Industry news for the professional cartoonist
The Center for the Digital Future (part of the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism) has released a study about the impact of the internet on Americans. They study touches on issues of privacy, social media, PC vs tablet computing among other issues. One prediction made is that most US newspapers will be gone…
Coming Soon has posted what looks like a mobile phone pic of a Despicable Me 2 poster. It’s not very revealing but confirms a 2013 release of the sequel.
Fascinating story over in the Telegraph about how much information we consume and produce. The growth in the internet, 24-hour television and mobile phones means that we now receive five times as much information every day as we did in 1986. But that pales into insignificance compared with the growth in the amount of information…
Universal Uclick has launched a new corporate website. From their press release: Universal Uclick, the world’s largest independent syndication company, announces the launch of UniversalUclick.com, a website designed to showcase the company’s diverse selection of comics, editorial cartoons, text features, games and puzzles available in print, online and on mobile phones worldwide. The new site…
The New York Times reports that a new Forrester survey reveals that 80% of Internet users in the US and Canada are not willing to pay for access to newspaper and magazine websites. According to a new Forrester survey, almost 80% of Internet users in the US and Canada would not pay for access to…
The mobile space is starting to get attention as syndicates and creators begin looking for new ways to monetize and expand their market. VentureDNA is launching ToonsWare on the Apple iTunes App Store partnering with Tribune Media Services to provide editorial cartoons. Stewart Dixon, CEO of VentureDNA, hopes to do more than just deliver todayâ??s…
Ave!Comics today announced their collaboration with the Swiss publisher, Paquet to publish the digital version of their stunning comic book, First Moon on the 40th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon. First Moon, penned by American author Joe Wight, tells the story leading up to the moon landing on July 20, 1969…
Paul Gilligan has announced that his feature Pooch Cafe is in works with RingTales to animate Pooch Cafe strips for distribution through the web, mobile phones. RingTales was co-founded by Michael Fry (Over the Hedge writer) with the objective of animating print comics. In my interview with Michael a year ago, he had mentioned that…
There’s been some publicity about Amazon’s new Kindle product for electronic material (books, blogs, newspapers). We’ve had discussions on this blog about how newspapers may evolve and how mobile technology might play into that (see discussion in comments of this story). I look at this and wonder if products like this might be what comics…
How cool is this? Over on Tom Tomorrow’s blog he writes that he created a series of cartoons that can be projected onto sides of buildings in San Francisco and Seattle as part of promotional efforts for a new mobile service. Passers by can text their punch-line into the empty word balloon, completing the cartoon….
Michael Fry Last May, I told you that Michael Fry (the writer behind Over the Hedge), had started a company called RingTales along with Jim Cox (the executive co-producer for the Over the Hedge movie). Their objective was to create small animated shorts from existing print cartoons that can be distributed via mobile phones, blogs/web…
The topic for this In Focus article has been rolling around in my mind for a few months now. Since October, when I started this blog, I�ve read several reports (usually around end of financial quarters) that bemoan the dropping circulations and overall readership of the newspaper. How was this trend affecting the big six syndicates who sell editorial cartoons and comic strips?� Because their business is so closely dependent on the health of the newspaper industry � what were syndicates doing to grow their business in this climate and ultimately, how would these trends affect the current or future syndicated cartoonist?
Tomorrow King Features Syndicate is scheduled to launch an all-new Comics Kingdom. Our new website will boast a unique visual identity and an optimized user experience designed with you in mind. From front-end wireframes to a streamlined user interface, our focus has been creating an attractive and user-friendly platform. Our commitment to a clean and…
Joy of Tech takes a shot at Facebook, which has launched a new way of tracking your activity in order to show you more ads, or, as they explain it, better ads. Which brings to mind the famous Monty Python sketch in which the woman protests, “But I don’t want any Spam!” Here’s an article…
What the hell were you thinking? Oh, wait. I wasn’t going to ask that. It’s never helpful and it assumes a fact not in evidence. It’s also redundant, considering that the people who — as Adam Zyglis puts it — dumped their college savings, vacation money and retirement nest egg down the crypto rat hole…