Gary
Author Comments aka Comic News
Learning
Remember, next month, we'll be holding a Halloween contest. There will be two categories, writing and visual art. Each category will have a first, second, and third place winner (assuming more than two people enter the contest in that category). First prize, in each category, will be $150 gift certificate to one of the following places (winner gets to choose): Target, Best Buy, Amazon, or Dic Blick, a t-shirt, and a trophy. Second place will be a $50 gift certificate to one of those places and a t-shirt. Third place gets a t-shirt. The t-shirt, for each, will be a redrawn/tweaked version of this comic.
Ok, so, the rest of this comment is largely for any other web comic people/creative people that read my comic (if there are any). So, I'm not sure what the answer to this is, but it's a problem I hit every so often, so if you hit this too, you're not alone, and maybe I'll be able to help you some as I work through it. At some point, a comic or repetitive creative outlet will probably become less exciting than it once was. The comic, which is my hobby, not my job, recently, has often felt more like a job than a creative outlet/hobby. An example of this is the Halloween comic. Halloween is coming up, and normally I get excited about writing a story for it, because I really like Halloween and coming up with a hopefully strong story arc for it tends to be exciting for me. This year, however, it's really difficult for me to start it, and when I do, I'm not all that excited to be working on it. Also, the past couple months it's been difficult for me to come up with jokes for the regular comic. If you're anything like me, then if you find yourself doing the same thing over and over again, not changing, you tend to get bored with it, and you want to stop doing it. Now, there have been some changes and improvements with the art on the comic, but not really much improvement with the jokes or characters or story. The problem with this is, my art could improve doing any kind of comic or visual art, so I don't really need my art growth tied to doing a regular web comic. Without the comic though, I'm not sure how regular I'd be with practicing my art. Now it's true, I probably wouldn't be doing a cartoony style at all, if it wasn't for this comic, but that never used to be my thing. It wasn't something I liked or looked for, which is why I didn't do it. I do, now, find the simplicity of cartoon comic art interesting and challenging. How does one make a simple repeatable elegant image/style that tells a story in very few lines? And while this is interesting, I question whether doing a regular webcomic is really the way to explore it. It's a lot of work to study something I never meant to study. So, what does one do when they're in this position? In the past, I've just pushed through and eventually I found something of some interest that kept me going. I'm not sure that's really an answer. It's probably a good thing to do, so that you don't just stop and give when you have your first writer's block. When I was a kid, I got to see Ray Bradbury speak, and he said that he was often asked how he deals with writer's block, and his answer was to never wait for inspiration, instead always write, everyday. So he used to write for at least an hour every day, no matter what. I've applied that to the comic at times, and it works. If you condition yourself to just push through, then you can and you find out that you don't really need inspiration. Now this gets you through small times of uncertainty, but I'm starting to think that one needs to be more proactive when approaching this problem. So I'm now starting to ask myself (no answers yet) "what do I want to get out of this comic, what I want this comic to do, where I want the comic to go, and how do I want it to get there". I've thought about these before, and I came up with story arcs, and long term character development, but then I started implementing the story arcs, and my irregularity with the comic stopped them from developing well, so my story arcs ended up shattered bits of confusion strewn over months' worth of comics. So, if I want to do this, I have to get a plan, and not just find the way to get there, but follow through with the way to get there, which isn't easy. Over the next year or so, I plan on trying to reshape the comic some, to keep it interesting for me. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that or what will change, but change is inevitable. If it doesn't change, I'll get bored, and some of you might too, and if I get and stay bored, then I'll just stop do this. Since I don't actually make any money doing this, stopping should be easy.
Now for a little background on how this comic started. When this comic started, it was supposed to be three people coming up with jokes for it, thus the "Three Js" (originally it was going to be called "The three jokers"). Each of the main characters is loosely based on someone I know, very loosely. So we were all going to come up with jokes, or at least that's how I thought it was going to take place, but that never happened, and I just ran with the comic, largely solo. Each of those people, to this day, have logins so they can post comments on the side as the character that's based off of them, see? Comments.. We'll call it a misunderstanding on my part, and I could've stopped doing the comic at any time, if I wanted to (heh, I'm not an addict). To me, the really funny thing is, I'm not the funny one. At least I've never seen myself as a funny individual. I don't tell jokes. I don't tell stories. Most of the time, I don't act too goofy. I'm the quiet guy, sitting in the corner, away from the world. They guy that everyone wonders if he's just going to snap one day. Thankfully, that day will never come, and maybe that's not who I am anymore, but that's definitely who I was in high school, and who I remember being. Friends from back then used to tell me that I was who they expected to see on the news being hauled away, like the Unabomber. Happily I never had a manifesto or really strong enough beliefs about anything to go all crazy. Then I also grew up some and found martial arts, and now I sadly have no rage left, but that's all beside the point. The point being, I wasn't the funny one. Now, here I am, trying to come up with jokes and tell stories. My friends do help, but this is largely my work. So, how does someone, who never used to tell jokes, write jokes? If I ever figure that out, I'll let you know.
So yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out and work on. How do I keep the comic interesting for me, and for you the reader? How do I break out of the rut I feel I'm in? How do I grow as a writer and artist? How do I do all of this in my free time, since I need to make money by doing my job, which offers other challenges and keeps me interested/happy when I get those challenges? How will I end this random babbling? Oh, like this.
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