A Quick Guide to Podcasting

by | Mar 11, 2015 | blog, comics, news, podcasting, social media

Podcasting seems to have made a resurgence in the mainstream, especially in social marketing circles, in recent months. As both a podcast producer and listener, it’s natural that I’d be happy about this! I’ve been podcasting since 2006 and the amount of fun, community, and opportunities that you build for yourself when you produce a podcast makes it difficult for me to ever imagine myself not podcasting. So I thought I’d share my learnings and experience with podcasting as well as my joy of cartooning in an ebook that I’m offering for free. Entitled, A Quick Guide to Podcasting, it’s part comic book and part survival guide. I hope my 10-page book will help you get set up on your first podcasting adventure. Or if you’re already podcasting, there may be some new tips that will be helpful to you. My ebook stars Spud, the main character in my web comic at superspud.com. I cover microphones, rss feeds, domain names, using smart phones as a short cut, how to sound like you’re not reading when you really are, choosing the best room in your house to record in, audio filtering, how to know if podcasting is right for you, where to find royalty-free music, community building, engaging listeners, and much more. Please note that I only cover audio since I’ve only dabbled a little bit in video over the years. Perhaps a topic for a future ebook? Watch this space! My ebook, A Quick Guide to Podcasting, is available in PDF format and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International...

My comic strip campaign for stuttering awareness

by | Oct 22, 2014 | blog, comics, content strategy, illustration

International Stuttering Awareness Day takes place every year on October 22. I like to plan an awareness campaign each time. In the past I’ve created audio podcasts, special Google+ Hangouts throughout the day, blog posts, and tweeting stuttering fun facts mixed in with a few silly, made up ones for engagement. This year, I decided on creating a series of comic strips. I chose a few common stuttering misconceptions and added a one-panel comic strip to them. I wanted to use humour (my speciality) to politely inform and educate. The strip above is my favourite of the bunch. I posted the rest of my comics below. Since my goal is to spread awareness, I designed the graphics to be viewable and shareable on social media networks. And since there’s a lot of noise on social networks these days, I opted for a minimal and straight-to-the-point design. I also created one for the kids! Of course, they aren’t really on social media but this would be more of an offline campaign or B2B (speech language pathologists, schools, etc.) of sorts. The cartoon fox is Franky Banky who is the protagonist in my illustrative self-help book for my fellow people who stutter. So yes, my other goal is to spread brand awareness (hence the brought-to-you copy at the bottom). The International Stuttering Association hosts an online conference every year in October leading up to International Stuttering Awareness Day. Head on over to isad.isastutter.org if you’d like to learn more about stuttering and what it’s like to live with stuttering. You can also check out my podcast, Stuttering is Cool...

Lessons from Batkid

by | Nov 15, 2013 | blog, comics

One simple wish from a 5 year old boy generated so much goodness. Indeed no hero too small. Miles Scott, 5 years old and in remission of leukemia had a wish: to be Batman. So the Make A Wish Foundation turned San Francisco into Gotham City for a day on November 15. Dressed up at Batman, he accompanied an older Batman around Gotham in the Batmobile to stop the Riddler and The Penguin from their dastardly deeds. Including rescuing a damsel in distress. Make A Wish made things happen. Thousands turned up to watch the events and cheer Batkid on as he saved the day. Tweets with the #SFBatkid hashtag made Tweetdeck one big blur of tweets. The photos, Vine videos and YouTube videos tugged at the heart strings, made me tear up and brought a lot of joy around the Internet and the world. I learned a few lessons: 1. Make A Wish made use of social media to send out a call for volunteers. The response was tremendous. So while social media played a big, big role in making this happen, the beautiful lesson here is among all the constant negativity in the world, there are indeed good people on our Earth. Even the media — notorious for cashing in on their concentration on negatively spun stories and such — got in on the act. 2. Batkid inspired illustrations on Instagram. And they were quite detailed and DC style! 3. The importance and impact of cartoon characters. Little kids love them so much. This past Hallowe’en saw many, many, many Iron Mans, Captain Americas, Batmans, Spider-Man’s, Supermans,...

Trying out watercolors

by | Oct 12, 2011 | blog, comics, creativity, illustration

My 4th Sketchbook Video has me flipping through my watercolour Moleskine sketchbook from sometime in 2008 or 2009 (I really should add dates in my sketchbooks). In spite of having grown up frustrated with the medium, I was inspired by the beautiful watercolour work by Calvin & Hobbes creator, Bill Watterson. I thought perhaps I should give watercolours another try. Plus, it gave me an excuse to buy the watercolour Moleskine. Also featured in this video is a wordless comic strip mystery. Can you figure out what is happening in the...

Drawing using no erasers

by | Oct 11, 2011 | blog, comics, creativity, illustration

My latest sketchbook video features the sketchbooks I used to draw my Snert Oh No web comic in 2010. I’d draw a one-panel comic during the 1.5 hour wait for my Toastmasters meeting every Wednesday after work. Then I used my iPhone for photographing, post-processing and posting (until a suitable app came along) it on snertohno.com (I wanted to use my laptop as little as possible). You can read all about it on my blog from way back when. I enjoyed the challenge of drawing in ink without means to erase any mistakes. It sharpens your drawing skills. You’ll see evidence of that in the video – I call them...