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johncomicBy the time I was in high school, I had decided I wanted to be a comic artist when I grew up.
By which I meant I would earn my living by drawing comics. Your ideal career is making a living doing something you love and that you're good at, so cartooning was mine. So of course all through high school and university I was making my own comic books.
Years went by and it never happened. I ended up finding work where and when I could, doing sutff that wasn't even remotely related to comics or drawing. In large part this is because I didn't work nearly hard enough at trying to establish myself as a professional comic artist. I just sorta did my sutff at home and dreamed and hoped a career would fall into my lap. Less than effective.
After I self-published Dishman and a Real Comic Book Publisher® picked it up, it was like a career did fall into my lap. And by this time I was old enough to have a better idea what actions I'd need to take, in order to leverage this publication into a career. But I never followed through with any of those actions, and my potential career sputtered and died.
Throughout all this, I never thought of my office job, which paid the bills, as my career. In fact, I still don't.
Gradually, though, I began to realize that I didn't really want to earn a living drawing comics. What I wanted was to earn a living doing the comics I want, when I want. And that kind of career is pretty much impossible to get.
Professional North American comic artists, for the most part, work as part of a team on a pre-existing property (e.g., you're the penciller on Spider-Man or the inker on Batman). So you work fast and hard to meet deadlines, with an editor telling you to do it over, drawing a story that you have little or no say in, about a character you don't own. And I finally realize that I never wanted that. If I were in that situation, the drawing that I loved would soon devolve into stress and drudgery.
Some people love drawing comics so much that they'd even enjoy drawing them under those conditions. Not me. Some of us are not of the right temperament to take what we love and turn it into a job.
My current job is easy, comfortable, secure[-ish: knock wood], sufficient, and I never take it home with me after quittin time. And my art remains something that I do for love and pleasure. For me, this works.
For many years I felt like a failure because I never got it together and got myself a career in my field. Today, I feel like I actually got what I really wanted all along.
By which I meant I would earn my living by drawing comics. Your ideal career is making a living doing something you love and that you're good at, so cartooning was mine. So of course all through high school and university I was making my own comic books.
Years went by and it never happened. I ended up finding work where and when I could, doing sutff that wasn't even remotely related to comics or drawing. In large part this is because I didn't work nearly hard enough at trying to establish myself as a professional comic artist. I just sorta did my sutff at home and dreamed and hoped a career would fall into my lap. Less than effective.
After I self-published Dishman and a Real Comic Book Publisher® picked it up, it was like a career did fall into my lap. And by this time I was old enough to have a better idea what actions I'd need to take, in order to leverage this publication into a career. But I never followed through with any of those actions, and my potential career sputtered and died.
Throughout all this, I never thought of my office job, which paid the bills, as my career. In fact, I still don't.
Gradually, though, I began to realize that I didn't really want to earn a living drawing comics. What I wanted was to earn a living doing the comics I want, when I want. And that kind of career is pretty much impossible to get.
Professional North American comic artists, for the most part, work as part of a team on a pre-existing property (e.g., you're the penciller on Spider-Man or the inker on Batman). So you work fast and hard to meet deadlines, with an editor telling you to do it over, drawing a story that you have little or no say in, about a character you don't own. And I finally realize that I never wanted that. If I were in that situation, the drawing that I loved would soon devolve into stress and drudgery.
Some people love drawing comics so much that they'd even enjoy drawing them under those conditions. Not me. Some of us are not of the right temperament to take what we love and turn it into a job.
My current job is easy, comfortable, secure[-ish: knock wood], sufficient, and I never take it home with me after quittin time. And my art remains something that I do for love and pleasure. For me, this works.
For many years I felt like a failure because I never got it together and got myself a career in my field. Today, I feel like I actually got what I really wanted all along.
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Date: 2010-01-19 07:58 pm (UTC)But at the same time, part of me wants to tell them “Y'know, really it's OK if you don't end up earning a living from this and you do something else instead.” I suspect they might not be old enough yet to believe it. I know that if my dad had given me that advice back then, I wouldn't have believed him either. And besides, maybe they're different from me that way...
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Date: 2010-01-19 08:08 pm (UTC)People always used to say that he should've been a car salesman -- he woulda been the world's only honest one! And when I was little, I wondered why he wasn't one, why he never even tried to be one. Sometimes I wondered if this was a failure on his part, that he never went for his ideal career doing what he loved.
But maybe he was like me, and he actually preferred things the way they were. And why not.