

Triumph of the Nerds - Comics - michaelbrave
http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21568586-internet-has-unleashed-burst-cartooning-creativity-triumph-nerds?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/triumph_of_the_nerds

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pg
"In Britain Punch coined the term “cartoon” in 1843 to describe its satirical
sketches, which soon spread to other newspapers."

It's slightly misleading to say "coined," because the term was already in use
for the similar drawings that artists made for e.g. tapestry-makers to copy.
(Judging from the name I'd guess these were on large pieces of paper.)

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arocks
I have often tried to compare Webcomics artists with say Independent game
developers or app developers. They ought to be similar but yet so different. I
think it boils down to the effort required in generating content.

It is quite hard to regularly churn good games or apps like a webcomic artist
would despite all the higher level tools that we have today. I think once it
becomes easier to convert a game design into a working game say in less than a
day, then we would have the rise of artist-centric games as an industry.

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RyanZAG
I disagree heavily - converting a game design into a working game in less than
a day means that all of the real work was done by an automated tool. You can
build houses the same way - an architect designs a house and then it gets
duplicated into a suburb with all the houses looking nearly identical. House
prices plummet and nobody wants to live there unless they can't afford better.

So sure, you could have a functional game in an hour off some automated
process... but it's not going to be art, and it's probably not going to be fun
to see the 3rd game come off that tool, let alone the 300th.

Webcomics work because there is no automation. You start with a blank page and
you create everything on that page by hand directly from your imagination.
Games that do the same (unique indie and older games, such as minecraft or
king's quest) are always far far better than some auto generated box2d jumping
game that are all the rage these days. These little quick games are fun for
all of 2 minutes before you close them and never look back.

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arocks
I think it would be hard to visualize using existing tools. Imagine the jump
from assembly language to scripting languages. The effort required reduced by
many orders of magnitude for the exact same result. We don't have such game
creation tools yet. We only have cookie cutters like RPG Makers or game
engines mods. So probably this is just a wishful dream for now.

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brador
Anyone have some numbers on web comics? Are they loss leaders into ecommerce?
What are the business models here?

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astine
Webcomics cost next to nothing to run, you just need the time and equipment to
draw cartoons on a regular schedule. You then put them on a website with some
cheap hosting. _If_ the cartoon becomes popular, and that's a big if, you can
sell advertising on the site itself, merchandise, and original artwork. You
can also transition to commissioned artwork or use the comic as a resume point
to get a good job as an artist. Most full-time webcartoonists, attend a lot of
comic conventions and use them to network, publicize their work, and sell
merchandise to fans.

From what I can tell, the biggest source of income for most cartoonists is
merchandise and the biggest cost center is conventions (both the cost of
travel and of renting a booth.)

