How well do you know your family? I mean, really.
Do you truly manga 60 years of japanese comics understand where each family member
is coming from? What they're thinking when you're
talking to them? What are their motivations and
desires, and how they're going to inflict chaos
on that institution that you'd like to call
"Home Sweet Home"?
If all is well with your family and you're happy
with the way things are going, you probably do.
If things are not going so well, and you maybe
sometimes thought that your family was getting
a little bit dysfunctional, then you need to go
back to the drawing board and reconfigure your
thinking on each family member.
In business, they teach you that to motivate a team
to achieve a common goal, you must first present a
vision and get everyone to buy into that vision.
Then you need to continually remind them of that
vision in a way that inspires them to help you
to achieve it.
What's your vision for your family? What does
"Home Sweet Home" mean to you? Have you ever
discussed this with your family? The vision
needs to be a common one that everyone can
agree to.
Clearly, each individual in the family has his
or her own vision of what utopia is to them.
Timmy's thinking Xbox 24x7 and no schoolwork.
Katy's teen crush and Manga books consume her.
Joe's a die-hard sports fan and beer-drinker.
And Mary's happy if she can have some time
to herself after she's managed to put
healthy food on the table after
coming home from a long day's work at her real job.
To achieve a balance and make everyone happy,
each must understand what the other's
end goal is. Together as a family, resolve
to make that end goal possible for each family
member (as long as it is legal and healthy).
Start the dialog today -- and continue
the dialog for a few weeks. You're sure to
notice the difference!
© 2006 by Saro Saravanan.
The Internet revolutionized many media forms, and one of those is the comic strip medium. It was about time, too! The comics printed in the newspapers, many of them over 50 years old, have mostly become stale franchises drawn by a team of hacks after the original artist passed away. The World Wide Web introduced us to a fresh, exciting world of talent. It poured new life into what was almost a dead medium. Adding a comic strip to your website can provide any number of benefits. It can keep you in touch with a younger audience, attract traffic and ad revenue, serve as a platform for airing your own point of view, and in some cases provide extra income through the sale of books, T-shirts, and other branded gear. Here's some tips to get one started:
Set yourself apart from the mob. There are some final points to consider in how you're going to distinguish yourself as a webcomic artist:
And finally, have fun with it! As with any creative effort, the more fun you have producing it, the more fun it will be for your audience to experience. Remember that not all comics have to run forever - Berkeley Breathed only produced Bloom County for nine years, and Bill Watterson only produced Calvin and Hobbes for ten years, but both of these strips are still popular today. If your webcomic starts to run out of steam, just wind it up and announce that it's ended, but leave the archive up for visitors to rediscover in the years to come. Bask in your success!