Dale O’Flaherty Interview

Dale O’Flaherty makes comics, and he’s a recent college graduate weighing the possibility of making that a living. He answered my questions (I’m Dan Copulsky) in June and July 2010.

You recently graduated from college. What are you doing now or planning for the future? Could you imagine trying to make a career out of comics, or do you think of creating them more as a hobby?

At the moment I’m unemployed. When I realized I would have all this free time on my hands at the start of the Summer I knew that I’d have an opportunity to try to get into comics. The problem I had before was that I was so busy with college I didn’t have time to produce comics and I would make one or two over the space of a week and then I wouldn’t put up anything new for a month or something. I’ve realized that I need to have a better internet presence if there’s to be any hope of me supporting myself through this. So at the moment the idea is to produce daily content (whether journal comics or doodles) and post thumbnails and panels from a longer work I’m currently roughing out and by the time the longer work is finished I should have enough journal comics to put out a couple of minis which will hopefully do well enough to pay for the print run of the longer one.

As far as making a career out of comics goes, I really like the idea of being self employed and doing something I love. The one problem is the comics scene in Ireland is very small from what I hear, but England isn’t that far I guess.

I also have some other non comics stuff on my radar planned like a camping trip and a lab position lined up that should keep me busy for a couple of weeks. And a lot of books to read. So many, oh my goodness.

Can you say anything about the longer comic project your working on?

Yeah, last summer I went to Electric Picnic (its a 3 day music festival in Ireland) and I got sick halfway through and had to go to the hospital with a case of appendicitis. When I was in the ambulance talking to my friend on the phone about how weird it was I knew I wanted to do a comic about it. Unfortunately my last year of college got in the way, but I still thought about it and and did bits and pieces on it here and there, but I realized that it would be silly to start it without doing a script and thumb-nailing it because it’s the longest thing I’ve tried doing. So I did out a rough list of plot points in chronological order recently to try to sort it out in my head and figure out where it was going and if there was any overarching theme or if it was just a bunch of stuff that happened. And I was worrying for a while that the comic wouldn’t work well as a whole. But funnily enough the one thing that ties it all together is that nothing turns out right. I make all these plans and everything just sort of goes wrong. I almost miss the train to Laois (I thought it was a bus and spent an hour outside waiting for a bus freaking out), I pitch my tent in the first camping ground I come to which quickly becomes packed, I miss a lot of bands, I forget sun cream, and when I do have to go to the hospital I spent two hours trying to call someone who is at the festival that can find my tent and pack up my stuff. It’s sort of funny how shitty my luck was that day, although pretty much everything did turn out okay in the end (although I had to leave my tent behind and I never got to see The Flaming Lips).

What kinds of comics (short, long, autobiographic, fictional, funny, serious) are you interested in making?

Right now I’m more interested in using journal comics to try to tell a longer story. There’s only so much you can do with short journal comics and I don’t think I’ve quite gotten the hang of those yet. The longest I’ve managed to do journal comics was for 30 days in June back in 2007. It was driving me mad at the end, it felt like an obligation instead of something I wanted to do. Although I think doing a short comic every day is a good exercise. I might try it again. I might do hourlies again sometime soon. Although I don’t know how John Campbell manages to do those for a whole month I’m sick of them by the end of the day! I have to draw really simply when I’m doing hourlies (kind of how John draws), otherwise I’m spending most of the hourlies sitting around drawing hourlies. I’m not sure how Lucy Knisley manages it. I haven’t thought of doing fictional comics yet. Maybe if I come up with a story that’s good enough. The comic I’m doing at the moment is a bit funny and a bit serious. Me and my friend are talking about where our lives are going at the moment but we’re also just drinking and goofing off so it’s a bit of both. I wouldn’t choose one over the other though, I like the story telling opportunities that both raise and each have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Though your artwork is beautiful, it seems like you’re still in some ways early in the process of learning your craft. What kind of support and advice have you received from readers and mentors?

Thank you! Yeah, I’ve always drawn since a very early age, but I’ve never had any formal art training (I think it shows as well). I started doing comics properly around June 2007 and posting them to Livejournal. Eventually I got linked by Ryan Pequin (which was a cool coincidence since his comics inspired me to start my own) and then I had all these artists I’ve loved tell me they liked my stuff, which was insanely flattering and a little bewildering. Yeah, I’ve been getting advice and constructive criticism on my stuff for a while now and its really helpful to have a community of artists and enthusiasts critique a drawing or let you know where you can buy good art material. As for specific advice, John Allison (this was on his blog I think) said to keep a proper sketchbook. I do most of my comics in my sketchbook but most of my drawings or quick doodles on printer paper. I need to get into the habit! Joseph Lambert is my sketchbook idol. His stuff is so good.

You mentioned trying to have more of an online presence. Aside from posting comics more regularly, are you thinking about anything like setting up your own website or creating something you could sell in an online store?

Yeah, I really need to get up off my butt and do comics more often! I find it hard to balance art stuff and life which is really weird considering I’m not working at the moment and have plenty of free time. I think I need to have structure, otherwise I end up pissing away whole days doing nothing in particular. I think a website would help me keep a proper updating schedule because there is an obligation for content otherwise people would quickly forget you and your website. I think I obsess too much about having nice art (I don’t think it shows), which means I have little art freak outs every now and then so I don’t post for ages, but I think I need to stick with it. I love looking at cartoonists’ old work where you can look back and see how they’ve progressed. I feel I’m at a very early stage, but I have an idea of where I need to go so hopefully in a couple years I can look at the stuff I’m doing now and not be too embarrassed! I’ve heard ComicPress is pretty hard to use so I might just start using Blogspot (and Tumblr) for the time being. Man, I’m pretty awful with computers. I’ll probably need help with a website sometime soon. Yeah, I keep getting bugged to start making stuff that people can buy which is as good sign as any I guess. Yeah, I think I’ll start putting out minis sometime very soon.

Other than Ryan Pequin and Joseph Lambert, what work (comics or otherwise) inspires and excites you the most?

Oh jeeze, I know I’m going to end up leaving some people out accidentally. Sorry in advance if I’ve left you out! Let’s see, MS Paint Adventures is probably my favorite comic at the moment. it’s pretty amazing watching the story (Homestuck) grow organically and seeing how Andrew can take something someone mentioned ages ago and make it this prominent story element. If you didn’t know, most of it is made up as he goes along—you’d think he was a story-wizard or something. Actually, he probably is. Order of Tales just finished up recently, that was amazing. I love Evan Dahm’s art work. Renee Engstrom (of Anders loves Maria) and her partner Rasmus Gran have started to do comics together, I like those. John Alison started a new comic after Scary go Round ended. It’s called Bad Machinery, it’s so good. Adam Cadwell does a comic called the Everyday (which is ending soon!). I really like the art work, it’s clean black and white artwork (although he has experimented with color) that is balanced well between realism and cartoony exaggeration. One of his friends in the strip is another great cartoonist, Marc Ellerby. Marc does Ellerbisms, which is this really funny autobio comic that can be really sad at times. Philipa Rice does this great comic called My Cardboard Life. I had the pleasure of looking at one of her strips in person, it’s really neat to see someone doing a collage comic. Joe Decie does great autobio stuff with an ink wash. He’s recently been experimenting with watercolors. I’ve learned so much stuff about journals from him. Shug Raine did this zine called Reet! which was awesome. He’s recently been working on completing his first long form work (Find Comet, Hit Comet, Watch Comet, Sleep), which I’m looking forward to seeing how he wraps up! There’s this guy on my Livejournal called dragoninstall who does this amazing bonkers comic called Shitcomic. None of it was plotted out in advance and none of it makes sense, but it is awesome! There’s another guy on my Livejournal called deathchalupa who does these amazing journals, he has such a distinctive style. I can’t wait to see more stuff from him. Both Liz Prince and Maris Wicks are awesome and have had a huge influence on my style. Penrod Pulaski is probably my favorite person doing journals at the moment, he’s so good! Even though he’s really technically accomplished he has this great sense of humor as well. I’ve only recently got into Dustin Harbin’s comics but his journals are amazing. I wish I was that good. Box Brown and Pranas T. Naujokaitis both do awesome comics. Hey Pais is a cat who does journal comics. Robin Le Blanc is a great photographer and writer (who sells prints here). Vicki Nerino and Britt Wilson (Uterus Parade Press) are the most awesome, gross, funny people doing comics at the moment (with the possible exception of Harvey James, who sort of transcends gross and funny). That’s really all there is to say on the matter!

Dale’s Livejournal – daleof.livejournal.com