Time Management Tips for Artists

(the following is a snippit from my recent e-mail to the “AWESOME LIST” which is for Coaching Clients of “Cash For Cartoonists” If you’d like to get on the Awesome List see the directions after article!)

For those that are pressed for time, this is for you! I know several artists who tell me they’d LOVE to launch a comic strip but feel they don’t have the time.  I’m pretty much doing Trader Dons in my “spare” time. I already have enough other projects taking up time and produce the two day a week comic, Bigfoot and Tiki. While I’m lucky enough now to work at home, home life is extremely busy! We have three boys, ages 10,13,14– a dog, three cats and bills to pay and a bunch of busy responsibilities. It occured to me that sharing how I manage my schedule with you, or giving you tips on how I’m fitting this in might shed some light on how you can fit something into your busy schedules. For now, here are two ways you can fit something new into your schedule if you’re really serious about making this a career. Start off slow and at least pen in 3 hours a day into your M-F or move some of those hours to the weekend or your days off….. Continue reading

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What I’m up to!

Coming very soon (and actually available on the Android Market already, Kindle in a few days) is my “Law of Attraction” graphic novel for SmarterComics.  You can use this method of thinking to literally attract ANYTHING you want into your life. Also a great gift to give to people you know who might be struggling a bit. This book easily helps you change the way you think and get rid of the negative in your life and focus and attract more of what you want, less of what you don’t. Old Yirmumah fans will have a treat as the narrator is “Drew” and “Bob” is used as the everyman “born loser”– check it out!

I’m back to drawing daily comics again! Hooray! Here’s what’s what:

Mon-Wed-Fri @ TraderDons.com

Tues & Thurs @ Bigfootandtiki.com

I’m still coaching some clients for the “Cash 4 Cartoonists” ebook privately. I was thinking about taking down the “coaching” edition because my time is getting a bit limited, but decided to keep it up. In fact if you’re a past buyer of the “coaching edition” make sure you are signed up on the “Awesome List” — I’ll be sharing my journey and behind the scenes business stuff with you while I work on my new Trader Don’s comic.

 

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Trader Don’s launches Oct 31!

Guess what? My new comic strip will be launching on Halloween! See details here  http://traderdons.com/  – and be sure to sign up for the free drink!!!

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Trader Don’s 6: A place to hang the hat

This is an ongoing blog series as I develop my new comic strip, Trader Don’s. Today I’m going to talk about website development. If you missed the other articles, here they be!

Okay, so it’s been a couple weeks since the last blog update in this series, but development on the strip has actually grown by leaps and bounds behind the scenes. I’m also doing all kinds of fun stuff with my other comic strip, Bigfoot and Tiki and I’ve been buried in work putting together the first book collection of those strips, which is available RIGHT NOW. YAY! — The Bigfoot and Tiki strip will still update twice a week as usual–

Designing TraderDons.com

There’s a lot to say about designing a website to house and archive your comics, probably TOO MUCH to say for this series of articles. If you’re a comic creator and want a guide to hosting your own comic or the basics of all this sort of stuff, I’ve written one here.

One big mistake I made was, I actually launched this series of articles before I actually owned the domain name “traderdons.com” – it had just slipped my mind! The name was important to me though, so if someone would have squated on that after seeing it was available, it would have stung! D’OH!

For beginners, I usually don’t suggest building a site before you make the actual comics. I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I’m a bit more comfortable in knowing that I can draw up a strip and the “home” for it is there waiting for me. In fact, it kind of pushes me to want to put comics on there even faster and get this thing going now that the framework is there…. but again, if it’s your first rodeo, I don’t suggest this. You can really burn yourself out on technical mumbo jumbo that can kill your creativity or drive for the idea. I suggest at least producing 10-15 regular comics to see if you’re still “feeling” they concept.

For my needs I decided to use the old faithful WordPress+Comicpress mix that I’m comfortable with. I toyed with the idea of … Continue reading

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Trader Don’s 5: More Characters and Fleshing Things Out

This is an ongoing blog series as I develop a new comic strip. If you missed the other articles, here they be!

In this installment I’m going to show off a few more main characters and discuss some thinking and some surprise things that popped up! Continue reading

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