Zine in a Month: A Soft-Hustler’s Tale
There once was a snail who was a wizard. Snizard, if you will.
🐌
There once was a snail who was a wizard. Snizard, if you will.
Snizard wasn’t supposed to be a zine.
Snizard was a story my daughter Emily made up on weekends when we were visiting her grandpa at the care home. In a place where her grandpa was slowly losing his light, she bounced in with tales of a snail-wizard and his colleagues who had adventures, played with words, and turned bad guys into weasels and lizards.
Years later, her grandpa died, and we sat around remembering the good times. We remembered Snizard and the fun and laughter a little curmudgeon snail-wizard brought into our lives. And we thought that what the world needed (and we needed) was a little of that snail magic to help send grandpa on his way.
With a month to go before the Panel One Comic Crestor Festival, we collaborated on a little zine, to have it ready to debut at that event.
The Sprint (Snail-paced, obviously)
I’ve made a whopping two zines before Snizard. One died before printing because I missed the deadline, and one I printed on a Staples photocopier an hour before the show I was debuting it at.
So my past experience wasn’t going to set me up to succeed, but I was determined to succeed anyway.
First, Emily banged out a three-page story on a manual typewriter (literally banging), and I took it with me to PopCon YXE and read it several times. I transcribed it into Google Docs and broke it down into sections that would make a good page, and went to work.
My first step was making the cover and getting a feel for Snizard's world. I would show my progress to Emily, and she would guide me on what she imagined vs. what I made.
Then I made all the zine pages as separate files in Procreate and typeset them before drawing the story. Once I discovered the main topic of each page and the themes I wanted to carry through the zine, I began drawing the pages in 45-minute art sessions every day for eight days. What emerged was a sweet, funny, and engaging story about a tiny life in a big world.
While I was doing that, I sent out requests for printing quotes to local and not-so-local Canadian printers. I did some quick learning on how InDesign works, set up my file and sent it off to the printer of my choosing.
What Snizard Taught Me
I learned that pacing is good, and panicking is bad. I have been a last-minute creator for the last few years, and I have to tell you that setting aside dedicated time to pour a cup of coffee and just make stuff effectively moves the needle enough every day to make the process easier.
I learned that AI isn’t all bad. I used AI to help me set a reasonable work schedule to get all my tasks done with time to spare before P1CCF. And every time I veered off the path (which was often), my AI assistant would reassign the tasks to keep me moving forward, or remind me what the next big thing was. Giving the schedule management to my AI handler left my brain open to creating snail magic.
The Next Chapter (a.k.a. Please Come Say Hi 🐌)
Snizard may have started as a family story, but now he’s real, and he's coming with me to the Panel One Comic Creator Festival (P1CCF) on Saturday, May 31st in Calgary. If you’re local, I’d love for you to swing by, meet Snizard in person (well, in zine), and maybe adopt a sticker or two.
This whole project reminded me that we can do big things with small steps. And sometimes, with enough tea and tenacity, even a soft-hustler can summon a little magic.
Hope to see you there. 💜
Kathleen
(Possessed by Goats, accompanied by snails)