May 31 2008
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In this article, Jacob walks you through how to illustrate speech and thought bubbles for comic books, webcomics and header art. He also has a few free samples for your convenience.
May 29 2008
Hi. We’ve revised our guide to making header art. In addition to the standard reformatting and stylistic changes from Cadet Davis, I added a small and not particularly technical case-study on the evolution of Superhero Nation’s headers. If you have high hopes for your website, particularly a writing website, I recommend it.
Yours,
J.M.
May 15 2008
Picture c/o http://www.bastroplibrary.org/mckinneyroughs06/rough500gator.jpg .
Apr 13 2008
On April 14, we did our monthly header change. (Note: this post is actually dated April 13– we always date our non-comedy posts a day off so that our top post is always comedy).
Here, glance at the two headers and see if you can spot what’s changed.
Original
Revision
The main change is a slight edit to our caption, from “…guide to superhero politics” to “superhero comedy.” I think “politics” scares potential readers and most of our posts aren’t political. Also, I think that people naturally associate “politics” with “propaganda” rather than comedy, entertainment or anything that would encourage them to stick around. So politics had to go.
This looks like a minor change. If I showed the original to 100 people and then showed them the new version 10 minutes later, maybe 5 would realize what was changed. But I suspect that this will significantly reduce our bounce-rate (5-10%). People are quite good at appreciating differences, even if they don’t consciously realize what they’re doing. I’ll release preliminary Google Analytics results in a week to show whether it’s had an impact. Over the past week, our BR was in the mid-to-high 60s.
By comparison, Google Analytics says that Comics and Animation sites have an average BR in the mid-40s. I suspect that we’ll remain worse than average for some time. Our site is very eclectic. Our audience is highly fragmented between sports buffs, politicos, online entrepreneurs and writing aficionados. When I write articles on, say, designing effective header art, someone who’s casually interested in comedic content is going to bounce. Even the the ISS limits its offerings to comedy, although it also makes tangents into sports and politics.
Other Header Modifications
Kudos if you picked out these aesthetic changes. The heroes have gotten a bit bigger and more spaced-out. Catastrophe’s face is a bit more evenly purple. The blue portions of the US flag are a bit brighter.
It looks like Catastrophe’s face is wider and rounder. It’s not, but we see a wider cut of it because I moved Agent Black (the white guy).
Other Modifications
At the same time I changed the header, I also changed our WWSGD plug-in. Before, new visitors to our site were greeted by this message at the top of the screen. “Superhero Nation is a wacky comedy site devoted to a superhero novel, sports and politics.”
I changed that to “Superhero Nation is a wacky comedy site and novel about New York’s second-most inept superhero and a Homeland Security agent that might not be a mutated alligator.
In addition, we are the world’s #1 provider of Lol Gators and occasionally offer noncomedic articles on creative writing, business planning and market analysis, visual design and marketing. In fact, we may be the only site anywhere to offer these things in addition to Lol Gators.”
Apr 10 2008
I was looking through my computer today and found this picture. Eek.
There is nothing wrong with this picture, particularly if you like desolate, bleak prairies. I’m more of a radioactively cartoony New Zealander myself. Enter the Photoshop saturation tool.
In radioactive New Zealand, even the water glows. And the rocks are blue!
Mar 28 2008
In a header, text usually looks best when balanced. For example, in our header “a fairly unbalanced” is balanced nicely because it’s exactly as wide as the row below it, “guide to superpower politics.” If you’re interested in learning how to make text look pleasant, this will help.
Jan 03 2008
This article will help you design your superhero’s appearance for a comic book or novel cover-art. No matter what your style is, you can avoid these 9 mistakes that cause a superhero’s appearance to sink the story.
Common Flaws of Superhero Appearances
