terminalhipster.com Blog

How often do you update?

For now I’ll be doing weekly updates with a new strip being posted every Thursday. Sometimes “Thursday” will mean “really late Wednesday night” so maybe check in early if you’re really impatient. I’m hoping to pick up the pace a bit over the coming months.

Once a week? That’s not very often. Why so slow?

Good question! I’d love to update with a new strip a few times a week or even daily, but for now real life is getting in the way. I work two days jobs on top of doing Terminal Hipster, so I don’t really have as much time as I’d like to put into the comic right now. I could promise daily updates, but by tomorrow I’d be a liar… a weekly schedule is something I think I can stick to and deliver on. If I can squeeze an extra strip in here or there, I’ll do my best to make it happen.

Another thing that slows me down is that I draw everything by hand on paper, including the lettering, and I’m a huge perfectionist. I scan and tweak and colour the art in PhotoShop, which takes a while too. I could rush the art or colours to get the strips out quicker, but I’d rather post one weekly strip that I’m totally happy with than three or four that I think look pretty half-assed. As it is, I’m pretty sure I’ll look back at the first few strips and hang my head in shame months from now.

How do you make a Terminal Hipster strip?

I draw each panel (including the lettering and speech balloons) out on paper in the traditional pencil-then-ink comics process that artists have been using for ages. After playing around with a few different formats, I now draw most of the panels at 10″ x 6″ which is just a little bit smaller than 1/2 of a traditional comic art page, though obviously some panels are often drawn at different sizes as the story may need. I scan everything in at 300dpi and clean up the images and colour them using Adobe Photoshop. By the time I size them down to a width of 700px (or the smaller 500px currently on the site) most of the the lines are smoothed out and look a bit sharper than the full-size art. The first few strips were saved as high resolution JPG files, but I’ve since switched to a PNG format.

Hey, did you just put a U in COLOR…?

Yeah. I am Canadian.

Cool cool… so where’s this story going?

I’ve got some ideas lined up. You’ll just have to read on and see where this goes.

Is Jason gonna hook up with __________?

That’d be telling! Just keep reading, okay?

The layout of your site looks like crap.

Thanks, but you know, that’s not really a question. And I know… I have next to no knowledge or ability when it comes to web design, so I’m using WordPress blogging software to put this thing together. Unfortunately, WordPress won’t let me post strips much wider than 500px without screwing up the formatting, so I’m also posting the strips in a larger size over at my ComicSpace page in the meantime. I’m working on a more functional, better-looking site here, but it might be a while before it’s ready to roll.

Are the characters based on real people? Are the strips based on your real life?

In a word… not really. Some of the characters might look a little like people I know in real life, but none of them are meant to be any of my friends or family. The story itself is pure fiction, but from time to time a line or two of dialogue or even a whole conversation might be lifted from a real life conversation I’ve had. Any writer or cartoonist who tells you that what he creates is 100% fictional is either lying or has managed to fool himself; I firmly believe that nothing comes from nothing, and real life has a way of bleeding into anything you create. It’s what you do with those influences that defines your work.

How much money do you make doing this?

Not a cent. In fact, Terminal Hipster ends up costing me money every month for hosting fees and, at the very basic level, art supplies. Maybe one day I’ll be able to make a few bucks doing this, but for now I’m just happy to be drawing some comics people might want to look at.