Originally from http://www.camelliasoftware.com/xcentrikz/newsmessenger.htm

Interview with Meg Koss on her great fantasy creation…

Messenger, the webcomic!

October 8, 2009

Meg Koss from Messenger approached me for an interview, hope you like it. Not only is Meg artistically talented and an imaginative storyteller, but she’s ALSO really friendly and a lot of fun to talk with! Please view this unusually illustrated fantasy/scifi creation… ENJOY!

— Eliza Schreiber

Eliza from The Xcentrikz Team: Thank you so much for the interview Meg! Do tell everybody a bit about your scifi/fantasy comic, I’d like to encourage people to view it.

Meg: My comic is a story that takes place sometime in Earth’s distant future, and is told in a non-linear format. Things have gotten kind of dystopian and survival is everyone’s top priority. The story begins with a teenage girl, Akiara Kenakobe, waking up from a nightmare about her dead best friend. We quickly learn that she’s part of a particularly aggressive tribal group of survivors, and that’s the way that most people live in this time. As her story continues, she decides to leave that life behind and strike out on her own. At the same time, the next chapter picks up with a group of genetically engineered creatures called “Chios” who appear to be living in a desert settlement. This part of the story focuses on two young Chios called Eldora and Finnegan, who are quickly thrown into a panic about their own immediate survival. All of the characters must figure out their own future by coming to understand Earth’s long-forgotten past. Each chapter of the comic focuses
on one character’s storyline, and they alternate by chapter, so the clues are slowly coming together about how all of these people are related. The story starts kind of in the middle of things, and branches out in every direction at once, so it’s up to the reader to piece things together.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Wow, you really know how to tell an in-depth story. Cool. So tell me about your early days doing illustration work. Did you do comics before this one? Has your work changed much, since you started?

Meg: Well, I got started with this comic during my first year of art school. Before that, I had done silly little comics for friends or for fun in high school, but never anything serious or ongoing. I had toyed with the idea of doing a webcomic for a while, and started working on it the first weekend I moved into the dorms since my school was out in the middle of nowhere and there wasn’t a lot to do for fun. (Cow tipping, anyone?)

My work has changed pretty vastly since then. I started out trying to get a feel for doing comics in general, so I was trying to tell a story and figure out my own style at the same time. It was a rough start.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What particular events led up to starting Messenger?

Meg: I blame peer pressure! A bunch of my friends either already had their own comics going or had recently started, and I felt left out. So I took a story I had already been working on and decided to try making it into a comic.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What do you think about the way Messenger has evolved and grown since it started?

Meg: The comic has really evolved a LOT since I first started. Back then I was still in a phase where I was trying to find “my style,” so things were really inconsistent. I went through a lot of materials and ideas before it really settled into any one distinct style. I was pretty new to putting art online back then, and got all kinds of bad feedback (because it was really bad, really!) which made me feel kind of foolish for a while. I kept at it though, and I’m glad, because I’ve really learned a lot by experimenting with it. I’m sure it will continue to change, and I’m glad for that. I like looking back a chapter or two and watching my own work evolve.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What was it like early on to publicize Messenger and get the word out? Do you still work hard at advertising, or are you satisfied with the existing reader base?

Meg: Early on I mostly just posted new pages to places like DeviantArt because that’s what all my friends were doing, and eventually I built it its own website. At the time my friends and I exchanged links with each other and that’s how I first got the word out. I also listed the comic on voting sites like TopWebcomics and Onlinecomics.net. Lately I’ve been using things like Project Wonderful for ads, which is really great. It makes it really simple to get ads to all kinds of people, at any budget. For the most part, though, I’m pretty passive about advertising. I’d like to have more readers, but I can’t really complain. It seems that you get what you put in with promoting, and I haven’t had a chance to really dig into it yet.

THE XCENTRIKZ: If you could travel in time to change something in your artistic career, and thus affect its future… What would you attempt?

Meg: That’s a tricky question… I think I’d just go back to the beginning and force myself to just play more instead of trying to grasp new things as I went along. Experimentation really goes a long way, and I feel like I should have done more early on.

THE XCENTRIKZ: What are your favorite parts about doing comics?

Meg: I love trying to translate a story into pictures. It’s a really great feeling when people start to get into the story and try to speculate about what’s coming next. I always want to spill the beans, but then all the work I’ve put into the new pages would just go to waste!

THE XCENTRIKZ: Do you have a favorite character you created? Have there been characters that you were disappointed with at all? And lastly, do any of the characters remind you of yourself; and why or why not?

Meg: Right now my favorite character would have to be Eldora. Her story is much more fun to work on because she can be very expressive and she has a lot of energy and movement. I’m not sure if disappointed is the right word, but I feel like I’ve had trouble making Akiara “make sense.” She’s not supposed to be very talkative (yet) so it can be hard to move her story along despite the fact that she’s such a central character, but it has started to pick up a bit recently. Everyone loves the Chios because they’re so lively, but Akiara has an interesting backstory, too! The only character who reminds me of myself is one who hasn’t appeared just yet! Her name is Nicky. She’s pretty upbeat and positive, which is something I usually try to be. She also likes to cook, but that’s about where our similarities end.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Fun. So what do your friends and family think of Messenger? Do they give you ideas that you use?

Meg: Most of my family aren’t big scifi people, so I don’t really push it onto them. (They’re always supportive of all my creative projects, though!) Waaay back when I first started writing the story that would eventually become Messenger, I showed it to one of my best friends at the time, who was very encouraging. It’s strange how things work out, because now we’re married and I’m always bouncing things off him while I’m working out ideas, since he basically knows the whole story anyway!

THE XCENTRIKZ: Is there something you really can’t stand doing for Messenger?

Meg: There isn’t much that I don’t like, really. Okay, maybe erasing all my pencil marks when I clean up the pages can be a little annoying. It’s all pretty fun.

THE XCENTRIKZ: That’s good. Doing cartooning can be super fun. Many web-comics are for free, so it can be really difficult for some authors to make serious living out of it. How do you feel about this, is it more a hobby for you, or…?

Meg: I think it’s great when people can manage to make a living off their comics. It’s really awesome to be able to get paid to do something you love. For me, at least for now, it’s just a hobby. I do have a book in the works that’s going to be available soon, but I’m really just doing all this for fun and anything beyond that is a bonus! I love telling stories, and it feels good to be able to share one through my comic.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Tell us a bit about your personal life, college, and what you like to do for fun! And how did you get the fun nickname ‘bug’?

Meg: I just got married this summer, which is pretty exciting! I also just graduated at the beginning of summer with a degree in Communication Design, which is basically a really broad term for graphic and web design and stuff like that. For now I’m running my own design business, but there are so many things I can do with what I’ve learned that who knows where I’ll be in a few years. Drawing comics is one of the things I do for fun, but I’m also a huge video game nerd and I really like to cook! I also really love to travel.

My nickname comes from “Bugbyte,” which has been my internet handle for pretty much as far back as I can remember. I can’t remember how I came up with it originally, but it just stuck. People just started calling me “Bug” for short, and those who know me especially well refer to me as “Buggy.”

THE XCENTRIKZ: Congrats on the wedding! Well… If you could be one of your characters for a day, who would you be and what would you do? Why?

Meg: Probably Nekos, since it would would be really fun to appear and disappear at will, along with some of his other powers I can’t really talk about just yet. 😉

THE XCENTRIKZ: Tell everyone about the various mediums you use to create the comic. It gives it a really unique look!

Meg: Thanks! I generally use Prismacolor or similar art markers to color the characters, and watercolors for background washes, but the most recent chapter I’ve been putting up is all done in watercolor since it’s a flashback and it gives it that kind of wavery, dreamy effect. After I scan the pages, I play around with levels and colors in Photoshop. You can do a lot of really neat things by manipulating watercolors digitally! Some of the earlier pages use other media like colored pencils, but they were just too inconsistent and time consuming to do on a weekly basis.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Nice… If you suddenly had one Magic Genie wish to use on Messenger, what would you wish for?

Meg: I think I would wish to turn it into a movie. It would be really fun to work with a bunch of people to put something like that together.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Any thoughts or predictions, on the future of comics, and their place on the quickly-evolving internet?

Meg: One of the great things about the internet is that it’s very easy for anyone to publish their own work, so I suspect that the future of comics (like other print media) is definitely digital. Online stores like iTunes and gadgets like the Kindle make it easy to get your hands on all kinds of music and books. Personally, I’ll always be a fan of printed material, but we’re living in a digital society now, so the majority rules, I guess.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Where would you like to see Messenger in 1 year? …5 years? Anything you’re hoping to improve with it?

Meg: One year from now, I hope that I’ll still be doing regular updates! It was really tough to keep up with during school, and I wound up taking more than a few long breaks, but now that I don’t have to deal with homework all the time it’s much easier and I’ve built up enough of a buffer to keep me going for quite a while. Five years from now I hope it will be finished, or close to it! I have a definite ending in mind and a pretty good idea of where the story is going between now and then. I’ve already been working on it for five years, so I can’t really imagine working on it for ten! But if that’s what it takes, so be it! I just really hope to learn as much as I can about working with different materials, and drawing, and promoting. It’s all an interesting experience.

THE XCENTRIKZ: Anything else to share? Perhaps a hint on what will happen next in Messenger …???!

Meg: Things are about to change drastically for Akiara!

THE XCENTRIKZ: Great. Well…. It’s so cool of you to take the time to do this interview Meg, so thanks again. And thanks for bringing your fun creation to the comic world! Best wishes to you. Hey everybody, please check out MESSENGER…

Meg: Thanks to you, too! It’s been fun!