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Alfred Stewart (@isshoni.webcomic, @NDGOink) Alfred joins us on the Black Superheroes Matter Podcast. Alfred is a Georgia native who incorporates Atlanta into the setting in his web toon titled Issho Ni. Being a “one man studio”, Alfred does his own character creations, scripting, directing, and illustrations also shown in his we comic titled COUNTER AGENTS. With over 30 years of experience in graphic design and other mediums, he’s well versed in traditional and digital arts focusing on the sequential arts and animation.
Notable Time Stamps:
Creating and Distributing during a Pandemic:
5:57-6:36 ”In a direct sense it did make me think about what I was going to do with my story. For my first season when the pandemic started, everybody was staying home, so I said maybe I’ll just keep going every week with a new episode.”
45:05-45:41 “It shook everything up because it changed the way distribution works because once one form of distribution becomes dangerous, then it’s how do we shift the way we distribute product and still try to make the same amount of money off of it and make it a valid reason that we can charge the same amount?”
47:25-47:47 “You have to justify charging this inflated price on something that usually if we still had both major forms of distribution, you wouldn’t have to justify it. You would automatically take off the shipping costs or something like that if I decided to choose digital because you had enough customers choosing tangible.”
49:37-50:09 “New industries are taking off during this situation. That’s one of the funny things, if the pandemic does go away, what’s going to happen to those new industries? Because now they’re kind of irrelevant. Once things get back to normal then they’re not really as needed anymore. They’re not going to be these billion dollar businesses that they were during the pandemic because it was a pandemic, you know?”
56:43-57:06 “People always will pay more for a more personalized experience and that’s the hard part. Going digital or virtual, how do you make that more personal? I think that’s the great thing about the time is more companies are focused on making the digital experience more personal because of the situation that we’re in”
Challenges of creating comics:
15:00-15:14 “Many times the art, for anybody that’s looking for a comic of any type basically, the art is what pulls you in first because that’s the first thing you see. You can’t just see the plot, you know what I mean?”
15:30-15:51 “There’s a lot of really excellent writers out there and unfortunately a lot of them don’t have access to great artists and vice versa. There’s a lot of great writers out there that don’t have access to a lot of great writers or they don’t mesh in a way”
17:31-17:33 “That’s one of the biggest things, quality.”
59:59-1:00:13 “Being able to charge this much money for a necessity makes no sense that internet costs more than water”
Augmented Reality:
37:32-38:02 “At this point where we are now, I feel like there shouldn’t be hardly any comic books on any shelf that don’t have some type of AR element on the cover at least. I should be able to walk in a store with my cellphone up and see all types of stuff jumping off pages from a distance.”
38:34-38:43 “If your comic is on the web and you have tangible comics, merging those two things together with AR I think would be awesome.
38:46-39:25 “Imagine walking into a comic book store, see a comic book right there, hold your phone in front of it, and you can actually scroll through the pages right there or see a preview comic right there. You don’t even have to touch the book, you just scroll through it right there or even send you the link to purchase the digital version or something like that. The fact that we’re not there yet doesn’t make any sense to me, it’s a little disappointing.”
41:24-41:57 “I think one issue is too many people are still stuck on tangibility and fair enough if you prefer having a tangible copy of something, that’s great, I can understand that. But economically and logically speaking, that’s not good business. You should be open to more than just printing a book.”
Work Ethic:
9:43-9:52 “It’s the passion for it that’s different with kids on whether or not they’re going to focus on one thing or move onto the next”
20:18-20:51 “The weird thing about Counter Agents is, I had an idea of what it was supposed to be about, but I never sat down and wrote it. I would literally draw an entire page first of just images and then come back and just throw in dialogue and that’s how Counter Agents was created up until the end.
24:00-24:25 “I find most of my motivation from seeing other people create and so DeviantArt was definitely a great place for me to start. I joined Battle-Artist, they put you up against another artist on DeviantArt and you draw the same character”
43:09-43:24 “Tangible is way more expensive than digital. It’s way more expensive to produce than digitally. So going digital is even the best practice plan just because it’s cost effective.”
Quotes:
25:45-26:07 “I’m not really concerned about making money off of my comics. There’s different people with different goals in mind for their storytelling and art creation and mine is really just pure ‘I want to tell my story, I want other people to see it”
59:04-59:32 “That’s one of the saddest points ever is there’s a lot of people in this country that don’t have home internet, they have internet on their phone but they don’t have home internet. That just doesn’t make any sense on a foundational level of government “
1:03:29- 1:03:42 “I love One Piece, I have a strong history with One Piece but I’ll let Oda hold that crown, he can wear that crown with pride”
Key Links:
Website: http://ndgoink.com/
Web Comic: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/issho-ni/list?title_no=278326
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isshoni.webcomic/?hl=en⎜https://www.instagram.com/ndgoink/?hl=en
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ndgoink?lang=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NDGOink
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FFDNB73/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_YCWQ0HAXQ2W03RQXBYQX
Hey, this is Steve. I played football at Oregon State University and University of Hawaii. Now I doodle cartoons and blow stuff up on camera. I also make web comics too. Hopefully I can make this whole thing a full time gig so I can make the big bucks to pay for Medical School! (Fingers Crossed) If you would like more thought-provoking content or a quick laugh consider supporting me on Patreon, checking out my webseries Eyelnd Feevr, or checking out links to my other projects below:
Eyelnd Feevr Webseries | PDX Black Rose Podcast | Stuck E Podcast | Black Superheroes Matter | Artist Portfolio | DIY Arts Tutorials & Blog |