D.J. Coffman – Sequential Artist, Thinker

Here’s a funny story for you. So as most of my friends and fans know I’ve been kind of busy doing OTHER things besides actual comic work.  One day I saw some hub-bub about a new contest Amazon and Universal had created called “Comic Strip Superstar” - There was the usual clamoring of people saying it was a BAD idea. And quite frankly, it probably IS a bad idea, and I’m not even sure WHY I was tempted to enter it… I guess part of me wanted to see if I could pull it off under a pen name or just jam out that many strips in such a limited time like back in the day… As I began thinking about it, a FLOOD of about 100 strip /joke ideas flowed out of me onto paper or notebooks. I was jotting down scenarios and whatnot and…. god forbid… it was kind of fun!

Daily comic strips are no stranger to me… back in 1999 we self syndicated a strip called GRAVITY that we got into 50 papers… when we (McDeavitt and I) realized it was too much work for too little money at the time, we shit-canned the Gravity strip and moved on to do freelance comic book illustration stuff and TONS OF WEBCOMICS!

But something about producing a daily comic strip never leaves you. Your mind is always looking at the world in a certain way that I can’t quite describe. I’ve had this idea for a comic strip up on the shelve, The premise was very simple… it was Generation X parents all grown up, raising a new generation of kids.  Something we know a good bit about here in the Coffman household—-

Here was my master plan.  I’d enter under a pen name, which YIRMUMAH fans might recognize. I’d be silent and just see how far I could on the strip alone. Best case scenario, I’d be picked in the top ten, rip off my rubber mask and yell SURPRISE, IT’S ME AGAIN! when public voting time came. Pretty much ALL for shits and giggles and shenanigans like in the old days, because frankly, the pay wasn’t all that great. I could MAYBE get a foot in the door at syndicates and save their friggin hydes with my genius plans! I wasn’t even sure if I’d be willing to sign an actual contract this time. Maybe I’d just bow out gracefully if the deal sucked and kickstart the feature as webcomic on my own. I was basically figuring “what the hell.”

The strips came out pretty well for only having one week (from the time I decided) to get 10 daily comics done and 2 full color sunday strips. I am pretty proud of myself for accomplishing that workload especially with other “pay the bills” things going on at the time. It was sort of one of those moments in life where you step back and say… “I still got it!” I can still do this.

WORSE case scenario, it wouldn’t cut the mustard and I’d have something interesting to write about (failed attempt at shenanigans!) and a whole bunch of comics to post all at once for friends and fans. Who knows, maybe they totally suck? I know I enjoyed creating them and could totally produce a strip like that with my eyes closed thanks to the wealth of material I have in my real life.

What happened… I entered the contest and forgot that I had even entered. I was reminded a few weeks ago when I got an email saying I had progressed to the top 250 strips of 5000 submissions.  Holy crap… it just might work! BUT ALAS… this week the new top 50 list was put out and XYZs wasn’t on it. For whatever reason , the editors at Universal passed on it.

Now I can show the strips to YOU. I don’t know if I’ll pursue this project further unless there was huge support for the concept or maybe a better offer sent my way. Maybe it’s complete garbage? I do know I had a lot of fun kicking the “daily” machine tires again though. It fueled the desire to possibly do SOMETHING daily again.

(You will need to click these thumbnails to open them up full size to read)

CLICK TO OPEN SAMPLE SHEET 2 BELOW

Click to enlarge strips below

CLICK TO ENLARGE

So, as many of you know, Hero By Night went on extended hiatus (cancelled) due to the financial reasons, but I had a whole 4th issue drawn and ready to roll that was never published or paid for. I was excited about this issue for a long time becaue it would have been the first creator owned characters I was introducing to the HBN Universe, and thought about doing a spinoff title all their own. The upside to this? Platinum Studios can’t lay claim to this story that was never published or paid for, including the characters within. So here’s a look at just the Roller Girl scenes from that issue. Props to James Patrick for the wonderful dialogue and capturing just how I imagined these girls to act and sound with each other. Click the image to go to the full link of scroll down pages. I find this awesome now looking back. They were called the “Steel City Rollers” — and now I’m actually a fan of the REAL Steel City team for obvious reasons. Enjoy!

Steel City Rollers

I’m helping out some new friends with their comic project and I was asked to critique and give feedback, or pointers on using the Cintiq screen and Photoshop to draw comics. Instead of typing up a tutorial, I sat down this morning and filmed this 25 minute video which includes tips, techniques and a look at how I approach a comic book page. There is no guidebook on how to use this new tool, so over the past three years of creating comics on it, I’ve sort of come up with my own approach, and I hope it inspires others. The Wacom Cintiq people should pay me a commission for the amount of these things I’ve sold for them and they have no idea! That or send me some free swag, Wacom! hah! (call me!)

Drawing Comics with Cintiq from D.J. Coffman on Vimeo.

A happy Monday morning…. woop, it’s afternoon!

The new Flobots comic launched today. Let’s call it the non-beta launch, because this one is a new direction and will update full pages Mon-Wed-Fri. First page and a blog is up over at flobots.net

My hot nurse wife… My wife started her new job today, which is only 3 minutes from our house! This equals her not being like a zombie working overnight shifts. She’s an LPN, and she liked working at a “facility” even though it was a lot more work for less pay. She was most happiest when she worked “agency” and was like a commando mercenary sent in to do the job. More money, less work… BUT… she was really heartbroken a couple years ago when “RED”, one of he patients who had Lou Gehrig’s disease passed away, and she’s been reluctant to go back to personal home care since then. – I tell her all the time though, that she’s unique because she cares so much about the people she’s looking after. SURE she gets attached, and it’s sad if anyone passes away… but Wow, if I had something wrong with me, or one of my kids I’d want someone like my wife there to see after them. I’ve seen a lot of really CRAPPY nurses who just come in and lay down the work and move on, and they don’t “care”. — I was a little pissed off a few weeks ago when the “facility” boss scolded my wife for taking a night off because of a REAL family emergency she had to deal with. The lady told my wife “This isn’t a McDonalds job where you can just come and go as you please.” — and that really got under my wife’s skin. Meanwhile, she could never leave that job on time because other nurses took their sweet ol’ time to relieve her. She was the dog gone Validictorian of her class, and she’s like a walking medical encyclopedia. Yeah, she’s hot AND has a brain too. That is a deadly combination, fellas. Anyways, I’m proud of my wife.  She texting me from the new job and said things were going “Good, real good! )- This makes me happy because she’s been dealing with horseshit from all over in her life (except here!) and she deserves good things, and not having to walk around like a zombie with no sleep…

OIL… thank god the price of oil went down. We’re in need of home heating oil here soon and I just called and couldn’t believe it was only 300 something as oppossed to 800 or 900 something this time. Yee hah!

I’ve been reading the likes of Hugh McLeod and Seth Godin for a long time. I think I like their thinking so much because I found people who think like I do.  In my bookmarks section I don’t have them listed as “bloggers”, just “thinkers” – -  Anyways… Hugh’s blog especially, and the journey he’s been on has been great. His pondering and coining of the phrase “social object” (at least I believe he coined that?) – has been a really fascinating conversation to watch unfold over the years. I’ve made it sort of a game to ask myself what do I have going that is a true “social object” – You know, the COMICS themselves or running a regular comic page isn’t enough. It’s not REALLY an object. And a printed comic book, sure, that COULD be a social object, but how many conversations does it start? Not many, and it’s only within a select group of people (comic book effeciandos) — so no, comics aren’t enough…

This brings me to the FLOBOTS, who I’ve been working with on a variety of things (comics, merchandise, websites, whatever they need) – Now, for me personally, it was the message in their music that brought me in. My “social journey” with the band began when I heard the song “Handlebars” on Sirius Satelite radio, before it “blew up” – it mentioned “comic books” and lead me to check out their full album…. which their full album just totally BLEW ME AWAY. Before even seeing the album cover and the American Flag bandanas they were sporting, I was already hooked on the message in the music. It was a total bonus to see provacative type imagery on the posters for their May 20th release of “Fight With Tools” you had lead Emcee Jonny 5 wearing his bandana in front of a microphone stand, pointing to the future… calling back to the lyrics “I can lead a nation with a microphone”

I’ll fast forward through the “social journey” part of working with the Flobots. That story is pretty amazing in and of itself and worthy of further discusssion at a later date. I’m coining that phrase right now though! “Social Journey” — , But the point of this entry is the BANDANA as a social object study.

Why is it a social object? Well it sparks conversations… tons of them! Both good and bad. We’ve heard from all types of people… old and young… military and civilian. Conversations sparked on the webcomic site about if wearing the flag was a “desecration” of it… some people asked “why are you hiding your faces!” — and many great conversations sparked from it at as well. And beyond talking, people found them on their own, and put them on and it motivated them to do good, wearing them at voter registration drives put on by Flobots.org Street Teams and other events. Hundreds marched with them on during the DNC, and in support of the Iraqi War Veterans…. all along I kept thinking about what a powerful social obect they had, and it wasn’t because THEY chose it to be this way on purpose… the people chose it.

The band was very busy touring all over the place. They had a couple shirts at their merchandise table, but no bandanas for sell. The demand for these bandanas was THROUGH THE ROOF. We got more email and myspace comments about “how do I get a bandana” than just about anything else. At the shows, Jonny 5 and Brer Rabbit explain to you what the wearing of the flag means to them… that it is not the flag of the past, it’s the flag of the future. I’ve even heard them say how they kind of wanted to “reclaim” the flag and make it stand for something good. I took that as meaning in part, that you can’t just go buy a little car flag sticker or window cling and slap it on your car and call yourself a patriot because you took part in the consumer experience. For me personally, I’d got a little sick of the weird patriotism that lead us into wars. People with American Flag Stickers with slogans that say “These colors don’t run!” or tough guy phrases.

Again, the demand for these bandanas was pretty high. The band themselves didn’t want to just put out a bandana and sell it for a profit, they could have probably pretty easily sold out and had branded “Flobots” bandanas at MALL kiosks this holiday season (as we speak!) — They wanted it to be special or do good if they did do it. They featured the bandanas again in the video for RISE, at the AmericaWillBe.org website. They had a ton of leftover bandanas from the RISE video shoot that they would give out personally to fans at the shows. Even off of their own chests or back pockets. Little did they know this only made the demand grow for these things. Starting MORE conversations about “how do I get one!” — Jonny 5 loved this, and we had a discussion about how cool it was that if you got one, you got it directly from them at a show.

They didn’t want to just put these bandanas at their merchandise tables at shows without them being special. So how could we make these social objects that were in high demand SPECIAL….

Screenprint something on them to make them branded as “official” Flobots Bandanas. But not just the logo…something else. This brought up questions again if it was even right to print anything on top of a flag. But this wasn’t a FLAG, it was a bandana. And one side was actually sort of whitish and not printed on. So it was decided to print something on the back… but what?

#1 – I designed a slogan, based in part by the call to action at their shows when they describe the flags to people… On the back of the flag, oh the 12th Stripe and under the spread out letters of F-L-O-B-O-T-S it reads..

“THIS FLAG IS FROM THE FUTURE. IT IS THE FLAG OF THE AMERICA THAT WILL BE. IT BEGINS WITH YOU. YOU MUST BE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD. JOIN US @ FightWithTools.org”

And to make it even more mysteriously cool, I encoded a secret phrase within the message, that you can only see if you own the actual bandana. This was insprired by what the first American revolutionary heroes would do when sending encoded messages to each other.

#2 - This bandana would only be available at Flobots shows, and all the proceeds would benefit their non-profit groupl, Flobots.org.

#3 - This idea was expanded to giving them out as a donation incentive on the Flobots.org website which we just re-launched last week. Now Flobots fans who are serious about owning one of these can get one and know that their donation is going to go to a worthy cause. If you’re interested, here’s the Flobots.org Donation INcentive page.

Now, the Flobots FAN side of me already has a bandana that was used in the RISE video, given to me by Andy in Washington D.C. – it’s tied to the light on my drawing table. But I couldn’t wait to get one of the screenprinted flags so I placed one of the first donation orders for one (just because!) — My OFFICIAL bandana arrived today…

I posted it up on the way out of my office, and realized the unintended signifigance of being printed on the OTHER side of the bandana. And how certain things just fall together if you are a Flobots fan…. “In between the lines…” you’ll find this call to action. Are you receiving???

Even though I have created thousands of comics over the years, this feels like the first real “social object” I’ve been involved with, and it’s just fascinating. Unlike others might speculate, I don’t think true social objects can be created or manufactured to work in a market. They just take hold and grow all on their own.

On the artist’s end (musician or otherwise) you just have to keep creating meaningful work. But it is a very powerful thing to know and study “social objects” and how they work.

Personally after writing this, I can’t get the words “social journey” out of my mind. I think that might be more important than anything else in the “social object” conversation. Just last night I was i-chatting with Andy Rok and we were digitally high fiving each other about awesome things that are going on… and he said: …I can’t believe this friendship and working relationship all came out of a single email

I can’t believe it either. I’d say it’s pretty darn REMARKABLE.

You want a sneak peek of what “FLOBOTS” will look like in the upcoming comic? (Dec 15th!) Well, watch this video… (if you’re in a hurry, you can move to the 2 minute mark…)

This was a 4 part video Jonny 5 and Andy Rok recently did. The full video interview is over at flobots.com -

Time for me to go to my recharging station and power back up for tomorrow. Peace!

Here’s a basic color scheme for an upcoming project…. just you know… color scheming…

This is waiting to hit the press… Flobots will be doing 3 nights at the Gothic Theatre in Colorado to wrap up their crazy year. It looks like I’ll be there as well to wrap up mine! You could be there too, tickets are still available.

I decide I don’t post enough friggin ART on the blog here… so here’s a panel I just inked tonight, a first good look at Flobot #13.

“Funneling through smokestacks…”