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Hi, this is Wade
Clarke speaking (typing) to you. I'm the guy who wrote and drew the
204 issues of webcomic Ocular Trauma between 2004 and 2005,
and I'm here to tell you a bit about the comic and this prestigious
archive. By the way, I harbour fantasies about recording DVD
commentaries for imaginary films.
The concept behind Ocular Trauma was for me to force myself to get
out one self-contained humourous comic per day. In this manner, I
figured that before I knew it, I'd have a long-running comic. I'd
tried to launch one before in the form of joke sci-fi serial Plan 10 (11 issues), but unfortunately I don't possess the gene that
allows for easy redrawing of the same characters over and over. It
just takes me too long to get them right.
So, for Ocular Trauma, I had to decide that the artwork would
favour punk passion over technical delivery to allow for speedy
drawing. When each issue is a one off, you escape the requirement of having to be able to accurately redraw characters. I knew that the subject matter would be weird,
gross, alarming, extreme - but always funny. I got the inspiration
for this model from an MS Paint comic called Smellypines by
an online pal of mine at Gamefaqs.com named Cory Hansen.
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A typical chat session from
this era. Here, Jerec and I discuss how we might
become famous webcomic artists.
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I began to publish Ocular Trauma via Livejournal. LJ friends
received the issues daily and encouraged me early on with lots of
positive feedback; thus the ball was rolling. The artwork improved
moderately over time and I eased my schedule back in stages to
accommodate this, going from seven issues a week to five, and
briefly to three.
I tried all the usual mad tactics employed by webcomic artists to
hawk and further popularise their wares. I hung out at sites like
Digital Strips. I implored everyone to vote for me daily at Top Web
Comics. I ran a competition, soliciting guest comics, in which I awarded a
real prize, a CD by Ukrainian musical goddess Ruslana. A bloody good
one! I even bought a review by donating to
charity. My efforts weren't to no avail, but they weren't to
sufficient avail for my taste over the course of a year. Some
outrageously popular webcomics that made me want to vomit my
entrails up (EG Questionable Content) mocked me by their mere
existence. Of course, 99% of webcomic artists feel this way. I don't
mean about wanting to vomit up their entrails at the sight of
Questionable Content, but that they struggle and struggle and find
audience-securing tough.
Eventually I got tired of the situation. Not of being a comedian, but of drawing the pics. In moments, they'd grown moderately nicer over
time within the style, but were still hailed as garish, etc., by
people I bothered to ask to review the comic. In general, nobody
in webcomicking was prepared to accept the comic the way it
was (IE unevenly pretty or ugly... more ugly... the aesthetic that enabled the comic to exist). Some sample comments:
- "It doesn't even look like a comic. Where's the frame?"
- "What's with the amateurish Arial font?"
- "Why must that necrophilia cartoon be so tasteless?" *
* Question paraphrased by me to emphasise stupidity/annoyance
factors
So on Monday, August 29th, I drew the last Ocular
Trauma (by hand, not computer, just to demonstrate that I could) and with some relief, retired from the enterprise and
recommenced work in electronic musicmaking.
THREE MONTHS LATER:
One particular issue of Ocular Trauma (#185 - 'Find X') started
being forwarded around the 'net. I knew something zeitgeisty was
happening when a friend of mine said he'd received the comic six
times already from different people. Requests started arriving by
email from around the world. Teachers wanted posters. Magazines
wanted to print the comic. A maths professor wanted to include it in
the front of his book. A TV show in the UK wanted to show it. One guy even wanted to translate it into
Norwegian, and did:
I'd finished with Ocular Trauma, but suddenly I
was having a measure of success with it. An
ironic turn of events after all the pro-active thrashing about I'd
done trying to promote the comic during its lifetime, but HEY!..
that's the way it goes in the old webcomic game.
While the timing wasn't ideal, I did get recognition for
OT in the end, and I'll always have that. Even if you try
and pry it away from me with a pointed stick, you won't succeed. And I wrote 200+ issues of a comic that is only as good as Peanuts about 10% of the time.
Speaking of what I have, I now also have this kickarse, highly
navigable and user-friendly website archive of the comic put
together by my mate Bryan. Please now enjoy yourself as you relive
the onslaught of eye-gouging comic humour which is OCULAR TRAUMA!
- Wade
Epilogue - Today I produce electronic music as Aeriae: Aeriae (homepage) - Aeriae myspace. The animated clip for the track AMay may somehow remind you of Ocular Trauma.
Finally, http://wadeclarke.com links to the rest of my work and other onlinery.
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