Including images immediately gives people a concrete sense of what type of work you write.Comics is a visual medium if you can get permission from artists you've worked with to put some of the artwork on your website, that'll capture people's attention more and make your comics seem more "real".What aspects of me and my career do I want to highlight?Īnd additional thoughts for writers who don't draw:.Are there any specific services I offer (commissions, teaching, editing) that I can include information about?.Is it user-friendly for visitors to read my comics? Is the comic text legible?.Does my website show examples of the same type of work that I would want to be hired for? (specific to age group and target audience).What is my professional goal right now? Is it to be hired, to sell stuff, or just to show that I'm an active creator (important when applying for grants)?. ![]() Questions you might find helpful when designing your website: These were some specific things I had in mind while putting together this website: I wanted to highlight my teaching services.īecause teaching is such a large part of my life now, I wanted to be like, "hey, this is a thing I do!" I now have clear documentation and contact info for programmers or teachers who do want to hire me to teach workshops. ![]() For this, it was less important to me that I get hired to illustrate a comic - instead, what better suits my goal (I think!) is to have full short story comics that are directly readable on my website, so that potential editors or agents can get a sense of both my storytelling style and my art.Īlso, I just wanted more people, like my students, to be able to read my comics easily if they wanted to! The other main thing I'm working towards is writing and drawing my middle-grade graphic novel, which I plan to eventually query with. I added some short intro text on the homepage to give a more well-rounded picture of the different things I do - I'm both an art instructor and a practicing, published comic artist. I also want to be invited to more schools, libraries, and community centres to teach my art & comics programs. I realized my goal was no longer to be hired for illustration work when I found myself virtually turning down every illustration job I got offered, because of lack of time! Nowadays, my time is focused on running Young Artists' Place, and I'm interested in growing my teaching. Website version 3 Goal: To be hired to teach art workshops, and show that I'm an active comics creator I'm not sure that a middle grade editor or designer would have looked at my site and thought that my style was a good fit for that market. And the samples I had on my website were a mixture of middle grade, personal surreal-ish illustrations, and editorial. People always say, if you want to be hired for comics, you have to show sequential art / comic pages, not just illustrations, and that's absolutely true! This solution wasn't ideal, but it's what I did at the time.Īlso note that my goal was vague - I was open to picture book illustration, middle grade, or teen! I didn't really have a particular focus in my mind. why are your comics on your illustration page?! This website did change throughout the years - as my goal shifted to be more focused on comics, I decided to put some comic pages on the homepage so they'd be up front and centre. And I was trying to juggle many things here with this website haha! She helped customize it to exactly what I wanted. One of my BFFs, Nic Chan, actually made this site for me from scratch. Website version 2 - Homepage Goal at the time: To be hired as a comics artist and children's illustrator ![]() I thought it would be helpful to show some previous versions of my website, say what my goals were at the time, and explain the things I was thinking about as I built each version. For me, I've tried to make my website specifically customized with this order of emphasis: comic creator, teaching artist, and illustrator. Some cartoonists design their websites more like author websites instead, with more focus on their publishing credits and books. A lot of comic artists have websites with galleries of art pieces, like illustrators. One thing I've noticed is that there doesn't seem to be a particular website convention for comic creators. And then you have to actually code/build the site!. a whole Process that requires reflection about your career goals and your brand~~~. Knowing what to include on your site is like. I find that with each re-design, my goals and needs for my website shift and change.
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