The Xcentrikz - Interactive Comic

Interview with Otter about that sharply clever civil-rights comic...

June 28, 2009

In case you haven't checked it out already (please do!) A Girl and Her Fed is about an unnamed Girl, and her Federal Agent partner who are working on a political conspiracy. Other hilarities ensue such as appearances by undead pixies, Benjamin Franklin, and a rather (nay, extremely) mad koala bear. The comic is humourous, clever, and can be very edu-tational. Have a look at their FAQ page to get started and HAVE FUN! Content not recommended for younger audiences due to strong language and mature situations. It's updated every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

The Xcentrikz Team: Thanks again Otter, for this cool chat about A Girl and Her Fed. I’m looking forward to hearing all your answers!

Thanks again for offering this forum for creators and collaborators.

THE XCENTRIKZ: You're welcome, it's we aspire to giving a variety of cartoonists a voice to be heard... Well - first question. Do you have previous cartooning or writing experience? Or did you get started in comics with A Girl and Her Fed?

I'm an editor and have the usual file full of short stories and unfinished novels, but this is my first experience with comics.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Cool! So how did you originally start developing A Girl and Her Fed?

Funny story. A client in Canada sent me a package, which was opened at the border by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This was right around the time when George W. Bush started openly restricting civil liberties, particularly in the gray areas surrounding information technologies. I'm an avid news reader and was really angry about these changes, but the package casually resealed with bright yellow government tape made it personal. One afternoon, I was doing some gardening and my mind kept wandering back to what the Founding Fathers would have thought about the state of the country if they were alive today. Then I wondered what might happen if they weren't alive. I went inside and jotted down some ideas, and the story took on a life of its own after that.

THE XCENTRIKZ: You have a really interesting inspiration behind the comic. And this passion shows through in your work! What do you enjoy most about cartooning?

The learning process. Storytelling is very different in this medium and I didn't understand that when I outlined the original plot. In cartooning, brevity is the soul of wit but I'm the type of writer who piles on the words (nudge nudge length of this interview nudge nudge). It's taken practice to trim down the language so it carries the details of the plot and the purpose of character interactions but isn't overwhelming. Same with the art - I didn't know how to draw when I started but have learned quite a lot in three years, and hope to continue to improve. The comic began with terrible art, has gradually evolved into acceptable art, and one day the art might actually complement the text instead of just providing static illustrations to accompany it. This is one of my main goals.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What type of sources in politics usually instigates your ideas? Do things your friends and family tell you inspire you?

As I said, I'm a news junky but with the exception of Obama's speeches -- he is among the best of our presidents when it comes to crafting a good speech -- there's very little inspiration to be taken from day-to-day politics. I think as a society we Americans get swept up in the little things and lose the big picture. Our nation was founded on ideals that were intended to be permanent and transcend the impact of events, no matter how significant or influential these events were at the time they occurred. I hate watching how politically active people in this country jump on each new topic as if it were the most important thing to happen since we left the ocean. We get burned out on politics when each news cycle throws yet another crisis at us, and the actual coverage of politics just pours gas on this fire...? Holy Batman, Batman. We should have all sat back and taken stock of our lives when CNN needed a spinoff network to give full coverage to celebrity scandals and the disease du jour.

As for friends and family? D**k jokes. They are an excellent inspiration for d**k jokes.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Ha ha... Good thoughts on media and politics. Is there something challenging about creating the comic? How do you overcome it?

The better I get better at drawing, the angrier I get when one panel doesn't match what's in my head. It's taking more time to do the line art and colors because I get disappointed and try again, then get disappointed in that and try again... Really, though, I'm not sure this is the sort of thing you want to overcome, maybe just find a way to live with even though you stay angry and unsatisfied.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What was it like starting out with A Girl and Her Fed? Did you work to promote it or did it spread more word-of-mouth? How did your fan base build up to where it is now?

I don't like to embarrass myself so when the art was bad, I kept to top lists and such. But I went to college with Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content, and he gave me a friendly link in his news post when my strip was about a hundred comics into the story. Since then I've done a few guest comics for him, have received support from other notable webcomic creators such as Ursula Vernon of Digger and Jennie Breeden of The Devil's Panties, and have done some target marketing using Project Wonderful. I've found that Project Wonderful can be extremely successful if you do short bursts of big-banner advertising in one or two high-traffic sites with content similar to your own. But these strategies are only good for generating traffic, not readers. A readership is made up of returning visitors who enjoy the content you provide. I'm pretty sure word-of-mouth is the best way to increase readership, as a strong recommendation from one friend to another is worth its weight in gold.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Too true... What do you think about your dedicated readers?

Awesome, supportive, and insanely friendly. I'm not saying I'd bear their children for them, but I'd definitely babysit the kids for a few hours if they wanted to run out for dinner and a movie.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Ha ha okay. So how do you feel about the way A Girl and Her Fed has evolved since you got started? Anything you’d like to improve upon?

Everything has evolved. The art, the writing, the story itself... the comic was originally supposed to take 350 strips to complete, but about 50 strips in I found I really enjoyed making comics and wanted to keep going. There's an obvious shift from a story-driven format to a character-driven format around that time, as I started adding elements of the characters' personalities and background. Oh, and it was never supposed to be a love story - that alone changed everything.

As for improvements, I'm going back and redoing the first 300 strips to clean up certain plot points, the dialogue, and the art. This is absolutely necessary since the first few chapters weren't designed to support an expanded version of the story. And personally? I hate the original art.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Awesome, it'll be interesting to see more of your revisions. Congrats by the way on your successes in evolving your illustrations! Okay - where did the ideas for the cast come from? (I’m especially curious about Speedy, ha ha!)

Hoo boy, Speedy... he's roughly based on a family member, but it's my boyfriend Brown who has given Speedy his voice. Brown trades in d**k jokes like a Samurai trades in violence - brutal to watch but you can't help but appreciate it as an art form with its own unique beauty. Speedy is also the only one of the four main characters who hasn't evolved since the comic began. Speedy isn't a little human being; he's what a koala would be if someone waved a magic wand and made him superintelligent. There are so so so many webcomics that have the "cute fluffy, and evil" animal character that I wanted to subvert it by using an animal that was neither moral nor amoral but its basic ornery nature would let us perceive him as a total S.O.B. I did some research and a male Queensland koala fit the bill. Male koalas are randy, territorial, and can be aggressive if provoked. However, Speedy does differ from other koalas as they are solitary animals and Speedy wants to be part of a family.

As for the others... since the story starts with the Girl's mail being opened by the government, I get the typical Mary-Sue accusations. I used to try and explain that all fiction comes from somewhere but I don't bother with the long speech anymore. Her character is actually modeled after several different people (although I did set someone on fire so that part's all me. Sorry, Eric!)." Mike, the big gay frat boy slash zen Buddhist Aikido master, walked on stage from out of nowhere. The ghosts were once famous people so I read their autobiographies and try to not misrepresent who they were ... Amelia Earhard is tricky as she wrote close to the vest, and I think if she were alive in today's era of aggressive no-holds-barred self-expression that she'd have taken her writing a very different way, so as a character she's more playful than she comes across in her autobiographies.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Glad to hear you did your research, it paid of beautifully ha ha. Do you have a favorite character to write or draw for?

The Fed, hands down. He's had his life ruined and his psyche turned inside out, but he rebuilds himself and comes out stronger each time he has a setback. You cannot break this guy, you can't get him to go against his moral code, and he never loses his sense of humor. This is a very good thing to have in a man who doesn't even need to put a finger on the button to reduce the world to dust.

He's also the hardest character to draw. I had a wake-up call at a convention a while back when I saw Lou Ferrigno and realized I was drawing the Fed waaaaaay too small. Really big men are all lines and angles, and it's hard to hide a mistake in anatomy on something that large. The ghosts and Speedy are the easiest since they are small.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Doing comics for a hobby or a living can be really fun. Although since many web-comics are published for free, it can be hard for some authors to maintain a web-comic with other responsibilities, like a day-job. Any opinions on your cartooning life?

Ask any freelancer and we'll tell you that time is money. It's been hard for me to sink my time and resources in the comic and not monetize it. The comic has very good traffic but I don't want to turn a hobby I enjoy into a commercial. I keep all ads and tip jars off of the site and try to keep the product shilling to a minimum - I wouldn't even offer products but I'm addicted to seeing my designs on actual physical stuff. That's so freaking cool to me.

What I regret is that this forces me to shift gears between paid work and the comic, and some details get lost in the shuffle. For example, when I do offer a product like a t-shirt, I collect the money for the pre-order and then get so busy with paid work that I forget to send the design to the manufacturer. I also have a dozen short stories that I want to make, such as how Ben and the Girl first met, but there's never enough time to draw them. It's sad, but my budget requires more cold hard cash than I could realistically make from the comic and most of what I have to do takes priority over what I want to do. Such is life.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What’s one of the weirdest things that’s ever happened to you as a cartoonist?

I'm... okay, I'm a geek, but I'm the type of geek who gets good haircuts and wears printed tees only on weekends. To paraphrase Eddie Izzard, I'm an executive geek. We have all met the other side of that coin, the weirdo geek. I got cornered at a convention by a forty-something man who offered to find me a husband through his Internet church, as I was getting old and needed to be married off as quickly as possible. He then told me all about his beloved bride and how he had been married to her for three years, and how he would meet her in person in another two. Until then, they would exchange polite letters and he was looking forward to their first phone call, which was planned for that coming Christmas... and yes, this sounds like your run-of-the-mill weirdo story but he was dressed as a vampire and was telling me this through a mouthful of fake plastic fangs. I still have no idea if he was screwing with me or not.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Wow, good story. Heh. If I may ask - What’s your political viewpoint, and what advances would you like to see global politics take in 1 year? … 5 years?

As I said, we lose sight of the big picture when we get hung up on the small stuff. Chris Rock put it best when he said "No normal, decent person is just one thing." I'm hardcore conservative on some issues and terrifyingly left-wing on others; I generally vote Democrat as I feel we live in a shared society and modern Republicans tend to close doors on people in need, but if today's Republicans were more like the Republicans of thirty years ago it might be the other way around.

Global politics, though... man, wouldn't it be nice if we could all just play nice and get along? I don't see that happening. I see a handful of people on a mission creating factions, and these factions create fractures throughout members of a shared religion, among citizens of nations, and between the nations themselves. I suppose I'd be cynical about our future but it's not as though humanity hasn't been in this exact same place a hundred times before. The only difference is the shiny equipment.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Exactly... Technology and clothes DON'T "make the man" ha ha. How do you feel about the future of the web-comic industry?

Confused? Persons involved in webcomics argue two different points: on the one hand, they say that webcomics provide an infinite canvas with almost limitless opportunities for art, storytelling, and website design; on the other, they say that good webcomics must contain specific elements or be housed on a website that has certain features. Some of these discussions are valuable when trying to optimize a webcomic for profit, true, but mainly they are just one person's opinion of what he wants to experience when he visits a webcomic. One reviewer in particular spends thousands of words on the wondrous unlimited potential of webcomics and thousands more castigating any comic, creator, or website that doesn't fit into the box he has built to hold his personal definition of a "good" webcomic.

I don't think we should be packing webcomics into boxes just yet. I tried to write an article last year about the sex of webcomic creators and why male creators were much more likely than female creators to have high-traffic sites than female creators. It failed - completely - because there was no way to categorize what made certain webcomics popular beyond grouping them into genres and subgenres like "gaming" or "stick art." What do you do with hipster musicians? Mad scientists reclaiming their birthrights? Existential dinosaurs? We all recognize that there's a general webcomic industry but industry and culture are completely different animals. I think we keep confusing our desire to see which webcomic formats are best monetized with our desire to understand what these projects truly are -- widely distributed graphic art created without external censorship -- and why certain elements of these projects create an emotional connection with our readers.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Well put, thank you so much. Do you have tips to share with other comic creators?

Recognize that what you think is a good webcomic and what other people think is a good webcomic don't have to be the same thing. It's a big Internet and someone else's opinions don't have to march in lockstep with your own. Experiment, have faith in yourself, and if you don't like what you're doing then take it in a different direction or begin something new.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Super advice! So the story is scheduled to wrap up by 2011, right? Any cool hints you can share with us meanwhile?

Everybody seems to think the story is about the Girl's civil rights and don't notice the four hundred semi-omniscient cyborgs waiting in the wings. Those dudes are American citizens and they have inalienable rights too. Oh, and if there's a third part to the story, it will be set twenty years in the future and Speedy's grandkids will have overrun Australia.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Cool! Thanks again for the chat, Otter! Keep it up with A Girl and Her Fed, and I hope your fans really like this interview.

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