I love the word “Jihad”. Not because of the modern day terroristic notions of the word, but it is a beautiful way to say “struggle”. Aren’t we all in a lifelong jihad against the man trying to keep us down? I think so.

My Advice for the Entrepreneurly Minded Cartoonist

Almost every day I get an e-mail from someone, usually a stranger, asking me for advice about their cartoons or comic strips or what I think they should do or any pointers I might have for them. I will not lie to you, this makes me feel very uncomfortable. For one, even though I’m mildly successful with my own endeavors here, I don’t really feel I am qualified to give advice out to other people, especially relatively new beginners. Sometimes I when I get an e-mail of something like “I want to be a cartoonist”, I instinctively want to tell them to do something else or to go to school for computers or something that actually PAYS! A “real” career. Cartoonists are really looked down upon by society in general, as we’re just goofing off and not really working. At least the underlying paranoia that most cartoonists DO have.

I did start the HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR WEBCOMIC blog, that I’ve neglected, but that was more setup for people who already had their shit together on the creative front. I don’t know what to say to someone who’s just starting out, knows nothing about the web but they sort of want me to tell them what I think about their work, and some of it is BAD. I mean, do they know they’ve just e-mailed D.J. Coffman? They could be a second away from catching my split personality and having me crap all over their work or tell them they suck. — Generally though, I try to be as encouraging as possible. But sometimes, I feel like I’m just flat out lying to them. Just telling them what they want or need to hear right NOW. Then, it makes me feel like a scumbag. Like the scumbags at conventions who setup “portfolio reviews” with no intention of hiring anyone or offering you any real insightful advice. The kind where you could stand there and listen to them give the SAME advice in waves to a line of 200 people. I don’t want to be that guy.

So, here is my advice and words of encouragment for you in general and it doesn’t have to pertain to being a cartoonist, I hope it can apply to ANYTHING you want to do, even building cuckoo clocks.

- Find something you love and have passion for or a desire to do. Not just a fleeting mood to do something. It’s got to be something that sparks inside of you and ignites a fire in your belly that you know is there. I mean, JEEZ, there is just no way I could sit here and make fake bricks, package books, hussle my wares and draw in almost every single issue if I didn’t have a passion for the reader/creator relationship.

- Learn EVERYTHING you can about it. EVERYTHING. If you’re just starting out at anything, keep a list of things you need to learn as you go. Example… OH, you don’t know how to layout a website or html, but you want to have a webcomic site? Don’t rely on services or other people, sooner or later they will leave you high and dry… learn it yourself slowly. One step at a time. Hell, I just taught myself how to install a PHP ad script a couple weeks ago, and edit a MySql database, ALL from info I got from free online. Google is your friend. LEARN IT ALL. Learn the fundamentals and beyond.

- Study Others - instead of sitting around being bitter at other people’s success, find out what worked for them and why, how, etc. It might not ever work for you, but soon you’ll see patterns that will help you develop your own successes. Study their work– I mean, if you were looking to become a master tiki carver, you might check out a forum like this one online and see how others are learning and what tools they’re using to what effect. And you can see there, trial and error.

- Know you’re not the best. But don’t be afraid to claim you are FIFTH in the world at it, and keep trying to be the best at what you do.

- Don’t give it up. If it’s something you REALLY want to do. A dream… an obsession. Do it. Man, life is too frickin short not to do the things you love to do. You might not be able to do it all at once, but like someone wiser than me has said “it’s not the destination it’s the journey” — THAT is frickin true, true, true. If someone asked me what the biggest high i got from creating over the years, I’d still say it was being surrounded by minicomics that needed stapled and bound by hand, and knowing that I was probably only making a quarter a piece off of them the next day after driving into Pittsburgh to sell them. All on maybe 3 hours sleep. There’s a feeling of sitting there when all of it is done and you’ve accomplished whatever small task you thought was insurmountable. It’s a nice creative high. If I would have just quit after being frustrated in not making money back then, I wouldn’t be here now. So, don’t give up. Take breaks, whatever, but don’t completely give it up unless you’ve lost EVERY ounce of passion for it. Sometimes you need to give it up for a while and do something else, recharge your batteries. Heck, I think I put Yirmumah down for a few years to do other freelance work, but it was always in the back of my mind, and always the thing people remembered me for doing and asking me when I’d bring it back.

- Make friends! This coming from me, the guy who could probably instantly make 100 enemies in one day on any given message board. But seriously, build friendships. I don’t just mean make friends to use them for whatever you’re doing– make friends to make friends. Friendships are valuable things, and can provide a nice support structure for one another. Conversations and feedback are wonderful things. You might get lucky enough to find REAL friends who won’t mind telling you that something you’re doing is sucky or you might be barking up the wrong tree. Those can be the most valuable kinds of friends, the honest kind.

And that’s it. I mean, I don’t mind giving out advice to strangers. I enjoy the idea that there are still people growing up and wanting to draw cartoons, just like I did. One guy said he was learning to draw by looking at my art! (bad move, dude!) but still, that was really flattering. To think I use to trace Garfield and now people are tracing my characters… it blows my mind.

This went too long, and as I write this Pearl Jam is about to be on Letterman, so it’s time for me to head off….. have a good weekend!

Recent Topics: Self Publishing, Pittsburgh, Llama, Ebay Auction, Ebay, Original Art, Al Qaeda, Al Zarqawi, Bin Laden, Osama, Terrorism, Bush, Impeach Bush, Living with War, advice

This entry was posted on Friday, May 5th, 2006 at 3:13 am and is filed under Entertainment, cartoons, News and politics, Humor, yirBLOG, yirmumah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.