With comic art being an occasionally uneven source of income, one has to wonder whether or not the financial aspects of being a comic artist ever makes artists contemplate doing something else for a living, and for the most part, the answer was yes. Even Sean Murphy, a man who has seen great success in comics, once thought of going a different direction. Since the crash of the 90s, a life in comics was a life in poverty. But things are changing at least for a handful of us.
Comics were an escape for me when I was a child, and they still are. There is nothing like reading an awesome comic.
What kind of life does that lead to? You miss movie dates. You miss gigs. You might as well forget video games. Some prioritize it though, and find the value quickly.
Insurance is expensive but a necessity. The health of the body is clearly important, but mental and emotional health is important too, and working in comics has made many creators make choices that made them sacrifice on the creative side. Sometimes, while other projects may be more creatively fulfilling, they often will have to move towards a project that pays better because, while it may be something they love, they still have to make a living.
It can be a really awesome, fun and rewarding job, sure. But at the end of the day, I need to get paid for my time and work. Even within the creator-owned discussion, it seemed that there was a good amount of positivity towards Image Comics in particular, which naturally fit the cast of commenters, many of whom work at Image themselves or have upcoming work there.
Additionally, it has huge financial upside. As one artist shared with me, sometimes, not all is as it seems on a project or with a creative partner. Especially for newer artists, the allure of an attractive project can sometimes make you willing to go through more strife than you would otherwise with your collaborator, sometimes at the sacrifice of your own emotional and financial well-being.
Comics are a passion project first, money-making endeavor second, and many admitted that if they wanted to make more money doing commercial art work, they could. I think most folks just think I just sit around drawing cyborg chickens all day long. You know what? I like drawing that stuff. Compensation can range dramatically depending on both experience and the publisher. At many of the bigger comic book companies, the art on the page is paid by the type of job—and sometimes multiple artists will be hired to do each piece.
This person is the one who takes the story and gives it life, sketching out the scenes in pencil and crafting the basic outline of the landscape and the characters within it. This illustrator is given the task of adding depth and shading to the basic outlines created by a penciller. This is the person who uses a variety of fonts and sometimes even hand-drawn calligraphy to create everything in the word balloons and illustrating the sound effects.
However, many times, these jobs are also paid on a project basis. Many of the publishers break up the creation of a title in an established series, hiring writers to lay out the plot and another the script. After an outline is in place, writers will be hired to add all of the dialogue and story to each page. You a creator? Listen to your clients, and know how to discern the problem to the symptom to improve your creation.
Note: Geez, man. There are more publishers than Marvel and DC around, you know. You can make money, better, a career, without them. Plus, with smaller publishers, you can see the whole process and learn how to launch your product later AND help them to improve their production. Thanks, Amelia, for your perspective. Those who shift will have tremendous upside.
And, yes, there are a lot of other publishers. Those are the ones I hear most talk in this way. I think the upcoming artists whose work appeals more to audiences at other publishers are more likely to have seen this message already, if only because they had to live it more to even get started.
As always, the biggest trick is to implement suggestions, and not just read up on them while still working the old way. I want to say to the newcomers it will be possible if they focus on their passion when they learn drawing and, the most important element, the visual storytelling.
Many times, publishers have other reasons than just the drawing quality or storytelling skills. The artistic production visual and writing has to be compatible with their brand and products.
Compatibility and flexibility are important elements. And, to reinforce this idea, I have to say the comic industry is a forgiven industry.
You can fail, a lot. Nobody will lose a million-buck deal because of a bad reception. Implement suggestions is a way to experiment. But, then, sometimes it can work out for the best. There are exceptions to every rule. Oh, yeah! If Diamond likes the proposal but rejects it because of the length, I have shorter scripts. So, I have to follow the rules and break them when I get more attention XD.
It can be a childhood dream, to be part of a club of very select people, but mostly it gets you recognized and opens doors. However, I think anyone going into this expecting to work for the Big Two, let alone any kind of continuing work therein and a pension plan, is a little nuts to begin with.
Mark and I share a birthday. Different years, but same day and month, at least. I hope people click through and read this one. Thanks for adding the link in here. When I started, there were no art program or design schools to attend to get a degree in comic art or game design. There was the Kubert school which wasnt really a college just art lessons. The entire time I was chasing gigs writing for comics. No matter how well I was paid or how good my benefits were… for a time Inwould have given it all to write got Captain America or Batman.
I wanted to write for the characters I loved. In my mind, Comics were like valuable, collectable, historical objects… Long before the Google and internet, the only way to find out what happened in a comic you missed was to locate a copy. In my head, Comics were like Movies and TV. The same level of celebritism, so of course I assumed they were millionaires.
Likewise, even though the game industry pays more than I could have ever imagined, I still pinned for this status of being a Comic Writer. Video games had given me everything, including a writing gig in a major Hollywood film, got me interviews on gaming websites, and even gave me the chance to run my own DC MMO game universe that was officially recognized by DC as canonical.
We had our own Earth designation and everything. Now my contracting rates as a writer are way too high for Comics and every artist I know that tried to be in comics is either in gaming or teaching now. And now, the quality bar for both art and writing in comics is so low and honestly unqualified to be entrusted the fate and reputations of 50 years of iconic characters. Jensen Ackles and others in the studio and head them perform my dialogue and tKe my direction.
Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, Brian Bendis, all hate superheroes, violently, even though their fame comes from subverting iconic superhero stories making heroes bad guys or goodies two shoes.
People who hate the medium are forced to do it to get ahead. Articles like this should never be written!!! All things are difficult in thier own ways, but other people should never be discouraging about it. I think about the young artist that loves to draw and wants to do it, believes they can do it and burns to do it, then finds this article and doubt starts creeping in. Im sick some one would write this killing the spirit of creative hearts.
With this article u did the exact opposite. This crap should be taken down and a rewrite should be done. Imagine everyone wrote crap like this…nobody would ever go into the art field. As a cartoonist myself, I see both sides of it. I was never really interested in pursuing a professional comic book career.
Yes, people like that exist. Wow, you are one miserable son of a gun. Why even expend the effort if you hate it so much? I wonder when you lost that ability to dream, assuming you had it at all. You mentioned you were diabetic and this made you even more practical. Hey give advice if you want, but it was written more like a reprimand. You just want to share it, you just want people to see it, not for money, not for fame, you just want it to be out there sharing your creativity. I just feel this article was slightly discouraging to artists who are just about to try and swing for the fences.
So you miss? You in my opinion, should stop writing about comic book artists, because a true artist never questions another artists motivation for picking up that pencil and wasting hours on a drawing board on a piece that may never see the light of day. We do it cause we love it.
Looking back,your article resonates loudly with me. I am glad I did not become a comic artist. Marvel did not treat Kirby very well did they? Those days not everybody could fly. But time does. It is now How the world has changed.
For my comic, it takes hours to sketch a page on paper, and the digital process of vectoring it often takes hours. A few of the most difficult pages took an estimated 15 hours to vector. The time to add the finishing touches after exporting it can range from a few minutes to another hour. For me it can take weeks, but I only do strips and most of that time the comic sits on my computer untouched until I have a sudden burst of motivation then I finish it in a couple hours.
So in reality It takes me a few hours not counting me being lazy. I think. I never timed myself. A complex background increases that by about an hour or 2 sometimes even 4. If I am drawing a page with 3 panels instead of the usual 6, decreases that by an hour or 2. Panels with just one character in a medium shot are the quickest to draw.
If a page has several of those, they usually are done faster. The more character per panel, the longer it takes. Children are faster to draw than the adults. I normally take roughly around hours depending on the complexity as well as it being spread over my free times when I actually feel like drawing Been a hectic month.
0コメント