At the same time, I have been put off by many things. The website's design is constantly in flux, making it difficult to navigate. Updates tend to come in clumps, then fizzle and die off for weeks (or months). And then there has been the issue of Carson's methods of fundraising, which upset me so much that I made this post. Given the fact that this is a tagboard that was embedded elsewhere, it's difficult to determine the context of what I was writing. I don't feel like going into it too much, but basically Carson was posting on the front page about how he didn't know what to do, because he couldn't pay the bills. He kept listing options. Finally, he grew so desperate that he stated that he would delete portions of the Elf Life archives from Keenspot if he didn't meet fundraising goals. In order to give people something for what they paid in, he offered sketches at exorbitant prices.
My argument was not that he didn't have the right to do this. It's his content. He can do with it whatever he wants. My argument was that this is offputting. It's bad PR. Instead of making people sympathetic to his cause, it makes him seem like a greedy whiner who's going to take his ball and go home...especially given the fact that so many of his promises were broken.
If he needed to take his content offline and have people pay for access to it, that would have been acceptable. A lot of webcomics are doing that now. I'm not sure that would be the wisest thing for Carson to do, given how it's really the story of Elf Life that sells the webcomic, and that story is drawn out gradually over time. But it wouldn't have pissed people off.
Today there is a new announcement on the front page of Elf Life.
Quick update: Computer go BRRZZT! Updates resume shortly.It has now become obvious to me that Carson Fire has no business savvy whatsoever. Most of what he said there serves no purpose, and could be interpreted as self-pity and vanity.
In the meantime, please scroll down and consider donating to Elf Life. So far the vote of confidence is leaning against us; please tell us you want to keep Elf Life going!
This month's donations so far have gone towards keeping the electricity on; the computer upkeep budget is nil (as is the budget for doing just about anything else related to the series), which is why stuff like this keeps happening. And instead of spending premium time working on the comic and other new content (not to mention site upkeep), I'm still spending a lot of time trying to find other ways to make money to support *Elf Life*. I'm not a white collar pro working a tech job on the side, but a blue collar 40-year-old with a broken back and bad eyes; apart from an intermittent temp job, I'm not in demand even for minimum-wage jobs these days (I was turned down for a warehouse job last week that I shouldn't even be taking because of my back). And so I have to spend a *lot* of time trying to make up the difference between the high hours/low revenue of Elf Life, for not much in the way of positive results.
I'm nervous about posting this more blatant appeal, because I have been attacked and berated and embarrassed at every turn in the past for trying to raise the funds to keep Elf Life going. But nothing has changed; some individual support for Elf Life is extremely strong; but overall, support is very weak. Many people have vocally supported Elf Life, too, and I thank them for that. It is only a small number of voices who happen to have very large soapboxes that manage to misconstrue and mischaracterize efforts to keep this series going. Before these people go back to their websites and loudly denounce me for trying so hard to raise funds -- and failing miserably -- let them spend some time criticizing their own friends who run similar donation drives and succeed wildly. I am getting tired of being kicked in the ribs by people who do not know me, do not know my family, and do not know what I have had to overcome to get even this far.
Anyway, with support this weak, Elf Life will always have a hard time staying on a consistent schedule; funding to complete the book will continue to be non-existent (that comes back to the computer); no major Elf Life projects will ever be finished. Please help us turn this around!
Not even any false modesty this time: Elf Life is incredibly unique, with odd but better-than-average art and a story as big as a novel. The comics may seem to go slow sometimes, but that's the trade-off for examining the characters as closely as we do, making them real individuals (the real magic of the series) instead of simply familiar stereotypes.
We also aim to bring a classical element back to comics, and create a work that could stand on par with Don Quixote, The Decameron, Tom Jones; great literature, ever eternal, yet each flawed in their own special way, like great shining gems; great works of humanity that make the intangible tangible by using language and imagery to express thoughts and story precisely, bucking the trend of comics to simply be pop, hip, and intellectual.
This is what your donation to Elf Life goes to support. I apologize for this lengthy harangue, but the future of this series (as always) is on the line.
But you know, not everyone is business savvy.
Not everyone knows how to schmooze.
What Carson Fire does know how to do is make damn good comics. And if nothing else, this announcement of his has drawn my attention directly to the fact that he does need help. This is not a case that can be solved by Carson swallowing his pride and pulling himself up by his bootstraps. He's been trying to do that for years.
In a perfect world, Carson wouldn't have to try to sell his comic. He sucks at selling his comic. In a perfect world, all Carson would have to do is produce it. And he wouldn't have to take jobs that ruin his health (like data entry or warehouse positions) to afford to do so, either.
Elf Life deserves to be made. Carson Fire deserves the chance to create it. And the series merits the funding it would require to allow Carson to do just that.
What Elf Life really needs is a business manager--much as Gabe and Tycho at Penny Arcade needed Robert, and lucked out when he came on board for free a few years ago. Carson needs someone to take care of his books, to create a PR campaign for his comic, to tell him what he shouldn't say, to nail the site design down as something clean and simple to navigate, and to determine alternate ways for Carson's art and storytelling skills to make money.
But all most of us can do at this point is toss a few coins in the tip jar.
And so I'd like to make my own appeal. Go to Elf Life. Read a few strips. Hell, check out the entire archives; they're still there, and they're still free. And if you agree with me that this thing is great, that there is something there that deserves to be continued, then please...donate.
(I made that banner myself. Ain't it purty? ...yes, we are all wondering why I have an art internship. ;P)
3 comments:
Just by reading your quote of what he said, I don't think that I could bring myself to even consider donating to the guy. I checked out the one strip you linked too, and it looked like yet another webcomic to me. Like he said, the art is odd, and better than average. The "joke" in the one I read didn't make me smile, but I suppose I could get interested if I continued to read.
But all of that doesn't matter now. The guy behind it, a 40 year old man, is acting like a complete child about his financial situation.
You know, he messed up by making his comic free. That's his main mistake, far as I can see it. If you make something for free, then people are going to see it as free, and when the time comes where you want to start charging, a lot of people are going to be turned off.
He's threatening to stop drawing his pictures if people don't pay his bills for him. This isn't how capitalism works - where you make something that someone wants and then sell it to them. And this isn't apparently the first time he's done this.
Instead of offering a product to consumers, he's blasting his loyal fans and telling them to give him more money. If this 40 year old cartoonist wants to make his career out of webcomics, then he really ought to treat his core fanbase better than this. At the end of the day, they're all he has.
He complains he's getting kicked in the ribs by a few with big soap boxes that don't know him or his family. Well, in my opinion he told me just enough about himself in that post for me to make my opinion, and if it seems like rib-kicking to him, then so be it.
He's 40 years old. He's got a bad back. He can't get a job anywhere. He started a free webcomic, and that's all he's got. SO YOU MUST PAY HIM FOR IT SO HE CAN PAY THE BILLS.
Bullshit. The husband of my wife's best friend wanted to go into paper-back comics, made his own, sold them, showed them around. Now he works for Marvel - he's the BOSS of some long-time Marvel writers/artists, and he's writing the screenplay that's already been funded for the movie based on one of his own comics that he created. He moved into a house bigger than shit, and his wife was able to not only quit work, but go ahead and enroll in school again.
That is how it should be done. I doubt he ever begged for money for the books he produced. He had a passion for it, he put it where people could get it, he sold it, and now he's where he always wanted to be. And he's not 40. He's my age.
What Carson Fire isn't getting is that what he's putting off to people is that he isn't in it for the comic (though he seems to think his comic is a must-have) - he's in it to pay his bills, and the bills aren't being paid well enough, so he MUST have YOUR money right now.
I've read his comic before, from links other people have sent me, and I guess I never looked deep enough to truly care about it, but I can't see his current methods paying off in the long run. You can't expect other people to just give you money for something that other people are getting for free - not unless you charge everybody.
Maybe he's afraid that if he puts up a price, hardly anyone's going to pay it. Maybe that's how it would turn out. There's no way in hell that I would pay for a webcomic no matter how great it was, but then, I'm not an afficiando either.
Seems to me that he needs to get himself a good loan, and start doing the real comics for awhile, and once they get out in good circulation, making a monthly fee for his site so that his fans can come read his other shit, or listen to more of his whining.
But I don't care to solve his troubles for him. What it doesn't look like Carson Fire is getting is that his webcomic, no matter of others' opinions of it might be, is a webcomic, and just one of many, many more. If he fades away, then so be it. No one owes him anything. You can't give a gift and then demand money a few years later when it would work out for you. If his comic can't generate enough cash to pay the bills through book-format and/or subscriptions to his site, then he either needs to come up with another "incredibly unique {comic}, with odd but better-than-average art and a story as big as a novel" that will actually satisfy his financial needs.
Doesn't matter how much you or a few others love what you do - if you aren't making money with it, then it isn't going to be your "money maker". Get another job and keep the comic on the side, or fix what's wrong so that it can generate the cash.
But no, I don't think I want to read his comic let alone consider donating, even though I respect it because you like it. It isn't the comic that turned me off, it's the self-serving creator of it.
That's exactly how I've felt over the years. Exactly.
I guess I've just hit the point where I realize that he doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't realize how he's hurting himself. And I'd like to help him somehow. It's easy to just write him off, but I don't want to do that...
...because what he is creating is brilliant. Honestly, I think more webcartoonists should focus on their art and stop with all the "rants"/"newsposts"/soapboxing. So I ignore anything that isn't the comic, in general, unless of course that something is plastered all over the top of the page.
I guess what I'm getting at is, I want him to be able to do his comic. He's not figuring out the right way to get it done. Somebody needs to help him.
I'm going to do some free advertising for him for awhile. I don't know if it'll have any effect at all, but I'd like to think that at least I'm helping in some way.
Art Internship?? Neat!
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