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About Digital Art / Professional Premium Member ShazzbaaFemale/United States Recent Activity
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*Shazzbaa
Double Z, Double A
Artist | Professional | Digital Art
United States
D&D Geek, Grammar Freak, and Aspiring Webcomicker! I use longer words when shorter words will do. :3
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  • Mood: Optimism
  • Listening to: Binding of Isaac Soundtrack
  • Watching: After Hours
I've had a couple of people ask what conventions I'm planning to attend this year, so I thought I'd make an OFFICIAL POST here as well!

~Skwinky and I are doing a smaller convention set this year due to both busy life things for everyone --

Otakon [link] - Aug 9th - Aug 11th
SPX [link] - Sept 14th and 15th

If any of you are coming out to either of these conventions, be sure to stop by! We're hoping to have some new books and new prints and such and it should be pretty sweet. :love:
  • Mood: Zest
  • Playing: D&D
  • Eating: oh right, I should get some food I guess
  • Drinking: OJ
Man, it feels like this thing has been in the works forever, but at last, the new Shazzbaa.com store is up!

I've got all three TNH books, the Fat Animals Colouring Books which have been a huge hit at conventions, and a few posters you guys might recognise as well!

I tend to be a bit slower on shipping than the big online companies since I literally run this business out of my room (it can take an extra week or so sometimes), but I'll always e-mail to let you know when your books or posters are on their way and I try to be as communicative as possible. :")

Leave a message if you find anything bugs or anything that Flak and I missed, and we'll get on them ASAP!

-Shazz

P.S. - I did put together a Runewriters book of the first chapter to sell at conventions, but I'm not sure how much interest there'd be for something so new -- so let me know if you'd be interested in seeing that available also!

OKAY I GOTTA ASK: RW readers, who's your favourite character in RW so far? :D 

35%
67 deviants said Tareth (the blonde deaf girl YOU SHOULD KNOW WHO THIS IS)
30%
58 deviants said Jonan (the tall angry mute necromancer guy)
19%
37 deviants said Severian (the one with tentacles)
10%
19 deviants said Xira (the mindreading turban-clad newcomer)
4%
8 deviants said Esra (Quentin's neat-freak second-in-command)
2%
3 deviants said Quentin Agorath (the red-headed slightly addled head of the Agorath Order)
1%
2 deviants said Iavin (the dark-haired puppet-master dude)

Webcam

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:icondancingferret:
*DancingFerret Jun 3, 2013   General Artist
You hath been featured :mwahaha:
[link]
Reply
:iconshazzbaa:
*Shazzbaa Jun 4, 2013  Professional Digital Artist
Oh cool!! Thank you very much! :love:
Reply
:iconmistydawnamara:
~MistyDawnAmara Jun 1, 2013  Hobbyist Digital Artist
Hey! We met at Heroescon last year and i was wondering if you were planning on comming this year! I'd like to swing by and say hi!
Reply
:iconshazzbaa:
*Shazzbaa Jun 2, 2013  Professional Digital Artist
Alas, not this year! Thanks for thinking of me though! Hopefully I'll be able to go back in the future. :aww:
Reply
:iconmistydawnamara:
~MistyDawnAmara Jun 3, 2013  Hobbyist Digital Artist
well, i got a couple years till i fly off for college, maybe next year or the one after^^
Reply
:iconbrightcynder:
~Brightcynder Apr 6, 2013  Hobbyist Digital Artist
Hiya :3 I hate to bother you again, but I'm starting a webcomic and I need advice, and you're the nicest webcomic artist I know ^^ If you could take some time to give me some advice I'd really appreciate it.

1. What's the best way to drum up interest for the comic without being pushy?

2. Do you have any special techniques for shading thick fur? Or could I get away with standard shading, like in this picture [link] ?

3. Is it okay to miss updates occasionally due to repetitive strain injury (which I suffer from a lot?)

4. About what size of canvas is best for a standard comic page? I usually have A3 at 300 DPI, but Photoshop's started crashing a lot on me with that.

Sorry to be a pest, thank you for your time >w< Also can't wait for more Runewriters! *w*
Reply
:iconshazzbaa:
*Shazzbaa Apr 6, 2013  Professional Digital Artist
Okay! I'll do my best!! :") THIS MIGHT BE LONG I TALK A LOT.

1) I say, don't even worry about an audience until you've finished at least 5-10 pages. At least, especially if you want to do a story-based comic! When I first started posting TNH, the only people who knew about it were my friends, and I just posted it for them. If you're a member of any forums, add the webcomic to your signature. Add a link to the webcomic on your DeviantArt signature! Post updates on Deviantart, or at least post teaser links like I do on tumblr. Just share it with people you're already connected to when you're first starting out! With TNH, I didn't even join TopWebComics until comic #33, which, even at 3x a week, is 11 weeks in!
You can buy Project Wonderful advertising, and you can join groups that'll have an interest in whatever your comic is, you can try to find a webcomic group to join and promote each other's comics, do guest art for other comics you love that you think are similar in interest to yours and try to find audiences that would overlap... but all of these things should wait until you've really gotten into the story and have something there that people could get super hooked on. I cannot tell you the number of times I've gone looking for a comic, found a nice-looking one, but when there were only 3 or 4 pages there, not enough to get me interested in the story, I never remembered to come back.

TL;DR the best way to drum up interest is to not worry about drumming up interest, and just post good pages! Webcomics build slowly, and that's okay! Take that time to settle into your update schedule. Runewriters looks like it came in with an audience, but that's only because I started with TNH and AWW!

To answer the actual question, though, the best attention I've received for my comics has been from making friends with webcartoonists. I put one popular wecomicker in TNH, she linked to the cameo on her website, and I got lots of new readers! It was like my big break! But other cartoonists I've drawn in TNH have just thanked me for the cameo, and that was nice too. Meanwhile Runewriters was featured on DA once because I asked ~mleiv for a banner to link to her gorgeous webcomic in my links page -- she checked out the comic, liked it, and suggested it as a DD!
The thing that makes these all good (and non-pesky) is that I was never asking someone to feature me or look at my comic, nor was that ever the intent. I just wanted to spread the love! If you do that, love will come back to you in some small way. :")

2) I think really the important thing is that it matches the style of the rest of the art! If that's the style you're using for everything else, then SUDDENLY HAVING A REALISTIC SHADING STYLE FOR THICK FUR would be quite jarring! In the style of art you linked, I'd probably use the lineart to indicate the fur's texture moreso than shading it a different way? That'd be my guess, anyway!

3) If you do not think you'll be able to keep to a consistent schedule then do not promise a consistent schedule! I've seen some webcomics that say they "update whenever, so follow on twitter or RSS for updates," I've seen some artists with health issues who update once a week, but don't specify the update day, so that they can update whenever in the week they're feeling most up to it. Updating less often makes the going slower, though! TNH seemed to climb in popularity much more quickly than Runewriters is now, and I would chalk that up largely to the fact that TNH updated 3x a week and RW is only 1x. If you're okay with that, then go for it! Just don't be discouraged that it'll be a little slower. ;u;
The thing that will turn people away is if you SAY you'll update, say, once a week, and then over and over have to renege on that promise. People will resent a comic that says it updates weekly and then doesn't! Just make your update schedule one that you HONESTLY BELIEVE YOU CAN MEET, barring disaster, and the occasional missed update is okay. :")

4) I usually use Ka-Blam's templates as reference! [link] If you ever want to print your comic, it's good to be sure that it's pretty close to a standard size. :") You could probably get away with working a little smaller than A3 if you need to (most standard comic pages end up being close to 6x9 plus trim) -- just make sure you have a copy at 300dpi if you hope to print it later!



I think that's everything? Hope it helps! Lemme know if you have any questions or need me to explain anything better! :"D
Reply
:iconbrightcynder:
~Brightcynder Apr 6, 2013  Hobbyist Digital Artist
Oh, this is all so fantastic help! Thank you so much! ;w; One thing I do need to ask though, since it's a giant crossovery king of comic of different franchies (Pokemon, Final Fantasy, etc) is it legal to use advertising for the comic even if it's non-profit? The legalness of these things confuse me X_X
Reply
:iconshazzbaa:
*Shazzbaa Apr 12, 2013  Professional Digital Artist
Oooo, legalness for these things is always a huge weird grey area. TECHNICALLY it's breaking copyright law to sell prints of art with licensed characters (like Pokémon), but people sell fanart posters all the time, entire conventions are dedicated to it, and companies just don't police strictly enough to stop them most of the time.

But LEGALLY my understanding would be that it would be just fine to advertise your crossover comic, but it would be profiting off of someone else's characters to sell adspace for other people on your website.
The one weird exception is parody, which occasionally falls into a legal thing called "Fair Use" and is legally okay -- 8-Bit Theater, for example, claimed that it used the Final Fantasy sprites for a work of parody and thus was perfectly legal under Fair Use, and sold ads on the website and never had any problems with it -- whether that's accurate to the law or not I don't know.

Parody doesn't ALWAYS fall under Fair Use, so some people prefer to play it safe and not involve their fanstuff with money in any way. But that's kind of up to you! I DON'T HAVE A GREAT UNDERSTANDING OF THESE RULES and tend to avoid it altogether by only selling things I've created, so you might want to ask someone who actually does a comic based on existing franchises, to see what kind of legal precautions they're taking or if they know the laws associated. :")
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(1 Reply)
:iconbrightcynder:
~Brightcynder Feb 25, 2013  Hobbyist Digital Artist
Hiya! I love your art ^^ I'm reading through TNH right now!

Also, Boo looks like my cat, only darker. *random info you don't care about*
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