Drawing a single panel comic about a turtle (Charley) when he was 9, JT knew he wanted to be a cartoonist. That didn’t work out.

Later a short stint in High school as a DJ for its low wattage radio station and on stage in the schools Plays and Musicals gave him a taste for show-bid-ness (that didn’t work out either)

So, when in 2005, (deep breath) after dropping out of college, joining the US Navy (5 years on the USS Spruance DD 963), marring a great girl, finding the Internet, having 2 Awesome kids, Finding webcomics, leaving the Navy, trying that cartooning thing again with Gecko Nation, and founding NightGig Studios (With Ken Prince) to help other Web Cartoonists, (breath) podcasting was born, he decided he wanted to be heard again and created… (wait for it) … The Gigcast.

Taken from JT’s Gigcast Bio.

1) Hello! Tell us who you are, and what you do.

Hi, I’m JT (Tim) Shea, Co-Founder of NightGig Studios, and host and producer of The Gigcast.

2) What about the origins of NightGig?

Back in the day, during the Drunk Duck Crash of  ‘03, Ken Prince and I decided to start a site to host comics for a few friends, but we also wanted it to be more.  We wanted to open our new site up to all sorts of artists, 3D, animation, musicians, writers, poets, etc.  We called it NightGig Studios.  Since then NightGig has gone through more than a few changes, and has basically settled down to a loose hub for a few friends who have some kind of art on the web.
We Have a moderately active forum and the Nightgig.com front page keeps a running list of rss feeds for all our members so it’s easy to see who has most recently updated.  We still host a few comics on the server, Kevin Hayman’s Sweatshop Studios, home of Errant Apprentice, KC Green’s Rumblo.com, and Scott Gallatin’s MadScott among others.  We also claim affiliation with Webcomics like Crimson Dark, The Gods of ArrKelaan, and PC Weenies.

(Note: Ken Prince, the catalyst of NightGig, fiancee of Kit White and friend,  passed away soon after he graduated form 3D animation school, He had given up a soul sucking programming job in a conveyor belt factory, to chase the dream of making his art his day gig.
It’s not what you do to live, It’s about what you Live to Do - Ken Prince)

3) How did the Gigcast come about?

In 2005, Gecko Nation had started and stopped many times and was basically dead, NightGig was a strong community, but I still wanted to do something creative and I was looking for a way to promote NightGig.  i had recently found podcasts through Leo Laport’s TWIT, I then found Slice of Scifi, The Signal and others, and I thought, “Hey if people are making these podcasts about things they enjoy, why not a webcomics podcast?”  I figured it was a great fit with NightGig, we could report on NightGig news and well as news from all over the Webcomic world,and maybe even do Interviews.

So I talked with some of my NightGig friends, and with Karl Kuras and Jo Craft (Now Mathis) co hosting, The Gigcast launched in Aug 2005.  On the second show we interviewed Scott Gallatin, who was later to become my right-hand man and co-host.  The first few shows were a definite learning processes. With Karl in Switzerland, Jo in Kansas and me in Florida, it was fun trying to arrange a schedule that would work, and i wouldn’t recommend listening to those first few shows.  They hurt.

Things got better, Scott joined up as permanent Co-Host (and partner in the running of Nightgig), sound/production quality improved, interview skills grew and news reporting became more natural.  We expanded out interviews to include other Nightgigs, interviewing authors and musicians, while keeping our roots in webcomics, reporting webcomic news and interviewing cartoonists such as Brian Anderson (Dog eat Doug) Howard Tayler (Schlock Mercenary) and Jenny Breeden (The Devils panties). Our audience grew and in 2007 we were contacted by and joined The Farpoint Media Indie Podcast Network.

4) Tell us about Gecko Nation.

Gecko Nation is what got me involved in all this.  I had a lot of free time in 2002, and with the help/advice of Kit White (Blue canary) I applied for a KeenSpace account, and started drawing (badly) a comic about a tech savvy Lizard who heads for the Caribbean on a self aware AI controlled sailboat, and finds out he is the direct descendant of a famous Pirate captain with a lost treasure.

It basically became an exercise in experimenting with as many art styles as I could find, and in learning HTML, and in website design, Well after about 50 strips in twice as many weeks, with story unfinished, i hung it up.  It was Gecko nation I was updating when Drunk Duck crashed and gave birth to NightGig.  So if ya want to blame anyone it’s Kits fault, she got me started and introduced me to Ken as well.

5) What are some of your favorite webcomics?

I hate making lists like this, you always forget some. I do most of my reading during breaks at work, which blocks all of DD.  But if I had to list a few favorites I’d have to say:  In The Blog Comic category: Planet Karen, The Devils Panties, MadScott, Real Life.  In The Other Category: Schlock Mercenary, Errant Apprentice, Gods of ArrKelaan, Penny Arcade, Pinkerton Park, C’est la Vie, XKCD, SuperFogeys, Dr McNinja. Evil inc. etc etc etc…(seriously, I forget to read 3x the comics I want to read each day)

6) What feature attracts your attention most in a webcomic?

Honestly, it’s the writing.  A good gag, a good story , good pacing and good character development keeps me coming back.  If you have that and art skills good enough to get your point across, and I’m happy.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m attracted to the shiney just like anyone and beautiful art only ads to a comic attraction.  But for me, I was raised on Newspaper comics, back when the only color was Sunday, so big colorful art is not a requirement, but a well paced, well written script is.

7) What are your goals in regards to Nightgig and the Gigcast? What’s the next step for them?

As for Nightgig, there is a site redesign planned.  If we had the funds time and talent, I’d love to expand NightGig to meet the original vision Ken and I had, a hub for all artists who put their Nightgigs on the web. But baby steps. We are also looking to expand out hosted comics this year, as we have the space and the band with.
NightGig will continue, with The Gigcast, to promote it’s members, hosted and otherwise. For example, each year we have attended Megacon In Orlando, this year, 2008, will be our third year and we’ll have 10 or so members attending. Should be a blast.  We also have produced a Webcomic Sampler each year as well, the proceeds of which go to help pay for hosting/promotional expenses. The Books are available on indyPlanet.

The Gigcast will continue to report on the world of webcomics, and to interview the people behind the best Nightgigs on the web.  With the help of Farpoint Media, we hope to expand our audience so we can continue to do what we have been doing.  Help turn peoples NightGigs into Day Gigs. They have already given us some leads on a few big name interviews (You’ll have to subscribe  http://gigcast.nightgig.com/rss to find out who ) We also hope to add some more per-produced spots, maybe add more reports like the DrunkDuck report Jenny Lui and Steve Rowles do for us.

In both cases, we hope to step up the promotional aspect of both NightGig and The Gigcast, but as these are our NightGigs, there is only so much time to do all we would like to.

What is some of your favorite music to listen to? How do you determine what music you’ll play on the Gigcast?

The main thing about finding music for The Gigcast making sure it is “Pod Safe”, meaning the powers that own the copy-writes have given permission for the music to be used in a podcast.  Sites like the Podsafe Music Network, make it easy to find podsafe music,  but finding good songs for The Gigcast that’s another story.
When it comes to the music we play on the show, I let my inner Geek do the choosing.  I’ve always enjoyed songs that tell a story.  Singer songwriters like Billy Joel, Jimmy Buffer and Simon and Garfunkel, as well as the Irish folk songs I grew up with, all played an big part in my musical development.
So I look for musicians like Jonathan Colulton, Beatnik Turtle (who wrote our Kick-ass Theme song) George Hrab, Mark Gunn and The Brobdingnagian Bards. All people and groups who are trying to make their Nightgigs work for them.  And if the stories their songs tell are about Firefly, Lord of the Rings, computer Programming or The Great Robot War of 2318, all the better!

9) Hadron Collider: Gateway to a new scientific era, or source of our future extinction?

Both!
Although not the way you think. No Micro black hole slowly eating the planet one atom at a time theory, but I go for more of a  “research leading to the development of super intelligent quantum multi-dimensional computers, which of course leads to the Great Robot War of 2318″ theory.
Thank you oh Great Robot Protectors

10) What do you like more, Star Trek, Star Wars, Futurama, or Firefly?

As a well rounded geek, I’ll have to take the 5th on this question, Mostly because the Star Trek, Star Wars and Fururama fan boys would get all upset with my answer, so yeah, I’ll take the 5th. (By the way, you forgot to put Battlestar Galactica on that list)

Thanks for participating JT!

Tags: JT, NightGig, Podcast, Ten Questions, The Gigcast

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