Dreamfinder and Figment

Me as Dreamfinder at Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party in the Magic Kingdom on 9/26/11. I couldn't tell you how many times I was stopped for photos. A few people even thought I was park cast member. It just goes to show you how much the character is really missed!

(Big thanks to my wife Kam and my mother in law for the absolutely kick butt job on the costume!)

Art sale! Buy some original ‘Shadowbinders’ pages, Transformers, Disney and more!

We’ve just put some original ‘Shadowbinders’ pages up for sale on Etsy. The pages are pencil on 11″ x 14″ Strathmore Bristol — 100% hand-drawn.

You can browse what we currently have listed at this link.

We also have some other artwork for sale on eBay this week, including an original page of Transformers art from the Mosaic project (view the published page), some Transformers G1 sketches, and some Disney comics Christmas sketches.

Here are the links:

• Transformers G1 Bumblebee and Cliffjumper sketches
• Transformers G1 original comic book artwork for the Mosaic “Fire with Fire”
• Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy Christmas sketch
• Tinker Bell and the Disney Fairies Christmas sketch

Happy bidding!

Confused? We're just taking a slight detour...

If you guys have been following Shadowbinders these past few weeks, you're no doubt confused by the switch from steampunk mayhem to high school hijinks. Never fear! The airships will return.

Soon.

In the meantime, keep reading Shadowbinders!

iPad comics? Or, “Will there ever be an app for that?”

There’s been a lot of hullabaloo about comic apps on the iPad lately.

With print media rapidly declining in popularity, I can completely understand panicky publishers jumping onto the iPad bandwagon in the hopes of recouping readership. The thing that gets me, though, is that print publishers are still expecting digital readers to adhere to the print business model. That is, they expect to sell a relatively small serving of material for a few dollars a pop. That worked for print, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a smart move for digital comics.

Why? Well, for starters you’re asking people to pay a relatively high press for a smattering of offline material that’s locked to a specific handheld device (namely, the iPad) and one that still hasn’t found widespread adoption at that (yet.)

Alternately, webcomics are accessible to nearly everyone on a wide array of online devices. Sure, you can’t read them offline (unless you save the individual pages for offline use, that is) but in five years time, who’s going to be “offline” anyway?

Dear Comic Book Industry: Think Netflix, not iTunes. (But that’s a whole ‘nother rant for another day.)

So will there ever be a Shadowbinders app? I honestly don’t see the point right now. Even if we were to give it away, it’s nothing that you can’t already get for free on your iPad or iPod right now anyway. Seems kind of redundant to me, but if there’s enough demand, we may consider it.

Anyway, the Shadowbinders pages are sized the way they are so as to be easily viewable on an iPad. They’re a little on the large size compared to many other webcomics, but with ever-increasing screen resolutions, I wanted to make sure we were ready for whatever the future might hold.

(Reposted from the Shadowbinders blog)

Digital Comics vs. Print Comics Part XXXVIIII (or, The Cheese is Moving)

Wow... the talk of digital vs. print comics (or illegal scans vs. legal, if you must) has BOOMed all over the place since Mark Waid made those comments.

It seems people's opinions fall into two camps: Waid is a digital prophet, or Waid is a nutty, tree-huggin' hippy. The former tend to be the more tech-savvy creators, while the latter are veterans who make their living in print and are completely FREAKING OUT over the digital revolution (as opposed to, say, learning to be open-minded, flexible and willing to change with the times.)

I made a career change from newspaper editor to "web guy" years ago. Even a decade ago, the writing was already on the wall for print. Why should comic books be exempt?

This came up over on the Disney Comics Forum, when someone posted a link to Beru's Disney Comics Fan Page -- a site that hosts hundreds of Barks, Rosa and Gottfredson stories. People freaked out, and the mods even went so far as to replace Beru's name with "XXX" so people wouldn't go Googling the site.

Ironically enough, that site has been on Disney's radar for years, but they haven't chosen to take any legal action... yet. In a more sane world, Disney would offer their own high-quality scans online for a nominal fee, but that doesn't appear to be something they're interested in doing right now.

Print comics people: The cheese is moving. Are you smart enough to find it?

New webcomic! Shadowbinders has airships, mecha and mystery!

Looks like the cat is out of the bag. We weren't going to officially launch our new webcomic Shadowbinders until next week, but some pages have already been posted as a sneak peak.

Head on over to www.shadowbinders.com and see for yourself!

Kneon on Facebook

Oh noes! I finally broke down and signed up for Facebook. Check out my page here.

I also set up a page for my upcoming webcomic, Shadowbinders. That page is here.

I hope you like them! (ba-dum-ching!)