EVACOMICS BLOG

After relentless whining about the lack of support for artists and my expensive monthly medical fees, a friend decided to pledge and encouraged me to finish my second book earlier. And because it was my birthday month, a fan increased her pledge to $10 for this month only, hence for the first time in more than a year, I finally reached the goal of US$600/month!!! ＼(≧▽≦)丿♪ ＼(≧▽≦)丿♪ ＼(≧▽≦)丿♪  But after one day, a fan lowered his pledge for June... ... anyway, at least all patrons are still around!!! It has not been easy and many times I was disappointed because although I have 96,000 likes on FB  and 5,400 followers on Instagram, I have less than 60 patrons supporting me. Which made me wonder WHY??? Sometimes I post about my disappointment on FB, but I would get random readers telling me to stop posting such demoralising posts, so I only post my comics nowadays... #supportlocal ? When my first book was published in 2014, I had around 48,000 likes but sales was slow. I h

It was a privilege to share my experience about the magazine infringement case with students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Law. The panel of speakers included Doanh Nguyen, who is their alumni and legal specialist who helped me in the infringement case.  You can recap what happened here.

I was approached by a company founded in Singapore last year called Blokko, to design a toy from my Evacomics series. The portal aims to matchmake creators and 3D modellers to make toys that will be 3D printed, while payment and shipment will be all handled by their partners and we get a cut from sales. I was told that the first modeller they found did not do a good job of my hair so they found another modeller for me called Rachel Collier , a professional 3D artist based in the US, who did a pretty good 3D rendering of my design. Of course, I was skeptical at the quality of 3D printing at first because the 3D printed stuff that I had seen so far were no where near a decent level. But when they showed me the toys they tested out with their vendor, I was surprised that it was actually quite decent. Unlike those mass-produced vinyl toys that has flawless smooth surface, these 3D printed toys have a rough sandy texture to it that makes them feel handmade. The final toy you w

There was a publication on Tuoi Tre, which I was told is one of the biggest daily newspaper for youth in Vietnam this morning. Here is a quick translation by Doanh Nguyen from  Vietnam IPR Infringement  to update my readers: ------------------------------------- Foreign author requests Muc Tim magazine to compensate 2,300 USD. http://tuoitre.vn/tin/van-hoa-giai-tri/tac-gia-nuoc-ngoai-de-nghi-bao-muc-tim-phai-boi-thuong-2300-usd/991168.html Surrounding a series of incidents where comics on Muc Tim magazine was found to be originated from a foreign author's work made online community tumultuous. On Oct 25, talking with Tuoi Tre, Mr. Nguyen Khac Cuong – Muc Tim’s Chief Editor, said that after he was informed of this incident, Muc Tim magazine found that these comics have been sent from a reader collaborator for a comics corner of an entertainment sector in Muc Tim. Muc Tim magazine discussed with the author Evangeline Neo, and then cut off royalties to that reader and tr

This is the Vietnamese version of my original article: " Vietnamese teenage magazine: Muc Tim stole Evacomics artwork and refused to admit ". Thanks to Doanh Nguyen for the translation! Tôi đã được thông báo vào ngày 4/9 bởi một người hâm mộ ở Việt Nam, người này muốn xác nhận với tôi xem tôi có cho phép tạp chí có tên là “Mực Tím” sử dụng các tác phẩm truyện tranh của tôi vì đã thấy chúng trên vài số báo. Tôi đã sốc và trả lời là không. Bởi vì tôi không hiểu tiếng Việt, tôi đã đăng việc này lên trang facebook (như hình ở trên) để tìm kiếm sự giúp đỡ cho việc liên hệ với nhà xuất bản nhằm giải quyết vấn đề này. Sau khi nhiều người hâm mộ “tấn công” trang facebook của họ, họ đã buộc phải trả lời tôi vào ngày hôm sau bằng một tài khoản gmail miễn phí từ một người không rõ chức vụ nói rằng đó là một sự cố kỹ thuật và sếp của họ thì đang đi nghỉ mát…. Luật sư bạn tôi nói với tôi rằng việc đó không đúng luật và tôi nên yêu cầu Tổng biên tập của họ phải liên lạc với tôi

I was alerted on 4 September from a fan in Vietnam, who wanted to verify with me if I had given permission for this magazine called "Muc Tim" to use my comics because they had been appearing for several issues. I was shocked and replied no. Because I don't understand any Vietnamese, I posted the above on my Facebook page to seek help to contact the publisher to settle this issue. After fans bombarded their FB page, they were forced to reply me the next day with a gmail account from someone with an unknown job title saying it was a technical mistake and their head is on vacation ... My lawyer friend told me it doesn't look right and I should demand their editor contact me through a proper company email. So I requested and their editor contacted me to ask for my bank account information to transfer my royalty and said they will also publish an apology on issue #37. I gave them my account number and asked how much they will be paying. At the same time, fans were

Sorry for the lack of updates this past month! I was paralysed by the selling of the cats... I had to reply tons of emails, messages, comments all over my many social media channels (FB, Instagram. Blog, Patreon), coordinating transport from warehouse to temporary holding then to my house and shop, labelling, packing and mailing the cats, etc. etc. There was simply no free time at all to draw new comics and I learnt: Despite me posting several times on FB and Instagram to ask people to buy, nothing beats a good story about how difficult it is to make them.  After posting this article: " Why Matcha cat cushions were so difficult to make ", sales soared and I sold around 150 cats compared to only 30 or so initially... Other things I also learnt selling online: Don't use bank transfer if a flood of orders come in because people don't put their initials when they make payment. Therefore it is difficult to cross-reference which payment is paid by who. Also sp

It wasn't easy to clear 100 cat cushions last year. I sold through my homepage, during my talks and I rented booths at conventions. The books were freakin heavy and the cats were freakin bulky. You combine the two and it's a seller's worst nightmare. Finally after 3 months of struggle, it  was finally sold out  during Anime Festival Asia in December. ...and I thought my nightmare was over... But whenever I take Matcha (yes that is the name of my cat) out to conventions, people kept asking for it. Strange that: When I have plenty of stock, people don't want to buy. When I have no stock, people want to buy. WAT DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

With nothing to sell this year, I went to Singapore Toy Game and Comics Convention, aka STGCC 2015 (12-13 Sep) as a media visitor to check out the exhibits, the artist alley and crowd. One-day pass costs $19 and two-day pass costs $28 , increased from $25 last year. Kids below 5 can enjoy free admission on Sat and kids below 12 can enjoy free admission on Sunday. Unfortunately this information was not well conveyed as many people I spoke to did not know about this.

With my last bit of time before flying off, I went to visit Elex Media, my publisher, which was located 30mins away from the hotel (with jam included). From left: Rena my future editor, Intan my promoter, Whindy my managing editor in charge of liaising with me. The only publisher that I visited before was Chuang Yi, back in 1997 during their prime. They closed down last year, probably due to decreasing sales and high production cost in Singapore. I remember their office was very small and had less than 8 people in the office. So visiting a much bigger publisher was an eye opener.

Thanks to Draw Slowly and Mark Koh , I was able to share booth with them to Popcon Asia!

Work began in April after persistent requests from fans to do LINE stickers. I first did a focus group on  Patreon  to gather feedback and Kurone Shizuhi, a very hardcore LINE user, suggested the most changes (Thank you Shizuhi, Reventon and Jerome!) After finalising the chosen 40 stickers, I inked it and sent it to my assistant to colour. Then it was returned to me a week later and I continued to clean up the lines and tweak the colours for another week or so (on and off). I finally submitted on 18th May excitedly and announced on my Instagram:

Contrary to what one might believe, we artists like anybody else, need to eat and drink to survive (FYI, water in Singapore is pretty expensive too). So I post commissioned comics on my FB from time to time but sometimes readers just can't tell that they are commissioned work (i.e. we work with what clients want). If you come to think of it, it's not possible to survive by posting 100% free webcomics all the time right?

I was invited by the Japanese Association of Singapore to share my comics to Japanese expatriates living in Singapore to help them adjust to their new life here.

I met this young student at ITE Central during my presentation with Wacom this morning. He was very enthusiastically taking photos before my talk so I thought he was the student photographer. Later on, he even volunteered to be drawn into a comic character for my live 15mins demo (seen above). After my presentation, he asked very politely if I have time to talk. Seeing that he was holding a few notebooks in hand, I figured that he must be an aspiring comic artist and wanted to ask me some questions on how to draw or how to make it in the "industry" (it's in quotes because I don't think we have a substantial local comic industry to talk about). So we chatted a while and he showed me his comics that he did some time ago as well as some recent work too. I could see a huge improvement but he credited that to a manga-drawing course that he was attending. His passion reminded me of the time when I was just a student who did not care whether or not my drawings could earn

After my Mr. Lee Kuan Yew tribute drawing went viral last month (with around 828,000 people reached, 31,000 likes and 3,500 shares), I was contacted to appear on Channel 8 news because they wanted to do a feature about the social media response towards Mr. Lee's passing.

This was my second trip down to KL to meet my fans and this time was organised by MPH Distributors ( first trip was Comic Fiesta ). I was extremely impressed on how they marketed my event by connecting me to as many major press (theSun, New Straits Times and theStar) as possible and getting materials for the bookstores to promote my book signing.

The problem: I believe many of you had read my article about the problems faced in self-publishing in Singapore . It is very time-consuming to market and sell your books and the little profits is insufficient to sustain a living in this country. So I had been doing freelancing but this means less time to update comics for my readers as well as to start book 2, which will be all new content! What is Patreon? In case, you are wondering if Patreon is a reliable and a legitimate company, they already received over 17 million in funding from investors . Many well-known youtubers and some webcomic artists like Zach Weiner are also already on that platform. Benefits of supporting me on Patreon In order to work on book 2 and more comics, I will be cutting down my replies across all of my social media channels like FB, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Youtube. However as a patron of my webcomics, you will get my utmost attention and tentative replies! Depending on the amount pledged,

Do you know that I was rejected by American publishers, Japanese publishers, Taiwanese and even Singaporean publishers? Of course only 7-8 rejects is not a lot compared to 100 rejects from some diehard cartoonists. Even when I had 25K likes on Facebook back then, nobody had faith in me that my books, which were quite niche, would sell. Fortunately when I was about to give up, I was introduced to my lovely investor in the Singapore Makers community , who believed in my work. So we paid a publisher to self-publish because no other publishers would want to publish my work. There was one exception, however, with a Malaysian publisher who offered me a contract for the first time in my life! But the condition was that my captions had to be changed to "Malaysia" instead of Singapore... Because my journey had not been an easy one, I would like to share some of the things I learnt with other authors or artists who are thinking of doing self-publishing as well.

Thanks to my brother, I finally have an android app that grabs content from both my blog and website so you can easily access all the latest comics, blog articles and news about my public events in one place!