Well I’ve placed an order for 100 giant squid lightswitch covers (see design in my masthead image above) through my place of employment, which I expect to have before Christmas. So tell all your friends and your enemies and order a bunch! (even though I don’t know what the price will be yet).
I’m on the verge of opening up an eBay store so I can sell this and my other products (all of which at the moment are Thickets merch–including the forthcoming “Greasy Spawn” toques–but more stuff independent of the band will go up) online. Anybody have an eBay store that wants to step in and say “oh god no!” before I hit the OK button?
If I do open the store I’m going to call it Dead Space God…something. Boutique. Or Altar. or Gifts ‘n’ Shit.
Have you thought about doing a web comic? There are a few web comic people out there who now live slowly off their creations.
For instance, Questionable Content and Achewood. The fellow from QC has advertising on the site (tasteful, for the most part) and makes most of his money selling t-shirt designs (which the characters in his comic generally wear and readers want).
Achewood, he also sells t-shirts and cookbooks and hardcovers of Achewood collections. He also does Achewood oil paintings which he places up on eBay. The paintings generally sell for between US$300 – US$600.
You have some pretty good ideas, and with a nice web site, and some time and patience, I think you could very well build up a following. Why not try your “animal superhero” idea out in that fashion? Three strips a week sort of thing. Once the following arrives, you get some nifty t-shirt designs (as well as the patches and stitches and lightswitch covers), you could probably make a half decent living at what you love.
That should say “solely off their creations” instead of “slowly off their creations.” Although I’m sure it was a SLOW process getting to that point.
Or maybe not. It only took about a year for the creator of QC to quit his job and devote all his energies to his comic, going from a 3-day a week schedule to a 5-day a week schedule, and ramping up his product lines.
Anyhow, it’s something to seriously think about at any rate, especially if getting a comic into print is going to be extremely difficult. It might be far easier finding your audience via the internet. And then from there you can release printed collected works of the strip.
Not too mention that you can go retro and do an old-fashioned serialized newspaper-style version of your Animal Superhero comic (I can’t remember what the acronym for it is.)
I’m buying a TEH t-shirt from Questionable Content, provided nobody gets it for me for Xmas.
If you have the time and wherewithal to keep it up your Crumplets might make a good webcomic.
Crumplets might not be so bad … but I’ve been finding that the most popular webcomics are those with an ongoing ever-evolving story arc.