Advice from the Pros

 

Yesterday (and bleeding over into today) the internet exploded with reactions to some professional advice offered on the First Second blog. I agreed with Callista's post. I also agreed with everyone's reactions/advice against it.

Thought today I'd offer a sampling of some of the advice/criticism I've gotten from pros over the years, good and bad. All of it's paraphrased (though I have an annoying talent for recalling conversations), and I've given credit when I could remember who said it (I have an annoying habit of forgetting names). Corrections welcome.

I can't not write. If you don't have to, then please don't, because I don't need the competition- Bill Ransom (a lot of people have said something similar to this, but he was the first I heard it from)

Your art is either too cartoony or too realistic. Pick one-James Sturm

I like the art, but the story is too thin-an editor

I like the story, but the art is too spare-a different editor, on the same book

Use the colors as they come out of the box. Stick to bright tones, don't mix your own colors- Color designer Jenny Hansen

Try to use subtle pastels as much as possible. Gray is a great color- Bill Griffiths

Colors looks best when you muddy them up a bit- Seth

Use the colors as they come out of the box. Stick to bright tones, don't mix your own colors- Color designer Jenny Hansen

You should always dress for work. We are professionals. -Seth

The best thing about being a cartoonist is you can wear pajamas to work- Everyone else

AND SO ON. Guess my point is, almost everything I've been told at one point in my career has been contradicted someone else further down the line. And they're both right! They're just telling you what has worked for them. So, do whatever makes you happy.

Drawing Prince as a superhero makes me happy.

Sketchbook Wednesday

I mean to update this thing every Friday. Not sure how it got to be Wednesday. Might need to invest in a calendar. Also feel like I don't write enough on this blog, just throw up a bunch of drawings and run away. So here's some random information along with random sketches.



Yesterday I was sick and walking home in the rain, and I thought about quitting comics, like you do. Then this morning I got a nice email from a cartoonist I admire, and a couple of shout-outs, and I'm over it. It's easy to feel like you're working in a void. And very easy to be pulled out of it.



Like all my artist friends, I was gifted at least three sketchbooks this holiday season- this is not a complaint, they will all go to good use. One was "642 Things to Draw". While the paper stock is crap, it's nice to have a prompt on those days where I Just Don't Want To Draw Anything.



Hey! Rob Clough was nice enough to review "Here at the End of All Things", written by Sean T. Collins and drawn by me, and also covers minis by a couple of CCS friends in the same post.



Washaway is still updating every Monday and Friday over at the website. Seems appropriate, as it is razor clam season.

 

Is it still a sketch if you use a needle and thread? Embroidery also helps on the days when I Just Don't Want to Draw Anything, at least it's still Making Something. There's been too many of these days, lately. Could blame seasonal depression, but in Seattle that's a year-round excuse. Until next week.

Might even be on time!

Blowing Up The Internet With a Sketch Bomb

Hey! I've had a lot of free time over the holidays, so here's a bunch of random watercolor sketches-

BOOM!

Happy Whatever!

Schnauzer Sketches

I will never get tired of drawing schnauzers. And Washaway is still updating every Monday and Friday.

 

You Will Fail 80% of the Time

First- Links! New comic up at the website. It'll be updating again every Monday and Friday until I run out of

new pages.

Second the disclaimer- I am not 100% sure I'm allowed to blog about this. Or, even talk about it. I did email some other people involved in the project, waited two weeks (which is like, a year in internet time) and when there were no responses, decided to just go for it. Send me a "cease and desist" if it's really a problem.

And now an explanation of the title- Someone (I think it may have been James Sturm?) told me early on in my career that 80% of the projects you try for aren't going to go anywhere. And most of the time, it's not anyone's fault. Projects have a way of dissolving. So you have to try a lot.

This is a story about some cartoonists and one of those projects, Illegal Aliens!

Back in like, 2006-2007, when the first class of CCS was deep into the thesis panic, the opportunity came up to create a dvd insert comic for a movie. This was the second comic of that kind that CCSers had worked on, the first was for the Last Broadcast dvd release, but because of where my trip home had fallen that year, I was only nominally involved in the project- think I may have helped scan a few pages, but that was it. This time I was excited to be involved from the beginning, and was even part of a small group of students who drove over to Edgewood (the movie's studio) in Rutland VT to see a rough cut of the film. And...yeah, it was bad movie. But fun bad, so bad it's almost good. I mean, it starred Anna Nicole Smith and Chyna, so our expectations weren't that high.

So, notes in hand, we all put aside our theses (thesises?) for a few months and got to work on the comic! A first draft was completed pretty quickly, sent off to Edgewood, and...then we waited. And waited. And waited and waited. My specific job on this project was acting as the liason between Edgewood and the CCS team, so I was calling and emailing them weekly with no response. When I finally did hear back, it was to let us know that all work was on hold due to the death of the film's Associate Producer...it took a few minutes for things to click. Anna Nicole Smith and her son were the Associate Producers. Living in a small town in rural Vermont, holed up in the studio trying to finish a thesis and (what was for most of us) the first paying comics job of our careers, we'd missed the news.

And everything fell apart from there- both for us and the movie.





This was the only image I felt comfortable posting, it's a rejected cover design I did for the Illegal Aliens comic. All the originals are gone, and I'm pretty sure that any comics pages are property of Edgewood.

And now there's a documentary about it! That's really the whole reason behind this post. I didn't make it to the Seattle showing, but I have to wonder if there was any mention of the comics project or CCS involvement...anyone heard anything?

Comics!

Assuming I pushed all the right buttons, there will be new comics on the website starting...NOW! www.tragicrelief.com