A number of you have asked me if I got comp’d any more meals at the steak house. Turns out, the answer is yes — though a doodle on a napkin isn’t a guarantee, nor is producing them in quantity.
Things have gotten far more advanced, and by some accounts are spiraling beyond anything I had ever conceived.
Where we last left things, the manager, as a joke, gave me a pile of napkins to take home and draw on. The theory was that if napkins provided my inspiration, he’d toss several hundred at me and see what happened.
Problem is, spare time. Or, more accurately, lack there of. The napkins sat here for a while, and I found myself visiting the steak house again and again. …and again, and again, and again.
While I’m there, there’s really nothing else to do -but- draw comics on napkins, much to the dismay of my friends that wish I’d be more social and engage in conversation.
So, I decided to try something different, based on an off handed comment by two of my art buddies.
The first one said, “you really gotta put your name on these things, someone’s gonna come in and want to get these professionally printed on napkins.” The second one said, “you’ve got a wider audience than you believe, you need a web site.”
My first gut reaction was that they were chicken scratch level of drawings, and I didn’t want to put my name on that. But that got me to thinking, the printing on napkin idea was an interesting one. Consequently, I took the time, did a paper and pencil mock up, used the right comic illustration ink and tools, produced a master copy, and did a test screening on about 200 napkins.
I presented these to the manager, who got wonderfully excited and started passing them out at the bar. Sure enough, the initial “marketing” was an overwhelming success, and I was presented with another pile of napkins.
Since I had high resolution scans of everything, it seemed only fitting to follow up with the next comment. I mean, I already had a website, but in this case it needed to be a targeted one.
I’m happy to announce NapkinComics.com has gone live. I’ve put a small sampling of the high-quality printed ones up there for viewing. I’ve also posted some other strips to make fun of myself and the process. As I transfer more of the illustrations into digital form for reproduction, I’ll be posting them on the site. You no longer have to visit the steak house to enjoy the humor, but you do if you want to see over a hundred originals that are littering the walls behind glass.
On my second to last visit, I got approached by the regional marketing director.
On this last visit, I was told by the manager that a pair of gentlemen had come in, examined all the artwork for well over half an hour, and wanted to know how to get in touch. The manager gave them the website information. He gave me an entire box of napkins for the next round.
I’m still not sure where all this will go. I’ve done enough to establish a repeatable workflow that produces high-quality quantity printings out and at a faster pace. If I can figure out a way to move the printing part out of house, I’ll be set. I’d rather illustrate than replicate.
So, here’s the official announce to my friends: NapkinComics.com is live — disposable humor you can wipe your mouth on.