Once Upon a Time...

For all of you interested in updates on our next Anthology, here it is.

All submissions have been accepted and announced. See list...
Cover winner announced, as well as a future variant cover. See them...
Sample pages from several stories have been posted. Have a look...

Whats left to do?

Well, a whole heck of allot actually.
Table of contents, artists information and credits, interior covers, making the covers into print format with proper spine....

lots.

We are still looking at a release date before Christmas, so fingers crossed!

Another issue is raising money to get the print copies to the participating artists.
If you want to help, Donations can be made via paypal to hello@gurukitty.com
We would very very much appreciate any help you can give. We may be doing an indigogo campaign in the near future to get enough money, but they usually end up costing a lot of money to raise money.

Thank you everyone for your continued support.

The fanart trap

It is really hard to sell an original idea. There is no doubt about that, even mainstream comic companies know that, thats why all these movies are being made of old stories and characters.

But remember Batman, Spiderman, Captain America, Iron Man and all the rest were original ideas once too.

We are sitting at minicomi, a small one day comic festival (mostly manga/anime), at our table trying to sell our original ideas, art and comics.
Across from us is a table selling 13x19 prints for $5 more than us of My Little Pony and various animes I'm unfamiliar with.
Beside us is some Princess Mononoke fanart, down the aisle is Zelda and some Adventure Time and Pokemon plushies.
Table after table is people making a profit off of other peoples ideas, hard work, and imagination.

It makes it even harder to sell an original idea, when you are surrounded by the familiar.

What we also see are some tables trying to sell their original ideas by selling fanart at the same time, this is what we call the "fanart trap".

Often these are artists that have been trying for a long time to sell their original ideas, or were fanart artists before and have a new original concept.
These people have often thought that they could gain an audience or fanbase by having familiar characters peppered in their displays. They very often have been struggling to make a profit for a long time and just sold out, or they are too afraid to jump in all the way.
Admittedly, with the right audience in the right time and the right place, this can work, but the reality is that most of the time all those ingredients just dont come together.

Once you go down that path it is hard to get out, this is why its a trap. People tend to get addicted to the sales at the end of the day and forget that their original story or characters are still ignored, hidden and lonely.

Having an original story or idea is only 1/2 the battle, most artists and business owners spend more time marketting and pushing their ideas than they do working on them. A sad fact for sure, but I asure you its true.

The only real way to get yourself known for your ideas is to make sure that your ideas and your face are what are out there. Yes, it is harder, but it is also much more rewarding down the road and you wont have to dig yourself out of the trap.

I find it very annoying to hear someone at a table with fanart and their original stuff, complaining that no one looks at their original stuff. DUH! You've distracted them with pop culture, familiarity and memories.
It's your own fault.

Im not trying to preach about the immorality and disrespect of selling fanart, what I want to convey is that its not an easy money making solution. It will make things harder for you, and its already hard enough.

For everyone who is trying to sell their original stuff, dont give up, dont sell out, and keep pushing yourself!
Your original idea today could be the next generations super fandom and immortality will be yours!

Some advice, pick your conventions wisely, research and see which ones enforce fanart rules and which dont.
Most larger corporate ones will be stricter on those policies, as they are a business. Though the corporate ones do have a lot of official mainstream stuff, stick to artists alley.
If you are in the greater Vancouver area, Vancaf was a great original artists con.
Vancouver Comiccon is surprisingly good for that as well, its small and bi-monthly, but you can earn back your table cost easy.

Minicomi is very fanart heavy, as most anime cons are because Japan is more fanart tolerant.
You can go, just remember what your competing with and dont let them sway you or discourage you to falling into "the trap".
If you have a strong anime style, obviously an anime con is where you want to be, but its going to be easier to sell a generic obvious anime image than a generic slightly anime influence image, so keep those kinds of things in mind.
In some cases it may be better to be an attendee and just hand out postcards advertising your stuff than trying to sell at a table. Make sure they are graphical and clearly show your style.

The last peice of advice is to join your local comics community. Connect with other original creators, art jam with them and form bonds.

Create on!

Summer of fun!

<p>We have two conventions coming up in July. First being July 7th at UBC, Minicomi. The next day we have Vancouver Comicon at Heritage hall!<br>
Busy weekend of fun! Hopefully we will see you at one or the other.</p>
<p>We have also added art galleries to our website (finally) and are working on getting digital comics in our shop. </p>
<p>You can see we already have 3 issues of Daqueran available for download.<br>
We are working on digital copies of Ghost Tales, but it being a much larger book its proven more difficult.</p>
<p>If anyone trys these digital books, please let us know how they work. We have tested them on Samsung Galaxy Tablet 10.1 and they worked pretty well.</p>
<p>Once Upon a Time is working pretty well, we are a bit behind schedule but that is due to thing's beyond our control.

Twitter and facebook

Vacaf is now over! This has turned out to be a pretty fantastic convention! We are so impressed with the organization and location of this convention. So fantastic. I won an auction for 2 framed comic pages by Jeff Ellis, from the exploded view anthology. Through the kindness of someone else who out bid us on 2 Jonathan Dalton Lords of death and life comic pages i have one of those pages as well. Both of these artists are friends from cloudscapecomics !  Good times!
Often times at conventions we get people asking us about how we do what we do.
We are really lucky because we have the 2 of us and we both have a different set of skills, that probably evolved from working together for so long.
So i thougt i'd give a few bits of information on how we've used twitter and facebook to our advantage. I'm not saying that what we do is the way to success, its just some things that have worked for us

TWITTER
- when you start a twitter account name it well. Simple text. That makes it easier to remember and verbally promote.
- to gain followers, follow others. We went to other comic artists that were prominant in the comic industry, and local people and followed all the people thst follow them, and that they follow. Many of them will follow ou back or at least check out your stuff.
- make sure you have a simple, descriptive bio on your account. That way when you do follow you them, they will see instantly what you do. Also that you aren't a porn bot.
- interact with people. If someone @'s you, respond to them.
- promote other peoples work. Retweet them often, and be supportive. Don't make all your social media into a ad for yourself. You'll be boring pretty quickly, and you dont really inspire people to promote you in turn.
- keep a seperate twitter for personal vs comic work.

FACEBOOK
- Set up your custom url for your facebook page. You can do that once you have 25 followers (I think). It's in the account settings.
- Make a page, rather than a group. A page is the one people can "like". People will like more freely than join.
- Be active! Post photos, works in progress, events, convention appearances, promote other artists. But dont be spammy.
- Don't beg or whine. Earn or followers, and appreciate what ones you have.
- If you have nothing going on to promote, use that time to learn about your followers. Post polls and invite them to post art or information on your page.

- for both twitter and facebook make sure you put the links on your website and business cards.

This stuff has worked for us. We're far from super famous right now but we have a few excited and eager fans and we love them. It takes a while to increase your followers and it takes work but it will work if you work at it.

Later on we will show you the awesome artwork we got at Vancaf!
Im on a train right now though haha!
Thank you so much to everyone who visited us at Vancaf!

Once Upon a Time Cover Submissions

We held our usual cover submission contest for the One Upon a Time Anthology cover, we got one wrap around cover and two regular cover submissions. We decided against a public vote this time as last time it ended up just being a popularity contest to see who could send the most friends over. Having said that, feel free to comment and share your thoughts about each cover possibility.

Here are the submissions

Wrap around Submission by L.M. Silva

Front Cover Submission by Jason Hart

Front Cover Submission by LeEtta Schmidt

Calgary Expo day 2

day 2 had a slow start but it picked up later one. It was crowded and sometimes the line ups for things were so long you had to walk for 5 minutes to see what they were lining up for.
At one point the fire marshall prevented them from letting more expo attendees into the building, and i guess people are pretty pissed off about it.

Now, there are a few things that irk me about this convention. We choose the economy booth because it looked like it was going to be an area we would fit in at. the map said "artist alley, small press, non profit" so we know the artist alley was separate from the booths, so we assumed that the small press and non profit would also be split up. Not the case. actually I didn't see non profit at all in the area, and I felt like we were the only ones that qualified as small press in our row. John is a film maker beside us, which sort of works, but then to the other side of us is 2 people selling old comics, in comic boxes - not small press at all, or non profit. the other stuff in the area is small time retailers and sort of "miscellaneous" booths, nd worst of all, most of them re fanart!!!! I felt a bit foolish thinking that we would be surrounded with others like us - with original ideas and personal projects to promote. I know fanart dominates these shows (despite LEGAL issues conventions blatantly ignore) but we thought by having a booth in an area called small press we would at least see less of it. We are very disappointed in the table area/set up of our booth. If we get a table next year we are only going to go for Artist Alley.

I found some copic artists and distributed fist bumps accordingly.

So, thats that. tomorrow is the last day, then right after we jump on the 15 hour bus trip with Beth, home again.
After we rest a bit we ill update our shop with some of the left over stock, so watch for it. Some new stuff coming along :)

Calgary expo day 1

Well, today was our first day at Calgary Expo. It was ok. We didn't break any records today but we did have a phenomenal amount of people teling us they thougt our artwork was amazing and that they really liked our stuff. A nice young lady said she really loved ojr copic tutorials online and that was nice. The compliments from the atendees are really nice, and its really nice to have a new audience.

Heres some photos of the con, and beth wagner at her table, hee

Calgary Expo

Today we're getting on the bus to Calgary Expo!
Last weekend was Vancouver FanExpo and while it was not what some people thought, I thought it was fantastic.
It was Vancouver's very first large scale convention, and it was a surprisingly good turn out. about Noon they were turning people away because they were at max capacity on Saturday but if you waited they were letting people in again at 2ish.
I think it was deliberately kept small to test out, because they say that next year will be double the size. incidentally we've pre- registered for 2013, and so... see you there :p

We're excited about Calgary Expo! We have a Booth instead of a table in artist alley, which is the first time we've been out of the alley.
While we're gone the main place we will be updating is our Facebook Page, so head over there and "like" us to get all the news and updates.
Well it's time to get ready, toodle roo :D

Fan Expo Vancouver

WOW, today was awesome! It was day 1 at Fan Expo Vancouver, ad we did pretty well. We got a ton of compliments on our displays, sold some ghost tales, and some prints and stuff. It's always so satisfying when someone says they "can't walk away from this" when they purchase your art work. Having someone like your stuff that much is indescribable. It makes you feel valuable. <3

We post as much as we can on our facebook page, so you can see a lot of photos there.

We're pretty tired now, and have another full day tomorrow so keep an eye on our facebook for updates, and if you're heading to FanExpo tomorrow, come say HI to us! <3

Next weekend we will be in Calgary for Calgary Expo, so if you're there, come visit too!!!!!! AHHH busy!

"Once upon a time..." deadline looms

<p>The deadline for submissions is fast approaching! We've started to see submissions come in and if you are still working on yours, you've got just over a week to finish.</p>
<p> If you are worried about the deadline and need an extension you can email us and we can see what we can do.

Deadline extensions will be granted on a case by case basis, however if enough people come forward we can offer a public extension.
We have planned for possible extensions in our timeline so don't be afraid to ask, you wont be holding anyone back or be a burden.