NO PLAIN TATTOO
CASINO ROYALE
WHO ARE THESE GUYS?
MORE THAN SKIN DEEP
BANKER’S HOURS
OPEN PALMS
THE ARTISTS
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS?

CASINO ROYALE
The Palms Casino, made famous by MTV’s Real World, is now home to the Hart & Harrington Tattoo Company. The shop opened on February 25th with performances by Good Charlotte and Mix Master Mike of the Beastie Boys. The event was earmarked by a fashion show featuring designs from Jaime Pressly. This is the first time a Las Vegas casino has housed a tattoo parlor and is the first official location of Hart & Huntington.

WHO ARE THESE GUYS?
Who are Hart & Huntington anyway? Well the idea falls to a masterminding venture with Palms owner, George Maloof and a couple guys with the last names of Hart and Huntington. Carey Hart is an extreme sports freestyle motocross legend and John Huntington is one of the country’s premier nightclub promoters. Huntington is responsible for creating big parties, including two of the largest in the country – Club Rubber and the Pimp ?n Ho Costume Ball.

MORE THAN SKIN DEEP
Behind the scenes, the tattoo company has three state-of-the-art tattoo stations. Guests are free to choose from the “flash” (pre-drawn artwork on the walls) or they can customize their own designs to fit their personalities. A private guest station for VIPs is also available. The entire place feels like a lounge complete with antique leather-covered walls, a custom surround sound stereo system and luxurious seating. Djs are regularly featured in the shop as are some of the countries premier tattoo artists.

BANKER’S HOURS
Casino banker’s hours that is. You can get a Hart & Huntington tat between the hours of noon and midnight Sunday through Wednesday. Noon and 3 AM, Thursday through Saturday.

OPEN PALMS
The Palms Casino is heralded as one of Las Vegas? hippest resorts. A 95,000 square foot casino, spa, salon and 14-theatre Cineplex are just part of the $265 million dollar resort. A lavish, “Mad Max – Beyond Thunderdome” styled night club dubbed, Rain in the Desert or just Rain for those in the know, boasts a dance floor with shooting fire. The Skin Pool Lounge gives you more than one reason to take a break from the gambling and the Ghostbar on the roof will give you the swankiest view Las Vegas has to offer.

QUIVERING HANDS WANT TO KNOW: THE TAT ARTISTS AS FOLLOWS?
THOMAS PENDELTON
At the ripe age of 20, Thomas Pendelton began an apprenticeship with the world famous, Bert Grimm?s tattoo parlor under the wing of well known artist, Rick Walters. From their he as worked in several of the most popular and respected shops in the industry, including – Kari Barba’s Outer Limits and Erick Maaske’s Classic Tattoo.

BEN CORN
Ben Corn has been doing this for more than seven years now, he got his start apprenticing with Roger Blankenship at Almost Brothers Tattoo shop. Since then he has been with Big Bear Tattoo and Body Graphics. He specializes in bold Japanese tattoos and has had the privilege of tattooing several celebrities and professional athletes with taste for his style.

CLARK NORTH
Clark has been through some tough times during his career, in the space of about three weeks his mother passed away and he lost his left eye. Emerging from the trauma with gray hair he is now continuing his life long art of decorating the body’s largest organism with intricate style and design.

BIG E
Eric Pele is Big E. He’s known for his bold tattoos, both in color and black and grey. His ready made designs, known as “flash” are extremely popular choices. His melting Superman logo is sure to gain you some attention. If you’re looking for something cool, then Big E is your guy.

“Art is a very personal thing. It’s ultimately up to each individual to express his or her personality on their body, I just help bring what’s in someone’s mind out for the world to see!” – Eric Pele

DEJAH NOT A DJ
Dejah studied with Jason Grant at Trust Tattoo in Arizona and has been at this for over half a decade. She’s worked for O.C. Ink, Sick & Twisted and Skinworks. Certified to do permanent cosmetics under Susan Church, Dejah is also a master in color and realism with her work.

LACEY
Even though her mother and grandmother are both artists, 28 year old Lacey came into tattooing more from the lifestyle cultural angle. It was a kind of retaliation and liberation from her stodgy upbringing in a small Utah town. For her tattooing is a creative and holistic endeavor. As she says, “A blending of some physical pain with the desire of your soul to be permanently marked, along with some mental control, makes you feel very alive”.

INK?D
AE now runs a hidden camera at the shop, called “Ink’d”. A reality show that records conversations between the customers and artists as well as documenting the ongoing dramas with the staff operating Hart & Harrington Tattoo Company.

To read more articles by Chad, visit the American Pop Culture Encyclopedia at: American Pop Culture Encyclopedia.

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Have you loved performing magic tricks in front of your friends ever since you were a kid? Can you wow people with your on-target Tarot readings? Tie balloons into wonderful animal shapes? You may have what it takes to be a party entertainer and earn a nice side or even a primary income.

Part I will describe what it takes to be a party entertainer. Part II will describe how to break in and earn an income from it.

Parties and special events are all around us. At some family occasions such as a
graduations, weddings or special birthday parties, you’ll be helping people celebrate a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Plus you’ll meet people from all walks of life – including some of the kindest, most generous people in the world.

Because party entertainment demands a high level of skill, performers are generally well compensated.

Party hosts and event planners are always on the lookout for well-executed
entertainment to make the occasions lively and festive.

So what do you need?

Topnotch skills in your specialty

Good, competent performers have spent years honing their talent and skill. If you
aren’t quite ready, study, take classes, and practice.

Many specialties such as balloonists, magicians, caricaturists, clowns, etc., have
their own trade associations. Go to their meetings and conventions. You’ll soak up a
great deal of knowledge and make some great connections.

Excellent interpersonal skills

Party entertainers deal with people from all walks of life. You’ll find yourself
performing in settings ranging from black-tie to casual. Expect to meet some truly
interesting and wonderful people.

Sooner or later, challenging circumstances and people will cross your path. You
have to remain cool and professional whether you are handling a difficult child, an
overanxious host, or an adult who has had too much to drink. And you must be
flexible enough to deal with a sudden downpour at an outdoor event.

Professionalism

If you commit to a date, you must show up on time and ready to perform.

People are counting on you: even if you are tired, even if the weather is lousy, or someone just offered you a hard-to-get ticket to a great concert.

And while you’re at it, you must be neat, clean and appropriately costumed or dressed.

The special events and party entertainment community is a small world. Your professionalism, or lack of it, is noticed and remembered.

Give up your weekends

As a performer you work when people party. So most of your gigs will be on weekends, evenings, and holidays.

That’s great if you’re looking for a side income to complement your day job. But it’s difficult if you value a traditional social life.

Are you still ready to take the plunge? Read Part II to find out how to break in and get started.

About the author

Ellen M. Zucker has performed at parties for over 10 years. Her company, Faces & Fortunes, provides caricature artists and fortunetellers to entertain at special events all over Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley region. For more information, visit http://www.facesandfortunes.com

Her sister site, http://www.faces-and-fortunes-partytips.com contains tips, interviews, and advice on putting your event together from the professionals who make parties and special events happen.

Syndicated comic authors have been complaining about newspaper size restrictions, content censoring and similar issues for a long time. Comic enthusiasts have been increasingly irritated by the treatment their entertainment medium receives as well. Then along came the Internet, providing unlimited and unrestricted distribution possibilities. Thus the webcomic was born.

There are millions of webcomics out there, dealing with such vast topics as video games, college life, samurai, Lego men, identity and self esteem, depression, suicide, children and joy. People write them for a living, for fun, as stress relief, for artistic expression, or often just for the hell of it. Then they stick their creations on the web and hope that just one more person will find and enjoy the fruits of their labour.

There seem to be several hundred new comics created each and every day. These often dwindle and fade after only a few months. Occasionally, however, a comic rises above the rest and gains such popularity that the creator is able to forgo all other work and scrape a living solely off the proceeds generated by their websites. Some examples of such are Penny-Arcade, PvP, CtrlAltDel and Squidi.net.

Many people, when introduced to the world of webcomics, think to themselves “Wouldn’t it be cool to have my own comic?” and a few go beyond this and create their own. So how can a newcomer ensure that their comic continues beyond the first few weeks of enthusiasm?

Now before I go into some useful tips it is probably worth noting that I am the proud owner of a failed webcomic. It went for a few months before hitting a few snags and then grinding into the ground. I have plans to return to creating the comics, but as of yet have not. So I’m not really drawing from a foundation of success, more of failure and an understanding of some of the main factors contributing to my failure.

For starters, you’re going to need to plan a little. It’s unfortunate, unfair and certainly not fun, but it is necessary. Sit down and think about your comic. Come up with a location setting, some characters and maybe even a few plots to test them in. Run the characters through some adventures and see how they react and how you react to them. Your characters will grow and change throughout this process, and continue to do so throughout the life of your comic but you need to get a handle on their basic character traits.

For some reason the majority of comics revolve around a group of people (usually guys) that are somewhat geeky and live together. Usually in a university dorm. I would imagine that this is because that’s the general life of the majority of webcomic authors. The premise itself also makes an awful lot of sense for the basis of a comic. When designing my own webcomic the process went a little something like this: I designed the main characters, most of which were drawings that I had been playing with since high school. Then I needed a reason for them to constantly see each other and interact, so I got them living together. They needed character traits that I could relate to, so they become university-aged students that had at least a passing interest in the geeky side of life.

I drew my first few strips and showed them to some friends, who liked them, so started looking into putting them online. The initial line up included two guys who lived together, a female love interest for one of the characters and a talking animal (in my case a frog, because I had this frog that I’d been drawing for years and had become quite attached to him).

At this point I wasn’t very experienced with webcomics, having only really read the syndicated newspaper comics that the syndicated press companies post online. So I started looking through some of the major comics, only to find that Sluggy Freelance had the talking animals, geeky guys that lived together and female love interest already covered. A bit more research revealed that the “university students living together” was covered in the large majority of comics. Furthermore, having a kind of wacky (and just a little stupid) character, and a more sensible and reserved one was practically a given. Then, to rub salt in the wound, I found that another comic had its main character design very similar to my own. So I got rid of the frog, removed the focus on gaming and university and otherwise left the comic as it was. Not entirely original.

Anyway, the point is that you should probably try to be more original. Check through your concept and remove the whole university students living together with wacky talking inappropriately anthropomorphic sidekicks. You’ll be better off in the long run and have a more original creation.

Before you jump headfirst into publishing your comics online, you should build up a bit of a backlog of comics. Try to draw at least ten or so quality comics that you would be proud to have on your site. If you’re going to have a story-based comic then it would be a good idea to plan your first story arc. It is really useful to maintain this backlog of comics whenever possible, so that you can fall behind in the creation of the comics but still have content to post online. Nothing turns away readers faster than failing to provide them with content when you say you will. If you eat into the backlog, try to draw a few extra strips so that it doesn’t get diminished.

As a helpful guide for your comics, decide roughly what format they will take (e.g. three or four panel gag strips etc.) and draw up the panels on your computer. You can then print these and draw the strips within the panels, ensuring that they stay neat and consistent. When the comics have been drawn, scan them into your computer and touch them up any way you like. It’s generally the best practice to remove speech balloons and text and add these on computer, because it will usually be neater and easier to read. Remember to fit balloons around the speech, not the speech into the balloons. It’s amazing how often this is forgotten. Some good fonts, free for non-commercial use, can be found at http://blambot.com. Don’t get too stressed about your artwork, I found that most people don’t mind slightly inconsistent and not overly fantastic artwork provided they enjoy the content of the comic.

So now you’re ready to get going with the online side of things. Start writing your web page so that you can just upload it when you’re ready. Webcomic PHP management systems are relatively easy to find. I personally really like ComicPro that, unfortunately, seems to have vanished from the web. If you can hunt it down it’s worth a look. Web hosting is quite easy to find as well, you won’t need much space to begin with so you can use one of the many free providers out there (including http://keenspace.com that provides free hosting specifically for webcomics), use the web space provided by the majority of ISPs or purchase your own web hosting plan (you can get a quite cheap one because you won’t be needing many features to begin with). When signing up for any hosting package, make sure you have permission to change the read/write attributes of your files because the PHP comic managers will need this (this is done on Linux servers using CHMOD from your FTP program; In Windows you can Right-Click a file, select Properties and change security permissions there; or you may need to use a proprietary control panel provided by the host).

You’re going to need to decide on an update schedule for your comic. It’s probably best to start small and build up; maybe two or three updates a week. This way you have three to five weeks of comics in your backlog, which allows you to fall behind substantially before anyone notices.

While we’re on the topic of deciding schedules, it will help you if you actually try and schedule an hour or so into your day to write comics. If you just try to fit them into the free time that you’re “bound to have just after you finish just this one last thing” then you’ll often find yourself failing to get a strip drawn on time.

Now that you have your comic online you can start promoting it. There are a huge number of comic directories out there that will help get you exposure. Get your friends excited about your comic and they in turn will get their friends excited. Read other people’s comics and get involved in their forums. Find sites that accept guest artwork or comics and send some to them. The best promotion comes from getting people to read your comic and fire a link across their instant messenger program to another friend. My current list of “must read every day” comics came entirely from various people sending links to me. Don’t expect instant success, look to sharing your vision with even just one new person every day.

Well, I hope that helps to give you a few ideas about how to make your comic and keep it running. When your characters start to grow they’ll almost create the stories and jokes themselves and the strip won’t be anywhere near as hard to write as it was when you first started out. Just keep drawing the comics on a frequent basis so that you don’t fall out of the rhythm of your created world and above all else have fun.

Daniel Punch

http://www.m6.net

Daniel Punch is a University student doodling his way through many a boring lecture.