Entries Tagged 'Comics' ↓

James Kochalka is a comic artist and musician, and now he’s a video game designer too. The awesome, prolific creator took some time in February 2010 to answer Dan Copulsky’s questions about his comics, life, and new venture.

You’ve been doing daily diary strips for over ten years. You’ve created a rather extensive portrait of your life and self, but there are some limitations to the form. You only have a few panels for each comic, and each generally has to focus on one day. Taken as a whole, do you feel like there’s anything missing from American Elf, or do you feel like it shows a pretty accurate picture of you and your life?

Both actually… it’s pretty accurate AND there’s lots and lots missing. But what I omit, either by design or accident, can be just as important as what I show in the strip. For as much as I reveal, I don’t reveal everything, and some things are only hinted at. It’s actually a strength of the strip. It’s a simple fact that our fellow human beings will always remain unknowable on some level. No matter how much you know about somebody, the vast majority of their life still remains secret. And so it goes with my strip as well. You will get to know me quite intimately by reading the strip, yet still the majority of my life will remain veiled. Basically, I reveal as much as one might reveal to a really really close friend.

Your website once required visitors to pay a small monthly subscription fee to read your comics. A couple of years ago you switched it so that most of your work was available to anyone but only subscribers could see some bonus material. Did the change have a noticeable effect on the number of visitors or subscribers?

Ultimately, no. Although there was a HUGE rush of attention when the site changed over from the subscription only model to the mostly free model. I think a few hundred thousand visitors came to American Elf in just a few days. It’s basically evened out.

The important thing about having the archives free is that it’s very useful for attracting new readers, and I can’t really get new subscribers if I don’t attract new readers. In the long run, it’s kept the site making money. Even though it doesn’t make any more than it did under the old system, at least it doesn’t make less… which is the direction things were heading before I switched.

Your two sons have appeared regularly in your diary strips since they were born. Oliver might still be too young to really understand what’s going on, but Eli must be pretty aware of your work. Does it seem like being a character in a well-read comic makes life more exciting or do you think growing up with it just makes it normal?

Both! That’s actually part of the point of American Elf… that the “normal” stuff in our lives is actually magical and exciting, if you’re open to it.

Being a character in my strip is something that Eli really likes, for now at least. He’s only 6. He even seems to like the attention that he receives from fans. The strip runs in our local newspaper, Seven Days, and people often recognize them on the street just by hearing me call their names. People hear “Eli and Oliver” and their ears perk up and they ask, are you from American Elf? He thinks it’s cool.

What happens if your kids become teenagers and are totally embarrassed by your comics about them? Would you stop putting them in comics? Would you take older strips out of your archives?

I expect they both will eventually reach an age where they don’t want that kind of attention drawn to themselves. I’m prepared to navigate those treacherous waters. I can easily just refocus the strip more prominently on myself, for instance.

No way in hell would I remove the strips from the archives. I don’t think they will ask for that, and if they did, well I’ll have to make some other compromise. My friend Steve Bissette suggests just paying them royalties.

How do you manage the time you spend working on art? For projects that you’re not necessarily doing a little every day, do you have deadlines (imposed by yourself or others)? Do you spend a set amount of time working on things every day or work when you’re inspired?

I do very little work that has a real “deadline,” so I don’t have to worry about that. But it’s still a trick to manage the time. I work when Oliver is napping or after Eli and Oliver have gone to bed at night, or sometimes a manage to steal a few minutes here and there. Eli is in first grade, so he’s gone all day, but Oliver only goes to day care two days a week… so I have just two days a week to really concentrate and get work done.

You’ve done a wide variety of creative projects, including diary strips, vulgar superhero comics, children’s books, paintings, and music. Is there anything else you’d still like to do, like drawing a really serious memoir or writing a novel?

One of my big dreams, since I was a little boy, has been to design a video game. So… a few years ago, I just started working on it… designing it on paper, working on the character and gameplay ideas. Then recently I was introduced to a small indie video game company called Pixeljam. I happened to be a huge fan of their games Dino Run and Mountain Maniac… and it turns out that they were huge fans of my comic.

So… we started work on my video game idea together. It’s called Glorkian Warrior. It combines my hand-drawn art style with their low-rez pixel graphics style. The bulk of the game is hand drawn, but Glorkian Warrior has a little pixel-robot version of himself in his pocket who can go into little caves and tunnels, where you play old-school style single-screen levels. We’re trying to fund the project through Kickstarter, and there’s a lot more information about it on our page there.

How much of your attraction to comics and video games is the same (like love for storytelling and art) and how much is different (like love for the interactivity of games)?

One of the things that I love about art is that it opens up a magical space for you to enter and explore. This feeling happens in novels, comics, music… but especially in video games.

Did you expect the game to actually get made when you started designing it?

I think I started work on it when one of my readers said, “Hey, I make videogames, do you want me to help you make a videogame?” We were going to make it as a GameBoy Advance game. So I started work on it, but they were really too busy and I never really heard much from them again. But I kept on working on the game on my own… mostly in my mind, but also sketching things on paper. And then I drew a short Glorkian Warrior comic for Pop Gun, and then I started working on a Glorkian Warrior graphic novel, which I’m about 2/3rds of the way done inking at this point.

Do you think you would have found a way to get the game made if you hadn’t been introduced to Pixeljam? Did those expectations shape the way you imagined or worked on the plans for the game?

My hope was to find someone to make the game eventually. But I wanted to be sure I found someone pretty professional and not flakey that would actually be able to put the work in and get the thing made.

I tried to keep my design ideas simple enough that I could explain them to a collaborator easily. I tried to hone the ideas in the game to something clear and precise and fun that a collaborator could make quickly and easily without much fuss. I actually came up with 2 or 3 clear different game ideas, but when I hooked up with Pixeljam they loved them all so much that they insisted that we combine them into one game. And then we all got so excited that it started to balloon wildly as we got more and more crazy ideas. But we know we can’t explore every idea or the game won’t get made… we’d just go on for infinity thinking up new amazing features, so we’re prepared to cut things back to the core.

Could you describe what the game’s going to be like once it’s ready?

We’ve made a very simple rough prototype of the basic gameplay elements, and it’s fun. The core of the game is good, it’s really strong. Basically, it’s sort of a combination of Super Mario Bros. and Galaga with some gravity flipping.

Here’s the premise: The Glorkian Warrior is supposed to patrol his asteroid field, but he lost the keys to his Glorkian Supercar, so now he has to go look for them. So, he follows his patrol route on foot from asteroid to asteroid, looking for his keys. He has a Super Backpack that he uses to shoot space-invadery type aliens flying above him, but there’s other creatures on the ground that he can jump on and bounce off of and stuff.

But he also has a little robot version of himself in his pocket that he can send into little secret caves to look for his keys and stuff. In the caves you will play an old-school style pixel-graphic version of the game. It’s going to be really cool.

Glorkian Warrior Kickstarter Page
Glorkian Warrior Homepage – pixeljam.com/glorkianwarrior
American Elf (James’ daily strips) – americanelf.com

When Ryan Estrada was living in Mexico for a year, he let me come stay with him for a couple of months, even though he didn’t know me. What I’m saying is, in addition to being a great artist, he is a real nice guy. Ryan’s got a comic competing for a contract with DC Comics and he’s working on a movie. He answered my questions (I’m Dan Copulsky) in February 2010.

You’re a world traveler, frequently adventuring around the world, but I haven’t heard a reference to your geographic location in a while. Where are you these days, and what are you doing there?

I’m currently back home in good old (boring) Waterford, Michigan visiting with the family, getting ready to attend my brother’s wedding, and getting the ball rolling for my animated feature! The movie I’m working on is an animated feature on live action backgrounds, and I’m going to be shooting the live action bits in Royal Oak, Michigan in the spring. I’m also going to have to do some flying around the US to record actors soon. Later this year, once I get to the animation stage, I plan to move to Costa Rica and animate on a beach somewhere.

I just arrived here in November. Before that I was living in Gimhae, South Korea for just over a year.

You’ve done both comics and animation in the past. Now you’re working on adapting one of your comics, The Kind You Don’t Take Home to Mother, into an animated film. What’s the relationship between the two art forms for you? Is there one you love more than the other, or do they just offer something different?

I just love telling stories. Where I feel my talent lies is in telling long form stories. Movies, graphic novels, and other ridiculously time-consuming endeavors. That’s why whenever I attempt to draw short gag comics, it never works, because I just can’t write that way! So I have all these short comics that are bad, and all these scripts that I’m really proud of sitting around gathering dust, and I want to get them out there. Animation, comics, I just want to share them! I will say that I enjoy drawing comics a lot more than I do the actual process of animating. It’s such a tedious, time consuming process that it’s easy to let it become a bore if your heart isn’t in it at every moment. But I enjoy the end product of animation a lot more.

To gather funds for your movie, you’re offering some interesting incentives, like putting someone’s name or portrait in the movie, or including their dog as a character. How did you decide on this fundraising model? How’s it working so far?

I knew I wanted to raise money myself, rather than pitch to a big studio, because this is my first movie, and I want to show what I can do without getting steamrolled by some producer that has total control over my project. So I came up with a few ways to try and raise some bucks.

The dog thing came first. The main character is a dog walker, so I knew I’d need to draw 4 or 5 dogs following her around through the whole movie. A few friends jokingly suggested I should draw their dog. I realized I could use that as an opportunity to raise money to get the movie made, without sacrificing the film, since it’s something that had to be there anyway. When I started typing it up, I realized all the other little things in the movie that had to be there but weren’t designed yet. Lists of names on a spreadsheet. Characters with only one or two lines. Random werewolf victims. I had raised money for my first web comic a similar way, by drawing people into the story, so I just decided to go all out and offer people lots of ways to get themselves or their loved ones in the movie.

So far it hasn’t raked in the dough I would have hoped, but I’m still trying to get the word out there!

The biggest incentive package available, for $50,000, includes writing a new scene into the movie featuring someone’s family. As awesome as getting that funding would be, do you feel like letting that have a significant effect on a part of your film could be sacrificing some of the artistic intentions behind the content?

Once again, I only offered that package because there was already a scene in the movie where the main character, who up until that point has been a bit of a shut-in, is trying to be social by talking to random people on the street and is completely out of her element. The scene would change little, except for the reactions by the family, which they could ad-lib. It’d be just like letting an actor ad-lib in a scene!

The website for the movie has an “About the Team” page that lists just you and Kevin Patrick Edhard. Is that the whole team? Are you going to bring in other people to help with recording, animating, editing, or anything else?

Absolutely! As we move on to new stages of production, you’ll see lots of names added on. First and foremost our actors…. I have some big names in mind, and have spoken with agents, but I have to raise a little more money before I sign them on. I’ll also be bringing on a crew for the live action segments, and then the animation team. I’m going to do as much of the work as humanly possible myself though, partially because I want to see it through myself, and partially because the budget of my entire movie is smaller than what a big Hollywood film would budget for the star’s pedicures.

You have a Comic, Sci-Fi Drive-By, competing on Zuda.com. Whenever someone I know or admire has something online that I can vote for, like a shirt on Threadless or a comic on Zuda, I want to show my support. But sometimes I worry that I really ought to evaluate every piece in the competition and try to vote based on the works’ merits alone. How do you vote on things like this?

I’m completely with you! Things like that are, by their very nature, huge popularity contests. Threadless may be a little different, but on Zuda the pool of regular readers isn’t large enough to sway the vote. It comes down to the audience each creator is able to bring in. But if someone has a terrible comic, it’s going to be very difficult for them to bring people in to vote. If people don’t admire and like their work, and think their current offering reflects that quality, they’re usually not going to vote for it.

I always feel awful when I’m in a contest like that. The only way to win is to get as many people to vote as possible, so I feel like I’m begging for votes. Lately though, I found a pleasant way around that. I offered to draw anything anyone asked for in the comments underneath my Zuda comic. They don’t have to vote, it was just a way to get people with Zuda accounts looking at my comic. Then, they can judge it for themselves without feeling like they were begged into it. But I don’t expect people to vote blindly, and I don’t either. When I vote for others, I’ll give the other entries a skim. I don’t mind letting myself be a little biased, but I’m not going to blatantly lie and vote for something I don’t like.

You’ve been involved in a number of daily updating, not-DC-contracted web comics. You stopped your most recent, Chillin’ Like Villains, citing lack of reader interest. Are you done doing that sort of comic for a while?

Yeah, I’m done for a while with regularly updated web series. I haven’t found a way for the web comic model to work for me personally, with the kind of work that I do. All the successful models seem to revolve around consistently working on the same strip with the same characters for years, and that’s just not the way I’m built. I like to develop a story, and tell it in a length and update schedule that fits with the story being told. If I can’t turn it profitable, I don’t have the time to devote to doing it right. I’m a full time cartoonist, so if I don’t get paid, I don’t eat. All the ways I’ve seen to make it work involve getting readers into a habit, and I haven’t found a way to build a big, regular readership for the kinds of projects I like to do. I’m sure it’s more than possible, but I’m a bit burned out on trying and failing.

You have lots of ridiculous stories about your life. You slept on a bench during a typhoon! You accidentally illegally immigrated to Burma! You unknowingly threw away the single game piece in one of those fast food giveaways that was actually worth a million dollars! Do you ever exaggerate?

Oddly enough, I don’t have to! I find that if you lead a life that revolves on showing up in random, potentially dangerous places you know nothing about completely unprepared, awesome stuff just happens!

Ryan’s Website – ryanestrada.com
Ryan’s Zuda Comic – votefor.ryanestrada.com
Ryan’s Movie: The Kind You Don’t Take Home to Mother

Lee Bretschneider is an awesome illustrator, animator, and comic artist, and this month he’s offering an awesome deal. All proceeds from prints sold in his store are being donated to the American Red Cross for Haitian relief efforts. You get a great 11 by 17 print for $15, shipping (to the US) included, even signed by the artist if you’d like, and you get to support an important cause. There are a bunch of prints by Lee, plus a few by others available too. So visit adventuringcompany.com/store, check it out, and buy a print.

Josh Frees is going to introduce himself. He is a delightful artist and swell guy. Swell enough that took some time to answer Dan Copulsky’s questions (by email, in January and February 2010).

First, could you give a short bio of yourself, the kind that would typically be found in the contributors section of an anthology?

Josh P.M. Frees is an artist and a musician from Philadelphia, PA. His work has been published in several anthologies and websites and he self-publishes his own intermittent mini comics when he gets the chance. You can find out more by hitting up joshpm.livejournal.com.

Next, could you give the sort of bio someone might be able to write about you after making small talk at a party?

Josh is some sort of ridiculously happy idiot who likes to make people smile. He plays music like a madman and makes comics that are full of the best kind of inside jokes and awkward dialogue.

Are comics and music just two things you’re interested in, or is your interest in both connected? I know you sometimes draw comics about making music. Does either art form have other influences on the other?

They are most definitely connected! Both are very important aspects of my life and it would be really difficult for me to do one without the other as different as they seem. First, music often inspires me while I draw, right down to stylistic decisions. I listen to happy, poppy ska, punk, and indie rock, and I feel like that shines through in my work. Like my comics, I like my music fun and carefree, but also a little provocative and with just a hint of edginess.

In addition, when I’m having trouble writing or drawing I often use music as a release. Performing with my band, Victor’s Lament, is always a really fun time. I jump all over the stage, play my heart out on my sax, sing along, and just rock out in general. Or if I’m at home I’ll take out the guitar and noodle around. I’m not very good at guitar but I’ve been writing some neat little licks that we might be turning into songs soon. But yeah, it’s another creative outlet that helps me clear my head and express myself in a different medium.

On the same theme, is there anyone you admire as both a comic artist and a musician? James Kochalka’s the only other person I can think of that does both, though there must be others.

There are actually very very many comic artists who also create some astounding music. Lucy Knisley writes some really touching heartfelt folky guitar songs every now and then, Nate Powell has been in several punk bands such as Soophie Nun Squad and The Universe (both of which I highly recommend), Liz Baillie and M.K. Reed are in a band called The Holepunchers and Liz also plays ukulele versions of Bouncing Souls songs in her one-woman cover band ECFUke, and my good friend Alvaro Lopez-Moreno writes both folk songs and makes some intense rap music under the name M.C. Blackwolf.

Other folks include Katie Rose Leon who makes some really fun synth pop rock gems, Jim Gardner (beautifully simple sweeping tunes), Jeffrey Lewis (straight up American folk), Aaron Brassea, Josh Sullivan, Brian Fukushima, Brian Lee O’Malley (as Kupek), Rebecca Sugar, honestly this list could go ooooon and oooon!

I’m always impressed by the range of talents of comic artists. Rarely are we one trick ponies and often the people I’ve met who make comics have a vast variety of interests in subjects ranging from art to literature to neuroscience to the biology of beetles. I think that this is one of the primary contributing factors to the richness of both the comics community and the medium itself. The variety of talents within the comics scene really makes it accessible, which sets it apart from the world of “fine art.”

You graduated from college a few months ago. What are you up to now? Do you have plans for the future?

Lately I’ve been finishing grad school applications and trying to find a part-time job. I am applying to both the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. I am really interested in really getting a down and dirty in depth education in comics, because while it’s something I’m passionate about and I’ve been doing relatively successfully over the past few years, I still don’t feel like I’m very good at it! I feel like both programs will also help me continue to improve my writing and branch out artistically!

I have been recording with my band as we are about to release a split 7” with some good friends of ours: The Heat Machine from Nebraska. I’m really proud of the new songs and the idea of releasing vinyl is pretty novel to me.

You also made a passing references online to working on a graphic novel. Can you say any more about it or when people might be able to look forward to seeing it?

I am very much in the planning/prewriting stages. I have some character sketches, a few outlines, some freewrite short stories that might be incorporated, but I have nowhere near the endurance, the drive, or the time to tackle anything like that right now. It is definitely something that I am taking my time on and really giving my all, because I want it to be huge and AWESOME. My ideal timeline would be to work on it for the next three years or so and see where it takes me. What I have in mind is expansive and convoluted and I love it, so I don’t want to rush it.

Lurking around web comics, I’ve noticed that you have a great ability to befriend people, like you seem to have this really easy way of making to-the-point, engaged, interesting, nice comments on other people’s work and in getting those people interested in what you’re doing. Is it a skill you practiced or just a natural talent?

I’ve always been one to kind of reach out to people. In almost anything I do, whether it’s art, music, traveling, etc. I really value the interactions and relationships I’ve been able to form with folks. As far as the comics scene goes: when I first started reading and posting comics on the internet I always felt very welcomed by people like Robert Forest (Grugg), Ive Surocok, Natasha Allegri, Liz Prince, Ryan Estrada, and the livejournal comics people in general. As I got more involved with comics and started going to conventions like MoCCA and SPX, meeting people like Alvaro Lopez-Moreno and Sarah “Sally Bloodbath” Louise who really took me under their wing and taught me how to do pretty much everything I know. It was really encouraging to see that, unlike a lot of art and music scenes, a lot of the pomp and pretense that exists in other mediums was completely missing. I found it very easy to talk to other artists, ask questions about techniques, or just generally make friends.

People also really tend to appreciate both support and constructive criticism. Comics is a largely thankless process where we spend a lot of time creating pieces that rarely take more than a few minutes to read. It makes a big difference when someone takes the time to say they really enjoyed a piece or to offer up some tips to help you improve! By the same token I try to make a point of replying to just about every comment I get on Livejournal (even if it’s just a “thanks!” or “hello!”) because I am really grateful that people are enjoying what I’m doing and it’s nice when they take the time to say so.

Basically Comics folks are just some of the nicest in the world. It’s always a pleasure to hang out, bounce ideas off folks, grab a drink, do some jams, or generally just joke around. This particular art scene makes it easy to just be myself and relax while doing something I love.

Josh’s Livejournal – joshpm.livejournal.com
Josh’s Band, Victor’s Lament – victorslament.com
Coming Soon: joshpm.com

Professional illustrator and comic artist Ryan Estrada is offering free drawings. Ryan has a comic competing on Zuda.com for a deal with DC Comics. All week Ryan is drawing whatever is requested in the comments for his comic, illustrations he’d usually charge a lot of money for. You don’t need to vote for his comic, but you do need to sign up for Zuda.com. Ryan is promoting his comic at votefor.ryanestrada.com. QuestionRiot.com cashed in on his deal: