The Carver's House

1. Sixth Sense - Brown Eyed Girls 2. Because I Missed Your Heart - Hwan Hee 3. Heaven - Ailee 4. Cry - MBLAQ 5. News - Nine Muses 6. Let This Die - Brian Joo

Despite the post's title, there are really no sure-fire ways to boost the sales of your comics. There are, however, principles that govern this, and today's comics creator would need to be familiar with these principles and work on them. To me, it's basically hinged on two factors: Your Work and your Platform. And from these two factors, we look into Quality and Scope. Quality of Work: It Has To Be Good When we look at quality, we look at the level of excellence it contains. In my previous blog posts, I've emphasized the importance of a quality story in terms of both writing and art, but there's more to that. When we look at quality, we're also looking at how writing and art help each other in achieving a satisfying reader experience. We also ask if the writing and art are "meant" to work together. Looking at Japanese manga as an example: while there is a particular style that's inherent in manga art, there are many permutations. A horror mang...

[Note: The recent Push Comics Forward initiative launched by BOOM! Comics reminded me of this piece I wrote on January 18, 2013. Though the text below was originally written to talk about the Philippine comics industry, I figured it's also relevant to the current conversation about comics industries in other parts of the globe. -- 01/30/2015) Where there's smoke, there's fire. Over the past decade or so, many comic conventions have been organized around the country, attracting thousands of comics fans and featuring prominent creators and artists. These events have been covered in tri-media and seem to be helping the industry elevate itself in the public consciousness. The question is, has the industry elevated itself high enough? There may be fire, but is the fire big enough for people to take notice? We could use the analogy of a burning house. If there's one burning house, the people surrounding that house would be alarmed, but that's as far as it would go. ...

One of the few projects I've been working on and off on is a graphic novel workshop. I even had an alpha test session last year with six volunteers. The workshop primarily focused on story development and story structure, topics that I dived into while putting together the story of the Zaturnnah sequel. While it was a successful session, there's a lot to work out to make it better-structured and more practical. There are a few comics writing references, but most of them just skim the surface. The other comics how-to books spend more pages on the art and visual storytelling. Understandably so, because comics is a visual medium after all. However, without a sound knowledge in story development, that part that comes before scriptwriting and visual interpretation, aspiring comics writers may find themselves building derivative stories, or another version of a comics story/novel/movie they've encountered before. Stories are like signatures. They are personal expressions of...

People know me as the comics guy, particularly the guy who created Zsazsa Zaturnnah. For a long time, I figured that this was to be my vocation, because making comics married a lot of my interests, including writing, illustrating, design, acting, comic books and other forms of geekology. But I realized that my interests went beyond that. If you're the kind of person who has a lot of seemingly disjointed interests, who's not really a specialist, who's not a master of one or two things, who finds yourself shifting from one field of interest to another, and being accused of an inability to focus, doesn't that feel frustrating? It sure is. I've been there and I still am. I've only recently discovered the term for that, rooted in psychology. It's called "multipotentiality," wherein a person has the potential to pursue numerous fields, a one-shoe-fits-a-lot-of-feet kind of person. It's also known as TMAs, or Too Many Aptitudes, characterize...

Something I've been working on in irregular bursts, and will take a long while to finish. This part is not complete yet. Just sharing... - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Just like traditional film and stageplays, a graphic novel story is divided into Acts. Acts are divided into Sequences. Sequences are divided into Scenes. Scenes are divided into Beats. All of these have a beginning, middle, and end. The main difference between them is the level of change that takes place. Changes on the Beat level are not as pronounced as those on the Scene level. Changes in the Scene level are not as pronounced as those on the Sequence level, and so on. The process of the change is what is known as the Arc (though beats aren’t normally described as having an Arc, since it’s the smallest unit of a narrative.) If you’re creating a love story, for instance, the Story Arc could begin from the time Mr. Wrong meets Miss Right, and ends at the point when Mr. Wrong and Miss Right get married an...

I've been mulling on this idea for a couple of years, and I don't claim to be the first to think of this. But I thought it best to write it down and get it out of the way. It might work. It might not. And since I don't know exactly how Philippine theatre operates, I'm considering this one of those brain farts I'd have from time to time, which may not be taken seriously. (Disclaimer: I wrote this with Metro Manila-based theatre companies in mind. But I think any theatre company in the Philippines can adopt this model.) Original Philippine theatre has always had a problem when it came to money. (Actually, it's a problem that's common among theatre companies anywhere in the world.) Setting up a commercial production is a massive undertaking, involving dozens of people and huge sums of money, but always carries a huge risk. Very few companies are willing to sponsor shows, and it would almost take a miracle to pack the theater houses during the production...