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If nothing else, the Japanese writing system is a beautiful art form in itself. And learning any art form, I think, will help you develop as an artist in your chosen craft as well. But more specifically, here are some principles I am discovering from my language studies that can be put to work in learning the art of cartooning.

1. Repetition: My biggest struggle in learning Japanese is the HUGE amount of rote memorization there is to do. There's just no way around it. One of the answers is, of course, repetition. This is especially useful in learning to write. There are literally thousands of kanji (those really complicated characters swiped from China) and it's easy to get them confused. It's also easy to get to a point where you can read some of them, but if called on to write them, totally drawing (no pun intended) a blank. But by repetition, you can get to the point where you can write them without even thinking about it.

Of course the same thing can happen in cartooning. Maybe drawing a hand or a foot or a car comes with great struggle for you, takes a ton of extra work, and some visual reference is needed every time. But with repetition, in time, it's possible to get to a point where you can draw it without thinking. Then you're free to be expressive instead of worrying about getting it right. So if there's something you're not too good at drawing, why not take some time and focus on learning to draw that one thing really, really well? Then you can move on to other things and enjoy yourself instead of agonizing over it whenever that thing comes up (or avoiding it, as we're all tempted to do sometimes).

2. Context: I find that Japanese words and sentence structures stick in my head better when I practice them in context. Like, putting a word into a familiar sentence structure can help in vocabulary memorization. Or, instead of just trying to remember what a certain piece of grammar means, if I could come up with a sentence that means something to me (like, that I might use in real life) I'm more likely to remember it and actually use it.

In the same way, as a cartoonist, why not get in the habit of drawing characters actually, you know, doing stuff? Draw them interacting with each other, sitting or standing or walking in different settings, and so on -- instead of just working on drawing the characters themselves, just posing. If you want to draw good comics, you need to learn to draw stuff in context, like you will in the actual comics. So practice that in your sketches too, and it'll come more naturally when you hit the panel or page.

3. Learning and Re-Learning: I find myself, in my language studies, learning words and grammar, moving on to other stuff, and then forgetting the older stuff and having to go back and re-learn it. And if I don't draw a certain character or thing in a while, I get a little rusty with that too. Sometimes you have to go back and re-learn to draw something, but just like in language, once you've learned, forgotten, and re-learned, you're less likely to forget again. With each re-learning, it gets a little more natural.

4. Multiple Methods: In Japanese, as in other languages, there are multiple ways to say the same thing. In fact, in Japanese, because of cultural subtleties, it can get really complicated. But what this reminds me about in terms of cartooning is that there's lots of room for variation, experimentation, and multiple styles. We don't all have to draw the same way. We don't all have to know how to draw "realistically". But we do have to be good story tellers.

So experiment, find your style, try new angles, tools, techniques and perspectives, and most of all have fun with it. There's no one right way to draw a comic.

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Which leads to the topic of this post. I'm by no means an expert on productivity, but I'm learning to be productive in spite of my inclinations towards disorganization. Hopefully that means my next webcomic project will be not only better, but more consistent. Anyway, here are some things I've learned. Maybe they'll help you too.

1. Stick to a schedule. When it comes to your webcomic, that means giving yourself a deadline and sticking to it, just like you would if it was your "real job" (if it is your real job, you've probably already learned this).

2. Try batch processing. Pro blogger Darren Rowse wrote a good article on this idea HERE, but the basic idea is that you set aside a chunk of time to do a bunch of stuff ahead of time. The linked article is about blogging, but a lot of the principles carry over to webcomic creating. For example, if you had a day off and wanted to work ahead on several tasks, you could set aside an hour to do some online promotion, a couple hours for writing, a couple hours for drawing... You get the idea. This leads to the next suggestion I have...

3. Work ahead. Give yourself a good-sized "buffer" of strips so that if you have a busy week you don't fall behind. This prepares you for the unexpected or for planned absences like vacation time. Brad Guiger of Evil Inc is apparently over a month ahead on his daily strip. You may not be able to -- or even want to -- get that far ahead, but a week or two, I would think, would be the minimum, depending on your update schedule, of course.

4. Give yourself a system for keeping your stuff organized -- not just your webcomics stuff, but everything. If all your life tasks, goals, responsibilities and so on are properly organized, fitting in time to put into your webcomic will be a lot easier and natural. Check out sites like Zen Habits, Lifehacker, and 43Folders for ideas on creating such a system.

5. Eliminate Distractions. When you sit down at your computer to write, go offline. Almost nothing is more distracting than the internet. When you're getting ready to draw or ink, make sure you're in a comfortable place where you can get work done. If you've been doing this stuff for any amount of time, you can probably figure this out on your own; you know what distracts you and what helps you get stuff done.

That's some of what I've learned. In future posts I may go more into my own productivity system, and talk about some helpful tools for staying organized. But feel free to add your own tips to this list by using the comment form below. What works for you?

1. Perfectionism kills inspiration. It's better to create imperfect art than to not create at all.

2. Don't wait until you're "good enough" to launch into an artistic endeavor. If you wait, you never will be.

3. Creating comics should be fun. I need to want to draw this thing to keep on doing it.

4. Planning ahead is good, but I need the freedom to improvise, change my mind... or even make it up as I go.

5. Inspiration is not enough. Discipline is needed in order to take an idea and see it through. People who only create when they feel like it usually never improve or reach their artistic goals. This is the difference between an artistic person and an artist -- not just talent, but also time and effort.

6. Specific goals and deadlines are necessary. Especially if you're a disorganized procrastinator like me. Stuff you learn about being a better organized student or employee or whatever can help you be a more productive and fulfilled artist.

7. Artists are notoriously disorganized and tend to be good at creating clutter. I definitely fit in that category. But being organized doesn't stunt creativity, contrary to some people's thinking. In fact, it aids creativity because it allows you to focus on the thing you're creating, not your piles of junk.

8. Good ideas need time to brew in private before you go public with them. But don't sit on a good idea forever. Face the fear, get it done, and put it out there for the world to enjoy.

Scott McCloud has written three non-fiction comic-books-about-comics: Understanding Comics, Making Comics, and Reinventing Comics. I've read the first two, but not the third, so I'll restrict my opinions to things I actually know about (always a good idea, I think -- which is an opinion in itself).

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

McCloud's second comic-book-book, Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels

One example of those little details in character creation is the idea of giving each character not only a unique face and style of clothing, but also a unique body language and style of speech -- things that are obvious when you think about it (after all, there's a lot more to real people's uniqueness than just their face) but that it might be easy to miss.

One of the nice things about all three of Scott McCloud's books-about-comics is that they're presented as comics. This is another idea that makes perfect sense when you think about it; if you're going to talk about comics, why not do in the form of a comic book? But I don't know of any other examples of writers who have done this.

As an added bonus, and as a preview of what you'll get in the book, there's an online supliment on McCloud's site (which was really hard to find, so here a quick LINK). Making Comics is in black-and-white, and since he wanted to discuss color in color (another obvious but good idea), he presented it online as "chapter 5 1/2".

I would highly recommend both of these books, especially to anyone who's interesting in writing and/or drawing comics. As for the third one, you'll just have to wait until I've actually read it. Of course, if anyone who's reading this has already read Reinventing Comics (or the other two volumes for that matter), I'd love to hear what you think. Anybody...?

Why? Well, I'm not entirely sure. But as I've reflected on the subject, and learned more about making and marketing webcomics, I've come up with a few things that I think contributed to SkitZo MaN's lack of success.

1. Lack of a buffer.

Actually, when I first launched the site, I did have a good-sized buffer of a couple of months' worth of strips. I was only updating once a week then, so that didn't take much, but it meant that for the first little while I had no problem keeping up. But when the buffer ran out, I never really got it back, and looking back, I think this would have helped. Because I didn't have a buffer, problem number 2 arose...

2. Inconsistent updating.

Once the buffer ran out, I started to miss the occasional week here and there. Sometimes Geoff wouldn't be able to come up with a good gag on time, and sometimes I'd have a list of his ideas but not be able to get the actually strip finished that week. Then, when a really busy month or two would come up, the site would be dormant for weeks at a time, which is basically like suicide for a webcomic.

3. Only one panel once a week.

But even when I was able to stick to my schedule, I don't think publishing only once a week was enough. Who wants to wait a whole week for the next installment of something that takes about 20 seconds (if that) to read? The most successful webcomics are usually humor strips that publish on a consistent, daily schedule, making it harder for people to forget about them in between.

4. No Archives on launch.

Like a lot of novices, I started publishing the strip and promoting the site with only one actual strip on the site. So a new reader would come, and even if they liked it, would not be able to go back and read more. As the Webcomics Weekly guys having pointed out numerous times, it's hard to get hooked, or to even get a feel for what the strip is about, in the 20 seconds it takes to read the one-and-only toon on the site.

5. Too narrow a concept?

This may be the big one. I don't know; it's hard to look at your own work objectively sometimes. Doing a comic based entirely on re-interpreted aphorisms and idioms is, well, limiting to say the least. No wonder it was hard to come up with new ideas! I mean, we had lists of cliches and stuff in the hundreds, but to take each one and come up with something original and funny punch line in only one panel was challenging. Now, challenges can be a good thing, and I think self-limitation actually helps creativity in some ways. But what if we had expanded the concept to include more character-based, story line driven ideas? Would that have given us more to work with? Would it given us broader appeal? I don't know for sure, but I think that deciding to limit the strip to the idiom thing made us suffer in both a lack of ideas and a lack of an audience.

So that's the sad history of my attempt at a producing successful webcomic. Hopefully I can apply what I've learned to future projects, and if you're a webcomic creator yourself, you can learn something from my mistakes as well. Or do you have your own mistakes to share? What have you learned from failed attempts?

How to Make Webcomics

Topics covered include image preparation (ie formatting, resolution, etc), website construction, promotion and community building. They also spend quite a bit of time discussing monetization -- how to make money from your webcomic. In fact, this seems to be the main focus of the book and the authors' definition of "success", which may or may not be a good thing, depending how you look at it.

Actually, that may be an overstatement, now that I think about it. But money talk does come up a lot, and for those hoping to make a living off their art, it's an important topic to think about.

How to Make Webcomics is written in the same light-hearted, conversational style that the Halfpixel guys are known for using on their podcast, Webcomics Weekly. This makes it a pretty easy and entertaining read. A few of the topics in the book (the technical stuff) can be kind of dry, but I'm glad they included them, because they'll be good to have as a reference when needed.

One thing I find annoying about the book, though, is the over-abundance of "side bars" and the like, which I always find break up the text and I'd rather have placed between topics rather than mid-paragraph or mid-sentence. But that's more of a layout issue rather than a writing issue. And probably a bit of a "me" issue too.

How to Make Webcomics does a good job at accomplishing what it sets out to do -- help budding cartoonists succeed at publishing their work online. I'll definitely be keeping it to use as a reference for any future webcomicing I do. You may want to do the same.