Careers That Use Comic or Art or Stiry Telling
Illustrators who brand comics do so as a labor of love. But, with the right arroyo, indie comics and graphic novels can be part of a long-term career strategy—a manner to make connections, attract dream clients or a book bargain, and create an fine art object of lasting value.
Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, defines the form as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the reader." Just perhaps Keith Mayerson, analogy and cartooning instructor at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), in New York City, best describes the medium's significance: "Comics can be a piffling chip like punk rock. It'due south not virtually money. … It's about people communicating [to a peer group] through this very expressive art form where a moving picture says a one thousand words."
Nowhere is that DIY spirit and community ethos more than apparent than at Pocket-sized Press Expo (SPX), the premier indie comics convention in the Us. Every autumn, in Bethesda, Maryland, more four,000 comics creators and fans gather to share their work and discover new artists. I spoke with a few insiders here in Bethesda to improve understand the ethos of indie comics and how to break into the industry.
THE LEGACY OF INDIE COMICS
Comics experienced a revolution in the 1980s when Raw magazine, Maus, and Love and Rockets burst onto the scene. It was articulate that comics weren't just for kids anymore and that they could be smart, aesthetic—even groundbreaking. The indie comics industry strengthened through the 1980s and 1990s and began to advance thereafter. But within the final ten years, the possibilities of the form have expanded exponentially.
Why the recent transformation? The Internet, plus various high-contour literary prizes—such every bit Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize for Maus and Roz Chast's recent National Book Award nomination for Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?—helped to legitimize the form. The Love and Rockets generation had grown up and connected to consume art comics; a few of them went on to get art directors and editors—and to support cartoonists by hiring them as illustrators.
Adrian Tomine, creator of Optic Nerve and cover illustrator for The New Yorker, told me in an interview for Guernica, "I recall that [these art directors and editors] not only made comics more socially acceptable, especially in America, but they besides actually started to help create an atmosphere where there was at least a slight possibility that you could make it a viable career." With free, user-friendly blogging platforms, it has never been easier to distribute your piece of work from anywhere in the world. Tomine said, "Who or what a cartoonist is in America now can mean so many things."
LANDING CLIENTS
Lisa Hanawalt, best known every bit the designer and producer of the Netflix original evidence BoJack Horseman, had been making comics since she was a child. After she finished college and began taking on commercial illustration work, she also began publishing her comics in blogs and magazines like VICE, the Believer, the Hairpin and others. She told me via due east-mail service that her comics have helped her land illustration gigs. Among her height clients are the New York Times, Audi and Slate. "I've found a lot of clients through my silliest work—sketches making fun of corporate slogans, animated GIFs of Obama eating Manus Romney," she said. "I recollect art directors like seeing evidence of ideas and a strong point of view."
Although creating comics can lead to new clients, it'due south non simply about landing a big consignment or a book bargain. It's about gaining the freedom to shift from the restraints of commercial and editorial illustration to the wide-open spaces of your own imagination. A webcomic or graphic novel enables an artist to build his or her own earth. You can begin to arts and crafts characters, place them in longer-grade narratives, and realize a larger and possibly more personal vision.
As a consequence, commercial and editorial clients gravitate toward this unique and inventive work. Brands looking to reposition themselves for younger demographics are particularly interested in the youthful, sometimes edgy and even transgressive appeal of comics.
COMICS STUDIES
It's rare for publishers to take a hazard on an amateur artist. Instead, they prefer to work with artists who accept refined their work through substantive practice. This practise could have the form of creating comics on one's own or taking comics workshops at places such every bit the SVA, the Centre for Cartoon Studies (Vermont) and the California College of the Arts.
When I spoke with him in his role at the SVA, Mayerson suggested that merely standing to practise the work bodes well for an aspiring cartoonist. "If you keep putting pen or pencil to paper and keep rendering it, that'southward adept," he said. "Y'all can first putting the work on Tumblr or whatever number of sites, if non your own site. Pages develop a fan base, even if it's amid your family and friends." He suggested that the feedback might motivate an artist to go along going with his or her work—and possibly finish a project, share information technology and proceeds momentum with it.
Who or what a cartoonist is in America now tin can mean so many things."—Adrian Tomine
DIGITAL COMICS AND MINI-COMICS
As I spoke with artists, a theme that kept coming to the surface was the significance of creating an online presence (on Tumblr or your ain website), having a hard re-create of your comics and attending indie comics conventions (comic cons). That is, it's not sufficient merely to create corking work. It has to exist easily shareable online and offline. Artists including Kate Beaton and Noelle Stevenson gained a following online, Beaton with her webcomic of literary and historical satire and Stevenson with what would later become the YA graphic novel Nimona, which was a National Volume Award finalist.
Mayerson said that cartoonists utilise mini-comics as cute business organisation cards. Mini-comics are self-published comics with a limited impress run; "mini" refers to the quantity of copies, rather than dimensions or number of pages. In 1 of Mayerson's classes at the SVA, students create their own mini-comics—often with only InDesign, a copy center and a stapler—and hand-get together them. "They're inexpensive to make and cocky-publish," Mayerson said. At indie comic cons like SPX and others, emerging artists often connect with established artists, art directors and volume publishers by giving out these modestly produced art objects. He said, "Mini-comics are the currency of the art world of comics."
Agents and publishers oft scout for talent at indie comic cons. I spoke with Chris Staros, editor-in-chief of Top Shelf Productions, whose table at SPX displayed, among its many books, its recent graphic memoirs March, by Rep. John Lewis (illustrated by Nate Powell), and The Story of My Tits, by Jennifer Hayden. When I asked him why he searched for talent at shows such as the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Arts Festival, the Alternative Press Expo and this ane, he said, "[Nosotros're looking for] somebody who can write and tell a story, who can bundle it so that it's a squeamish physical object, and who tin can too set upwards a table here and be industrious enough to meet the public and proceeds some traction in that way."
He gestured toward the volume by Hayden, a fiction writer and children'southward book illustrator whom Meridian Shelf noticed at SPX years ago. "We saw some of her artwork early on, and we decided to go ahead and sign her and work with her through the process and let her take her fourth dimension." Hayden adds that they spoke often at events such as this, to the point where she says that they felt like family and that Summit Shelf understood the kind of personal project she wanted to create. The Story of My Tits took about ten years to create, Hayden said. It made its debut at the convention. The volume received positive early on printing, including a starred review from Publishers Weekly and write-ups in Marie Claire and other magazines.
The Story of My Tits traces Hayden's ambivalence about her breasts, from puberty to adulthood to cancer. The funny, intimate and moving memoir would non accept been possible without Hayden's passion to tell her story and her dedication to such a greatly personal project.
She tells me that the medium of comics has offered her something that illustration could not. "It has increased my conviction," she says. "I'm starting to rethink how I tin tell other personal stories with comics."
I'm starting to rethink how I can tell other personal stories with comics."—Jennifer Hayden
FROM WEBCOMICS TO Book DEAL
Cartoonist and illustrator Gemma Correll, author of the contempo collection of comics The Worrier's Guide to Life (2015), created web-comics for years and ultimately connected with a publisher. A young art schoolhouse grad from England turned Tumblr comics celeb, she told me at SPX that she had ever created comics, but she simply called them "illustrated diaries." She went on to study graphic design and illustration and later began to land jobs for such high-profile clients as the New York Times and JetBlue. However, she also created comics as a creative side project; she uploaded her work onto Tumblr and brought her mini-comics to indie conventions such every bit these. GoComics then solicited her cartoons for their platform, and her work attracted the interest of Andrews McMeel Publishing. "There are common themes in a lot of my piece of work," she said, such every bit the anxieties of modern life and the curative properties of cute pugs. So the publisher asked her, "Do you want to put a book together?"
Many other artists take also generated leads through grassroots publicity. Hanawalt said via e-mail that showing her comics at a convention helped her find a book amanuensis. "My agent establish my work at a comics convention and e-mailed to tell me she loved my 'animals in hats' drawings. I knew we'd be a good fit because she liked my weirder comics." Right afterward signing with Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, Hanawalt heard from Tom Devlin at the art comics publisher Drawn & Quarterly, who asked her if she might want to create a book. Her ensuing comics drove, My Dirty Dumb Eyes, came out in May 2013. Her adjacent book, also from Drawn & Quarterly, is due to be published this year.
Thanks to the rich history of independent comics, classes in cartoon studies, free online platforms, indie comic cons and more, the opportunities and the possibilities have expanded for those who wish to create visual narratives. You can create mini-comics, spider web-comics, graphic novels or all of them. Yous can draw gag cartoons, illustrate moments in history or delve into personal trauma. Whichever stories you desire to tell, not only can comics assistance you lot tell them, just also, comics can connect yous with a community of young man creators and fans who volition be eager to take that journeying with you. ca
Grace Bello (grace-bello.com) is a staff author for Columbia University, an interview editor for Guernica magazine and a freelance writer. She lives in Queens, New York. In this issue's Business column, Bello speaks with illustrators and graphic novelists to observe out how their comics fuel both their artistic lives and their careers.
Source: https://www.commarts.com/columns/careers-in-comics
0 Response to "Careers That Use Comic or Art or Stiry Telling"
Postar um comentário