Yay – We just pushed out another website update! Major changes this time around include: 

Faster site loading. Tapastic is growing so fast! Obviously our growth has been awesome, but also sometimes had a side effect of contributing to the site slowdown — not as awesome. So we’ve made some fixes, and now the pages are loading much faster – by our measure, up to 10x faster – than before. We’re doing our best from our end to keep the site fast, but as you know, we always encourage our creators to use images that are lighter in size. Please avoid creating all your panels in one giant-sized, super-long image! 

New design for series home: The new recommendation feature that we launched recently on individual episode pages turned out to be a great success! Many creators, especially those who were new to the platform whose series didn’t get noticed a lot, are now saying they’re seeing far more pageviews and Likes. So we wanted to enhance discoverability on the series home page too. Now there’s new “You might like” and “Recently updated” sections on the series home’s sidebar.

And of course there were some other updates and bug fixes too. We’ll keep improving the product and adding more exciting features; As always, send your good ideas and suggestions, or other feedback, to our ways through comments on this post or the Feedback link on Tapastic. Thanks!

We now have 340+ artists updating 430+ visual story series on Tapastic. Our overall content volume increased by a whopping 10% in the past 7 days alone. Between January and March this year, we saw roughly 30x traffic growth; Now our May traffic is expected to be double our March traffic. Dare we say – Tapastic is on fire!

The fact that we’re growing fast means there are more people who know Tapastic is the place where they can find and work with great visual story artists. As such, we’ve recently been contacted by a few potential business partners who wanted to work with Tapastic artists for creative art projects. To give you a few examples of ongoing discussions:

• Creating “stickers” – small icons with interesting characters – for messaging apps
• Creating characters and other graphical assets for a kids’ education tablet app
• Launching a new webcomic series based on a mobile game for cross-channel marketing

It’s not difficult to think of other interesting possibilities that might come up in the future. For example – movie studios asking us to produce a new webcomic series about their upcoming movie. Or big corporates asking us to re-produce their boring annual reports or employee training materials into a webcomic series (see this article, for example).

Of course our main focus is (and always will be) on Tapastic.com. But we think introducing interesting project opportunities to our artists would actually be beneficial to our community in the long run. For example, helping artists make more money through these projects would actually help them carry on with their ongoing Tapastic series.

We’ll figure out the best ways to handle these business opportunities and hopefully make an announcement soon. This might involve a separate “business program” agreement. Maybe at some point in the future, we won’t even rule out the possibility of having some sort of a “job board”. In the meantime, if you have good ideas or suggestions in terms of how best we can handle these business opportunities – feel free to share with us.

When we try to explain Tapastic to those who aren’t too familiar, we sometimes say: “We’re Youtube for webcomics and visual stories.” Of course we aren’t YouTube, but there are enough interesting similarities too: YouTube is all about providing a free platform for publishing, consuming, and sharing great videos. Tapastic is providing such platform for serially-updated, bite-sized visual stories.

Speaking of YouTube, one key feature that makes YouTube YouTube is their embed feature. The ability for anyone to take a YouTube video and embed it on any website or blog has led to explosive viral distribution of interesting video content.

We’ve thought about providing a similar functionality, and today we’re excited to announce the embed feature is available on Tapastic. Now you can find “Embed” button below each episode.

Simply click on the button and copy the iFrame code (you can also adjust the iframe size in the dropdown menu), then paste it to any website’s HTML codes. Voila – you are now showing awesome Tapastic story, right from your website or blog.

The iFrame is still served by Tapastic.com, so every time someone views the embedded content, its Tapastic viewcount goes up too. But if for whatever reasons you’d like to disable the embed feature on your series, you can simply edit the series information to disable the feature to stop allowing visitors to embed your content. (But wouldn’t you want your readers to help distribute your awesome content?

As always, for any questions/comments/bug reports, please use the “Feedback” button on Tapastic, or leave comments to this post. Thanks always for using Tapastic!

In my last 2 posts, I covered the importance of having to Know Yourself, or get to know what you want, and Show Yourself, or put your personality in your portfolio. I’d made my way into Cartoon Network producer, Fred Seibert’s office but didn’t know myself enough to make something of it, then landed a job with legendary designer, Milton Glaser by adding personality to my portfolio website with webcomics. That’s 1 for 2, but the god of scarce paychecks for artists decided I wasn’t going to get away that easy. This and more in step 3…

My band, Genevapop playing the grand opening of Mission Comics in San Francisco. Live the dream!

Throw Yourself - Get Out and Talk to People in Person

When the small partnering company with Milton Glaser I worked for in Manhattan went under, I freaked out. They still owed (owe) me about a month’s pay, I’d just moved to a bigger apartment, and student loan bills were fast approaching with graduation, all while having to finish my thesis animation with style and grace. I officially hit rock bottom. What could I do but bury my head in a pillow and cry like a banshee? With tears for fears now transferred to said pillow, I slowly lifted my head and realized wait, I could do something about this.

Immediately, I designed business cards to pass out at every event and gathering I attended, like when animator for Spongebob Squarepants turned producer, Todd Broder was a guest speaker in my class. After his talk I nervously approached him with a business card, thinking he’d consider me just another inexperienced student desperate for work. To my surprise he replied, “I like your fortitude and will definitely get back to you”. Indeed he did and suddenly, I was designing the dossiers that begin the episodes for Season 1 of the Food Network‘s Throwdown with Bobby Flay. This was my personal recession bailout and I was so possessed with relief, I lost my ATM card three times that summer (first and last time ever). If you’ve ever applied for work online without going through a contact, creative agency, teacher or approaching a professional directly…just don’t. People trust people more than words on a screen from someone they don’t know, consider it a last resort if anything.

Hitting rock bottom was torture but I later realized how freeing it was, because I don’t freak out about it any more. This is good because freelancers like myself will tell you about the inexplicable phenomenon, that work doesn’t usually come until you really need it. So you have to be a little crazy, but you’ll eventually find that your prior, self-defeating notions of a real world career stop making sense.

From my latest gig, directing and creating animated shorts for Men’s Wearhouse.

It’s people like conceptual artist, author, and music legend, David Byrne that remind me to keep my head in creativity, and to not settle for letting the days go by.

Teddy Hose is the artist behind Oscillating Profundities.

In my last post I covered the first of three steps to surviving a creative career I call Know Yourself, Show Yourself, Throw Yourself. It can be conflicting to think that by showing employers exactly what you want, it may cancel close enough opportunities that can pay the rent for now. However like in my last story, you don’t want to be in the right place at the right time without knowing what you want, like when Ralphie visits Santa in A Christmas Story. You can’t throw (pitch) yourself without knowing yourself enough to show what you want first. Some people might fear the career world is full of employers not much unlike Santa’s helpers in that scene, aggressively impatient with the long line of kids. Having to deal with the kids twiddling their thumbs probably made them that way, which brings me to step 2…

Look how not businessy these business cards are, I obviously had fun with them. Wouldn’t you want to hire me over John Doe, the trend following stock art imitator with the business card in Papyrus font?

Show Yourself - Put Your Personality into Your Portfolio Website

While studying animation at School of Visual Arts in New York, I worked part-time as a graphic designer for a small business with a small paycheck, so I needed to climb the ladder. I wasn’t ready to switch to the more risky and competitive animation path just yet, so I consulted the school’s Career Services office for help with my meticulously designed portfolio website. It had a serious, business card template tone and an animated douchey corporate style logo, basically facepalm material. The counselor there asked, “If you’re studying animation, why don’t you put more of your animation style work up?”. I didn’t think I’d land high-profile design work by showing my cartoony stuff, but as they recommended I made my site more fun and fearless.

Lo and behold they called me with a job opportunity a few days later. When I went to interview at the company, the manager there said, “I really like the comics on your site”. No mention of my graphic design work from her at all, just the stuff I enjoyed making the most which captured that resonance. So I got the job working with Milton Glaser, world-famous designer behind the I <3 NY logo and co-founder of New York Magazine, thanks in part to my comics.

As a big fan of The Aquabats, I totally loved that the lead singer created the show, Yo Gabba Gabba! That’s me in a state of grace animating a screensaver for it at Nickelodeon, with Times Square 33 floors below. I showed the interweb who I was so it knew where to take me.

My art school friends now working for Cartoon Network, wouldn’t have gotten there without building a reputation through their webcomic series prior. Tell that to your executive account manager of human operations dad.

Next week, the third of the series, Throw Yourself: Tokyo Drift.

Sometimes a product or a service is so popular and successful that it ends up defining its own category. Think Google, Xerox, Twitter, or any other brands that are used as verbs.

The Oatmeal, a wildly popular webcomic (not available on Tapastic – at least not yet!), is in my opinion one such category-defining work. Case in point: I recently had a chance to ask a room full of college students how many of them enjoy webcomics regularly, and I saw a few hands go up. But when I asked the same audience how many of them knew The Oatmeal, I saw almost everyone in the room raise their hands.

So why is The Oatmeal so popular? It’s simple: because it’s great content. After reading a few episodes of The Oatmeal, you’d be like, “Wow, who is this guy? He’s freaking awesome.” After all, not everyone can draw funny comics about relatively mundane objects like Sriracha sauce, and then go one step further and launch a new line of underwear using the same theme.

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Most parents quiver at the thought of their children pursuing artistic careers, but if you’re like me you know you’re just too offbeat for the office life, offbeat but not without rhythm. My dad is actually a mural artist while my mom makes crafts and works stay home jobs, so I never anticipated a career analyzing the Dow Jones, Q1 market research outlook for the fiscal year, or whatever it is normal people do for a living. I only knew art so I moved to New York City, went to School of Visual Arts and somehow survived as a designer / animator / illustrator for 10+ years covering rent there, now in San Francisco and student loan bills that weren’t much cheaper. Through a little desperation, luck and putting myself out there, I found myself working for companies like Nickelodeon, The Food Network and having a piece recently featured on Mashable and Huffington Post.

Me a few years ago in NY with a wall full of art, animation, indie comic and design findings I like. Step 1 in action!

Here’s 1 of 3 basic steps to making it work I call Know Yourself, Show Yourself, Throw Yourself.

Know Yourself – Know What You Want

Don’t wait for someone to discover you, get to know your strengths, what you don’t want, and be honest to yourself about obligations that block you from what you really want. I wish I did this my senior year of college when now Adventure Time producer, Fred Seibert was a guest speaker in my class. After his talk I raised my hand, looked him straight in the eye and said, “I want to work for Cartoon Network”. That’s all it took for him to invite me to his New York office later, and offer to help me make it in LA. I was all heart and no head though, and didn’t know what I wanted to do specifically so the opportunity just kind of deflated in front of me. The truth is I realized I wanted to be more of a writer/director than a visual artist, but I couldn’t admit it to myself at the time having just put myself through expensive art school. That’s what I mean by being honest about the obligations that block you from what you really want. The sooner you confront them, the better.

A little self help with story and personal style.

Stay tuned for step 2 where I ask you to show yourself for money. More awkward wording like that in my comic Oscillating Profundities!

Welcome to the amazingly imaginative, dreamy world created Aaron Winterhalter and Sandra Harvey. Check out Trizzella by the Sea which is currently on hold, but will be returning to Tapastic on May 1st.

You can also check out the short animation, Trizzella by the Lake. If you have a minute, please go to the Contest Page and VOTE for your fellow Tapastic artist!

Contest link: Trizzella by the Lake

This weekend I will be scouting out Tapastic potential from Portland, OR’s infamous Stumptown Comics Fest at the Oregon Convention Center. Here’s 8 things on my itenerary that I think should be on everyone’s Stumptown bucket list:

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The first Saturday of May is host to Free Comic Book Day, an annual event where as the namesake would imply, participating comic book stores give away comics for free. If you’d like to attend the event try looking up local comic shops around you with Comic Shop Locator.

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Yesterday, I wrote a post about Jewel Kats and her interview on Link Disability Magazine. Jewel informed that May is National Mobility Awareness Month, so today, we want to make a special shout out for Jewel and others who are living with disabilities. What is NMAM?

National Mobility Awareness Month is dedicated to showing the world how people with disabilities can live active, mobile lifestyles. Teamed with national spokespeople, Mike Savicki, Ashley Lauren Fisher, Josh Dueck and David Lowell, we support and utilize the National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association (NMEDA) network of members to help educate the public.

So there you go! Help spread the word and awareness. Also, if you have a minute, please VOTE for Jewel as a Local Hero to win a wheelchair accessible van. Jewel is a true inspiration to our Tapastic staff everyday!

VOTE FOR JEWEL LINK: http://www.mobilityawarenessmonth.com/entrant/jewel-kats-toronto-on/

BY: JEWEL KATS

I can do this.

I can do this.

I can do this.

I WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Everything starts off as an idea. With a spoonful of hard work, and a pinch of focus, something will bake. Read: An empty page will be filled.

However, to make things really takeoff…You need heaps of d-e-t-e-r-m-i-n-a-t-i-o-n. We’re talkin’ buckets full.

You’re a talented web comic artist. We both know that. You can draw. You can write. Or, gasp, you can magically do both! Now, you must, must, must let the world know about your talent(s). PRONTO.

I’m sorry, but advertising simply won’t cut it. You can, and should do more than that.

Treat EVERY human-being you encounter as a potential reader. Yes, even your hot Postman! Don’t let any opportunity get by you. Somehow, someway, slip your web comic into the conversation. It’s not every day that people meet comic artists. They will be intrigued. Trust me!

As a matter of fact, I practice what I preach. For instance, just the other day, I went into a showroom for mobility products. I literally had the salesclerk log onto our web comic series “DitzAbled Princess” from her checkout computer. Right then, right there, she was hooked. And, guess what? We had instant views. I’ve even told complete strangers while sitting around in hospital waiting rooms. Conclusion: You can network ANYWHERE.

If you’re not a loudmouth like me, a creative business card can be just the trick you’re looking for. Be sure the style of your web comic, and its Tapastic series number are clearly reflected on it. You can even step it up a notch by using snazzy colored cardstock paper.

Now, comes your best friend…The media.

Once upon a time, I used to both study and work in the field of journalism. It’s a tough crowd, but you can shove your way through it with some might. Think about it. A lot of people are fighting for airtime. Public relations experts are especially hard to beat. They’re trained pros.

However, you can be an equally good vulture. Your key to success is to have a catchy hook to your story. What makes your web comic newsworthy? You need an angle. You know, some interesting juice to get a creative journalist’s mind swirling and twirling. Also, be sure to target newspapers/magazines that share a common ground with your comic. This will help illicit interest.

If you’ve been following us at www.ditzabledprincess.com, you’ll notice that we’ve landed quite a few news stories in a relatively short time for our web comic. I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve worked hard to land these media sound bites. Confession: I’ve even had doors figuratively slammed in my face along the way. But that’s life, right?

Reality check: Not everyone wants to hear what you have to say. So, what should you do? Pick up your chic suitcase, and knock on every other door you can find. Eventually, someone will jump and bite at every word you say. Lesson: Without tough skin, you’ll get stuck in target range one.

Last, but not least, remember you’re the biggest spokesperson for your web comic. If you don’t believe in it, nobody else will. Excitement is contagious. Start spreading the word, and I promise you won’t dare look back.

I can do this.

I can do this.

I can do this.

I WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Jewel Kats, 34, is the reality-series comic strip creator and writer of “DitzAbled Princess” (tapastic.com/series/316)  Katarina Andriopoulos illustrates the series.