Given that she’s familiar with the Resonance, she probably knows how the transmissions work and that it’s not her mom. I bet she’s just happy to get a message.
She shouldn’t be crushed. Adopted kids should have the right to have access to information from/about their birth parents, and that shouldn’t threaten the relationship with the adoptive parent.
Well, this is awkward. Even if this sort of thing is normal in Selkie’s culture shouldn’t she be at least a little creeped out since she’s been kiving in human society for so long?
Seeing as she dreams of being a mad scientist, and has retained a lot of her early Sarnothi language skills, I doubt it would phase her as much as it would anyone else. She’s probably more psyched than anything to see her mother, as opposed to “wow this is a hologram, what are the implications of this, modern technology couldn’t achieve this, etc etc etc”
Dave, do you have a patreon? If not you should really get one because a lot of comic artists are able to make a living from them, or at the very least you could make a little money from your hobby. I for one really enjoy your work with my nieces and nephews so if you were to get one you would have at least one patreon.
I’ve considered it, actually made it my new year resolution to figure out what kind of perks/extras I can offer for a patreon. Not ready to discuss details yet, but for the moment it’s more “something to noodle over”.
To begin with: You don’t actually have to offer benefits. Patreon is first and foremost about setting up an easy, trustworthy way to regularly transfer money to a creator. Do not think of this as us “paying something for nothing”; that is failing to grasp the very nature of donations and the reasons people might want to put their money into helping maintain a creative work that they value.
In addition, for those of us who support multiple artists, Patreon results in fewer money-transfer charges, since it takes the full sum in one transaction per month.
I pay $2.78/month to fund Pam’s creation of Minecraft mods, and when I averaged out her supporters and her monthly Patreon income I was kinda shocked to realize I wasn’t much lower than the average… people pay what they can. It makes us feel good.
Pam speaks privately with her supporters via the Patreon emails and chat area, which is something I value. She also makes us aware of upcoming updates before the general public. Extra Credits has a donator-only monthly chat where you get to talk with the creators directly and ask questions and such.
Extra Credits got rid of its YouTube ads once the donations reached a certain tier. That was a benefit for the community, funded by the ones who could donate, and that’s exactly how this sort of thing is supposed to work.
Multiple comics have created desktop wallpapers for donators. My preference is always that these become available for free eventually — that those who pay get them right away, and they get released to the public later on (say 3 months later or something), which benefits fans who simply can’t afford to pay for eye candy.
SF Debris has a 5-person Senate, where these people get to vote on upcoming content. For Selkie, a Sarnothi-style “Senate” could vote on t-shirt designs: offer 3 possible designs (in rough sketch form) and have them vote on which one you develop into a full piece of artwork to be sold in the store. If you do limited-time content you could also have the Senate, or a lower support tier, vote on which designs to bring back to the store around Christmas or something. You could also allow voting of items that are not t-shirts, like “Do I put this design on a mouse pad, a mug, a backpack?”
If my budget allowed it at the time, I’d pay for a Sarnothi-themed card deck. Custom card decks are available through print-on-demand services (let me know if you want some links) and they’re nowhere near as expensive per deck as they were back when I first started researching this possibility for my own project. It would also allow you to flesh out some backstory or history via the specific choices for the face cards, aces, and jokers — characters the comic hasn’t gotten to yet, symbols that will make sense later on, landmarks we may never see in the comic proper, maybe even a set of deities or mythical figures.
Howard Taylor, who creates Schlock Mercenary, offers stuff like people getting his comics early (he maintains a steady buffer; this probably wouldn’t be as good for you), letting patrons pre-order before the general public, and letting them buy convention goodies even if they couldn’t attend the convention.
Tailsteak offers to do fanart of fellow webcomic artists who support him, and give links to their comics (plus a “glowing but honest” review); of course, he’s got enough traffic that this offers a pretty sizable bump in visitors. He also will design a board or card game for you, and offers webcomic cameos. Dan Shive of El Goonish Shive will draw a character of your choice in outfit of your choice and such.
If you had enough control over your forum here, you could offer custom titles to patrons, that would show up before or after their name. Kingdom of Loathing does something similar. You could also offer donator-only icons based on characters from your comic.
I’m trying to think what other types of rewards I’ve seen. One I got from Pam was getting to add a type of food to HarvestCraft — the Japanese treat “Manjuu” is there because I asked for it, and its color and general appearance was chosen by me.
I could see letting patrons give their favorite webcomic or anime or TV show or musician or whatever a shout out by having it show up as background detail in someone’s room or on their clothes or something. Maybe around Halloween you could have a set of patrons vote on costumes for the characters. Or just before Christmas the patrons could suggest presents certain characters would give each other.
So there’s definitely a set of goodies you could offer without taking on more work than you’re comfortable with, and if you are careful with it you could probably use it to reduce some of your own work load (like the bit about selecting/suggesting background details, which’d ideally mean you wouldn’t be sitting there wondering how to liven up the background of a room).
Oh, barely touched on Stretch Goals. The “milestones” of Patreon would let you offer things that you want to put time into eventually but are procrastinating on. For example, say that you wanted to add 5 new goodies to the store, but had been putting off designing them; just say the milestone of “$50/month” (or whatever) means you’ll add 5 new goodies to the store, and then make sure you make good on your offer.
Or say you had been planning to create a buffer so that you don’t feel so bad when you’re rushed and can’t finish a page on time. Set up a tier where you will establish a 1-page buffer, and a higher tier for a 2-page buffer. If the donations reach that high, take a whole weekend or two to pour time into making this a reality.
Or say that you wanted to offer B&W versions of some of the neater comic pages, or coloring pages of Selkie and Co., or something like that. Have a stretch goal for you creating an 8-page printable coloring book, or for sitting down and selecting some pages that’ll make a good set of uncolored pages, and then actually fixing up uncolored versions with good strong lines.
Stuff like that can help motivate you to work toward goals. Of at least, it’s a possibility.
These are a lot of good ideas! Lots to consider here. Wallpapers and illustrations is what I was currently leaning towards, but I like the idea of coloring books and playing cards.
My pie-in-the-sky dream would be a Quit My Day Job tier, to be honest. XD
Pick a number you think you can live comfortably with and set that up. Then figure out some earlier tiers.
Make sure that you give a good split between rewards that are purely for the people who pay money, and rewards that the patrons effectively release to the community. I happen to think that benefit-the-community rewards are more compelling. There’s a strong community ethos around the internet, especially in groups like the Open Software movement, and a lot of people are more interested in things they can donate to the group than in benefits they can personally enjoy.
Along those lines, you might also offer something that could be gifted to others — like, a person on Tier 4 (whatever that might be) could convey the benefits of Tier 3 to any one other fan, just by handing over a code they could redeem.
And I think 5 days a week would be fine. We can’t all be Howard Taylors.
I would adore a Selkie coloring book. This is such a sweet little comic that, while dealing with a lot of serious social issues like bullying and immigration, is something I can easily steer my nephews and nieces to, and I shouldn’t have to tell you how rare that is on the internet. (It’s also the reason I’m hoping your tiers will involve adding merchandise to the store, because it’s still weird that the most prevalent piece of swag in the Selkie store is emblazoned with a creative swear word.)
I wonder if you could make coloring books geared toward different age groups? One for little kids with much simpler pieces. One for tweens with more complex art and maybe some puzzles or something. And one for teens that uses the coloring book format to still discuss some social issues that would be inappropriate for younger audiences.
…now you’ve got me thinking about a Selkie-themed set of puzzles. And making me want to design a Logic Puzzle for Selkie. Hmmmmm.
I do need some more swag in the store. I keep bouncing back and forth between, “I should think up more stuff” and “I don’t want to constantly pester people with new merch announcements”.
…and huh, I could’ve sworn I had the Narwhal illustration I made for Reno in there. Have to fix that.
You don’t need to announce each new item. Just add new items and people will eventually announce them for you (“Oh wow, you didn’t mention that you added three new t-shirts to the store! When did that happen?” etc. etc.).
I would love to see some wallhangs or t-shirts that were themed for the different groups of Sarnothi — kind of like showing allegiance to the houses of Hogwarts. Color schemes and designs specific to that group.
Also, the only piece of webcomic swag that I ever bought directly — because, as mentioned, my budget isn’t great for luxuries — was a MegaTokyo bag. Then I found the same bag at a second-hand store for like five bucks and bought it too, so I have two copies 😀 but it has lasted me for like a decade and is still in great shape. I think a bag is a useful item, whereas a t-shirt, though neat, is more of a luxury. The MegaTokyo bag is of a good, sturdy fabric with good straps, a pocket on the flap (which ended up being the place I kept most of my stuff that wasn’t books) and one on the inside plus a couple non-zip pockets that’d probably be more useful if I actually carried makeup or… well, I guess pens could go there, but I just stick them in the flap pocket.
If you ended up getting a print-on-demand Selkie bag of some sort that looked like it’d last a good long while and was big enough to hold books, or act as a kid’s school backpack, that’d be neat. Dunno how easy it would be to do that, though. MegaTokyo’s one might be a custom order or something.
Anyway, yeah, getting more swag in there would be a great use of the Patreon tiers. It’d also be something that fans can look at with anticipation, like “Oh hey, the Patreon numbers are almost up to Tier 3, looks like we’ll be getting 5 new t-shirt designs pretty soon, can’t wait to see them!” and “Hmm, maybe it’s about time I became a Patron myself, since then I could vote on the t-shirt designs….”
But yeah, I like the idea of reader-suggested swag. I can only work with what the POD places offer in terms of item diversity (I don’t have storage space to hold and ship merch directly), but patron-suggested designs is a fun idea.
Is that new or did I just not browse thoroughly enough to find it? Looks awesome.
And yeah, I never figured on you going with anything that’s not POD — at least, not where you are right now. There’s plenty of ways to explore the POD service goodies before you get to the point where you might want to make a high-selling goodies at lower prices and take some to cons or something.
I’ve been in touch with the guy who runs TheCards.com, and he said he overestimated his ability to sell out card decks, so he’s still got tons in storage — which puts a crimp on his ability to make any further efforts, such as a version with alternate languages (I was hoping for Japanese or Italian). I took that as wise advice not to get into the storage problem until POD really isn’t doing it anymore.
The tote bag option has been there for awhile, but that particular design I only recently uploaded. I thought I had uploaded it in November but apparently I forgot.
Todd’s not gawking at the hologram. He’s gawking because he’s fallen in love at first sight. Goodbye Mina, hello glowing green amphibious mom hologram.
So, a recording or Mom? Or a hologram? Either way Selkie is going to be crushed.
Asuka did say that it was talking on a loop, so I’m betting holographic recording.
Given that she’s familiar with the Resonance, she probably knows how the transmissions work and that it’s not her mom. I bet she’s just happy to get a message.
Well… Vahn Mohru is “Help me Obi Wan” if my Tensei isn’t too rusty…
She shouldn’t be crushed. Adopted kids should have the right to have access to information from/about their birth parents, and that shouldn’t threaten the relationship with the adoptive parent.
Yap, I was right, it mom.
Well, this is awkward. Even if this sort of thing is normal in Selkie’s culture shouldn’t she be at least a little creeped out since she’s been kiving in human society for so long?
This isn’t her first experience with the Resonance.
“The Resonance”
It has a name! 😀
“Crazy-Black-and-Green Stuff” was too clunky. ;P
Please don’t tell me that the refugees are called “The Resistance of the Resonance”
Alliteration always amplifies analogy
Oh crap, now I’m stuck with Michelle in my head from ‘Allo ‘Allo…
“Ze Ré-seestaaaancuh of ze Résonaaancuh” :p
Seeing as she dreams of being a mad scientist, and has retained a lot of her early Sarnothi language skills, I doubt it would phase her as much as it would anyone else. She’s probably more psyched than anything to see her mother, as opposed to “wow this is a hologram, what are the implications of this, modern technology couldn’t achieve this, etc etc etc”
She’s a kid. She just thinks it’s ultra cool.
Awesome sauce:) Resonance!
Yep! 😀
I love how you can still see Todd’s gaping jaw in the last panel.
And now I’m going to leave a hypothetical question for all of you: If the black-and-green magic stuff is Resonance, what’s resonating?
Help me, Selkie! You’re my only hope.
Wouldn’t amber be easier on the eyes than green? (Da dum dum!)
I cant remember how to translate this again what is she saying? also laughing a little I’m a kaiju girl too
Dave, do you have a patreon? If not you should really get one because a lot of comic artists are able to make a living from them, or at the very least you could make a little money from your hobby. I for one really enjoy your work with my nieces and nephews so if you were to get one you would have at least one patreon.
I’ve considered it, actually made it my new year resolution to figure out what kind of perks/extras I can offer for a patreon. Not ready to discuss details yet, but for the moment it’s more “something to noodle over”.
Lemme see if I can help you with examples.
To begin with: You don’t actually have to offer benefits. Patreon is first and foremost about setting up an easy, trustworthy way to regularly transfer money to a creator. Do not think of this as us “paying something for nothing”; that is failing to grasp the very nature of donations and the reasons people might want to put their money into helping maintain a creative work that they value.
In addition, for those of us who support multiple artists, Patreon results in fewer money-transfer charges, since it takes the full sum in one transaction per month.
I pay $2.78/month to fund Pam’s creation of Minecraft mods, and when I averaged out her supporters and her monthly Patreon income I was kinda shocked to realize I wasn’t much lower than the average… people pay what they can. It makes us feel good.
Pam speaks privately with her supporters via the Patreon emails and chat area, which is something I value. She also makes us aware of upcoming updates before the general public. Extra Credits has a donator-only monthly chat where you get to talk with the creators directly and ask questions and such.
Extra Credits got rid of its YouTube ads once the donations reached a certain tier. That was a benefit for the community, funded by the ones who could donate, and that’s exactly how this sort of thing is supposed to work.
Multiple comics have created desktop wallpapers for donators. My preference is always that these become available for free eventually — that those who pay get them right away, and they get released to the public later on (say 3 months later or something), which benefits fans who simply can’t afford to pay for eye candy.
SF Debris has a 5-person Senate, where these people get to vote on upcoming content. For Selkie, a Sarnothi-style “Senate” could vote on t-shirt designs: offer 3 possible designs (in rough sketch form) and have them vote on which one you develop into a full piece of artwork to be sold in the store. If you do limited-time content you could also have the Senate, or a lower support tier, vote on which designs to bring back to the store around Christmas or something. You could also allow voting of items that are not t-shirts, like “Do I put this design on a mouse pad, a mug, a backpack?”
If my budget allowed it at the time, I’d pay for a Sarnothi-themed card deck. Custom card decks are available through print-on-demand services (let me know if you want some links) and they’re nowhere near as expensive per deck as they were back when I first started researching this possibility for my own project. It would also allow you to flesh out some backstory or history via the specific choices for the face cards, aces, and jokers — characters the comic hasn’t gotten to yet, symbols that will make sense later on, landmarks we may never see in the comic proper, maybe even a set of deities or mythical figures.
Howard Taylor, who creates Schlock Mercenary, offers stuff like people getting his comics early (he maintains a steady buffer; this probably wouldn’t be as good for you), letting patrons pre-order before the general public, and letting them buy convention goodies even if they couldn’t attend the convention.
Tailsteak offers to do fanart of fellow webcomic artists who support him, and give links to their comics (plus a “glowing but honest” review); of course, he’s got enough traffic that this offers a pretty sizable bump in visitors. He also will design a board or card game for you, and offers webcomic cameos. Dan Shive of El Goonish Shive will draw a character of your choice in outfit of your choice and such.
If you had enough control over your forum here, you could offer custom titles to patrons, that would show up before or after their name. Kingdom of Loathing does something similar. You could also offer donator-only icons based on characters from your comic.
I’m trying to think what other types of rewards I’ve seen. One I got from Pam was getting to add a type of food to HarvestCraft — the Japanese treat “Manjuu” is there because I asked for it, and its color and general appearance was chosen by me.
I could see letting patrons give their favorite webcomic or anime or TV show or musician or whatever a shout out by having it show up as background detail in someone’s room or on their clothes or something. Maybe around Halloween you could have a set of patrons vote on costumes for the characters. Or just before Christmas the patrons could suggest presents certain characters would give each other.
So there’s definitely a set of goodies you could offer without taking on more work than you’re comfortable with, and if you are careful with it you could probably use it to reduce some of your own work load (like the bit about selecting/suggesting background details, which’d ideally mean you wouldn’t be sitting there wondering how to liven up the background of a room).
Oh, barely touched on Stretch Goals. The “milestones” of Patreon would let you offer things that you want to put time into eventually but are procrastinating on. For example, say that you wanted to add 5 new goodies to the store, but had been putting off designing them; just say the milestone of “$50/month” (or whatever) means you’ll add 5 new goodies to the store, and then make sure you make good on your offer.
Or say you had been planning to create a buffer so that you don’t feel so bad when you’re rushed and can’t finish a page on time. Set up a tier where you will establish a 1-page buffer, and a higher tier for a 2-page buffer. If the donations reach that high, take a whole weekend or two to pour time into making this a reality.
Or say that you wanted to offer B&W versions of some of the neater comic pages, or coloring pages of Selkie and Co., or something like that. Have a stretch goal for you creating an 8-page printable coloring book, or for sitting down and selecting some pages that’ll make a good set of uncolored pages, and then actually fixing up uncolored versions with good strong lines.
Stuff like that can help motivate you to work toward goals. Of at least, it’s a possibility.
These are a lot of good ideas! Lots to consider here. Wallpapers and illustrations is what I was currently leaning towards, but I like the idea of coloring books and playing cards.
My pie-in-the-sky dream would be a Quit My Day Job tier, to be honest. XD
and that one would come with a daily strip?
Probably five days, but daily is possible
Pick a number you think you can live comfortably with and set that up. Then figure out some earlier tiers.
Make sure that you give a good split between rewards that are purely for the people who pay money, and rewards that the patrons effectively release to the community. I happen to think that benefit-the-community rewards are more compelling. There’s a strong community ethos around the internet, especially in groups like the Open Software movement, and a lot of people are more interested in things they can donate to the group than in benefits they can personally enjoy.
Along those lines, you might also offer something that could be gifted to others — like, a person on Tier 4 (whatever that might be) could convey the benefits of Tier 3 to any one other fan, just by handing over a code they could redeem.
And I think 5 days a week would be fine. We can’t all be Howard Taylors.
Howard Taylor also employs a colorist, so that relieves a lot of art time from his shoulders.
I like the community gifts idea.
I would adore a Selkie coloring book. This is such a sweet little comic that, while dealing with a lot of serious social issues like bullying and immigration, is something I can easily steer my nephews and nieces to, and I shouldn’t have to tell you how rare that is on the internet. (It’s also the reason I’m hoping your tiers will involve adding merchandise to the store, because it’s still weird that the most prevalent piece of swag in the Selkie store is emblazoned with a creative swear word.)
I wonder if you could make coloring books geared toward different age groups? One for little kids with much simpler pieces. One for tweens with more complex art and maybe some puzzles or something. And one for teens that uses the coloring book format to still discuss some social issues that would be inappropriate for younger audiences.
…now you’ve got me thinking about a Selkie-themed set of puzzles. And making me want to design a Logic Puzzle for Selkie. Hmmmmm.
Now you got me thinking about it. 😀
I do need some more swag in the store. I keep bouncing back and forth between, “I should think up more stuff” and “I don’t want to constantly pester people with new merch announcements”.
…and huh, I could’ve sworn I had the Narwhal illustration I made for Reno in there. Have to fix that.
You don’t need to announce each new item. Just add new items and people will eventually announce them for you (“Oh wow, you didn’t mention that you added three new t-shirts to the store! When did that happen?” etc. etc.).
I would love to see some wallhangs or t-shirts that were themed for the different groups of Sarnothi — kind of like showing allegiance to the houses of Hogwarts. Color schemes and designs specific to that group.
Also, the only piece of webcomic swag that I ever bought directly — because, as mentioned, my budget isn’t great for luxuries — was a MegaTokyo bag. Then I found the same bag at a second-hand store for like five bucks and bought it too, so I have two copies 😀 but it has lasted me for like a decade and is still in great shape. I think a bag is a useful item, whereas a t-shirt, though neat, is more of a luxury. The MegaTokyo bag is of a good, sturdy fabric with good straps, a pocket on the flap (which ended up being the place I kept most of my stuff that wasn’t books) and one on the inside plus a couple non-zip pockets that’d probably be more useful if I actually carried makeup or… well, I guess pens could go there, but I just stick them in the flap pocket.
If you ended up getting a print-on-demand Selkie bag of some sort that looked like it’d last a good long while and was big enough to hold books, or act as a kid’s school backpack, that’d be neat. Dunno how easy it would be to do that, though. MegaTokyo’s one might be a custom order or something.
Anyway, yeah, getting more swag in there would be a great use of the Patreon tiers. It’d also be something that fans can look at with anticipation, like “Oh hey, the Patreon numbers are almost up to Tier 3, looks like we’ll be getting 5 new t-shirt designs pretty soon, can’t wait to see them!” and “Hmm, maybe it’s about time I became a Patron myself, since then I could vote on the t-shirt designs….”
Just a heads up, the Society6 store has tote bag options. 🙂
http://society6.com/product/battle-narwhal_bag#26=197
But yeah, I like the idea of reader-suggested swag. I can only work with what the POD places offer in terms of item diversity (I don’t have storage space to hold and ship merch directly), but patron-suggested designs is a fun idea.
Is that new or did I just not browse thoroughly enough to find it? Looks awesome.
And yeah, I never figured on you going with anything that’s not POD — at least, not where you are right now. There’s plenty of ways to explore the POD service goodies before you get to the point where you might want to make a high-selling goodies at lower prices and take some to cons or something.
I’ve been in touch with the guy who runs TheCards.com, and he said he overestimated his ability to sell out card decks, so he’s still got tons in storage — which puts a crimp on his ability to make any further efforts, such as a version with alternate languages (I was hoping for Japanese or Italian). I took that as wise advice not to get into the storage problem until POD really isn’t doing it anymore.
The tote bag option has been there for awhile, but that particular design I only recently uploaded. I thought I had uploaded it in November but apparently I forgot.
If you’re seeing this, it means I’m already dead.
Well, “vahn sient toht” means “I love you”. So maybe “vahn” is “I”?
So how will Todd react, meeting/seeing Selkies real parent(s)?
So Todd’s in for a shock, but Selkie gets a message (even if it was recorded a long time ago) from her mom! Definitely improves her day.
Also: Asuka, you would be into kaiju. Just so long as you don’t have to fight them, eh?
Todd’s not gawking at the hologram. He’s gawking because he’s fallen in love at first sight. Goodbye Mina, hello glowing green amphibious mom hologram.
I- buh- wuh-?
(WEDNESDAY COME SOONER PLZ)
Several months later, I skimmed the archive list and noticed that this page was not on it.
Thanks, should be fixed now.