Greetings and salutations! Welcome to the latest issue of the Skook Works in Progress newsletter in which I show images and ramble on, sometimes about the images, sometimes about life, sometimes about completely unrelated things. Thank you for visiting.
These Days …
This is one of my Long Weeks. Because of rotating days off every six weeks postal carriers have a week where we work six days in a row. Monday I worked 13 hours. Tuesday and Wednesday I worked about ten houes each day. Yesterday I did a little over nine hours. We’re supposed to get an eight hour day at least once during any five day week so today I should be scheduled for it. Whether or not that happens will depend on how many carriers call in sick. We’re already down a lot of folks due to vacation time. If I work more than eight today I will get paid double time.
I am hoping for eight. A friend of mine had surgery yesterday and I’d like to have the energy to visit her in the hospital. I’ve heard things went well and we’d planned to visit her on Sunday but if we can see her sooner that’s better.
Found Objects
The Salesman and the Cartoonist walk into the Studio. The Cartoonist is drinking a large mug of cold coffee. The Salesman is drinking water. The Cartoonist sits at the drawing table. The Salesman turns on the computer and settles down in front of it..
Salesman: You’re finally going to do a new version of The Desktop?
Cartoonist: Sure. It’s a good image and I think I could design a version that looks good on a coffee mug.
Salesman: You can’t just color the original?
Cartoonist: I’d have to make a new scan. The only version I’ve got saved is a low rez jpeg. I can’t do anything good with that. The original art is in one of my flat files but it would take less time to draw a new version than to try to find it.
Salesman: The original is the wrong layout to work on a mug.
Cartoonist. That too.
Salesman: You are going to make it so it works on t-shirts and things, right? We want to maximize the potential of all the art.
Cartoonist: You want to maximize the potential. I want to design a cool coffee mug. If the image fits on a t-shirt as well, all the better. But first I want it to fit on a mug. T-shirts get worn one day and then washed. A coffee mug is an every day companion.
Salesman: You’ve changed the design.
Cartoonist: I did the original almost 20 years ago. It got published in the first issue of The Black Seal but I drew it before I’d started contributing. I submitted it along with a bunch of spot illustrations I did specifically for the magazine. I draw differently now. And I want the image to work on a coffee mug.
Salesman: What is the significance of all these things? Do they all have stories?
Cartoonist: Sure. But I’d rather not say anything. I’d rather the viewer made up their own stories.
Salesman: It’s easier to sell something if it’s accompanied by a story. Human beings think in narrative. Images without context are less likely to generate interest in the observer.
Cartoonist: Is there a story we can tell about a mutant baby in a jar that will appeal to a broad audience?
Salesman: Probably?
Cartoonist: It’s a collection of weird objects acquired by an investigator into the paranormal and occult. It’s samples from a cabinet of curiousities.
Salesman: What’s with all the pills and medicine bottles?
Cartoonist: Some of the objects have properties that can only be observed while under the influence of psychedelics. The investigator is also self medicating to manage the trauma and PTSD they acquired in the process of acquiring their collection.
Salesman: Is there a happy, Disneyesque version to this story?
Cartoonist: With songs and dances and helpful animal companions?
Salesman: Yeah!
. 
Cartoonist: Ask me after I’ve had more coffee. Preferably in one of these mugs.
Salesman: You still haven’t explained the mutant baby in the jar.
Cartoonist: It will tell its own story in a song. Go get us a movie contract.
Shop Talk
So this happened –
That’s my design in someone’s else shop on Redbubble.I found this on Sunday morning. The pirate was nice enough to copy my tags when they copied my design so it showed up when I did a tag search for “skookworks”. Their entire shop was filled with designs stolen from other folks. I reported them but I expect that this is only my first experience of being pirated.
This does seem like a good time to talk about tags. Again.
I belong to a Facebook group for people who are selling designs on Redbubble. After I’d contributed a few comments about what I’d learned about using tags on Redbubble, one of the moderators asked if I’d be willing to write a post about them. I said I’d think about. I didn’t and don’t feel like an expert. I’ve got a lot to learn. I do find learning fun so I’ve been doing research to see if I can use tags to help folks find my store and therefore purchase my stuff.
First off, for those who don’t spend a lot of time social mediaing, a tag is word or phrase that can be used to help search engines locate stuff (information, posts, articles, photos, videos) online. I’m going to use the Found Objects design above as my example for using tags on Redbubble. I used my greatest variety of tags on this design so it gives me the best example of how a diversity of tags can call up a diversity of results.
At this writing I’ve attached 25 tags to this design. Redbubble recommends that you use up to twenty but allows as many as 50. As far as I can tell Redbubble puts no restrictions on the words or phrases you can use for tags. When I was first doing test searches on tags I checked to see if there were any forbidden words. I started with the standard “four letter” words. Thousands of results. Then I searched using derogatory and offensive terms. More thousands. Everything I searched for turned up multiple designs using that tag.
This is a little deceiving. Yes, every word I could think of has been used as a tag. However, not every phrase has been specifically used as a tag on the design found. Consider “monster porn”. That phrase turned up 223 results. Yes, quite a few results featured suggestive images. A significant number of the results were innocuous – images of cookies or flowers or sushi. I checked the tags on some of those. None of them had “monster porn” as a tag. One, a image of chocolate chip cookies, had the tags “cookie monster” and “food porn”. Other designs had similar combined results. “Monster” in one tag got linked in “porn” (food porn, flower porn, luxury porn, etc) in another tag.
You can edit your designs at any time to add or remove tags. I might do that down the line if I learn new ways of using tags.
Using my current tags, these are the number of results I got when I searched each tag:
cthulhu – 13075
cthulhu mythos – 1729
h p lovecraft – 1837
lovecraftian – 3677
green – 2,027,540
necronomicon – 2184
skulls – 447,049
fetish – 22,634
idol – 29.593
sorcery – 10,574
madness – 17,291
insanity – 3877
great old ones – 1553
fetus – 2500
drugs – 72,319
hallucinations – 6978
crystals – 102,087
potions – 21,696
skookworks – 123
david lee ingersoll – 124
old gods – 11,298
occult – 88,005
occultist- 786
cultist – 449
Hmmm. My first thought is personal and practical. I’ve got over 125 designs posted. All of them should have “skookworks” and “david lee ingersoll” as tags. There should be the same number for each tag. Clearly I’ve missed some.
In one of the discussions in the FB group someone asked why they should include their name in the tags. They expected that customers would search based on descriptors for a design. I said that having the designer’s name helped fans of the designer find that designer’s work. This is probably more useful for designers who are producing original cartoons or illustrations. Current cartoonists and illustrators are probably more likely to have fans than folks who are producing more anonymous designs – funny sayings and quotes or repurposed public domain art. And, as I mentioned at the beginning of this section, pirates will copy your tags when they copy your product. If your name/store name is one of your tags you’ll be able to find stolen designs easily.
My second thought is that some of these tags are only tangentially helpful. “Skulls” has too many results for my design to show up sooner than the 100th result page. Searching “fetish” would also not be much of use. “Skull fetish” on the other hand – 142 results. Is anyone going to search for “skull fetish”? Maybe?
“Cthulhu idol” – 43
“green fetus” – 53
“Cthulhu cultist” – 132
“Lovecraftian madness” – 122
“occult drugs” – 195
“skull sorcery” – 835
It appears that having a variety of terms for Redbubble’s search engine to combine can narrow the results. But again, will anyone search for these terms in these combinations?
This is the tricky thing. Tags only help people find the designs they are looking for. They don’t inspire anyone to look for your designs specifically. That’s what marketing is for. That’s what social media is for. I’ve posted both versions of this design to my tumblr, deviantart, Facebook and artstation accounts with links to the designs in my store. I’m writing about it here.
Redesigning
One of the things I like about print on demand is the ability to update (or remove) a design at anytime. As I’ve gotten used to designing for the various merchandise available on Zazzle and Redbubble I’ve rethought a number of my older uploads. I really liked the circular designs I came up with for the repurposed Unspeakable and Inhuman illustrations so I’ve been applying that idea to other images.
Frankenstein’s Monster –
Before –
After –
A Portrait of H.P. Lovecraft –
Before –
After –
Helen Vaughan from The Great God Pan –
Before –
After –
And that’s it for this week. I hope life is being good to you. If not, I hope you’re at least able to be good to yourself. Thank you again for reading!
