How is artist Winona Nelson creating the “amazing” art of Artifice?

In a comment on my webcomic site, Winona responded to a reader asking just that question. I know there are creators and artists who are following Artifice, so I thought I would post up her response here. It gets a little technical, but even for us non-artists, it’s kinda cool to think about all the work that goes into making one of these pages.

(Click to enlarge the images. Then hit the arrow key to cycle them.)

Winona here I’m flattered that you asked (and that it doesn’t look like obvious Photoshoppery!) Here’s the whole process:

Yaoi 911 Artifice Page 5 Pencils
Art by Winona Nelson
© 2011 Alex Woolfson

I did pencil 1/4 page thumbnails of each page, then scanned and blew them up and did digital pencils. I like to do the pencils digitally because at that stage I’m still moving things around a lot and this way if I want to move a figure over an inch it doesn’t mean redrawing the whole page. I also built the sets in 3d using Sketchup, and used the models as reference for the perspective.

I then printed the pencils and taped them to the back of the paper I was going to ink on. I didn’t have a big printer for the first half of the project so I was printing on two pages with the middle overlapping, hehe!

Yaoi 911 Artifice Page 5 Inks
Art by Winona Nelson
© 2011 Alex Woolfson

The inks are Staedtler and Prisma technical pens (and a .25 Pilot Hi-Tec C for tiny details) on Borden and Riley #234 Paris Bleedproof paper for pens. The paper was trial and error. I tried Blueline boards, which are too thick for lightboxing and too rough (and they aren’t archival; they yellow over time), then regular cover stock which was thin enough to lightbox well but was too absorbent, it bled a lot. Then a friend tipped me off about the B&D paper, which is suuuper smooth, really translucent on a lightbox, and the ink doesn’t spread at all, it’s fantastic You have to cut it to size but it really is the best to ink on!

Yaoi 911 Artifice Page 5 Inks
Art by Winona Nelson
© 2011 Alex Woolfson

Then I scan the inks and color in Photoshop. For the spots that look more painterly, like that explosion, what I’m using is a hard round brush with pressure set to opacity and the flow set to 25%. [EDITOR NOTE: For us non-artists, what Winona means here is that she is using a pressure-sensitive Wacom pen which changes the opacity of the colors depending on how hard she presses it against her tablet.] I’ve used that hard round brush forever but changing the flow never occurred to me until fairly recently, and it’s made a big difference. It just makes it feel a bit more intuitive and it’s easier to blend with. Most of the form shading is done with that brush (or a soft-edged brush for big gradients and things I want to be very smooth, like skin). The actual shadow areas are done on a separate layer set to Color Burn, all the same sort of purple-blue (no K).

I’ve been subtly colorizing the inks too, which I do by making a new layer and then adding a layer mask made from the ink layer. The layer mask allows you to paint outside the line as much as you want and none of it shows up, but if you then need to make changes to the inks you can delete the layer mask and make it again from the revised inks and the color will still be there. You can get pretty much the same effect by copying the ink layer and locking the transparency and painting on it, but that method doesn’t make it so easy to make changes since you then have to make the changes in the appropriate color and it takes a bit longer.

One final thought that might be interesting to you is that this is all done in CMYK because we’ve always intended to print the book. That means some colors don’t get quite as bright as RGB, but those colors aren’t printable. It also means I had to be very aware of K values sneaking in, because if you’re not picking every color with the color picker and setting the ink percentages to contain 0% K, you can end up with muddy colors when it prints. K is the only opaque ink and it’s also very slightly thick on the paper so it appears ever so slightly raised; you don’t want it anywhere but the inks and maybe some really dark shadow areas if you can help it.

Hope that made some sense to you! I’ve used Photoshop for so long I can get a bit technical talking about it 0_0

Have any questions? Please ask them here and I’ll forward them on to Winona to answer!

In addition to the webcomic Artifice, I’m also offering some of my other yaoi comics as free PDF downloads for my mailing list subscribers, How do you get them? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comics page and the links will be sent right to you!

Find articles like this one interesting and useful? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Want to learn more about the process of creating pencils and inks for comics? Then check out Yaoi Art: From Thumbnail Sketches to Final Pencils and Yaoi Art: From Pencils to Inks!
• Interested in creating your own comics? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Curious about why I decided to start a webcomic? Then read Gay Sci-Fi Webcomic Artifice Now Online and Why call Artifice a “gay sci-fi webcomic”?
• Want to read reviews of other yaoi comics? Then please take a look at my in-depth Yaoi Reviews!

I got an email yesterday from the contact form of my webcomic Artifice. The email itself was actually fairly thoughtful and the writer had more than a couple intriguing suggestions about ways to treat same sex relationships in a sci-fi setting without evoking the concept of a gay identity. But they also had a couple questions and concerns that I wanted to respond to. Artifice has a story that might appeal to some readers who aren’t that familiar with what’s it’s like to be gay and thus might have similar questions.

This was the email (quoted in its entirety with permission from its author):

Subject: Artifice story vs. presentation

I’m sort of offended by the Gay heading in the upper-left corner. If this is to be a story of some sort of same-sex affection, can we simply put it in the context of a future with artificial people? At least this would be a refreshing approach to realize that if you could manufacture people you couldn’t likewise manufacture their personalities.
-Or is the Gay heading supposed to mean that you shouldn’t be reading this comic unless you’re gay?
Frankly, what offends me the most is gays saying that they’re special when all they mean is they have sex differently than heterosexuals (who don’t go around telling people they’re different.) Why should it matter if this character who has been artifically created finds some emotional level he has not been programmed for- except for that emotion itself which is a declaration of uniqueness and identity?

And this was my response:

Hello!

Let’s see if I can answer your question.

I’m sort of offended by the Gay heading in the upper-left corner… is the Gay heading supposed to mean that you shouldn’t be reading this comic unless you’re gay?

No. I’m delighted to have anyone read my comics. And looking at the demographics of my mailing list and Facebook Insights, it seems to break down to about 50% gay and 50% straight readers (mostly straight women, but there are straight guys there too). I work very hard to be inclusive on my blog and elsewhere and I’d like to think the tone of my comics isn’t “inside baseball”—meaning that non-gay readers will understand the references and that I am respectful of people of all orientations.

I use the “gay sci-fi” heading in the title of my pages for search-engine purposes. It’s not to be exclusive in any way; it’s to make it easy for readers who like sci-fi and gay romance to find my comic when they search for it on Google and such. You see, there aren’t a lot of gay male romances set in a sci-fi world and so I think readers searching for that might particularly enjoy Artifice. So, I’m trying to make it easy to find my comic when they search for “gay sci-fi” or “gay webcomic”. That’s the only reason I’m doing that.

Frankly, what offends me the most is gays saying that they’re special when all they mean is they have sex differently than heterosexuals (who don’t go around telling people they’re different.)

Because you wrote me a thoughtful email, I’m going to assume that you’re looking to understand why gay people like myself would tell people they’re different (even announcing to the world that their webcomic is gay!), so I’m going to respond to this as well. (Please forgive me if you were just venting.)

If you’re not gay yourself, I can understand why it can be confusing why gay people would feel the need to “come out” and tell others that, unlike 90% of the population, they don’t fall in love with members of the opposite sex. The truth of the matter is, most of us (including myself!) wish we lived in a world where such distinctions were irrelevant. It certainly is no fun having to say to someone who is assuming you’re straight (and asking what kind of girl you like or making an anti-gay joke) that actually you’re gay and then wondering how they are going to react. Honestly, sometimes, it’s exhausting.

But unfortunately, we live in a world where most people assume everyone is straight. We live in a world where the word “fag” or “queer” is the ultimate put-down in the school yards and the word “gay” can be used to mean anything “sucky” or “weird”. We live in a world where in many places you can be denied work, education and housing simply because you were born to fall in love with members of the same sex. We live in a world where people can marry members of the opposite sex and get tax breaks, hospital visitation rights and lots of family and social support; but if you fall in love and want to marry a member of the same sex, in the vast majority of places you can’t do it. Here in the U.S., if you can actually get married, you won’t get any federal benefits (thanks to the Defense of Marriage Act), and many folks will see you as a threat to family and children for even wanting to get married. And this isn’t even getting into the parts of the world where if people found out you were gay, you could expect to be attacked, arrested and even executed (such as in Iran and Saudi Arabia). These are things many straight people never have to think about if they want to start dating someone. They can just do it because it’s considered “normal”.

When I was growing up, there were those who would argue that gay people didn’t need explicit protection under the law for things like work, education and housing. That asking for that protection was asking for “special rights”. But it’s not a “special right” if everyone else gets to do something without a second thought and you can’t. I would argue it’s an “equal right” if you get to do the same thing as everyone else. Straight people can apply for a job and don’t have to hide that they date people of the opposite sex. Same for applying for an apartment or even just talking about how they spent their Saturday night. In many places in the world and the U.S., that’s not true for those who are attracted to the same sex. And in most of those places (including most of the states in the U.S.), it’s perfectly legal to deny gay people that apartment or that job, just because they are gay.

Now, if you live in the U.S, you probably have noticed this is changing. Twenty states now have anti-discrimination laws that forbid denying people work or housing because of sexual orientation. Five states even give equal access to marriage. The U.S. military has just been ordered to change its policy of firing soldiers because of their sexual orientation. This is good news—both for gay people and, I’d argue, for all citizens of the U.S. And none of it would have happened if gay people had kept their mouths shut and just let everyone assume they were straight.

I’m going to end this with one of my favorite quotes from Pastor Martin Niemöller, but before I do, I just want to point out that while I’ve framed this response mostly in terms of equal protection under the law and personal safety issues, that there is one other very real reason why gay folks tell others that they are gay. It’s because falling in love is a huge part of the human experience and it feels wrong to lie or be evasive to the people in my life who care about me about such an important thing. Telling someone I’m gay isn’t just saying I “have sex differently than heterosexuals”. While others may define you by it, speaking as a gay man, I can tell you that sex is actually a very small part of the experience of being gay. It’s really about who you want to spend the rest of your life with.

I wasn’t always “out” and so I can tell you, to not be able to talk to my friends and family about those romantic hopes, dreams (and yes, failures and even successes) is like being buried alive in concrete and it created a wall between myself and those who cared about me. You see, people talk all the time about love and romance. If you’re straight, you don’t have to make any special declarations to answer those questions or start conversations of your own. I’m sure you’ve had conversations with friends and co-workers about dating. Imagine if it were a very real possibility that those around you would be “offended” if you were simply being honest in those conversations—that they might actually seek to hurt you for joining into that conversation as an equal—and then you might be able to begin to understand why it is important for many gay people to try to create a world where you don’t have to lie about or hide who you fall in love with. And that world can only happen if you’re willing to “go around and tell people you are different.”

I want to thank you for taking the time to write me your email. You could have just kept your thoughts to yourself but instead you reached out to me to share them. I don’t imagine you expected to get this lengthy reply back. But the truth of the matter is that I do care about all my readers, both straight and gay. You took time to reach out and write me. And so I wanted to give your words a thoughtful response.

Alex

The quote from Pastor Martin Niemöller (shared with me originally by a straight friend after I came out):

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

We live in a world where bad things quite often happen to good people. And it’s important to remember that sometimes the only way to stop it is by speaking up. Even when we don’t “have to”.

So that was my response and I’m happy to share here that it was well-received and that, in their reply back, the author of the email went out their way to say very nice things about Artifice. For both gay and straight people, it can be easy to jump to conclusions about how open someone is going to be to understanding another person’s view. But I have to say one of the most gratifying experience of starting this blog is the happy discovery that the vast majority of people out there are cool and thoughtful, if only you’re willing to engage in a real conversation. I’m glad this person wrote to me and proved, yet again, that I have the absolute coolest readers in the world.

In addition to the webcomic Artifice I’m also offering some of my other yaoi comics as free PDF downloads for my mailing list subscribers, How do you get them? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comics page and the links will be sent right to you!

Find articles like this one interesting and useful? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• I’ve had other interesting and provocative reader questions. Want to read another response? Then check out Why This Gay Man Is Creating Yaoi!
• In my day job, I got the chance to edit a video made for gay teens at risk for suicide also talking about coming out and what it’s like to be gay. Find it at It Gets Better: Google Employees!
• Want to learn more about why I decided to start a webcomic? Then read Gay Sci-Fi Webcomic Artifice Now Online!
• Want to read reviews of yaoi books that might or might not offend you? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own comics? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!

READ THIS FIRST: If you created an account at The Yaoi 911 Store at https://store.yaoi911.com or to comment on this blog, please read the rest of this blog post. If you didn’t, no one else was affected by this and you do not need to worry. (To be clear, that means if you just have an account for The Yaoi 911 News & Downloads mailing list, the Yaoi 911 Zazzle Store or any of my other logins or simply downloaded comics from one of my newsletter emails, you do not need to worry, this does not affect you. It only affects people who created an account at https:/store.yaoi911.com.)

UPDATE 5/5/11: OK, having reviewed all the files on the FTP, I also found some suspicious files in this blog and in my webcomic. Based on reviewing those files, it looks like the ultimate goal of this attack was to turn my sites into zombie spam sites. I caught it before the malware could really do much and now all the files have been cleaned. But in light of the fact that I noticed some strange files on this blog, then I’d say if you are a registered user here, you should also read below. Again, if you’re a mailing list subscriber or used any of my other stores, this still doesn’t affect you. And even if you did create an account here or at the Store, the chances of someone capturing your password are pretty remote. (The real damage seems to be wasting a couple days of my time triple-checking that there weren’t any more hidden files lurking anywhere. Grrr.) But because I want to make sure all my readers are safe, I still think it’s wisest to change your passwords if you reused them here or at the Store.

Well, this sucks. The Yaoi 911 Store (at https://store.yaoi911.com) was hacked today. I caught it in less than 24 hours and I’ve locked it down with a password, but it still happened.

After a reader left a comment saying she was having difficulty accessing the Tough chapters, I went to my store to see what was going on and there was a lovely little hacker program running that allowed anyone on the Internet to see every file on my store and, I assume, its database contents as well. I’ve thrown up a password barrier so no other jerks can get at that information and I know that not a huge number of people took advantage of my store to get my comics, but if you did create an account at https://store.yaoi911.com, there are some steps I think you should take to protect yourself.

What You Should Do If You Created An Account At The Yaoi 911 Store or this blog

Ideally, you used a unique password for The Yaoi 911 Store or this blog. That’s a very good idea and I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend it for every account you create on the Internet (and I recommend using a password locker program like 1Password, which I use myself, to make the process of creating unique super-strong passwords really easy and painless.)

But I know not everyone does that.

So… if you used the same password on The Yaoi 911 Store (which was at https://store.yaoi911.com) or as a commenter on this blog anywhere else, stop what you are doing right now and change that password on those sites!

I don’t know if this jerk was able to download the passwords, but they might have. The passwords weren’t stored in plaintext, of course—your password would have been encrypted in the database using a “hash algorithm”—but if you used a dictionary word under 15 characters or so, there are programs on the Internet that make unencrypting password hashes possible for the determined hacker. So, please, change those passwords!

Also, even though not many people included their postal address information or full names when creating an account, some did. I doubt this hacker could find any real use for that information, but I just want to remind you that it’s possible that they might have downloaded it. It also seems possible they could access the email address you used. So please be extra aware of phishing scams attempts and remember that no one reputable will ever ask you for your password to any of your accounts over email.

And just to be very clear: I will never ask you for any of your passwords through email ever. So if you get a message claiming to be from me or “Yaoi 911″ or yaoi-anything asking you for personal information of any kind, it’s a hoax—don’t do it! (A phishing scam is a very, very unlikely risk, I’m hardly Chase bank after all, but I really, really care about your safety and so I’m wanting to cover all the bases.)

So, the main thing you should do is change your password on other sites if you used the same password on The Yaoi 911 Store or on this blog. And if someone contacts you by email and pretends to be me asking you for personal information of any kind, tell them to go jump in the lake.

I made a PayPal payment to you through The Yaoi 911 Store. Is my PayPal account at risk?

No. You had to leave the Store and actually go to the secure PayPal site to make a PayPal payment and thus none of your PayPal passwords or credit card information were ever stored in my databases (which is one reason I went with PayPal; I didn’t want to store your private payment details). So long as no-one hacks PayPal, you should be fine.

What if I never created an account at the store or this blog? Are any of the other Yaoi 911 logins at risk?

No. There are a number of reasons I’ve kept this blog, my mailing list, my blog subscription list, The Yaoi 911 Zazzle Store, Yaoi 911 Prints and The Yaoi 911 Store as separate accounts and this is one of them. I use a different password for every single account, so even if the evil jerk was able to figure out MY password for The Yaoi 911 Store and its database, they couldn’t use it to get access to any of the database information anywhere else. If you are a Yaoi 911 News subscriber, a Feedburner blog subscriber or someone who’s bought from one of my other stores and your password is different than what you used for this blog/The Yaoi 911 Store (meaning at https://store.yaoi911.com, which is just used for downloading my comics) or you never signed up with this blog/The Yaoi 911 Store, then your information is safe.

(If you did create an account at The Yaoi 911 Store and used the same password on this blog, then change that password here now by logging in and changing the password on the bottom of your profile page!)

What’s going to happen next?

For the time being, I’ll be taking down The Yaoi 911 Store Web site. But I know there are some of you that found it a convenient way to download my comics, so I will start working on a replacement—ideally a very secure replacement—in the near future. This blog and the webcomic use much more secure software, so now that they are cleaned, they should be fine.

And in the meantime, all I can say is I’m sorry. And that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure this won’t happen again. (And remind you, to yes, please change those passwords if you used the same one on other sites!)

The response to the first only-for-subscribers wallpaper by Ponderosa was overwhelmingly positive, so I’ve decided to send out another one. This time the pencils and inks were created by DC/Marvel/Dark Horse artist, Adam DeKraker, and the colors are by Arifice artist, Winona Nelson. (You can read a bit about them here.)

"Pillow Fight" | Click to enlarge.

It’s Mike and Rob from Tough having a pillow fight in their underwear! Who says sorority girls have all the fun?

Let me know what you think!

As I’ve said before, creating exclusive downloads for subscribers is an experiment; one that I’m hoping you’ll like. So what do you think? Do you like seeing Mike and Rob like this? And what do you think of the art? Sweet, sexy, cool, not cool? Let me know in the comments section of this blog post! If it turns out you all continue to like these, then I’ll commission more of them. (And if you really like this one, you can get it right now as a poster or card.)

So, what’s next?

Some readers have said while they really liked Ponderosa’s art with the shirtless guys, that they would need something a little… different to show their support for Tough and Yaoi 911. Something, y’know, tamer, that wouldn’t give casual bystanders heart palpitations if they were to see it.

Well, that makes a lot of sense to me, so in addition to creating some more sexy wallpapers, I’ve also commissioned a couple fully-clothed, safe-for-Grandma ones. The first of which I’ll actually be sending you next month! It’s by yaoi artist Agent Agnes and it’s super sweet. Sound good?

Please let me know what you think of Adam’s and Winona’s work in the comments!

Want to download the high-res versions of this wallpaper? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comics page and the link will be sent to you about a week after you sign up! (And in the meantime, you get download links for the first two completed chapters of Tough sent to you immediately in the Welcome Email. That’s 70 full-color pages of yaoi goodness. For free. Score!)

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Take a look at the last wallpaper I sent out for Tough!
• I’ve also just launched a gay sci-fi webcomic that you won’t want to miss. Check out Artifice now!

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but my sci-fi yaoi graphic novel Artifice is finally ready for you to read. If you’ve been following my work for a while, then you know my original plan was to release Artifice as a for-pay PDF that you would download at our store. But after following the excellent work of Hamlet Machine with Starfighter, EMIRAIN with Teahouse (both webcomic links NSFW, BTW) and Cheera and Muun with sfeertheory, I’ve been inspired to try something different. I’ve decided to post Artifice up, for free, one page a week, as a webcomic.

What’s Artifice about?

It was supposed to be a routine “clean-up” mission on the isolated colony Da Vinci Four, but Deacon, a prototype android soldier, has failed spectacularly. Not only did he disobey orders, letting a 19-year-old business liability named Jeff survive, he also attacked and killed those who were sent to help him. Now, the brilliant and uncompromising robopsychologist Clarice Maven has been summoned by the Corporation to determine why.

With Deacon at her absolute mercy, Maven will find out exactly what happened between the android and this boy—and she will use her terrible power to make sure Deacon never fails the Corporation ever again.

Check it out for yourself!

I wrote Artifice and all the art from pencils through colors is being created by the totally awesome Winona Nelson. And to give you a good feel for what’s to come, I’ve posted up the first five pages on the webcomic site. (Starting next Saturday, I’ll post up a page a week until the story is complete.) Please take a look!

Read Artifice right now

(Be sure to click the Next button under each page to keep reading! )

Why a webcomic?

Well, like sending out the pin-ups to my mailing list subscribers, this is another experiment. My current method of publishing my comics is to wait for each one to be fully completed before sending them out to my readers as PDFs. This means that when they are released, it’s a lot of fun. (I have over 14,000 subscribers of my mailing list and all my readers are awesome sweethearts, so I get a bunch of great comments and feedback when each comic comes out.) But then, several months pass before the next comic is ready and that explosion of momentum and energy—which frankly is so useful for morale for me and my artists—naturally falls off quite a bit. And, I also think quite naturally, in those intervening months, a lot of readers wind up forgetting all about me and my comics, even if they really enjoyed reading them. I have a busy life myself, I know how it is.

This has been on my mind for a while now. And so, when I went to YaoiCon last October and I saw how much buzz was around the (awesome) webcomics Starfighter and Teahouse, it got me thinking. What if I were to have a comic that was released on a more consistent basis like once a week—like, well, a webcomic! And so after talking with a bunch of folks about that idea (including Starfighter’s awesome Hamlet Machine who was very helpful), I’ve decided to give this a try to see if it helps keep readers engaged with my work. Now, I’m not expecting the kind of success of Starfighter and Teahouse, but just having something to share with my readers every week, just having a consistent way to connect with my readers every week, well, that just sounds like a lot of fun.

I’m very, very proud of the work Winona and I are doing on Artifice. The truth is, I think it has some of the the best writing I’ve done out of all my comics. And, frankly, if I put it out as a $4.99 e-book, there are only so many people who would choose to pay for it. I’ll still try publishing a for-pay e-book at some point (maybe with the 18+ Chapter 4 of Tough), but I think by putting Artifice out as a free webcomic, a lot more people are going to be able to enjoy it. And that’s something I really want.

Please let me know what you think

So, I’d love to know what you think of what I’m doing. Good idea? Bad idea? Cool? Not cool? And what do you think of the pages I posted up? Please let me know by commenting on this blog post or on the pages of the webcomic itself.

I really hope you enjoy reading the webcomic pages I’ve put up so far and that you’ll come back to find out what happens next!




And, of course, my other full-color yaoi comics are still available as free PDF downloads for subscribers of my mailing list. Want to get your hands on those download links? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comics page and the links will be sent right to you in the Welcome Email! You’ll get the first two completed chapters of Tough sent to you right now! That’s 70 full-color pages of yaoi goodness. Score!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Well, this was an awesome thing to wake up to this morning. The first chapter of Tough gets a review in Brian Cronin’s “Comics Should Be Good” column at Comic Book Resources.

I’ll admit, when I first saw the link on Twitter, my heart skipped a beat and no small amount of terror filled my heart. What would a mainstream comics reviewer think of my first efforts? And when I was actually reading the review, it was certainly strange to read about myself referred to only by my last name (as I am wont to do with other creators in my own reviews.)

But what did he think?

Well, check it out for yourself!

(And Brian will be reviewing LGBT comics for all of March, so be sure to check out his other Month of LGBT reviews. )

Oh, and stay tuned! I’ll have something new and exciting (and non-Tough-related) to share with you in a couple weeks! (And here’s a hint, it’s not just a pin-up.. It’s in full-color and there are words and characters and a plot and….)

Just a quick post to share some new art with you. While I’m waiting on art for “Brother’s Keeper” (just got the last penciled pages today!) and Artifice (which is so close!) to finish, I’ve started work on a superhero yaoi. That’s right: a superhero yaoi.

I’m working with DC/Marvel/Dark Horse penciler Adam DeKraker on this and he just sent me character designs for our two main characters: superhero Kyle and supervillain “The Annihilator”.

Check them out and let me know what you think in the comments!

Want to make sure you get the free download link to this comic when it’s finished? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comics page and the link will be sent right to you when it’s done! (And in the meantime, you get the first two completed chapters of Tough sent to you right now! That’s 70 full-color pages of yaoi goodness. Score!)

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One thing about making independent comics is that it can take a long time to finish. When you’re DC or Marvel, if you want great work done quickly, you can just throw money at it, but when you’re just a guy with a desire to tell cool stories, that’s not an option. And as I’ve said before on this blog, I’d rather have to wait a little bit to get great art and tell my story the right way than cut corners and wind up with a comic that’s just so-so.

The challenge, of course, is staying connected with your readers. I mean, I’m never going to get rich making yaoi comics. (On some days, breaking even seems like a lot to hope for…) So the only realistic reward I can reasonably expect is to have my work connect with people and to hear back from them. And I have to tell you, the kind words you all have put in the comments of this blog and on my Facebook page more than make all the hard work worthwhile.

But I’m still presented with the challenge of how to stay in my readers minds if it takes several months to finish a chapter. This is a particular problem for new folks who sign up for our mailing list and then don’t hear from me for a long time. They get that first Welcome Email with the links to our free comics, don’t hear anything for weeks and weeks, and by the time they get sent an email with the next comic, they often have no memory of signing up. Some even hit the dreaded Junk/Spam button—which among other things, actually sends me a direct message calling me a spammer—even though they themselves asked to get my emails!

My Evil Plan

The solution, of course, is to send out more emails to my subscribers. But, the truth is, I myself don’t like to get a ton of email even if I do sign up for something. And I’m not just going to send out random, content-free updates—if I’m going to send an email to thousands of people (close to 14,000 subscribers right now!), then it has to be something that I myself would be delighted to get. So I got to thinking: comics take a long time to finish; but a full-color pin-up—that’s a much different matter. And getting sexy art with the boys kissing and stuff, well, that’s something I’d be delighted to get in my Inbox.

So… I’ve decided to work with some of my favorite yaoi artists to create pin-ups of our characters that I can send out as exclusive downloads for my subscribers to use as computer desktop wallpaper/screensavers. I’ve commissioned four of them and the first one, by yaoi artist Ponderosa, is now ready for subscribers to download!

Here’s what it looks like:

Art by Kimi Owens. © 2011 Alex Woolfson.

(Click image to enlarge)

People who are currently subscribed to the Yaoi 911 News & Downloads mailing list have already been sent the links for high-res wallpapers of this image that work on all the standard computer monitor sizes as well as the iPhone. But for new subscribers, I’m trying something different. When new members sign up for the list, they will be sent a link to these wallpapers (and all the others as I create them), but those particular links won’t be in that first Welcome Email. Instead, I’ll send this first wallpaper out a couple days after they sign up. Other pin-ups (when they’re done) I’ll send out maybe every week after that first one. That way, new subscribers will get more than just one email from me—and so hopefully they will be more likely to remember who the heck Yaoi 911 is in the future and feel a bit more connected to our work right now. And they’ll get a nice treat in their Inbox every week or so which makes me smile when I think about it.

That’s my evil plan, anyway.

An Experiment

As with pretty much everything I do in this wacky new world of publishing independent comics through the Internet, this is an experiment. I had this art created in the hope that you might like it and, over the next few months, I’ll be sending out 3 more new wallpapers. But what do you think? As a subscriber, would you want me to send you free, yaoi wallpapers? Do you like seeing Mike and Rob like this? And what do you think of the art? Sweet, sexy, cool, not cool?

Please let me know in the comments section of this blog post! If it turns out you all like these, then I’ll commission more of them and subscribers will hear from me a bit more often, like once a month or so. (And if you really like the art, then I’ll also make them available as posters you can get at our store.)

So to sum up: This is the first of four wallpapers. I plan to release them once a month for the time being. And by that time, hopefully I’ll have another comic ready to share with you all.

Please let me know what you think!

Want to download the high-res versions of this wallpaper? Well, it’s easy! Just fill out the form on the Free Comics page and the link will be sent to you within 48 hours of your sign up! (And you get download links for the first two completed chapters of Tough sent to you immediately in the Welcome Email. That’s 70 full-color pages of yaoi goodness. For free. Score!)

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

One of my most popular posts is How To Find Bara in English — bara being a term commonly used to refer to gay comics created by Japanese male creators. In that post, I link to sites that host bara scanlations. As a creator myself, I have mixed feelings about doing this — on the one hand, the vast majority of these scanlations are certainly being distributed without the creator’s permission; on the other, the vast majority simply aren’t available for purchase in English and it’s my hope that by increasing awareness of bara, I will also increase demand.

But I had another purpose for that post: to make readers aware that there are legitimate ways for non-Japanese readers to purchase bara manga and thus compensate the creators for their hard work. It’s sort of a stealth plan — come to see sources for free downloads, but wait! Here’s where you can go do the right thing, support the creators and even find bara (and yaoi) manga not available through piracy.

Based on some of the feedback I’ve gotten, it’s seems like a lot of readers are interested in doing the right thing, just so long as they have a way to — and purchasing e-manga straight from Japan is one of the most direct ways to do that. But seeing as many of us don’t read Japanese, navigating a Japanese Web site has felt… daunting. To help out, I linked to an excellent walkthrough by *elee0228 showing how to use the Webmoney service to purchase and download works from the very popular Digiket market.

Alas, for the past several months, readers in the U.S. have been having problems using this method and thus there hasn’t been a really awesome way for us to purchase e-manga straight from Japan.

Well, now reader UltimaST has come to the rescue! On his own, he created a walkthrough for Surpara.com and has given me his kind permission to post it here. Surpara.com is an e-manga site that has lots of yaoi and bara downloads. And, even better than Digiket, it allows you to use your regular old credit card to pay!

So, here’s the step-by-step:

1) The Japanese gay comics can be found at

http://mk2.surpara.com/

so start there.

2) You’ll be taken to an age-check splash screen. If you’re over 18, click yes. (And click the images below to enlarge.)

3) After you find the manga you want to download, click the marked location to add the manga to your shopping basket.

4) You are taken to this screen which displays your shopping basket. You can either continue to shop or just press the next button (marked):

5) You are then taken to a screen where you could enter your ID and password if you were a registered member — but you don’t need to. Instead, just check the marked box next to the red message:

6) Scroll down the page to find the choice-of-payment section. Fill in the spaces as follows:

1 – enter your email
2 – retype your email

And then check the marked location next to the credit card icons.

7) The next screen is a summary of your purchase. Just click the marked location to continue.

8. You are now taken to the screen to enter your credit card information. Fill in the spaces as follows:

1 – enter the name of the credit card holder
2 – enter the number of the credit card
3 – enter the expiration date of the credit card

Then press the marked continue button.

9) If the transaction went through as intended, you will get this screen. Just click the blue link. (If you get anything else, the transaction didn’t go through.)

10) After that, you will get an email with a link to a download page that looks like the one below. Click the marked download icon and you’ll be able to save your manga to your hard drive!

So, there’s you have it — a walk-through on how to download manga from Surpara.com using your plain old credit card. I tried it myself and it worked fine. And they seem to have a nice selection of bara/yaoi downloads.

That said, I just want to give you a heads-up about a couple things. First, is that about a week after I downloaded my manga from Surpara, I received their newsletter in my email inbox. I’m not wild about getting marketing materials I didn’t specifically sign up for (especially when it’s all in Japanese!), so here’s what I had to do to unsubscribe.

1) First I clicked the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email: http://mk2.surpara.com/mag.php

2) Then I was yet again taken to the age-check screen. Being over 18 years of age, I clicked “yes”.

3) Then I was taken to the unsubscribe screen. I needed to enter my email into the 2nd (marked) field and click the grey button next to it.

4) Which brought me to this screen, letting me know my email address was unsubscribed from their marketing materials:

The other heads-up I want to give you is that some of the manga and pin-ups you can download from Surpara feature manga characters who are supposed to be under the age of 18. It is currently illegal in the U.S. to receive obscene cartoons depicting minors in sexual situations through the mail or the Internet. Yes, I consider the law tremendously misguided—and at the moment, at least in the U.S., prosecutors seem to mainly use it to add extra punishment to those who also possess and distribute actual child pornography—but because I care about your safety, I would advise you to choose your downloads with the local laws in mind.

All that said, I believe UltimaST has done a great service to both us and the creators we admire by creating this walkthrough. Please let me know about your experiences in the comments—and be sure to give UltimaST a special “thank you” shout-out!

Hey! Want links to full-color yaoi/bara comics sent to you — for free? Just sign up over at our Free Comic page and we’ll send you the download link to our first comic right away!

Enjoy reading articles like these? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Curious about the next comic we’ll be sending out to our newsletter subscribers? Then read all about our High School rescue-and-romance Boys Love story, Tough!
• Want to read about other creators’ yaoi? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!
• Would you like to read more about how the law treats readers of manga with underage characters? Read about the Christopher Handley case in How To Keep Manga Fans Out Of Jail and then be sure to check out Cartoon Teen Sex and the Law!

I recently read a self-published comic book that contained explicit sex involving a 16-year-old character—something I wasn’t expecting when I picked it up. Originally, I mentioned that book by name in the following discussion, but the last thing I would want to do is cause undue attention and trouble to a young creator who had no idea she might be breaking the law, so I’ve removed mention of the specific details of that book from this post and the attached comments. What law am I talking about? The US PROTECT Act of 2003. It’s a federal law that most people have absolutely no awareness of—and here is where I feel a bit… protective myself of my fellow yaoi self-publishers and their readers.

Among other things, the PROTECT Act punishes with jail time

Any person who, in a circumstance described in subsection (d), knowingly produces, distributes, receives, or possesses with intent to distribute, a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that–
(1)
(A) depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and
(B) is obscene; or
(2)
(A) depicts an image that is, or appears to be, of a
minor engaging in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic
abuse, or sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-
genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of
the same or opposite sex; and
(B) lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value;

and follows that provision with the provision

(c) Nonrequired Element of Offense.–It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist.

(You can read the complete text of the Act here. And FYI, the circumstance referred to in “subsection (d)” mandates that the offending work be sent or was intended to be “communicated or transported” across state lines via any method including computer or be sent/received via mail even within a state. Obscenity is defined in the U.S. by a failure to pass the three-pronged Miller test. And yes, a “minor” is any character under the age of 18, including as part of a story involving two 17-year-olds engaging in consensual sex.)

Now, I’m going to lay my non-lawyer cards on the table here and state for the record that I think these provisions in the Act are examples of crazy bad law that protect no children and are, in fact, unconstitutional. That prohibiting cartoon images involving no real young people—and which never involved any real young people—is punishing fantasy and imagination and thus is essentially creating a class of thought-crimes. It spits in the face of the First Amendment using the inflammatory rhetoric of protecting children to punish unpopular speech. I will also state that I have a horse in this race because I am writing a graphic novel that involves a 15-year-old hero and it is likely that he will engage in “sexual conduct” before the story is finished.

That said, I’m confident the work I’m creating is not pornographic and thus, while I’m not writing War and Peace here, I’m also fairly confident that Mike’s story would be considered something with “serious literary or artistic value” by a reasonable judge, for that reason not be considered obscene and thus that the PROTECT Act would not apply to me. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly have no desire to go through the expense and hassle of a Federal trial to defend my right to create Tough, but if it comes to that, I will fight and I have every belief that I will win.

But did the publishers of the book I read feel that their explicit comic also had “serious literary or artistic value” and would not be considered obscene? Were they aware that if they were prosecuted and their book failed the Miller test, then their only recourse (short of a plea bargain) would be to challenge the constitutionality of PROTECT Act itself, most likely all the way to the (now rather conservative) Supreme Court? Are the readers who have ordered this book aware of their exposure to this Act (or to a similar Act in Canada and elsewhere)?

I suspected the answer was no. I suspected that most likely the publishers of that book and certainly the majority of their readers hadn’t given much thought to their exposure to these laws at all. And why would they? Less than 1000 copies of the comic was printed, the story itself was just a silly fantasy involving no actual 16-year-olds, those provisions in PROTECT Act are stupid, idiotic, unreasonable law that no one would assume had any reason to exist and the book itself was being published by very lovely young people who certainly wouldn’t have any interest in harming kids nor the funds to run each comic by a legal team before putting it out there.

And as it turned out, after speaking with the publisher, I was right—she wasn’t aware of the risk at all. And as for the readers, well, perhaps this post can help make us all more aware of the current, badly broken law.

Now let me state the obvious here: I’m not a lawyer and as this law in the U.S. has barely been tested, things are murky: on the one hand, U.S. Code seems to focus mostly on whether the images are indistinguishable from actual children, specifically exempting cartoons; on the other hand, we have defendant Dwight Whorley convicted and losing an appeal for possession of anime images of underage girls (PDF) (he also was convicted for possessing child pornography involving actual children; the Supreme Court refused to hear his case. That whole PDF I just linked to is actually worth reading if only to see how broadly the PROTECT Act can be interpreted by very reasonable sounding judges.) Also, the comic I read may very well be deemed to have serious literary or artistic value—I’m certainly not claiming that it doesn’t. Nothing bad at all might happen to the publisher or its readers, there’s no reason for me to think a DA would take a particular interest in this book, its publisher or its readers, and I’d trust your own lawyer over my blogger concerns any day.

But this law is on the books. People have been prosecuted under it. And that’s something any publisher, small or otherwise, should be aware of and it should at the very least inform their choices and actions. (And why all of us should be supporting the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.)

Overall, I think it’s fantastic that high quality yaoi is being self-published by Western yaoi creators. I feel proud to include myself in their number. Mainstream publishers, even small ones, can be cautious, conservative and slow; self-publishing gets rid of all the bureaucracy which can pressure creators to compromise their visions. As an artist, being able to realize your vision without limits is often a good thing.

But sometimes there are good reasons for caution and if we’re going to distribute our work to hundreds or thousands of readers, we as self-publishers need to be aware of those reasons. We might still choose to put that work out there, but at the very least we’ll be doing so knowing what the consequences might be. We can then take appropriate actions based on that information (including content warnings for our readers), and thus protect ourselves and our fans as best we can.

The PROTECT Act is designed to create a chilling effect for legitimate, yet unpopular free speech. This sucks and the last thing I want to do is encourage folks to give in to unconstitutional pressure. But it’s important that everyone involved knows what they’re getting into.

Create awesome yaoi. Buy awesome yaoi. But protect yourself so you can do it all over again.

ADDENDUM: This isn’t the first time I’ve talked about this issue. The last time I did so (about the Christopher Handley case), a commenter felt strongly that those who are prosecuted for reading comics that include minors engaging in sexual activity (shota and loli, in particular) deserved what they got. I wound up writing a mini-essay defending the right to engage in unpopular speech in response. Because this is a point that often comes up, I thought I’d include the text of my response here in the hopes of helping to move the discussion forward:

@Robyn –

Robyn, thank you for your thoughts. While I don’t presume to speak for everyone who is troubled by this prosecution, I don’t think your experience of shota & loli would be all that different from that of most of those who feel that the government has overstepped here. Personally, I don’t care for shota or loli. Not being a medical or psychiatric professional, I would not use words like “sick” to describe those materials but I often find what I’ve seen of shota/loli to be very disturbing. I’ll never be a fan.

But that’s not the point here. We live in a country founded on rights. One of those rights is the right to free speech. In order for rights to have any meaning, they must represent a special claim against the majority. Even if a view is tremendously unpopular, that cannot be the basis on which to suppress it. The fact that something turns our stomach — that we think it is “crap” — is not enough. If we truly are to value free speech, then we have to allow the dissemination and viewing of things we dislike so much we want to call it names like “sick” and “crap”. Otherwise, it is not a fundamental right — it’s merely a permission granted by the majority that can be revoked based on current tastes at any time.

If we are to suppress speech — and of course I am using the term “speech” here to mean anything publicly communicated including anime and manga stories — we need a much more compelling reason, usually one that involves the serious endangerment of other fundamental rights, such as the right to personal health and safety. The classic example of unprotected speech is shouting fire in a crowded movie theater — the very real risk of immediate physical harm is clear and difficult to deny and it’s fairly easy to see that it outweighs the harm in suppressing that speech. Likewise, threatening to murder someone also falls outside of protected speech for similar reasons.

But in the case of shota and loli, one is forced to ask, who exactly is being harmed? The reason child pornography is so heinous isn’t because people take “great offense” — we’re a cranky species, people take great offense at a lot of things — rather it’s because child pornography involving actual children has clear, awful and often lifelong consequences for the real children involved. This is why even though there is plenty of pornography that falls under the classification of protected speech, no form of child pornography does. The clear, actual harm to real, living young people is just too great — their right to safety and health far outweighs the pornographer’s right to free speech. But if no actual children are involved in the making of a shota/loli manga — and the work is only viewed by consenting adults — you can’t make that argument.

Of course, you might try to claim harm through indirect means. You could argue that those who view shota/loli are more likely to be encouraged to eventually act out their fantasies with real, live children. But this is a question of fact that must be proven — and it’s my understanding that there is little evidence to support this even with pornography involving actual children. (PDF) You might also argue that shota/loli manga could be used by pedophiles to seduce minors into believing that underage sex is appealing and thus its possession might be harmful in that way — as a means to “groom” young people. But just because we can picture a potential possible misuse of a literary work is not sufficient justification to prosecute those who own it. I might potentially choose to beat a flight attendant over the head with my copy of War & Peace, but that doesn’t mean that the TSA should be detaining me for packing Tolstoy in my carry-on.

Now if we can establish through factual evidence a clear connection between owning shota/loli and actual harm to real children or adults, then yes, we would absolutely need to take action in spite of the right of free speech. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening in Handley’s case. What seems to be going on is that a handful of materials that Handley owned turned the stomach of a postal inspector and an overzealous DA. And instead of doing what you choose to do — which is to do your “absolute best to avoid that crap like the plague” — they chose to arrest him and expose him to great legal expense and potentially years in prison.

Now you might say “Good for them! Anyone who likes that stuff deserves what they get!” But we live in a diverse country. Is there nothing in your library that those in power could take “great offense to”? There were many people who felt not only that the Harry Potter books were “crap”, but that they were actively, perniciously satanic and evil. Being in the comfortable majority who do not agree with that view, we might smirk at those people, comfortable that we are safe from any prosecutions they might lobby for. But at least for me, as a gay man, I am fully aware it was not that long ago that people like me could be arrested, incarcerated and institutionalized for owning erotic material that turned the stomachs of those in power. Even though everyone involved in the making of those erotic materials would be consenting adults — even though that material would be owned by a consenting adult for use in the privacy of his own home — that didn’t matter. What mattered is that those in power thought it was “sick” — and so they were going to enforce a “cure”.

And this is why I feel this is a battle worth fighting. Not because I think you or President-Elect Obama or anyone else should develop an affection for cartoon kiddie porn. But rather because it is not right for my government to be prosecuting its citizens for owning drawings that harm no actual living beings.

I doubt anything I say here is likely to convince you that Handley is being unfairly prosecuted. But when you do argue against this issue, it’s important for you to remember why people like me think it’s important. Not because we approve of what Handley was reading, but rather because we find it dangerous for the government to arrest its citizens for owning “child pornography” that never involved any actual children.

No, I might not want to have a beer with Mr. Handley, but I certainly am not so naive to think that what the government is doing to him could never happen to me. It’s not about whether we approve of any particular genre, it’s about government abuse of power. And if there is any way that the new administration is relevant to this discussion, it’s in the hope that we might just see a little bit less of the latter…

Anyway, hope to see you and any number of tits you’re willing to give here again sometime. Our High School BL story “Tough” might be a bit young for you, but the characters in “Artifice” are all full-on grown-ups, both hunky and sweet. Perhaps we can get you on the side of that.

Find articles like this one interesting and useful? Don’t miss out! Get Yaoi 911â„¢ blog posts emailed right to you — for free!

Learn More!

• Read about the PROTECT Act case that brought this law to mainstream comics attention, the Christopher Handley case in my post How To Keep Manga Fans Out Of Jail!
• Curious about the legal issues facing creators, retailers and publishers who publish work with mature themes? Then read Why Comics Need Age Ratings!
• Want to read reviews of yaoi books that might or might not get your own butt throw into jail? Take a look at our in-depth Yaoi Reviews!
• Interested in creating your own manga designed to piss off The Man? Start with How to Write a Full Comic Book Script and How to Find the Perfect Yaoi Artist for your Graphic Novel!