Tweet
In the news this month…
Is Patreon the new alternative to Kickstarter for Webcomics?
There has been some rumblings in the world of webcomics that a potential new alternative to the Kickstarter model could inspire artists to reach out for continued patronage rather than single project funding. The premise is simple – you post your project details on Patreon, offer some incentives or alternate tiers for higher level contributors, and promote your Patreon page as a landing page for garnering support for your project. Patreon works on a monthly billing cycle, but only when new content is posted – if you decide to pitch $1 to a project, you are only charged that $1 every time content is released. If there is no release, you don’t get charged. Here’s the short kicker – if 10 pieces of content come out, you are paying $1 for each piece of content, and are now paying $10… see how it works?
Artists are seeing this as the new monthly donation drive system, where generous patrons pitch money towards a central goal. As it stands right now, Patreon is geared more towards musicians and creators of videos, but the system could be easily altered to work with traditional comics creators. Keep your eyes glued to this new platform in the next few months, as it is primed to explode in popularity.
To learn more, follow the link: via Patreon
In other news…
Our man Phil Hofer – you might know him as Frumph, has released version 4 of ComicPress. For those of you who are new to the world of webcomics, Phil Hofer created a theme that runs with WordPress geared towards comic content delivery. A couple of years ago, Phil abandoned ComicPress to work on a new theme called Easel – which was quicker, lighter and easier for users to modify.
With new additions and requests from users, Phil tweaked Easel to the point where it was a vast improvement from the initial release. Ready to call the new version Easel Evolved, Phil did a 180 and decided to make the new theme the latest update – 4.0. Here’s what he had to say about it on his development blog:
I was going to name the new version of Easel, Easel Evolved. Instead I’m going to take a different route. I’m going to name it ComicPress 4.0
I’m going to revive ComicPress – but not with the ComicPress code inside of it. The new theme which has thousands of new enhancements inside of it. (not individual features mind you). Remember I posted a long time ago there will never be a ComicPress 3.0 ? heh that’s why it’s going to be 4.0 / never said there was never going to be a 4.0.
What does this mean to current ComicPress users? It means if you ‘accidently’ update your theme to 4.0 you will instantly have to get the Comic Easel plugin and ComicPress to Comic Easel migrator plugin and migrate all of your comics to the Comic Easel format. Your archive will no longer work and you will need to update your pages for it to include the new shortcode for archives. The child theme I’ve been begging you to make will be required to be updated with the new CSS elements. ALL COMICS need to be only set into a SINGLE category. (it could be multiple different categories, but only one set.)
For more information, check out his blog at Frumph.net
and in our final bit of news…
Venerable webcomics webhost and promoter, Drunk Duck, was faced with a server problem that dropped the site off the map. For over two weeks, Drunk Duck suffered an outage, and creators who relied on DD hosting felt as if they were left in the dark while the issues were resolved. The official word from Drunk Duck’s Facebook page and Twitter was:
August 15th: Hello Duck Fans. We are having web hosting issues. We will be back up shortly. Thank you for your patience.
August 19th: Sorry people, Drunk Duck is still down. We hope it will be up and about again some time on Monday or Tuesday and we will finally be over our current hosting issues! In the mean time I’m trying to finalise this week’s Quackcast and not even that is going right… so it’s not a great start to the week for the Duck right now. >:[
August 22nd: Sorry again for the continued downtime that we have been suffering! We have been having continuing hosting issues. We HOPE these will be resolved over the weekend, although I will make no guarantees at this stage. We are massively sorry about how things are impacting you guys, we know how crap it is not to be able to have your comic there or tell your fans what’s going on, or connect to your comic community. I personally thank you very much for sticking around and waiting for us. I know it’s not easy and you only have so much patience. Please try and hold out a little longer.
September 3rd: The news is that the site will be back up tomorrow. We apologise again unreservedly for the long down time! We know how bad that’s been for you guys and your comics.
Speculation began shortly after the site went down – did Wowio suddenly pull the plug? Was this Platinum‘s doing? Was the site bleeding money? Poor management? etc etc. In the end, there was some resolution to the server outages – but will this be enough to appease all of those who rely on DrunkDuck’s hosting services, or will this result in an exodus from some established artists? For now, it seems DD may be on a course of PR damage control to ensure their loyal members remain that way.
——–
These were just some of the news events occurring over the last month. As a Postscript, here are a few topics people were also buzzing about:
WACOM introduces the Companion, geared towards artists.
Ross Nover of The System Comic reaches his Kickstarter goal to print Volume 1 of his work.
Shadowbinders by Thom and Kambrea Pratt turned 3! Celebrate with a birthday Q&A Podcast!
Charles Dowd’s Kickstarter – Lilith Dark and The Beastie Tree Graphic Novel needs your support!
There’s your news for this month – we’d love to hear your insights and opinions in our comment section – so fire away. Just remember to