Month: September 2014

This is the story of how we got a web comic artist for the Devil Music comic, by Carly Orosz to accompany her novel by the same title.

tl;dr: Carly selected Candace Ellis, whom we found on deviantART, and the comic is still going!

As Carly was finishing up the final draft of Devil Music and starting to look for a professional editor, we started brainstorming what to do with it. The characters have some good chemistry to them which lends itself towards some comedy, and Carly had at one point considered trying to do the entirety of Devil Music as a graphic novel. So we settled onto the idea of a web comic to bridge the narrative gap between the end of the Devil Music book and the beginning of its sequel.

We looked to try out a few potential candidates in order to find a good match for Carly. To this end, we decided to hire a few different artist candidates to each work with Carly to create a double character portrait of Cain Pseudomantis, the main character in Devil Music, in both his “human” form and his “demon” form. Carly posted to both the deviantART job offers forum and The Web Comic List dogpile, directly on Carly’s blog on Blogger as well as reaching out directly to Woody Hearn of GU Comics (Carly liked his art style).

I wrote a novel!

It’s about a half-demon named Cain Pseudomantis who becomes a hair-metal rocker in 1980’s Los Angeles along with his three super-powered human friends. It’s pulse-pounding, hair-raising, a whole slew of similar book reviewer’s favorite catchphrases, and…you can’t read it yet. I’m still searching for a publisher.

I’m also hoping to create a supplemental web comic to chronicle the further antics and drama of the band. I’m in the process of writing up the first batch of comic strip material.

Of course, web comics aren’t just text; I’ll need to throw a few pictures in there too. They won’t be my pictures. I can’t draw. That is why I’m looking to hire a part-time web comic artist on contract for the first year. I would like to have one (1) web comic created and posted per week.

Application Submission Process

To apply, please send an email to me at carlyorosz@gmail.com with:

• “Web Comic Artist Application – Your Name” as the subject
• A short (2-3 sentences is fine) introduction to you and your work
• A link to or standard images (JPEG, PNG, GIF) of your portfolio
• A description of your past experience with producing web comic art, if any (i.e. resume. You can attach an actual resume if you want, but if you don’t have one lying around, something less formal is fine)

If I like what I see, then I will commission you to do some test work. If that also goes well then we can work out the contract for the first year (52 pieces). The test work will be:

• a 1200px by 1800px 2-character image, one character in front of the other, fully colored, no background
• a test comic strip

I am looking for a cell-shaded, moderately realistic style. Think along the lines of GU Comics, Ctrl+Alt+Del, or Questionable Content.

I’ll update this post when my search is complete.

In addition to Woody Hearn, Carly worked with Hannah Nott, Ben Kariuki, and Candace Ellis. Each produced a double portrait of Cain with their own, unique touch. It was fun to look at all the possibilities.

Ultimately, after significant consideration, Carly felt that Candace’s communication style and personality meshed best with hers, and Carly felt Candace’s art style was closest to what Carly had in mind for the Devil Music web comic. And that is why we have Candace Ellis to thank for a new Devil Music comic every Thursday, with the WiP going up on the Devil Music Series tumblr every Tuesday.

In order to increase awareness and sales (“conversions” of site traffic to customers) of the book “Devil Music” by Carly Orosz, the promotional landing page is now displayed to new visitors instead of the homepage.

Previously, the Buy The Book promotional landing page was only accessible by scanning the QR-code on the back of the book, by clicking on one of our internet advertisements (e.g. on Facebook, or The House of Hair), or by someone sharing it.

This limited display of the landing page is accomplished by redirecting the user from the homepage to the landing page if a “past visitor” cookie has not been set.

if ($_COOKIE['pastvisitor'] == '') {
  setcookie('pastvisitor', 'true', time() + (1 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60)); // expires in 1 year
  // Redirect the user to the landing page only once per year.
  header( 'Location: '.'http://www.devil-music.com/buy-the-book/', true, 307 );
  die();
}