Interview With ‘Writhe and Shine’ & ‘Overcast With A Chance of DOOM!’ Creator, Robert Tritthardt

Writhe and Shine #273 – ‘Perfect Evening’ art. [Source]

Robert Tritthardt is a creator currently living right here in Seattle, WA. Read through the impressive collections of webcomics he has created, and his wry sense of humor and keen observation of the world is immediately apparent. In addition to his wonderful webcomics (Writhe and Shine and Overcast With A Chance of DOOM!), Robert has also done art for gaming projects (Unhallowed Metropolis and Sinister Dexter). I recently had the chance to catch up with Robert to talk about all his current projects, as well as the innovative new way he is using crowdfunding to help support his creative endeavors.

Comics, and Stuff, and Things: You have not one, but TWO current webcomics (Writhe and Shine and Overcast With A Chance of DOOM!). For the uninitiated, can you tell us a little about these respective projects?

Robert Tritthardt: Writhe and Shine follows a group of friends that work at and run a goth club in New Orleans. It is an honest and heartfelt look at the goth scene from the inside. It is fueled by coffee, cloves, scene politics, bitchy exes, and mule dookie. Writhe and Shine can be described as the bastard lovechild of the TV shows, The Addams Family and Cheers.

Overcast With A Chance of DOOM! is about Doomie, a girl who attempts to flee her past and finds herself living in a haunted house in Seattle. Her four roommates (five if you include the ghost) have a wide range of backgrounds and personalities, but they all able to put up with each other… barely.

You have a great knack for seeing the humor in everyday events and exchanges. Are your characters and stories based on actual people and events, compositions of various people and experiences, complete fiction, or all of the above?

Yes. All of the above, actually. The characters in Writhe and Shine are based on a few friends and myself, while the Chance of DOOM! cast is completely made up. The events in each are things that really happened to me as well as fabricated situations. I think the funnier stuff comes from the real life situations.

Overcast With a Chance of Doom #105 – “Weird Stuff” [Source]

It seems like you put a lot of effort and care into your art. What is your artistic background, and what initially inspired you to start making webcomics?

I only drew a little bit while I was growing up, but wasn’t encouraged enough or didn’t have the right peers that would have gotten me more into doing it regularly. Either that or I was just lazy. Maybe it’s a combination of all three. I was okay in high school art classes and found that the only courses I enjoyed in community college were Painting and Drawing. From a young age I collected MAD and The Savage Sword of Conan magazines. I was always fascinated by Dungeons & Dragons illustrations as well as other role-playing games. After a couple of years of working in restaurants and factories, I told myself that I wanted to paint for D&D. I earned my degree in Illustration from NIU, where I drew a comic strip for the daily campus newspaper. After I graduated, I moved to New Orleans and missed doing my strip so much that I started Writhe and Shine. I didn’t make them specifically for the web, mainly because the internet was just starting to catch on and I didn’t have an actual computer at that point. A friend of mine out in California urged me to send him photocopies of my strips so that he could put them up on his website along with some other comic artists. That’s where it all started

If I understand correctly, at one point you decided to take a break from making comics? What made you decide to start back up again?

Yeah. I took a really long break, unfortunately. Making comics didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere, so I stopped and focused my time on doing illustrations for role-playing games. I hadn’t been doing any of that since college for the same reasons I didn’t draw much when I was growing up: lack of encouragement, lack of peers, laziness. After a while, I realized that I didn’t know how to market myself, didn’t have a good portfolio, didn’t have work that anyone really wanted or could use, etc. I was asked to do some work for a local game called Unhallowed Metropolis, and that was cool while it lasted.

Stunning “Coffin Man” art for the Unhallowed Metropolis RPG. [Source]

Then there was a period of doing nothing at all, just standard 9-5 work. That was a bad time for me artistically. I nearly let my webcomic domain name go, but for some reason I kept it. After a couple years, I just felt like doing something again and that’s when I started Overcast With A Chance of DOOM! In order to gain back all the followers I lost in my absence, I started releasing all the old Writhe and Shine strips again and driving some attention to my new series. All of this helped build my momentum and in April 2013, I picked up right where I left off with some new Writhe and Shine strips.

It takes a ridiculous amount of time and effort to make comics.

Yes, it does… Unless, for some reason, you’ve got a knack for writing stuff that people find freakin’ hilarious. It doesn’t matter if you know how to draw AT ALL. Just stick a pen in your ass, wiggle it around on a piece of paper a bit, and voilà! You’ve got a hit webcomic! I’m not saying that my drawings are better than anyone else’s, or that my writing should even be considered “good.” I’m just upset that, no matter how much effort I put into my work, no matter how many times I write and rewrite, draw, and redraw, there’s always going to be someone out there that will make them better than me, faster than me, and make a whole hell of a lot more money at it. I don’t know. I think there is some sort of weird mathematical equation that I can’t wrap my head around. The more effort I put into something, the less people seem to value it. Some of the webcomics out there today don’t seem like any effort was put into them, yet they’re insanely popular. Or, maybe my comics just suck. I don’t know.  Do I sound bitter?

The world of comics can indeed be a fickle and harsh mistress. I’ve seen webcomics that utilize “donate” buttons on the websites, or even Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns to help pay the bills. You are using a slightly different crowdfunding method to help fund your creations. Can you please tell us about that and how it is working out so far?

Patreon has got this really great concept. Instead of raising a ton of cash for a really big project like Kickstarter, it’s more of a pledge system. Someone can pledge to give me a certain amount for every comic strip I post, say $1. At the end of the month, the transaction is made depending on how many strips I made. Patrons can put a cap on their amount if they’re worried that I’m going to start posting every day, or they can pledge more if they want some of my higher rewards. I’m offering a few things right now like being able to see the strip a day before it’s posted and access to the strip I did in college to having prints and actual sketches from the strips mailed to their house.

As of this moment, I am only in the third week of crowd funding at Patreon. I’ve got 24 patrons for a total of $59 per comic strip. I’d say that’s pretty good seeing as I launched at probably the worst time of year, Christmas. I wish I would have had not lost my fan base when I took my extended break. I’d probably have a lot more support at this point. Running this campaign is like a full time job. It’s tough to do this and make the comics at the same time. I don’t really know the first thing about marketing and promotions, but I’m learning more day by day. Sooner or later I’m going to stop begging my friends to share my comics and tell their friends that the strips are being posted again. Sooner or later, the people that read my strips 10 years ago will come back. Sooner or later, I’ll be making better and better strips and I won’t HAVE to drag people kicking and screaming to the sites. All I can do is hope that the amount of patrons I have grows larger so that I can pay my bills without having to get a full or part-time job.

In addition to your work on Writhe and Shine and Overcast With A Chance of DOOM!, you are also the artist on an indie game? Can you tell us a little about that project?

Absolutely. I’m currently the primary artist on a mobile game called Sinister Dexter. Not too many details have been announced yet, but it’s a turn-based strategy game of dueling wizards set in a medieval fantasy world. Over the past six months I’ve collaborated with one other artist to contribute concept and final art for characters, UI, and icons. Some early examples are here.

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I look forward to checking it out, as well as continuing to enjoy your webcomics. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and providing such thoughtful answers!

Please be sure to check out Robert’s webcomics, and help to spread the good word. You can find his Patreon page here, and find him around all around the web on the usual places: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, deviantART, and Instagram.