Tag: comix

Take My Idea and Run With It

The Late Night Comix Show, 5/7/2023

I’m not doing my weekly stream anymore.

I was trying to do two incompatible things at once. I was riding the fence between recording videos and guiding real-time activities. And riding the fence hurts!

Streaming is best when the audience is engaged and is using the text chat. But in my experimenting, I realized that drawing and using the text chat can’t happen at the same time. I was finding it too difficult to transform my activities into ones that promoted chat box use.

That’s not to say that making those activities isn’t possible!

If you want to try running your own Late Night Comix Show, you have my blessing and my support! You don’t have to call yours that. I would like to see streams and videos around alternative comics making.

My original blog post about the show is here. My videos are here. If you want any advice, direct message my Instagram here.

Otherwise, I recommend Sequential Artists Workshop’s Friday Night Workshops. It’s free on Zoom, and the recordings are on YouTube.

And if you live in Northeast Ohio, I of course recommend Comics in the Circle.

The Late Night Comix Show

I’ve started streaming on Twitch. I’m calling it “The Late Night Comix Show” because I’m leading the audience (you?) through comics making activities LIVE on Sunday nights at 9 PM! I’m also reading some indie and alternative comics (comix) to tie in what what we’re making into what people have already made, with a focus on what inspires me.

A comic, or a recording of my attempt to get into the image of what the show could be!

This idea has been bubbling up in me for a while now. I’ve wanted to be in Lynda Barry’s lineage of comics making (I have other inspirations I swear!). Her comics classroom and teaching position look so cool! But I can’t snap my fingers and become a comics professor.

So I’ve wondered… “what isn’t she doing that I could be doing?”

I’ve also noticed there aren’t many streamers leading the audience through drawing exercises, at least at first glance. Places like the Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW) are holding free weekly zoom classes to make comics together, and that’s the closest thing I can think of to what I want the Late Night Comix Show to be. But as the sole show runner, and through the weird and new situation of “streaming” an almost one-way broadcast, I can do some different things.

“some different things”

Not necessarily original things! I’m sure the guided activity live stream is a thing! But comix? With the anti-critique, careerist-neutral, DIY philosophy of Lynda Barry? With time constraint and cheap material tactics?

Actually, I am thinking of WendyMac who has pretty much done this type of thing for children, up to and including using Lynda Barry’s methods. I am also thinking of Bob Ross. But also Mr. Rogers. Not that I’m planning to get that good at this, or that I’d like that level of production. I’d rather come off as a confident amateur. I feel like attachment to polished (gilded) aesthetics is a creativity killer, and it’s such a widespread and powerful demon. How many times has waiting “until it looks professional” stopped me from sharing my work?

But back to WendyMac – we deal with a whole new set of problems when we try to write and draw and make comics as adults… want to see me try to deal with them, LIVE? 🙂

Is this more or less professional than making this in OBS? If I waited to stream until I learned OBS… I would have never started.

My next stream will be tomorrow (5/7/2023) at 9 PM on https://www.twitch.tv/haberfish. It will also be recorded. It should be available there for 7 days after. I plan to upload recordings on YouTube as well. I run the show with that subset of the audience in mind.

I had fun doing my first two streams. So I’m confident enough to make a blog post! The first one I didn’t record – because I didn’t know I had to set Twitch up to automatically record. The second time my audio was bad. I solved that by turning off one of the cameras. So uh… the first recording is barely watchable. Try turning the volume down and don’t use headphones lol sorry!

The Late Night Comix Show is an experiment. It’s already been successful, because I have a lot of new data about what I like to do. I also now know members from my Comics in the Circle community are supportive of the idea! Now my goal is to make enough episodes (10?) where I can say I tried a variety things. At the very least it will be a log of my approach to making comics. My goal after that will be to confirm that I have audience members making comics with me, either live or using the recordings. If that’s happening… this could become a bigger project…

So that’s what’s up! If you’re interested, I hope you will participate to our mutual benefit! If you know of a friend who might be interested, please share this post! Thank you!