEx more.
And still more, making me wonder if anyone had communicated to anyone else that I already had a metric ton of reference, and if they would before I was buried under 15-pound large FedEx boxes. They must have gotten a sweet FedEx discount, some of these guys. They could've sent the stuff regular mail and given me a higher page rate, instead.

I'd have all the ref I needed, and then some, so much reference I was at a loss how to organize it. I took the best of the muhmillion 11x17 copies, especially the sheets with design theory and "How NOT to", weeded the dupes, and stored the rest. (Stored for ten years, in fact. I finally threw it out when I moved to a house. Wading calf-deep in an 8'x15' room in paper and crap pulled from a 3'x8' closet was a great motivator.)


Re-enactment of studio cleaning.

The first two issues of the Image series of Rumble Girls were lettered by hand, then scanned. Looked like crap. After that, I sorted out scanning (with the help of a specs page from Image), sorted the peculiarities of computer lettering (with help from James Lucas Jones of Oni) and sent Pagemaker files to the Quebecor FTP site. No more cut lines from pasted balloons! No more sticky fingers from glue stick! (Once, it was "Wheeee! No more rubber cement high!") And the pages looked great.

Then there was the time Quebecor sent me proofs of some pages via fax. "Some" meaning the whole damn 112-page blueline of Clockwork Angels, instead of the pages rendered in pencil. To a friend's fax machine. Which her boyfriend had said, "Sure! It's okay! Send it here!" (I've never owned a fax of my own.)
She met me at the door, clutching a double handful of fax pages, and on fire with righteous anger. She hadn't been told the fax was coming, and every time the fax disconnected and reconnected, the whole book started sending again. (And the faxes were so crappy it was hard to tell if the pages in question were acceptable. I had to wait for the physical books to know for sure.)
The next time I had to proof Clockwork Angels, I looked at files from an FTP. When I proofed NBM's collection of Rumble Girls, I had a PDF, also downloaded from an FTP.

Tech advances have changed employment in comics: if you can't color on a computer, you can't get coloring work. If you can't letter digitally, good luck get lettering jobs. (Not that there are many not handled by studios now, anyway.) If you don't have a way to prep files digitally, you're gonna be in a pickle.
These changes have forced adaptation: either people with those skills have learned the new way to do them, or they've moved on. (Or they open their wallets and pay someone to prep files.) They've been doom for some craftspeople. They've been the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. (Or whatever extinction event it might be this week.)

But there are these great up sides:
Better reproduction.
Beautiful color.
Art no longer at the mercy of a barely-trained camera monkey.
Lots of money saved on shipping and copies, both to and from a creator.
Never ever again having to fold out a CMYK chart the size of a Rand McNally U.S. road map and stare at the little squares searching for the "doesn't match the blue I used on the color guide but it'll have to, SIGH" code until the chips float and dance like a cannabis hallucination. (We will not speak of the brutal retinal afterimages.)
No more worrying about being crushed like that Japanese dude who was buried by his collection of weekly comic magazines. My family will never have to dig me out from under a mountain of Little Mermaid copies, me clutching at my ribs, giggling, "G-Grimsby's crusty exterior hides a s-soft spot for Eric* tee hee heeowuhowuhowuh!"

That last one means more space in the studio. That's always good. More room for Playstation games and craft suppl--I mean books.

Yesterday, I got sent some reference for a job tryout. The tryout came about because I emailed samples in, chatted up a connection in AIM, who was later messaged by someone else looking for an artist.
I called the editor, and had the reference in my Google mail inbox before I hung up the phone.

More room for Playsta--I mean books!

*Actual copy from The Little Mermaid merchandise reference packet page on Grimsby.

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