Max Riffner

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How I Tricked Myself Into Cartooning Again

In July of 2008, I finally felt like getting back into cartooning again, and had settled on trying my hand at an online comic strip. There are many self-imposed obstacles that I see cartoonists put in their path to creating anything (that way they never have to put work out in the public eye), and I am no stranger to those delusions. Here are some of my stumbling blocks and how I got around them:

Character Sheets
I have seen a lot of cartoonists do millions of character designs and never do one single panel. I read once that Erik Larsen designs the characters on the page as he draws them, so I started doing that. The one drawback to this is consistency; I’ve drawn my characters wrong before once or twice. But more than likely, no one will notice, and this is easily solved by creating one master sheet in between updates. I did a master sheet for Lydia before I started at Kevin Church’s request, and I have to admit that has helped. When I was getting started on Drunk Elephant Comics, I skipped it so it wouldn’t slow me down.

Comic Strip versus Graphic Novel
It’s no secret that I like telling complete stories. I like movies over television shows, for example.¹ But crafting another longform graphic novel just filled me with dread, not only because of the work involved, but because of the fact that longform isn’t that popular online. So I decided to do something completely different and try my hand at a humorous webcomic strip. I doubted my ability at comedy, so I did 4 test strips and sent them to a close group of friends and peers. Obviously since we are closing in at strip #100 on Drunk Elephant, they said I should keep it up. And a strip update is a lot less daunting than a whole comic page as an artist.

The Website
I build websites for a living, so getting wrapped up in the design and CMS and development was an obvious stumbling block. I really did a good job of telling myself “what does the site matter if there is nothing to put on it?” The “comic” is the important part of “webcomic,” and the “web” is just the method of delivery. So my first few months of strips were done on Webcomics Nation. It’s dead easy to set up (it’s designed for cartoonists who are not technology savvy) and start posting immediately. It also has a large community of cartoonists that you are networked with just by being a member. Did I mention also that it’s free?

No Buffer
Many webcartoonists tell you to build a buffer of strips, in case you get sick or need a break. To start though, I threw the idea out the window. If I had told myself I needed a buffer, I’d start thinking about how it wasn’t quite ready yet, or I’d find some other way to stall. Those 4 test strips I did? I put them up immediately after I had my feedback. The rush of immediate publishing is so thrilling. It’s flying without a net. It reminds me of when I did a comic strip for my high school paper — waiting patiently for the first copies to come back after barely making a deadline. I still don’t have a buffer on either strip. I should probably start, but I’m addicted to deadlines and the rush. Literally, I have little to no idea what the next Drunk Elephant strip will be until the night before. This is probably not sustainable, but for now, it works.

Drawing Analog
After drawing an entire graphic novel with a Wacom tablet, I found it hard to get used to the visual disconnect with so much time off. By disconnect I mean, you have to train your eyes/brain to look at the screen and not your hand. It takes some getting used to (it actually made me sick if I did it too long when I was getting started). This is why the first few strips of Drunk Elephant might seem rough; I went back to using a pencil and brushed ink on bristol board. Simple tools, sure, but they make comics just as well as a fancy electronic tablet. I found that once I started drawing by hand again, I picked up the digital drawing again quite easily.

These were my basic faults that I knew I would have to overcome, and could easily get over with the right thinking. Hopefully putting this out there will help some other folks get over their blocks. If there are any cartoonists out there reading this, leave a comment regarding one of your blocks and how you overcame it? Might be an interesting tip in it for the rest of us!

¹ I need to write more on this — I’ve been studying television and comic strips a great deal to move past this particular hump.

Do You Like iPhones?

I know I like my iPhone. Want to enter a contest I’m putting on for Drunk Elephant Comics? Read all about it here for a chance to win a free iPhone!

Lonely Transition

Over the last year, I started a webcomic which was updated two times a week, just to be sure I could handle that schedule. I soon boosted production up to three times a week, and then shortly after, teamed up with a writer to work on another webcomic that updates three times a week. I am essentially doing comic work full time at night now, having to produce 6 strips a week.

It’s a draining endeavor. Obviously the first thing to go was blogging, and you can see ever since I started working more 3 years ago at my previous employer that posting here has dropped off considerably. More worrisome for me is finding a place for this blog: what should I be posting here? It’s a question I ask myself daily. I think I’d like to use this place for production notes, and what I’m finding out about myself from doing this much cartooning. Hence this post.

The most striking thing so far that I’ve learned is a lesson that my professional friends warned me about: cartooning is lonely. I mean, serious loneliness. I come home from my 8-5 day job, maybe eat dinner, more likely I don’t, grab a soda and the dog and go to work. This is around 5:30 – 6 PM. I usually get done with all my drawing and uploading around 9 – 11 PM and typically go to bed at midnight. So some nights, I have an hour to myself. Odds are good I haven’t spoken to anyone in a long time. I sometimes go to a nearby bar that serves food late to grab a bite, have a beer, and maybe talk to the bartender for a bit of conversation.

This schedule is freeing in some aspects. For example, I don’t watch much television, and my Tivo collects the shows I want to watch, so I can enjoy it in one chunk. However, this sedentary lifestyle will eventually catch up with me, even though I’m doing something positive. Finding time to exercise is tough. In fact, finding time to do much of anything is tough. Exercise is a priority for me though, because the better I feel, the less likely it is to fall into bad habits that come with working too much (vices such as alcohol and tobacco are ‘get-stress-relief-quick’ habits that I know I can fall back on, for example).

With being online all the time though, television via the web is a hard temptation to pass up, because you weirdly feel like you are multi-tasking. A certain friend recently got me hooked on Arrested Development which I’ve been plowing through on Hulu. This is a mistake; I end up stretching my cartooning time out several hours in some cases on the weekends while watching that show. Similarly, instant messaging needs to be planned for certain production periods. If I’m drawing, I’ll keep putting down the Wacom to chat (it’s easier when I’m lettering and doesn’t interrupt my workflow as much).

Another thing I’ve noticed is all of my friends seem to be having the best time ever and they are talking all about it via social networking. Talks of last night concert sting a bit in this context, because you wonder where you were and oh that’s right you were chained to your desk drawing in a dark room. I try to cut myself off from times where I may be tempted to sit and see what people are up to, basically scheduling time to check Facebook, for example, so it doesn’t get too overwhelmingly negative in my head.

Adding to the “negativity to watch out” for is the dreaded feeling that I have somehow had hooks replaced for my hands and I have lost the ability to draw. This is a strange occurrence, because I know I can draw, I did it all last week. Very well, even. But this week? Forget it — I now have the drafting abilities of a 10 year old. The best advice I’ve received from peers is to just get out of your head and push through, you’ll get over the feeling typically within a week, and no one will notice your fictional “slide into awful” anyway. This is strange to me, because I’ve heard this from 5 or 6 other cartoonists who don’t necessarily communicate often. They all experience this sense of impotence occasionally and for about the same length of time also.

Throughout this transition over the last 6 weeks though has been a sense of contentment, that this is, in fact, what I should be doing with my time. Cartooning and storytelling have been such a big part of my life since I was a young child that the work I am doing now fills me with a great deal of joy and a feeling that there are just bigger things on the horizon for me. Last week I posted this quote on Twitter because when it does feel crappy, I read this and it gets me right:

“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery—isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
— Charles Bukowski (Factotum)

With how topsy-turvy my life has been over the past 3 years of layoffs, divorce, and other such life obstacles, that little quote has given me more solace than I care to admit. That in the end, I have a shot of something more real than I can imagine.

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