Really interesting Youtube Video that discusses increasing importance / prominence of women in the comic book world as consumers in terms of purchasing etc

[punkarsenic]

my point was that lots of women in this thread have stated that they care abt female representation, which negated aspiegamers point. that was my point. you are, therefor, jumping off on a tangent and making assumptions about the women posting on this thread.

[theladiesi]

It's basically saying that comic book publishers ignore well established and fleshed out minority characters such as Misty Knight or Lila Rhodes in order to push their original characters which usually sell well in their first issue but then people stop buying their later issues. You can look at the statistics for Marvel's sales by individual issue for that. This is why Marvel is constantly putting out multiple number one issues of the same character over and over again. Squirrel Girl even made a joke about this but that doesn't excuse their bad business practices.

[punkarsenic]

i know what hes saying, esi, but it was a tangent from my original point. the new character vs established character debate often ends up being a catch 22 and given it wasnt what i was taking about, its not what i want to talk about. remember what thread youre on, and what were talking about.

[punkarsenic]

this thread is devolving to me and these two it seems. im not gonna reply to either of them anymore so hopefully well get away from this tangent

[ratique]

Some conversations are turning a bit in circles now.

Let's return to discuss the original youtube video if possible.

[theladiesi]

We want well developed, three dimensional characters in our representation. Not pandering.

[Kayke]

Isn't that kind of childish

Considering you highlighted it when you quoted me, not sure if you missed the fact that I said I hated Lord of the Rings "as a kid"

I often relate to characters who differ from me and I don't always relate to characters who are the same gender, race, orientation as me. But I do tend to enjoy stories with characters that span a range of different genders and races over stories where all the characters are similar in those aspects. And I think it's important for kids to be able to see characters that share their traits fulfilling all kinds of roles. I don't consider diversity to be pandering but rather realistic in most stories where the character variation isn't limited due to some plot situation. Characters shouldn't have to be female or a poc due to "SJW" pandering, characters should be varied because humans as a species show a lot of variation.

Making a character a woman or a different race shouldn't excuse the writer from making them a developed character with a personality outside of that. In fact that's part of the problem when a cast has just one female character as being "the girl" often becomes her only personality trait since that is enough to make her different from the rest of the cast. Luckily this trend is fading away along with the trend of the token poc and token gay person... in large part due to media becoming more diverse and the novelty of a character being female, queer, or a poc no longer being seen as enough to make them interesting/different.

There are bad writers with diverse casts and bad writers with uniform casts. Those writers are going to make flat characters. I'm not saying making a flat character a woman or a person of color or lgbtq will save them from being flat. But if someone is a good writer who creates well developed characters but next to none of them are female or the female characters are not as developed or as interesting as the male characters, then that might be an issue and I would hope most of us could agree on that.

[IdiotWithPencil]

ok to return to the original video, what do you guys think about taking marketing courses and buisness corses for making webcomics?

[theladiesi]

I'm all for it personally. I think learning the business would help webcomics succeed as an industry of its own.

[emmyengberts]

Again, I disagree with your rationality and how the industry works. Saying that the hunger games is for girls because the main character is female is like saying harry potter is for boys because the main character is a boy. Many parents will give their children these books or watch these shows with them regardless of their gender.

That may be your experience, but it's not a common experience.

The fallacy of shielding boys from books that star girls

Why boys should read girl books

I wish it wasn't like this. I really really wish it wasn't. But, my own experiences have been very similar.
I stopped reading fantasy novels for a long time because I couldn't find any fantasy novels with female main characters at my library, barely any of them even had female side-characters. I wanted to read more girls so I started reading YA novels because those seemed to have more girls doing cool stuff. I loved fantasy novels and I devoured the few ones with female main characters that came out a couple of years later. But, I still stopped reading fantasy for a long time because all the characters in them were very tiringly male and I was tired of reading stories about just men.
When your gender takes up more than half the Earth's population but seems to only take up very tiny parts in the books that you read... That gets very tiring after a while.

[Kayke]

So long as you could find a class where the information was broad enough that you could apply it to your comics, it sounds like a great idea. Something focused on digital marketing and branding might be the most helpful? Unless you could find a class specifically on marketing yourself as an artist.

When I was in school for illustration we had lectures about web presence, social media, branding, and promotional materials (both digital and print) and I still use the info I learned all the time!

[punkarsenic]

When I was in school for illustration we had lectures about web presence, social media, branding, and promotional materials (both digital and print) and I still use the info I learned all the time!

ive heard of a lot of degrees that teach this these days! its probably more prominent in the 'art with a job to do' side than in fine art, but i dont know for sure... theres also courses some places specifically on business within the arts (although in that case, its stretched from theatre to illustration to music and back)

[IdiotWithPencil]

yeah web marketing would be a great for us specificaly, also I have been in a basic marketing class (just simple stuff and mostly traditional) and I do find it helpfull in marketing my comic from time to time, maybe sombody could post their notes from these clases like they did with the college comic clases

[IdiotWithPencil]

fine arts is also part of the marketing spectrums since you have to make it so people actually asociate your brand as fine art

[punkarsenic]

of course, of course, but i dont know if as many fine art courses dedicate time to teaching their students marketing and business as illustration or graphic design courses do

[IdiotWithPencil]

oh no perish the thought, I think in that case those courses should be diffrent, I don't want to go to a fine arts and traditinal painting class or course and see market theory, that's what the marketing classes and courses are for, now if the colleges of fine art don't put those courses in the curiculum(don't know if that's the right word) then their very slow on the uptake

[punkarsenic]

okay this is just a miscommunication bc university is run differently in the UK. over here, you take A Course and that course covers everything youre gonna learn at uni besides how to get really drunk. so thats how i was phrasing it. i dont expect a degree composited of various classes to have a fine art class that has marketing thrown in.

[IdiotWithPencil]

ah ok, no in Mexico we have a carreare and in it they put diffrent clases about diffrent things, from math to social culture and history, we have this paper called pensum and that tells us what kind of clases we have to pass to be able to graduate, don't know if the UK has a similar system, also we don't have drunk courses we know how to drink comming from the womb XD

[punkarsenic]

haha no in the UK you select a course at university, and that one course is in one thing. for example, you select the 7 year fine art course at edinburgh - totally different to the 3 year fine art course at leeds, or something - and you have a course runner who decides what the course covers - and thats all you get. that might include an economics class or module, but its all in the one course.

and ofc theres no getting drunk courses, its just that people get drunk a lot in their free time lmao

[IdiotWithPencil]

I'm getting drunk right now (beer on the table) also yeah carrears differ uni from uni here too, but not to that degree XD and there should be some drunk courses cause some people really need to learn how to hold their liquor (yours truly included)