I got interviewed! XD

I decided to translate this:

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Comicnoobs: Fun on the line

Everytime Leo Roque and Felipe Cartin met each other on messenger, it wasn't to chat, but to have a battle... with drawings.

"We drew ourselves and put little faces, at the end we always had a duel", says Cartin.

"Everything was a response attacking the drawing Felipe made. That's when I said 'we're losing our time, let's publish this so that someone else can see it'", recalls Leo.

That's how on April of this year, the idea of making a webcomic in English called Comicnoobs was born.

This pair of 25 year old guys are the theme of our weekly entry "The + bugs of the web", where the illustrator Monfa and the radio line Radio Malpais were once before.

Newbies, so what?

They didn't know how to make comics but decided that they would do this project anyways, that's why they called it Comicnoobs, because the term "newbie" in English means beginner. But that didn't hinder them from investigating and be on par of what's happening in the field of their interest.

"We always were looking for references of other comics so that we wouldn't repeat the same old jokes. There are a lot of people that criticize movies or videogames that just came out, thus we tried to avoid those topics or tackling them from another point of view", says Felipe.

Furthermore, every week they took two comics made by others to analize them: "we note what we didn't like, what worked, if its the art or the character's expression", says Leo.

Both of them have internet experience. Roque has developed web pages before, that's what made them say "we can start now with the website and do whatever we want", while some time before, Felipe had a game project that was being developed "with people online where we displayed updates", recalls the young man.

Very exaggerated

The guys guarantee that in their creation, their characters and situations "are ourselves exaggerated to the limit, if we didn't have the hinderances of society", explains Leo.

While Felipe adds that every story that is told there have reference with their real lives.

These cerators make and want to have at least a story per week, the process lasts around four to five hours and they meet in person to plan it.

Ideas come from both of them. Leo works on the script and Felipe with the drawings, however Leo sometimes works on them too.

The guys confirm that the internet surfers can find fun and a forum on their website: "so that they can ask us why did we take too long (publishing another comic)", says Leo jokingly.

The interatcion with the public is very important for these guys as they can take constructive criticism from these people to improve on their comics.

In English

The sketches that these guys make are in English, they made this decition until after they analized they people they wanted to target.

"The entity in which we move are forums, videogame websites, and comics which are written in this language. We wanted to target a more wide audiencem if we focused only in Costa Rica our jokes would be only from here and those who read them from the outside world wouldn't understand them", explains Leo.

Felipe also shows confidence that on doing this they would target people from Europe, the U.S. and Japan, just to give out a couple examples.

The characters that appear on the comics are the same throughout, and there's always a trama behind them, but that doesn't neccessarily imply that you have to read them in series to understand them individually.

Win, win

Leo and Felipe work full time and without a doubt, one of their main concerns that they have for their comic is finding the time needed to develop them.

Even after having this in mind they still make plans because they want their website to grow and above all keep making a comic per week. "It's not that we just want to gain publicity and money with our comic, what motivates us is our creation", confirms Leo.

These guys have clear in mind that they still are on a learning process. "Sometimes we want to make two jokes and blend them, but they were ununderstandable", recalls Felipe, that's why the feedback they've gotten from the community has been very useful.

But that's only if they find good people to criticize them as their goal is to improve. With time they have learned that the more easy the idea is, the easier it is to develop it. Their stories are fed by daily life routine.

In the future, this pair of young guys hope that their website will start to pay them off their time and dedication, in other words, some earnings.

They have also started to think on developing products with their comic characters on them and have evaluated the possibility of even making a videogame, but that will only come with time.

In the meantime they just limit themselves to telling others: "we decided to launch and promote ourselves so that others can have a chance to do the same thing", says Leo.