Artist Alley Merch: Comic Books, Stickers, and Sketch Cards
[dc]I[/dc] expanded my Artist Alley offerings for the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo, aka SPACE, this weekend (and the conventions/appearances beyond). I will have a lot more for sale this weekend at SPACE than I did at the MSU Comics Forum in February.
Comic Books Time
The first addition I made for my artist alley table a run of standard size comic books–I will still have my mini-comics, but I wanted to try printing larger books. I talked about this in last week’s newsletter (subscribe!), and I’ll recap here.
I went to a local print shop and asked about printing a run of comic books. The print shop promised a quick turn around, essential this close to a show, and no order minimum (always nice). Not knowing how well my comic books would sell—it collects all four of the Chocolate Quest pages—I wanted a small run.
Originally I went with ten, but I decided I wanted more. I split the difference and went with 15 comic books. I drew a cover and formatted all four pages of the comic book myself.
Chocolate Quest comic books.
Perhaps most importantly: I kept my comic book simple–which was easy to do with a four page comic. If self-publishing has taught me anything, it is: when you are trying something for the first time, go for simple.
I’m happy with how the books turned out, although I had a formatting challenge since my original comics weren’t created with a standard page layout in mind. But, I made it work and I like the result (I can always experiment with future books).
As you can see on the cover, it says “_ of _”. I decided to individually number the books to make them unique (after I shot this photo, I hand numbered them with a calligraphy marker).
If I do another run of these books, I will make the second run look different.
Stick It To Me
I read about offering small items at my artist alley table, and decided to look into making stickers. I didn’t have time to order stickers through a printer, but I saw I could buy sticker sheets for my printer.
The sheets I bought didn’t have pre-cut shapes, which meant I could make my stickers any shape I wanted and I didn’t have to worry about lining my images up with a template or the sticker sheet.
Getting sticky with it.
The only challenging part was deciding which images to use. The upside to having over 100 comics¹ in my archive is, there are plenty of images to choose from. A simple select-copy-paste-resize in Photoshop and I’m done.
The stickers turned out great for a quick and easy print-at-home solution. I added my URL and signature to the stickers too. BRANDING. I cut the rest out of the sheet nicer than the one shown here. This was just a let’s make sure this actually works test.
Pretty Sketchy
I wrote yesterday about trying sketch cards and making my own. I drew about 20 different cards on Monday night, and I have enough cut cards to do…um…70 more.
This doesn’t mean I expect to have 90 sketch cards finished by Saturday, and I really don’t need to—I was in the groove of cutting cards on Sunday night and cranked out a bunch (it will save me work later). I could buy pre-made sketch cards, but it seemed more cost-effective to make my own (and I wanted watercolor paper cards).²
You can buy pre-cut sketch cards. Image via Amazon.
Making my sketch cards is a three-step process:
- Sketch
- Ink
- Color (with watercolor paint)
My plan is to sketch a bunch, then ink ’em, then paint ’em. The assembly line approach really helps here, as I only focus on one thing at a time.³
First step of making my sketch cards.
The photo above shows a few sketch cards I cranked out on Monday. They are rough sketches, which I will ink in the next step, and color with watercolor paint in the last step.
And yes, that’s a cutesy cat drawing saying Trust No One. When in doubt, go for weird.
Even if I only sell a couple sketch cards, finishing a batch of cards is a great writing and drawing exercise. I force myself to quickly come up with an image and/or a joke and get it on the card just as fast (I can always tighten the image while inking–like No Filter Fox’s eyes in the card on the right).
OK, back to work.
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¹ I keep meaning to write about breaking the 100 comics mark.
² I can fit sixteen 2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ sketch cards on one 11″ x 15″ piece of watercolor paper. Multiply that by the number of the sheets in the pad, then divide what I paid for the pad by the total amount of cards I can make. It cost me about 5 cents per card. Sure, there is the time element, but once I had the system down, I cranked the cards out pretty fast.
³ I cannot stress the advantage of focusing on one thing at a time enough. It helped me increase my comic output. I write/thumbnail two comics at once, then I panel both, then I draw both, then I ink both. It really does speed up my work flow.
Today’s Amazon Deals
Sketch Cards on Amazon
