This single video sums up some much of the web’s “humorous” gaming content, not excluding some of my own creations as well. Pip pip!

The brilliant minds behind Hello with Cheese [1] have put their brains on the table for a brand new zombie-inspired deck of playing cards called Póstumo [2].

If you’re not familiar with Hello with Cheese or the collaborative team behind it of Dern and O, then shame on you. But you still might be familiar with some of their previous successful Kickstarter projects like: Scury Dogs: Pirates and Privateers [3], The Monster Alphabet Board Book [4] or 3v3: The Commissioned Comic Card Game [5].

Póstumo is their latest successful Kickstarter project. I say successful, because as of the time writing this post the project is already 1,256% funded and it’s only 4 days in with 26 left to go.

So if the project is already 1,256% funded, why am I mentioning it here? Twofold. One, you gotta support your friends. And two, its simply a really cool friggin’ thing. I already pledged for my own deck and I’m contemplating upping my pledge to get some of the neat higher level stuff.

Nonetheless, I really think this is a project worth supporting. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be doing it myself.

After the huge success of fellow webcomic Hello with Cheese‘s most recent Kickstarter project [1] and the ongoing success of the Double Fine Adventure [2], I decided to share one of another project from a fellow webcomic friend of mine.

Rob Balder, the author of Erfworld [3], recently launched a brand new Kickstarter project called Erfworld Year of the Dwagon [4]. The project itself is two fold. The first part is to fund the the conversion of the first Erfworld book, illustrated by Jamie Noguchi [5], into motion animations using the original artwork along with the addition of voices and music. This part has already been funded. The second part is to create what I feel will be one of if not the most complex webcomic website that has ever existed [6]. This part has yet to be funded.

My love of animation is half of what compels me towards this project. The other part is just to see the new Erfworld site become a reality. It’s definitely going to be a massive undertaking and the web developer in me definitely wants to see it come to fruition. So if you’ve got some funds to spare, I highly recommend supporting this project.

If you wouldn’t read it, why the hell should I?

This is really common sense. If someone else had created a webcomic that looked and read like yours, would you still read it? If not, they why would you think someone else would. There’s a lot of competition out there and you are trying to convince someone else to give up some of their own valuable time to read your webcomic. If your comic is crap, don’t expect much in return.

Your friends and family don’t count!

If you want to get an honest opinion on whether or not your webcomic is good you need to expand beyond the opinions of your friends and family. Having your friends and family read your webcomic is fine, but they’re going to try to spare your feelings. They think that’s what you want to hear, when what you really need is an honest opinion.

Toughen the fuck up!

Not everyone is going to like your webcomic. In fact, the larger your audience becomes the more likely you are to come across people who vehemently despise your webcomic. If you can’t take criticism or your feelings get hurt easily, then just quit. I am serious. The internet is basically an anonymous, unfiltered, sounding board. There’s a good chance you might see or read something about your work that you don’t like. Get over it or get out!

Facebook is not the final step.

Posting a link to your webcomic for your friends and family on Facebook or Twitter won’t really help unless you’ve got friends like Jeph Jacques or Zach Weiner (famous webcomic people). Once again, these are your friends and family. Mentioning it on these sites doesn’t really expand your audience it just reminds them that you’re still putting stuff on the internet.

Get yourself some knee pads.

Unless you already have credentials from previous works or are friends with famous people (ie. Jeph Jacques or Zach Weiner) you, are going to have to whore yourself out. Regardless of your opinion, you are now at the bottom of a very large barrel of webcomics. If you want to move up you are going to have to work for it. That means self promotion, advertising, guest strips, etc… It’s how things work. Get used to it.

Size does matter!

At the end of the day, the size of your audience does matter. Having a strong core fanbase is good, but if your audience only totals a couple dozen it is not great. Until your readership base regular totals in the thousands, you are still just getting started.

Patience, my young Padawan…

It takes time. Success doesn’t come overnight. To be honest, it might never come. But, regardless if it does come, it’s going to be after a lot of time and hard work. So be patient… And I’m not talking about the kind of patiences that can be measured in weeks or months, but the kind that you measure in years.

Hopefully, I haven’t scared you guys away. The internet is vast and there’s more than enough potential readers for everyone. So best of luck on your webcomicking ventures, just try to keep a realistic perspective on your end goals.

I don’t know if it has been done before. In my own personally experience I’ve never seen it. Nonetheless, when I saw that Nick Borkowicz did a live action trailer for his webcomic Oh, Perilous World I definitely felt it was worth mentioning. It’s these kinds of interesting, nontraditional approaches to the the ever changing expectations that the world wide web demands from us that make me proud to be part of the webcomic community. Good job, Nick.