ALTERNA-TV.COM Interview

I was interviewed by Anthony Letizia of ALTERNA-TV.COM after Pittsburgh Indy Comics Expo 2010 about Webcomics, Webseries, TV and New Media.

Here is a sample:

Carolyn Belefski was an attendee at the PIX Indy Comics Expo and had a broad collection of her work on display, including traditional comic book-style creations as Black Magic Tales and The Legettes. A finalist for the Kim Yale Award for Most Talented Newcomer in the 2010 Lulu Awards, Belefski is also a webcomics practitioner, having taken the comic strip Curls, which she created for the Virginia Commonwealth University school newspaper, onto the Internet shortly after graduation. In many ways she exemplifies the independent spirit and opportunity that the melding of traditional comics and the new webcomic medium represents, and her insights correlate to the webseries just as much as webcomics.

“The Internet allows people to create their own opportunities,” she explains of her decision to utilize the web for her work. “It seems easier to build a fan base now than in the past, especially globally. With webcomics, anyone with access to an Internet connection can read your material. Before the Internet, you’d have to be a published author or artist, usually in the print medium. With the door open (and some motivation) you can publish yourself at a relatively low cost.”

The same can obviously be said of the television industry with its Hollywood insider mentality. The advent of the webseries, coupled with the dropping cost of the equipment needed to film, has opened doors for creative types interested in the television medium who had no previous chance of breaking into the business. The structural difference between television and the webseries, meanwhile—most webseries episodes are significantly shorter than what can be found on the networks—is partially due to the changing nature of the entertainment needs of a more web-savvy audience, just like webcomics.

“Webcomics provide people with quick entertainment and characters they can follow along with,” Belefski explained. “In this era of new media, audiences recognize and support stories that they are interested in. I also think we are living in a time of selective media. People have more choices and avenues to digest how they want their time to be spent on the Internet, therefore traditional media is being pushed aside in favor of fresh webcomics.”

Read the complete "Webcomic Insights for Webseries Practitioners" article here: http://www.alterna-tv.com/news/pix.htm