Fedscomics blog 2011 review

I started this blog on August 30^th 2011, so it hasn’t been active for an entire year, but since the change of the calendar prompts people to reflect on the previous year, I thought I’d reflect on what I’ve done with this blog since August.

I started my blog as a way to post information about my artwork and personal appearances and write reflections about things related to comics and maybe other interests of mine. I thought for a review I’d do a “top 5 most viewed posts” list.  Based on the site stats the posts that have been viewed the most are:

A Thank You  http://fedscomic.blogspot.com/2011/11/thank-you.html   This was a follow up to a post I’ll discuss below.

Labors of Love http://fedscomic.blogspot.com/2011/10/labors-of-love.html This was my first attempt at writing something significant rather than just another note on my artwork or a convention I'd been to.  This is an essay on creator owned and produced work and why it is so impressive.  When Jason Leaver (creator of Out with Dad) promoted the post and I noticed my stats climb I figured it would be the highlight of my year.

Review-Nocturnal City http://fedscomic.blogspot.com/2011/11/review-nocturnal-city.html Interestingly, Nocturnal City is another creator owned and produced work.  I picked up this movie before I discovered Out With Dad, but blogged about the later first because I watched Out With Dad first.  I just don’t get around to watching many movies.  At first I wasn’t sure this post would ever get many views, since it is a student movies very few people have ever heard of.  However, once word got out among the people who worked on the project, this became a very popular post.  I'm happily the only person to ever post a review of this movie on the Internet!

Happy Holidays to Out With Dad http://fedscomic.blogspot.com/2011/12/happy-holidays-to-out-with-dad.html The idea for this came to me and I wanted to draw and post it because of the success of my most viewed entry (see below). What can I say? It’s nice to have people look at your work and art is how I best express my appreciation for things I enjoy!

Likenesses and Zombies! http://fedscomic.blogspot.com/2011/10/likenesses-and-zombies.html I never would have suspected a goofy drawing could generate over twice the attention as a well thought out essay about creator owned and produced work.  Go figure.  Here’s the story behind this one:

I was reading some Star Trek comics drawn by my favorite comics writer and artist John Byrne.  Drawing Star Trek generally constitutes drawing a lot of likenesses, which is something that Byrne often says on his website that he doesn’t do very well.  (I disagree, but that’s beyond the point of this story.) This got me thinking about likenesses and it just happened to be right about the time I discovered the webseries Out With Dad.  So I started doing some sketches of the characters from the webseries as a way to practice my likenesses.  I decided one of the drawings, a sketch of actress Lindsey Middleton, was good enough I might want to post it on my blog someday.  It also happened to be nearing Halloween, and I was working on drawing people as zombies.  So I did a zombie drawing of Miss Middleton as practice.  Then I got the idea to post both the sketch and the zombie drawing as a Halloween post on my blog.  One thing troubled me, though.  I didn’t want to post drawings of someone without their knowledge and permission.  I don’t think everyone would appreciate seeing drawings of themselves on the Internet drawn by some stranger.  Some quick searching led me to Lindsey’s Facebook fanpage, however, and this gave me a way to make sure the post was okay with her.  She liked the art, as I wrote about in my Thank You post, and the results were far beyond my wildest predictions!

Well, there’s the top five posts as ranks by views. I’m enjoying this bloggy thing so far. It sure has led in directions I did not expect. I’m not sure what I will be posting about next year, but I plan to have some fun!