Other plans.

Yes, after a long (long) hiatus, Breaking Out! finally makes its return. Why now? Let’s just say for now, “love made me do it.” The statement will make more sense when the next Breaking Out! article hits.

The original column was a two-headed beast of advice and motivation. One head wanted to introduce creators to the business/marketing/sales aspects of the comics industry. Creators tend to get all wrapped up in creating and often overlook those aspects of turning something you love into an actual career (if that’s your goal). The other head wanted to give creators an extra kick in the pants…to motivate them…to encourage them…to help their passions soar. To keep them from giving up on their dreams…giving up on something they love.

There’s that “L” word again… must be important. Well, it was important enough for me to resurrect the column.

You might be thinking, “What does the business of stripping have to do with comics?” Think about it for a moment…you have people that strip in the privacy of their own homes for their own enjoyment, you have people that strip for others just for the fun of it (often putting their pictures/movies up on the internet), you have people taking on lots of small stripping jobs to earn a modest living (or work their way through school), you have people working their way from smaller clubs to bigger clubs to get noticed and possibly pick up the big paycheck one day with Hollywood. You have the same patterns in comics…and music…and acting. So, let’s look at how strippers “expose” themselves at different levels.

The tease. So, do you think you can walk out on stage naked and be done with it? Well, if you have the perfect body, you might be able to get away with it…but chances are you’ll just lose your chance because they know there are others willing to put a lot more effort into it. A good stripper teases the audience showing a little skin here and a little there. They know how to build up the interest of the audience. They milk every bit of their exposure to capitalize on it. Even strippers with just fair or average (and sometimes worse) bodies can get a crowd excited if they’re exceptionally talented in the art of the tease. And if they’re good at teasing, they have a much better chance of having people toss money their way.

Sure, you could wait for your one project to finally hit the stands, but what if it flubs? What if hardly anyone notices? You’ve just walked out on the stage naked and risked your success on your project being so perfect that everyone will take notice without you putting much effort into it. But why take the chance when you can just build up their interest? Tease them with images, pages, snippets, press releases, a good website, interviews, signings, convention appearances, and more. Work on smaller projects like webcomics, articles, and anthology pieces that reveal a little bit about the quality of your work and get people interested in seeing more. Give people a reason to get excited about you and your projects.

Spice it up. It’s tough to be original in most creative businesses. How many strippers have gone before that strutted out on the stage dressed as cops, firefighters, clowns, business executives, or those friendly and adorable pussycats? If they put in the time and effort, they can still find new ways to twist up those ideas and make them different and intriguing. They might take a basic concept like the cop uniform and bring in a fellow stripper to play the criminal in a mock interrogation/strip search scene. It’s the same basic concept, but it’s a different execution that might make people take notice. They could also bring in props like a fire extinguisher that’s really a fog machine for the firefighter who steps in and out of the fog revealing more and more each time (using the prop to enhance the tease). With tons of other strippers out there, they need to do something to set themselves apart, and it doesn’t have to just be costumes or props. A stripper could go out there with a unique pole routine or an exotic dance or even strip while they sing. They take the execution of the striptease to a new level to make it more involving for the audience…to give them their money’s worth.

Take those ideas and keep twisting to produce a comic that catches people off guard. Mix vastly different ideas together or take an existing idea and execute it in an intriguing fashion. You could take a general premise and spice it up…like showing superheroes from alternative perspectives like Damage Control or Powers. You could show the different sides of superheroes like Hero Happy Hour and Common Grounds. Give the reader a little extra something to grab their attention and make them feel like they’re getting their money’s worth.

Interact. Many strippers like to work the crowd a little before they get on stage to flirt with the patrons and give them something to look forward to. Not only does it help solicit more tips for their stage performance, but they can also pull in extra work doing table dances. If they just sat backstage and waited their turn, they’d miss out on that. Plus, getting cozy helps develop regulars that will keep their act successful even during hard times. Then there’s also the fact that those regulars would talk about them to their friends. If word of mouth spreads, more and more people could start showing up for their shows. If they get a big enough following, a bigger club might make them an offer hoping to secure those crowds…or an agent might see some potential and “make some calls.”

Taking the time to talk with your potential audience can have a great impact on the outcome. Make friends and develop a network of people that like you and your work enough to champion it to the masses. Respond to letters and emails, chat with them about their favorite parts of your comics, and make them feel like a part of the experience. And remember to not just focus on bringing in new readers…you also need to work at building and keeping the interest of regulars that will check out your work time-and-again.

####

If you’ve worked on your skills, and you honestly feel you’re ready to take the plunge into the world of comics, then go ahead…expose yourself. You know you want to. If you know your project will take a while to get rolling, start building up an audience. Do a webcomic based on the characters or a webcomic that shows the quality you and your collaborators are capable of. Work on some articles for some websites…artists can give tips on drawing, coloring and inking…writers can give tips on writing (or tips on dealing with frustration, rejection, and feeling like you’re invisible). Build a website to promote different aspects of the project–concept artwork, short stories about the characters, news about the project and creators, and other fun stuff. Get out there and tease the world with what you have to offer and get them excited for more.

Doesn’t take much to sidetrack you from working on that second job, does it? By the time you realize that you need to get stuff done, it could be late at night, and you’ll stay up even later to get as much done as you can. You wind up not getting much sleep, and you start that day job tomorrow a little weary. It makes the day drag on, leads to mistakes and loss of productivity that increases your workload, and puts you in a position where anything remotely resembling work is the furthest thought from your mind by the time you get home. You’re just too burnt out to “work” on your dreams. And it’s a pattern that keeps getting worse…unless you do something about it.

Break the cycle. The nasty thing about those vicious repeating cycles is that they never seem to end. They just go on and on like some kind of endless pit of frustration. And if you keep at it long enough, it’ll become habit. If this is you, stop. Immediately. Break the cycle now. Take some time off to just relax. Not just a day, or even just two. Take at least three days to just indulge yourself. Watch movies, play games, read some books, go on a nature hike. Do whatever it takes to relax and give your fried husk of a brain the chance to recover. Don’t think about any kind of work…no day job…no comics…nothing but entertainment and fun. But before you take that break, you’ll need to do one little thing.

Work out a schedule. Given: the day job’s gonna grind you down. Given: your mind will need a little time to relax from work. Given: creating comics IS work (fun work, but it does take a lot of effort). Given: you need a certain amount of sleep to be productive…in your job and in comics. Now, take all of these factors into account when you develop your comic working schedule.

How much sleep do you need at night to feel rested and ready to take on the world? If you’re not sure, use your days off to find out. What time do you need to get up in the morning to make it to work on time? Use this as your baseline and find out when you need to go to bed to get the right amount of sleep at night. But you can’t just call it quits right at bedtime and expect to fall asleep immediately. Give yourself an hour to unwind from your comic creator persona. This gives you a buffer, so if you happen to run a little long with your comic work or get hyper-focused on a particular project, you’ll be able to handle it without running into your sleep time. Continuing with this backwards-stepping approach, figure out how much time you can dedicate to comic work each night while still leaving yourself some time to cool down from regular work.

But no schedule is completely foolproof, so take an extra precautionary measure to make sure you don’t jump back into that dreadful burn-out cycle.

Schedule time off. Give yourself permission to goof off one day every week. Plan a night out with some friends, go to the movies, veg out with popcorn and movies, go shopping, or take care of any number of things to take your mind away from work and let it unwind. In a single day, you should be able fit enough recreational activities to sate your “goofing off” fix for the week. By working it into your schedule, it gives you a psychological advantage over slacking off all week long. You’ll have an easier time getting to work on comics all those other days because you know you have an entire day coming up soon where you won’t have to deal with any kind of work.

Know how to plan your projects. So, now you have a schedule you can work with to preempt the burnout phase…but you still have to integrate that with your project planning. With a set schedule, you know how much time you can put into creating comics each week. But how long will a project take you? How do you schedule your projects so you aren’t overloaded with work and wind up right back in that dreaded cycle? How much time do you need to do research on a project (gather facts/data or find reference material)? Once you’re prepared, how long does it take you to get through writing/drawing/inking/coloring/lettering an average page? What factors might cause that page to go slower or quicker? If you’re not sure, take a couple weeks to time yourself and find out. Since you have a new schedule where you work a set number of hours at a time, just keep a record of how many pages you complete each day.

After a couple weeks, calculate an average of how long it takes you to complete a page. If you have any time that took longer than your average, go through the pages from that time and find out why. Did you require extra research or references? Did it have heavy amounts of dialogue, backgrounds, or details? Do the same for any pages that finished up faster than the average and take into account these factors that can impact your schedule.

####

And yes, everyone’s different. Some people are workhorses that can just come home and have no problems jumping right into their comic work. A lot of people working the small press route also tend to run with really loose deadlines, and they just get projects done at whatever pace is comfortable or convenient for them. But once they get a solid deadline on a project that could be their big break, there’s a chance those lax ways could get the better of them and lead them to frustration and dwindling productivity. If you feel frustration getting to you or feel yourself struggling with stuff that came easily a few weeks ago, step back for a moment and take an honest look at yourself…are you burning out?

If so, don’t let it get worse. Do something about it. Develop a plan that works for you if you have to. The above steps work for me whenever I start collapsing into a burnout phase, and they’ve worked for some friends of mine. If all else fails, give them a shot because at least you’ll be doing something to keep those dreams alive.

Of course, there are instances where it’s nearly impossible to quit…when you’re addicted. Giving up smoking? How about caffeine? Or sweets? Quitting isn’t always a bad thing. When you actually think about it, quitting can be a form of sacrifice to help bring your life in line with your goals. Set a goal and try not to give up anything to achieve it. Want to lose weight? You’ll probably need to give up a lot of your favorite foods and some of your time for exercise. Want to watch a weekend-long MST3K marathon? You’ll lose out on time for other projects, sleep, and you might even sacrifice a little sanity along the way.

When I decided to get serious with my writing, I gave up a lot of my late nights playing games to make time for it. I also gave up an hour of sleep each night to get up early and work on my craft. My TV watching dropped to minimal levels as well, but that’s to give myself more time with the family (so they don’t feel left out when I’m locked away in my office writing).

Unfortunately, giving up so many different things to go after a goal also helps make it easier to quit later on. Think of how much you had to quit to go after a single goal. That’s a lot of practice, isn’t it? And if you have time to work on your projects, then you’ve been practicing how to quit other things correctly. You need to put that kind of practice into your creative endeavors as well, or you’ll be tempted to fall back to something you’re good at…quitting. But you can practice all the time and still feel the urge to quit.

So, how can you increase your odds of not giving up and falling back to all that well-practiced quitting? You get yourself addicted. Give yourself time to enjoy the rush of creating something new. Reward yourself whenever you stick to your goals and when you do a good job. Take a break every now and then to do something weird with your artwork…something fun. Set yourself up, so that you always feel your creativity overwhelming you to the point where you have no choice but to follow that path. Get yourself to the point where you stop thinking about how much you’re giving up and sacrificing to be a creator and start filling your thoughts with your creations instead.

Let’s flip back to the creative side real quick. You’re now addicted to all that fun creative stuff. You write or pencil all the time. But if you don’t take the effort to tear apart and analyze your work and guide all that practicing towards improvement, you’ll just be spinning your wheels. If you write and draw all the time, but do it wrong, you’re just reinforcing all those bad habits (and making them more difficult to break later on). So, it’s not enough to just write or draw all the time unless you constantly review your work with a critical eye to push yourself to improve your craft. Get the most out of the time you’ve made for yourself. To paraphrase from George Leonard’s book, Mastery–practice perfectly.

So, be a quitter! Quit the things you can afford to sacrifice to reach your goals, quit viewing the world through a pessimistic lens, quit worrying about your big break not showing up, and quit reinforcing bad habits in your craft. Quit those things, so you can reclaim the time, develop the positive attitude and practice the skills you need to reach your goals.

Know where to find your prey. If you’re in the middle of the wilderness starving to death, it doesn’t do any good to set a trap or spend your time hunting in an area with no animals. Is there a water hole nearby? Is there a trail leading to it with a variety of different tracks along it? Guess what you might find there? Our prey is a little different. It’s bits of fashion or culture or psychology or science or history twisted around into something fresh and exciting. It’s information and observations tossed into our brain blender and pureed into an imagination smoothie. So, where does this information come from? A blank page? Not hardly. Stop staring at it and track down the fruit you need to squeeze for those creative juices. It lurks in pictures, conversations, news articles, history, scientific advancements, nature, events, and anywhere else you can learn something or spark a response from your senses and emotions.

Follow the trail. When you find a source of information that looks promising, don’t just stop there–follow the trail. If that bit of information whets your creativity appetite, chances are good that it could lead to some bigger game. Let yourself get lost in a sea of ideas, whimsies, data, and imagery. Let yourself leap freely from one intriguing tidbit of information to the next. Explore as much of the trail as you can and gather the resources you’ll need to capture your prey.

Tag it. What about when you find something that sparks your interest or triggers some thoughts and emotions? Tag it. Write it down, clip it out, or sketch it…and then file it away. If it triggers some reaction in you now, it will do the same later on. Build a file of ideas, thoughts, and possibilities that you can snack on whenever your mind’s starving for creativity. Leave yourself a trail that allows you to wander those paths you found again…and again…and again.

Corral those ornery critters. You have all this information now that’s running around wild and free like a pack of animals. You can just browse through some of this data and try to spot the inspiring information, or you can attempt to corral those ideas and put the one you want within reach. Just take a few random bits of data from your file, and let them run wild across the plains of your mind. Now, figure out a way to logically pull them together and guide them along. Let the ideas feed off of each other until you can shape the strange or opposing ideas into a logical, cohesive pattern. Take the chaos of the world and find a way to guide it into a premise that people might think, “If things were just a tiny bit different, this could really happen.” Practice pulling these stray ideas together and train your mind to constantly look for the creative patterns in the ideas around you.

####

What? You thought we were going to actually hunt creativity with rifles, shoot it and drag it back to the house on the hood of our truck to carve up into creativity chops? But that only provides you with a limited amount of ideas…if you want your creativity to grow and be easily accessible, you need to have a lot of lively ideas at your disposal. Be the smart hunter…capture and secure them in a place where they’ll grow and spawn even more ideas. Ideas that are easy to get to and will last for a long while.

Bad reviews, harsh critiques, rejection letters, overwhelming self-doubts, and obstacle after obstacle toss up the roadblocks on the road to your dreams. These things add up and can even rattle the best of us at times. To keep going, you need some thick skin, a positive attitude and enough knowledge in your craft to cull the useful commentary from the crap. The knowledge can be gained through study and training, but how can you get that thick skin and high-octane positive attitude? You could start early by writing essay papers on Norman Vincent Peale when you’re in fourth grade or you could get a job in a hostile verbal work environment…like working in customer service/tech support somewhere. That would give you a good start, but is there more you could do? Yep, you could train for it just like with your artwork.

Arts and crafts time! Here’s what you’ll need to construct your “Pessimism Voodoo Doll.”

–Cloth…two pieces cut into the same pattern (or you could just pick up a kit at a local crafts store). If you have or receive lots of negative thoughts and comments, make sure your patterns have lots of surface area. The actual pattern itself is up to you–square, skull, pyramid, teddy bear, Jigglypuff, or whatever shape makes you feel happy.
–Needle and thread
–Pins!
–regular paper
–a small notebook that’s easy to carry around with you

Now, sew those pieces of cloth together around the edges as if you’re turning it into a small pillow but make sure to leave an opening to add the stuffing. If you have a deadly allergy to needles, then you can take the easy route with construction paper and a stapler.

Next, get yourself a piece of paper and a comfy-grip writing implement of doom. Jot down as many negative and non-constructive comments you’ve heard (or even just thought) about yourself or your work. Fill that page up with every little negative thought that shows a glimmer of a chance of getting uppity one day and stopping your productivity in its tracks. Now, for the fun part. Take a good, long look at that sheet of paper, take a deep breath, and then tear it to shreds. Use this as your stuffing for your “doll.”

Ready for the next part? It gets a bit tricky here. Take that small notebook and write down three concise yet highly positive sentences about yourself. It could be a good quote from a review, a comment someone made about your appearance or personality, something you’re really good at, or any number of positive thoughts. As long as they instantly bring on feelings of happiness, pride, accomplishment, or hope, they’ll work. Take a deep breath, slowly release it, read those three sentences out loud, and then stab a pin into your “doll” to teach those nasty thoughts a lesson.

Keep your notebook handy, and every time you get a pessimistic thought or someone tells you something negative and non-constructive, put a mark in your notebook. Don’t write down the exact comment or action–just put a mark down, read one of your positive statements, and move on. When you get home, take a deep breath, slowly release it, read your three positive statements, and then stick another pin in the doll for each new mark in your notebook. And let all those negative thoughts go. Don’t give them a chance to hold you back from what you’re capable of.

When the path to your dreams is littered with criticisms, subjective likes and dislikes, frustrated people lashing out, and self-doubts, it can make it difficult to press on. Sometimes, it’s enough to make a person turn back and return to the easier life. The path to your dreams is definitely a tough one, so be sure to pack all the positive thinking you can carry with you…and lose all that unnecessary negative baggage.

The smell of beer and party sweat still lingered in the air of that old dayroom. The chill morning air and the glimmer of sunrise danced through the open window–both passing by with barely an acknowledgment from me. Focused. Determined. I poured myself into my work. Well, “play” would actually be a better term for it, and therapy would be a close second. I pressed on and didn’t even notice when the Chief entered the room.

He settled his massive frame into a chair near the television and propped his head back against the wall. A sigh spilled forth from his huge lungs. I glanced up from my work as he rolled his eyes over in my direction. A few more weeks until he retired, and you could see the change creeping into his body…and drowning his spirit.

“Son, do you have a dream?”

A simple question. I had a small window of opportunity coming up soon–a second chance at one of my dreams. A few weeks from now would be a test of strength, speed and endurance that stood between me and the career I longed for. I peeked over at the crutches propped up against the wall beside me. Then I glanced to the swollen, blue-green tinted flesh that used to be a perfectly good ankle. I could feel how trampled my hopes were deep inside. I hung my head and just let the feelings overwhelm me for a moment.

But something grabbed hold of my hope and pulled it to safety. My work…my play…my therapy. On my lap sat a notebook filled with scribbles and blurbs of text. I flipped through it to see character descriptions, story ideas, sketches, poems, song lyrics, one-liners, memorable bits of dialogue I’d heard…and more. It was all right there, and it was something I’d always gone to for fun and to escape the stress of the day. I remembered telling campfire stories to my friends as a kid. I cherished a few memories of sitting with my friends and putting together our own comic book stories. I thought back about how eager I always was to do writing assignments in school. I recalled the day I was forced into making some kind of career decision and giving up on struggling down the path of writing. But I never really gave it up, did I?

I looked over to the Chief. “Yeah, I have a dream.”

“Good. Don’t ever let it die. See it through and don’t be one of those guys looking back on their lives and wondering what the hell happened to all their dreams.”

####

You’re a dreamer. You know it, and I know it. You have to be…it’s part of the job. Whether you dream up stories, envision the shapes and lines of exotic locales and people, walk through all the lights and shadows of a scene, or dance through color schemes in your mind, you bring to life dreams on a regular basis. You probably also dream of making a career out of this, but that can be a struggle most of the time.

Any number of obstacles can stand in your way, but you can reach your goal…as long as you don’t let your dream die. If you dream of creating entertaining stories, it needs to consume you and be the motivating factor to carry you through the troublesome times. But some people hold back on their dreams. Maybe they’re embarrassed by what they enjoy working on–afraid of what others might think. Maybe the fear turns another way, and they constantly wonder if they’re good enough. Maybe they can’t deal with rejection or criticism or all the work involved with promoting themselves and their work. Maybe…just maybe…they don’t really want it at all, and they’re doing it just because they think it would be neat or cool. Writers, do you sit there at a restaurant having dinner with family or friends and suddenly turn a misheard phrase into some crazy story about Viking fish? And do you immediately share it with the people around it or do you hide it? Artists, do you find yourself compelled to sketch all the time? Do you find yourself filling sketchbooks, book margins, napkins, old bill envelopes, walls, and anything that could pass for a writing surface with line after line whenever you don’t have to be working on something else?

Do you hold onto your dream to create comics because you love to create comics…or do you hold onto the dream thinking you’ll get a little prestige one day if you keep at it? Search deep down inside yourself and find out what you really want to do…and then do it! The only thing stopping you is…you. If the dream consumes you, you’ll practice and train and hone your abilities. You’ll keep at it day after day no matter what…because you love to do it. Find your dream…and don’t ever let it die.

Now, you have some artwork to put into your portfolio. What else can you add to it? Let’s see…I’m thinking of something…it’s on the tip of my tongue now…oh yeah, writing! Articles, reviews, flash fiction, tutorials, interviews, short scenes from screenplays, excerpts from a novel. The key is to make sure the writing is something simple, creative, and concise enough for them to digest in a quick glance. Or it could be something that you can just point them to for reading at a later time. “Here’s a scene from my screenplay, I have the rest of it available at my website.” “I wrote an article on that very subject. Here’s a sample of one of my articles from my column at the so-and-so website. I’d be happy to email you a link to the article after the convention.” For my online articles, I like to print out a copy from the actual website to show off the site logo (which also gives the person glancing through it a feel for all the different places you’ve dealt with in the past). If you don’t have any articles or reviews or anything like that out there…just write some up! Find some place looking for some help and jump on in, or just write up some more content for your website (which makes a good marketing tool for your work anyways).

Artwork and samples of your writing…anything else? I threw in copies of letters from screenwriting contests I entered this year to show where my writing placed in the competitions. If you have similar writing accomplishments, throw them in the stack (we’ll sort it all out later). You can also put together a list of quotes from reviews of your work. You can write up a page with a listing of your published credits. You could toss a page in there with nothing more than “Damn you, four-layer chocolate cheesecakes! Damn you and your accursed, tasty calories!” in super-large, bold font. Well, you should find your own phrase for that…but just think of a quick attention-getter that causes them to pause and think about the portfolio for a second (and maybe get a good chuckle out of them).

We have some material and we’re ready to jam on that portfolio now. The biggest thing to remember here is that you want a single item that you can carry around easily with you and show off samples anytime anyone asks about them (or refer to at opportune moments in a conversation). Plus, it keeps you from having to carry around a bunch of comic books as samples. For my portfolio, I use a single three-ring binder with plastic sheet protectors to hold the pages (and to ward off coke, queso, and chocolate). As you work out the placement of your portfolio pieces, keep in mind a very basic principle used in your craft…hook them from the beginning, keep them moving forward, and then finish big. Since this is for comic book work, you should start right off with comic book work. Use some sample pages from one of your finished stories and make sure it’s something that will grab the viewers attention right away. Continue with the comic pages and throw in some of your other writing here and there. Here’s a sample of what my binder currently looks like:

Outside of binder: Color cover from my Arazel & Xarenia submissions
… promotional image and first 5 pages from Party Crashers
… 2 page mock interview–the Devil interviewing me as we barter for my soul
… 20 pages from my Brat-halla webcomic
… a tutorial written for Comic Stack that covers writing speed drills
… 5 pages from my published Dungeon Bears story
… 5 pages from my published Bob the Battleship story
… 5 pages from Spook’d (webcomic and published pieces)
… a Breaking Out! article
… all 3 of my published Arazel & Xarenia short stories
… letter from the Nicholl Fellowship stating that my Arazel & Xarenia screenplay placed in the top 6%
… letter from the Austin Film Festival stating my screenplay made it to the quarterfinals
… opening pages of my screenplay
… sample of The Comicaze Report

And that’s all I take around with me. I use the binder to refer to my works during a conversation. It also helps when I’m talking with someone that’s familiar with a project I’ve contributed to, so I can easily point out what I worked on. In essence, it’s a tool to help out when you meet new people and also provides a way to promote yourself and your work. You’ll still need to be proficient in public speaking to make an impression, but you’ll at least have a visual aid to give people you meet an extra little something to remember you by. “Oh yeah, you’re that parody Care Bears guy!”

Honesty. No personality change here. Especially not when I’m kicking this off by telling people to just be themselves. And when you’re out there representing yourself in public…there’s no need to be anything but yourself. When you meet new people, you want to be honest with them, so they get to know who you really are. When you learn knew things, you want to be honest with yourself and get the most out of what’s offered to you. When you’re promoting your current or upcoming work, you want to be honest with potential buyers and fans, so they get the real story to get excited over.

So, just be yourself. People constantly remind the aspiring types that this is a small industry, so it’s always good to make sure the information spreading around about you is accurate (especially if the source of that info is you). Let people know who you really are and what you’re really capable of accomplishing. Wouldn’t you want the person working with you on a project to be trustworthy and upfront about what they can do? Editors and publishers like those kinds of people as well…it makes it easier for them to manage their schedules and deadlines when they know what to expect from someone.

Treat them like people. They truly are real people. They have real needs, desires, passions, frustrations, and dreams. They have family and friends. They lead lives with bills, taxes, traffic, and health problems. Like many other people at the convention, they’ll probably get tired, bored or even hungover. And if they start showing a little attitude or grouchiness, just think about how you might feel if you had people stopping to gush about your latest work and just ramble on and on and on about the same thing that hundreds of other people talked about all day long. Think about how you might feel if people kept interrupting you while you tried to eat or what it might be like to have people trying to strike up a conversation with you while you’re using the restroom. People following you around…sharing crazy dreams that they had about you…reciting your own life story to you…reciting their life story to you. Sounds a bit crazy, doesn’t it? Well, creators deal with those kinds of things because there are some fanatics that treat them like objects to be idolized and praised. Be different. Be professional and treat them like real people.

…but show some respect. No need to deify them, but you do want to show them a little respect. Even if you absolutely despise their art or writing, they did make it into the comics industry, and as many of you know, that’s not an easy task. So, they might produce mediocre or fair work, but many other factors play into working in the industry. Timeliness in getting work done (good work ethics), professionalism, flexibility in dealing with editorial demands, working well with other members of the team…and they didn’t choke when they were given their big break. It’s an incredible accomplishment, so just remember that when you run into a creator that you’re not a fan of. You might be able to draw/write/ink/color/letter rings around them, but you can still learn a lot about all the other aspects of the industry from them.

Be helpful. My past catches up with me here. Early on in my life, my mom taught me about helping others. I took it to heart and tried to help everyone I knew. That didn’t work out too well though…there’s just not enough time to help everyone. But I did what I could, and I felt good about myself. Then I noticed a few occassional perks–people remembered me better after helping them, and when I needed some help with something, volunteers were usually easy to find. All for just donating some time and some hard work to give people a hand.

As with all things, there are no guarantees, so don’t count on those small benefits. People still might forget you…people might not be able to help you out in return due to busy schedules…people might get a touch paranoid and think you’re just helping them to get something from them. So, help out because you want to help out…because it makes you feel good. That alone makes it worthwhile…whatever else you get out of it is just Karma saying thanks.

But how do you help people at a convention though? People looking for directions–point them in the right direction. An artist wandering the crowd looking for another creator to review his/her portfolio–help them out with a few leads. Some aspiring artists and writers stopping by your table in Artist’s Alley–share some tips, advice and experiences with them. All little things…but a lot of times, people appreciate the little things others do to help them out.

####

That wasn’t so bad, was it? No discussion of what fork to use for different courses of the meal. No pinky lifts. No list of proper ways to address royalty throughout the world. Just some helpful little tidbits that can help you display a good attitude and a show of professionalism…and just might help someone remember your name after the con…or maybe make someone feel more inclined to teach you a few tricks of the trade…or possibly make some people more willing to check out your work.

… Stood in line to impress Somebig Artist with my portfolio, and it was horrible. These guys in front of me just kept talking and talking and talking the whole time we were in the line. They even started showing each other their portfolios. But the big thing is…they wouldn’t shut up! The others even stood around and watched and asked more questions as he reviewed each portfolio. After my review, I encountered them down the hall a ways as they talked about their portfolios even more. I wanted to take a baseball bat and pummel some silence out of them. It was probably because of them that Somebig Artist slammed my portfolio.

… Wow, I must really have these pros scared cause it looks like they’re all talking to each other. I guess they figure if they all tell me close to the same thing that I’ll change my style, and then I wouldn’t be a threat to them anymore. I bet they even threatened some of the editors that they’d miss deadlines if they don’t tell me the same old crap. These conventions are just a big conspiracy to keep the kick ass artists down so these jokers can keep their damn jobs. I can outdraw at least half these jerks anyways. Well, I’ll show them!

With an attitude like that, there’s not much point in bringing a portfolio to a convention, is there? As I mentioned in the previous article, there are benefits to conventions for up-and-coming creators–learning something new, meeting new people, and getting word out about your work. Let’s look at how to use the portfolio to maximize those benefits.

Learning something new. This one’s easy. Take the portfolio up to a professional creator that happens to be doing portfolio reviews and let them have at it. If you pay attention, you’ll probably learn something new. But there’s more you could do…especially with a little preparation.

You could go over your work before the convention and write down your weaknesses (and be honest with yourself). From that list, you could whittle it down to the top three problems you struggle with the most. With those three weaknesses in mind, take a look at the guests for the convention and find the artists that are really strong in those areas. This gives you a focused set of professionals to start with to help learn how to strengthen these aspects. When you get to these portfolio reviews, ask the guest about those specific things. And then listen carefully to what they have to say and see if the guests have any specific drills or tips for practicing and improving on these weak points. Be sure to bring a notebook with you and write down what they said when your portfolio review is over. This makes it easier to focus all your attention on the next review (and have something to refresh your memory on what that creator said later on).

Plus, you don’t have to stop there. Plenty of other artists will be there with their portfolios. Every time a guest comments on a portfolio, you have the potential to learn something new. With their comments and a physical example you can actually see, you can learn about things you might not run into with the few samples in your portfolio. I notice a number of people tend to stick to just what’s in their portfolio and what the guests have to say about just their work…but if you think about it, a convention is like a big open classroom with people handing out lessons all over the place. Just listen in on a few and see what helpful tips you can pick up.

Meeting new people. You’re walking through the convention with your portfolio, and you see someone else there with a portfolio…think there’s a common connection you could both chat about? You could take a look at each other’s portfolio. You could discuss what kind of feedback you’ve been getting from the different guests. And you can even discuss artwork in general. That portfolio opens up a lot of different possibilities for meeting people and possibly making new friends.

Now, if you did your research for speaking, you have an opportunity for double bonus time. In storytelling, it’s effective to get the audience’s attention early and pull them into the story. You can do the same thing with your portfolio…especially if you managed to find out about some of the likes and hobbies for the creators that will be there. If an artist really enjoyed surfing and your portfolio starts out with two or three sequential pages dealing with the beach and surfing, do you think they’ll have a little more fun reviewing your work? Think it might get them talking about the subject? Think it will give them a nice change of pace from the common comic book characters they might be going through all day long? Think it will help them remember you after the con’s over? And all it takes is two or three sequential pages that you can add to your portfolio as examples of everyday people doing everyday things (and just swap those pages to the front before you meet that guest).

And don’t forget the small press publishers/creators in Artist’s Alley. Showing your portfolio around there will definitely help you meet new people…and you might even learn something in the process. Some small press creators know a lot about creating comics. As with any endeavor, not every bit of feedback will be helpful though…some might be bad or way out there, and you’ll just need to trust your instincts to know which is which. Of course, if the same comment occurs over and over, then there’s a good chance it’s something you need to look into. Overall, the small press area is a good place to meet and chat with other creators. It’s also the place where people might contact you later on about small jobs or where you could find a great story to work on with someone to try to get published (and possibly have a comic book sitting in your portfolio the next time you attend this convention).

Your portfolio also presents a good chance to meet writers. Surprisingly enough, some writers actually know a lot about the artwork side of things as well…from working with a variety of artists and small press people on different projects or from studying to be an editor (because comic book editors also need to have a good eye for art as well as handling the writing side of things). Even without an in-depth knowledge of perspective, anatomy, shading, and other artistic basics, a number of writers can still judge how well sequentials flow from a storytelling perspective. New artists to the realm of comics also get the chance to discuss comic creation with writers and learn about some expectations writers have when dealing with artists. Better to discover those kinds of things before jumping into a project and finding yourself overwhelmed by the task at hand.

Getting the word out. Got a new project coming up or a submission getting ready to go out to publishers? Include some pages from the project in your portfolio. This let’s people get a preview of the book and meet one of the creators, so they have more than just a name to associate with the work. It can also get people asking questions about it and talking about it. In fact, you could work with the writer to develop a small pitch, so when people ask you about it, you can give them the quick “hook” for the storyline.

And if you have work already published, put some sample pages from that project in your portfolio along with a copy of the book. Let them see the story and see how much effort you’ve put into creating comics. Let the other small press people know about the book as well (especially if you have more issues on the way). Advertising works, and a portfolio is a great way to advertise your book at a convention.

… Remember, that portfolio of yours carries some advantages. It gives you opportunities for education, networking, and advertising all in one fell swoop. And you can get so much more out of it if you take a little extra time to prepare and focus your efforts.

Now, I know the writers out there might feel a little neglected in the realm of portfolios. There are ways to put together a decent portfolio to showcase a writer’s work, but that’ll require a future article of its own. Right now, my best recommendation for writers in lieu of a portfolio is to work on those speaking skills and know your stories inside and out (with pitches ready to go)…because convincing storytellers should be able to work in any medium (with a little practice).

For aspiring creators, attending conventions holds various benefits–learning new things, meeting new people, and getting word out about your work. Conventions are NOT job fairs. Can you walk away from a convention with a job? I’m sure you could…anything’s possible. But if you focus most of your energy and time at a convention trying to find work, make sure to book an extra seat on the flight home for your buddy, Disappointment. Spend your time getting the most out of the con. Learn something new, make some new friends, or get word out about your existing/upcoming work…jobs will follow. This series of convention tips focuses on ways to maximize those benefits, so let’s start with something many people dread…Speaking (in Public).

Whether going from table to table to chat with people or being behind the table addressing questions and comments from passersby, speaking becomes an important trait for the convention experience. Many people run into trouble when speaking to strangers or talking someplace where everyone can hear them…shyness, nervousness, low self-esteem, and outright fear cause people to freeze up. Some people are naturals at speaking to others, but most need to learn and practice the craft to get comfortable with it. This article will provide some basic strategies and tips on speaking, but it’s a skill where that knowledge really needs to be applied to build confidence in it. For getting that experience, I recommend joining your local Toastmasters group or signing up for a course in Public Speech or Theater at a nearby college.

What’s your name? In art and writing, many people stumble on the first page, and in speaking, worry over a good opening causes lots of problems. The easiest way to start a drawing is with a single line. For writing, it just takes a single word. When speaking and you’re worrying over how to start, there’s a simple opening that often works the best…your name. The name’s a powerful thing. When you hand it over to someone, you give him or her something that means a lot to you, and they usually respond in kind. Look at that…instant interaction. I’ve seen people talk themselves out of going up to speak to someone because they were so nervous about making a good impression with their first line. The most memorable “lines” develop naturally from the actual conversation, so stop worrying about what to say and introduce yourself.

Do a little research. Research? Blech! Kind of like studying and homework, right? Double…no, triple blech! What the heck do you need to do that for? Well, if you want to talk to people about stuff, you should probably know a little bit about…stuff. Two types of research lead the way here–general and focused studies.

General studies revolve around current events, trivia and everyday bits of knowledge. Conversations drift easily. One minute you’re discussing comic books and the next you could be talking about how Genghis Khan’s territorial conquests exceeded that of Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun and Napoleon combined…which could lead to a discussion of how Napoleon was afraid of kittens…and that might remind someone of their new kitten they just named Knickers…and so on and so forth. This doesn’t mean you need to be an expert at everything (or even try to be). You just need to have some familiarity with a variety of subjects so you can participate in the conversation…even if it’s just knowing enough to ask an intelligent question and let the other people involved run with it. So, where do you get that kind of familiarity? Reading newspapers, magazines, or books; watching the news, “do-it-yourself” shows, history shows, or documentaries; listening to lectures, speeches, panel discussions or even just people chatting it up in a bar. Some great sources of general information out there are the Sunday New York Times (which a lot of local libraries have available), Variety/Hollywood Reporter (if you like to discuss the Hollywood happenings), and bathroom books (like the Great American Bathroom Book, which has condensed summaries of some of the all-time great books, or the Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers, which have a little bit of everything…history, etymology, strange stories, quotes and a lot more).

Focused studies deal with a known factor…the convention. Each guest has likes, dislikes, family, friends, cities they grew up in, schools they attended, projects they’ve worked on, and more. Somewhere in all that you could find some common ground. Maybe you went to the same high school as one of the guests or you both enjoy volleyball or possibly even have some mutual friends. Common ground gives you a good stepping stone for a conversation that involves things both people enjoy…and knowing what that common ground is beforehand is a lot easier than trying to find it in the middle of a discussion. And you don’t have to stop with just the guests…there’s the history of the convention itself, information on the retailers and publishers that will be there, or even knowing a little bit about the convention city and the area immediately surrounding the convention. Specific research topics you can look into that are pertinent to your situation…topics that can easily be brought up when talking about the convention or the city you’re currently in.

Be observant. You’re walking over to talk to a comic professional at a convention. Freeze this moment and observe. The person sitting next to the professional has an Oakland Raiders hat on. The pro stretches and yawns as the person currently talking to him at his booth yammers on and on without even noticing. Another person anxiously waits behind the talker with a portfolio in hand. The pro’s wearing a t-shirt with one of his less popular characters on it. It’s hotter in this section of the convention than anywhere else. The booth next to the pro’s has a gimmick with two people dressed up as goldfish in boxer shorts fighting each other with nunchakus made out of bras and rolled-up newspapers. The smell of stale popcorn and old pizza carries over to here from the nearby concessions area. Got all that? Good–it could be useful information to know.

Observation ties you into the people, the surroundings, and the conversation itself. People provide body language, gestures, and facial expressions that relay feedback to the speaker about the topic discussed or the way it’s presented. The surroundings present opportunities to take the conversation in a variety of different directions. And listening carefully to the conversation gives clues to how it could evolve by linking choice words or phrases to prior observations and prior research. So, pay attention, stay alert and get as much mileage as you can out of that conversation.

But…be careful. As a writer, I developed a people-watching habit to help clue into new ideas and new dialogue. So, sometimes I’ll zone out into observer mode at malls, bars, clubs, and other places with large crowds and take in all kinds of information…sights, sounds, smells, etc. I’ve caught myself doing that during conversations in the past, and I know a couple other people that run into that problem as well. It doesn’t make for very engaging conversation…trust me. People like good listeners, but if you don’t respond and participate in the conversation, it’ll slowly die out. So, be careful about focusing on observation to the point of exclusion of actually saying something.

Nervousness is your friend. So, what happens when you get nervous? Adrenaline kicks into your system. Your heart races to speed oxygen-gorged blood to your muscles. Your respiration picks up to meet these increased oxygen demands. Perspiration forms on your skin as a means of keeping your body cool. You’re afraid, and your body is priming itself for performance. Fight or flight. But in speaking, most people can’t run from the situation (technically, they can run from any speaking opportunity–they just have to deal with the consequences afterwards), so they wind up following that fight instinct even though there really isn’t anything to fight. Except that fear. So, they gather up all that energy generated by the fear and try to suppress that same fear with it. Hands shake and teeth chatter as the struggle internalizes. An endless cycle of fear intensifying to handle the battle against itself.

How do you fight the fear then? You don’t–you make friends with it instead. Invite it on over to help out with something else and burn up a little of that anxious energy. Do a little quality pacing before you speak…use some of that energy on some gestures and body language while you’re talking…sneak off somewhere and do some pushups…focus on taking slow, deep breaths…redirect it into your motivation and determination. Just don’t focus all that energy on your fear…you’ll just give it more power. Break the cycle and get on with it.

####

These are just a few quick ideas to help out with speaking in public situations…a quick rundown of tips gathered from various public speaking courses, speech and debate competitions, impromptu speaking during instructor training, and more. As I mentioned before, this information really needs to be applied to get the most out of it…in other words, it takes a little practice. Practice to figure out how big of a leap you can take into a tangent without losing everyone. Practice to get a feel for reading the feedback from the listener. Practice to get comfortable with speaking and help make nervousness your friend. So, get out there and talk to someone…anyone–it’s one of the cheapest and easiest ways to practice speaking.

“The Company is one of the world’s most prominent character-based entertainment companies, with a proprietary library of over 4,700 characters. The Company operates in the licensing, comic book publishing and toy businesses in both domestic and international markets.”

Right out of the gates, Marvel let the investing world know that they have 4,700 characters, and then they list “licensing” as their lead business operation. This stance appeared in their 10-K reports all the way back to 1999, but that first year, I found a difference (besides 1200 less characters in their library)…a single line tacked on to that general company description:

“Management believes that the potential of the Company’s library remains largely unrealized.”

Let’s see…1999’s report covered the year 1998 where Marvel saw their Blade movie released that August. It grossed around $70 million. Since then, they tapped into licensing revenue with properties like the X-Men: Evolution cartoon, the Mutant X TV series, the X-Men movie, Spider-Man, Blade II, and Daredevil. And they still have more on the way. But with 4,700 available characters, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. So, how could a publisher open the licensing doors even wider?

They could start by placing hot/high profile creators on a line of books that modernizes characters and pulls them out of standard continuity. Books that proved the core of the characters have mass appeal and can make Hollywood think, “I see movie.” This line took off with comics like Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimates, and Ultimate X-Men constantly appearing at the top of the charts. Heck, why not capitalize on this idea and release a ton of “Ultimate” characters? They could…but maybe they have another plan for what they could do with these hot properties.

They could give them away for free. That’s right…free comic books online at Marvel’s DotComics website. Well, that’s just crazy. These people must be dumber than a box of rocks if they think I’ll buy a comic I can read for free. What possible reasons made them think free comics would be a good idea? Well, it gave Marvel a system for getting people talking about their books…letting them browse through past issues and giving readers previews of things to come. This made their comics accessible to the public and even people that might be looking for new movies, TV shows, or promotions. But did Marvel truly give these comics away for free? Maybe they figured out a way to do what thousands of websites were unable to do during that whole DotCom era…generate revenue from banner ads. Some of the smartest people out there were trying to get people to click on those pesky little ads (even switching to pop-ups to force interaction with the ad and prove to advertisers that there’s some kind of response), and here came Marvel with people willingly providing click after click just to get to the next page in an online comic. How many clicks? I’m not really sure, but according to the advertising information posted at Marvel’s website, DotComics get downloaded approximately 600,000 times per month. Marvel definitely gave advertisers a lot of online bang for their advertising bucks, and probably has even more advertisers trying to get in on some of the Marvel action while they’re hot.

But that’s advertising revenue…how does it play into licensing? Well, if Marvel wanted to expand their licensing revenue, they probably need to get those characters out of the library and into print where people can see them. But how can they afford to publish these licensing opportunities without taking a loss? Not every book can sell like gangbusters or pick up a movie deal, but if they offer enough choices, they create a better chance for running into that character Hollywood might be looking for at that time. But getting all those books out there isn’t cheap, and that’s where extra advertising revenue can help offset the costs. Still, they’d need a lot of characters out there to hedge their bets…a lot more than advertising could help with. So next, they’d want to find a way to get the retailers to order enough to allow books to break even.

With a “no reprints” policy, costs associated with the printing charges, inventory storage, shipping and such would go down. This “no reprints” policy put the retailers in an “err on the side of caution” mode so they don’t get caught without enough copies of potentially hot books. But how do you know that will work? Hype some books up and see how the retailers react. Whether the hype’s for controversy, some special event, star creators or some “contest”, they’d make some noise about it and let it flourish or bomb. That helped get the retailers to the point where they have a good feel for how to order in the “no reprints” realm. But Marvel still needed a way to test if books could actually break even in this new environment. So what if they threw out some potential “bottom-feeder” books of odd concepts with new characters, different genres, or second tier and/or old characters to generate some numbers on what range of sales the these books might get if they sunk to the bottom? Books like Marville, The Hood, B-Sides, Apache Skies, Killraven, Rawhide Kid, Mangaverse and more–some were really great stories, but they hit such a wide range of ideas, genres and characters in the vast selection of comics out there that some were bound to get lost in the process. So, what might Marvel see with this kind of test? According to the Top 300 charts out at ICv2.com, the bottom 6 Marvel books have run between 9000 and 20,000 in initial pre-orders over the past 6 months. But will this still hold up if they introduce a lot of new books? They could always test and see…maybe rush solicit a bunch of titles with a variety of different characters and concepts as a test–a Tsunami of new books to see if they can maintain those numbers as the market gets flooded. And as a side benefit, they also get more characters “out of the library” while gathering heuristics on sales performance.

They’re getting closer, but the numbers might not be enough to break at the lower end, and a sudden downturn in the market could really cause some problems. So where else could Marvel cut some publishing costs? Let’s take a look at that 10-K report again:

“In 2001, Marvel cut back on the number of expensive, exclusive agreements with writers and artists while establishing new relationships with some of the industry’s hottest creators, as well as recruiting from outside the industry. Starting in 2001, Marvel eliminated the costly and inefficient process of hand-coloring books in favor of higher quality, less expensive, computer coloring.”

Even with the computer coloring and a slight reduction in exclusive contracts, there’s not quite enough cost reduction there to help get them to break even, but we can see another strategy in the works…recruiting from outside the industry. Why not keep it all in the industry? Well, you have talented people in film and television that have experience at telling stories. They may not know exactly how to translate that to comics, but they can be taught. Some, like Kevin Smith, can even bring a decent fan following to comics. But all of them can help the company network in the film and TV industry, which can be beneficial if your primary focus is licensing.

That doesn’t help reduce production costs though. With the normal freelancers and now professionals from other industries, rates would still be too high to get the books to break-even if they drift to the bottom. Maybe if they brought in eager up-and-coming talent on the books, they could set the costs for books down to a much-reduced rate. They’d be taking a big chance though, so they’d need to know if there was enough quality talent to support several books. Just to make sure, Marvel could spend a couple years doing talent searches, so they can see if there’s enough quality talent to run with this idea. They could also open their doors to writer submissions and see if there are enough good storytellers to handle the number of titles they want to release to the public. And they’d look good in the process. It’s always helpful when a company can spin information gathering into something that helps their image.

So, they developed hooks in the film/TV industries, proved that the core aspects of the characters can stand on their own after modernizing and revamps, increased advertising revenue possibilities, reduced some production costs, encouraged a steadier stream of orders from retailers, reviewed a lot of eager talent, and gathered numbers on lower end sales and production costs. Now they run into another problem–the potential to make lots of books but not enough editors to handle coordination of the creation process on that many projects. Well, why not develop a system to hand that off to the eager up-and-comers with “guidance” from the Marvel editors? They could even secretly approach some talent they’re already familiar with to run this process through its paces a bit before finalizing it. And it would develop into something like the new Epic guidelines that Marvel recently announced.

So, since 1999, Marvel released crazy idea after crazy idea–a lot of things people complained were just hype or short-term fixes to a comic book sales problem that would ruin the company and the industry. Whether it ruins anything remains to be seen, but if you look carefully at the various bits and pieces as a whole…it looks like they actually had a plan. A four to five year plan with a lot of different steps, but when I look at how all those different pieces could fit together, I can see how they’d set the stage to get more characters out of their proprietary library and make Marvel the premiere breeding ground for licensable characters. All with a plan that allows a comic book company to actually produce the heck out of comics while simultaneously pulling in revenue from film, TV and video games–things people tend to spend their money on instead of comics.

So, what’s your long-term plan? I know that was a long example, and it may not even be an accurate theory, but they did know exactly what they wanted to accomplish back in 1999…”Management believes that the potential of the Company’s library remains largely unrealized.” Even if it all just happened to fall into place through luck, they might never have gotten that chance if they hadn’t focused all their efforts on that goal so many years ago. A lot of aspiring creators don’t have that kind of focus. They have eagerness to break in–right this very instant and not a moment later–but they don’t always think about long-term goals. They don’t think about how much work they’d need to do to make a living at comics and about how much training and practicing they need to get to that point. Some don’t even consider what they’d do if they couldn’t break in even though each individual craft has job opportunities outside the realm of comics. They also don’t think about the steps it takes to become a great creator…they like to focus on what it takes to be better than what’s at the bottom of the barrel. They don’t even take a good look at the companies they want to work for. They tend to worry and complain more about how bad the company is or how bad the company’s stories are or how the company’s destroying the industry. And many aspiring creators don’t really think about where they could be in a few years if they just set a goal, make a plan and stick with it…maybe they could have a job where they could actually produce the heck out of comics while pulling in a good salary.

When the job takes up a lot of time, you’ll still need to make deadlines. When your Muse says she’s had it with your crap and takes off on a little sabbatical, you still need to deliver great work. And when the criticism from the readers seems overwhelming, you still need stick to your guns and believe in yourself. On top of all that, you really need to love what you’re doing…and you need to love all aspects of it (good and bad). Long hours? You could be spending just as many hours writing up reports or working graveshift in computer tech support. Creatively drained? At least all those ideas aren’t bottled up inside you and driving you crazy. Negative criticisms? Any kind of feedback is better than silence…and just think of how many of your favorite movies got bad reviews or spat on by “fans”. If you truly love the work, you’ll accept these things as part of the job and embrace them fully (ewww…not that kind of embrace).

I relate this one to “masochism” because survival in this industry often means you need to love the abuse. You’ll work hard and probably receive little positive recognition. And those awkward situations at formal social events where everyone’s talking about their “prestigious” professions aren’t going to boost your self-image much either. But if you love doing this, it won’t matter. The right attitude and some thick skin can carry you through all that easily.

And even if you learn to love the abuse, that doesn’t mean you have to just sit by and let other people slam you. Just let your actions speak for you most of the time, and if you do need to respond, pick your battles wisely. Handle the situation professionally, and you just might earn some people’s respect along the way. And if all else fails, I sometimes resort to something one of my old bosses used to tell me (even though I’m not sure where he got the line from), “Professionalism is the ability to insult someone and have them walk away feeling good about themselves.”

A great attitude helps in any creative endeavor. Learn to spin off the positives from the bad things, ignore the little things that shouldn’t concern you, and keep a great attitude about things…even through the hardships. Comic book creation can be painful at times. Don’t hate the pain…don’t give it power over you. Love the pain instead…diffuse it and just work on through it.

This probably seems like an odd topic to throw into a conversation about good qualities for comic creators, but what it breaks down to is simply…feelings. If you really want to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack, your work needs to speak to people…it needs to make them feel something. You want to tug at their feelings and emotions to provide them with a story so compelling that they won’t want to set it down. Laughter, surprise, humiliation, sadness, horror, terror, fear, trauma, peacefulness, happiness, extreme joy, love, loss…these are just some of the things that grab readers, hold them down, and steal their lunch money. These are some of the things that need to be mastered to help reach your audience.

Most emotional situations are a matter of controlling expectations. But building up those emotions and delivering on strong feelings is an art in itself. That’s why I picked “sadism” to represent this topic. In one session alone, you could let your subject see the weapon beforehand…demonstrate how much damage it can cause. As you set yourself up, they tense their muscles ready for the strike…but their anticipation is met with the weapon slowly, gently caressing their skin. They know it’s there…they know you could strike at any time, so as you pull away, they ready themselves again. But they’re met with whispers this time. You tell them what you want to do to them–just flat out tell them. You encourage them to reach out with their imagination and join you in this runaway fantasy, and they soon get swept away in it all. WHAM! You hit them with their guard down. Now, will they be taken by surprise if you hit them at the beginning next time? How many other variations could you run through to keep a tight rein on their expectations? How many different emotions could be delivered in a manner similar to this? What if that “WHAM!” were a punchline instead (some super-powered types crash through the wall in the middle of a fight and they stop the fight so one of them can snap some pics with his digital camera)? Or a potential tearjerker (pull back to see the video is being played in a courtroom in the middle of a child custody battle as the parent watches their familial hopes slip away)?

But do emotions and feelings have to be so elaborately set up? Nope…and they shouldn’t. If you drag it out every time, people will start looking for it. You need to keep it fresh and exciting, and good emotions can come from a lot of simple things as well. A choice glare here and there from a fiery character, a subtle brush of the hand against a character’s own cheek in remembrance of times long lost, a dark, moody setting to a scene, a slow shift in colors from panel to panel to enhance the shifting emotions, a change in the inflection represented in the words. They may seem like minor things, but in the right situation, they can be just as effective as an elaborate setup (in fact, they can even be part of the setup or the payoff). And these are little things you can learn easily by just watching the world around you.

If people can look at your artwork or read your writing and feel something, they’re going to remember it. Entertainment at its core is a means of escapism…people want to feel new emotions; they want to let their imagination wander through new experiences, new adventures, and new hardships. They want to feel what all of that’s like…because feeling reminds them that they’re alive.

It seems like such a simple concept, but most people can’t follow through on it. Why? There could be dozens of reasons. Most people start out working on comics part-time, so they have to decide whether to spend their free time working that “second job” making comics or goofing off. Things like games, TV, movies, message boards, and home margarita machines easily distract some potential creators. Then, there are a lot of people that find themselves drawn into the frustration of the blank page. And there are also some people that plan and research their work so much they never actually get started with it. Some are just afraid to do the work–so discouraged thinking that their work isn’t good enough that they let fear control them (after all, you can’t fail if you don’t try…of course, you can’t succeed either). If you really want to make comics, you have to work through all that. That’s where discipline becomes important.

But leaping into a tough, disciplined schedule can often lead to discouraging results. We’ll use the old, reliable “exercise and get in shape” analogy here. People make that New Year’s resolution, and the next day, they completely change their diet and hit a demanding workout schedule…they pick up those body building magazines and try to emulate what those healthy people are doing. And then about two to three weeks later, their bodies hit a wall from this drastic change, and they start delaying to get a little extra rest or let other things distract them more readily. Sure, there are exceptions–people that can push through all that and keep to their schedule and diet. They already have the discipline it takes to do that. Everyone else though needs to give themselves a chance to succeed…a chance to take what levels of discipline they already have and build it up to suit their goals.

So, how do you build up discipline? Baby steps. Continuing with the working out analogy, what if those people with the resolutions started out with one change to their diet (switch to artificial sweeteners, just eat more veggies, replace beef with more chicken/turkey, or limit desserts to once a week…just one little thing to start with) and a workout routine 10 minutes long that they did three times a week. It won’t get them the quick results they’re hoping for, but it’s something they can keep up with. When it becomes habit, they can step up a little more (change one more thing in their diet and workout a little bit longer), and eventually get to where the results are noticeable. Instead of forcing a routine on themselves that they aren’t ready for, they develop their discipline to the point where that routine eventually becomes easy for them.

So, when you start off trying to make comics, don’t just gallop out of the gates at breakneck pace. You’re not a pro (yet) so don’t try to keep up with the pros. Don’t even try to keep up with the people you consider peers. Find a pace that’s comfortable for you…one that you can keep up with. When it becomes second nature to you, push yourself a little more. Set yourself an initial schedule that you think would be easy for you to accomplish (when I seriously got back into writing, I started by writing twice a week for at least an hour each time…a pace my life and schedule could easily support at that time). And if you can’t keep up with your schedule, adjust it back to a more comfortable level. The key is to do the work on a schedule you can succeed with and let it become routine for you. Then take the next step…and the next…and the one after that.

Just make sure that your schedule allows you to focus on your craft–whether it’s writing, penciling, inking, coloring, or lettering. You won’t get anywhere working out if you spend your 10 minutes staring at the ladies in the step aerobics class…the same goes here–keeping to a schedule won’t help if you don’t get something done. It doesn’t matter if what you write or draw is any good…just do your best and get it done. You can always revise/analyze it later to figure out what might be wrong with it, but to build discipline for good work habits later on, it’s important to just get the work done. And if the blank page haunts you during this time, find a program or website (or even scraps of paper in a hat) for randomly picking a person, place or thing and go from there or some other kind of warm-up exercise to “stretch” those skills out before getting started.

Yeah, so this article has a bit of that preachy rant feel to it–but discipline’s something a lot of people fail at. And it’s definitely important for anyone that wants to make a career for themselves in a creative field. So, chain yourself to the drawing table or the keyboard and get those whips out now…so you don’t have to worry about missing deadlines later on if some major publisher decides to offer you that big break.

Bondage: 1: the tenure or service of a villein, serf, or slave 2: a state of being bound usually by compulsion (as of law or mastery)

So, what does that have to do with comics? Well, if you’re looking at “breaking in”, you probably want to work for one of the big publishers. When you work on someone else’s property, you’re bound by their whims and editorial control. Sure, they’ll allow you some creative freedom, but ultimately, the final decision on what makes it to print and what doesn’t is theirs. Sometimes, what shows up on the shelves might not even resemble what you originally intended. Its not slavery or serfdom, but if you’re not prepared for it, it might feel a lot like they’re putting some big old chains on your creativity.

Now, that doesn’t mean they need zombie workers that do whatever they say, but they will need people that can take their vision…their popular, fairly set-in-stone characters and run with them. They need people that can produce exciting work that sells with what they’re given. Some editors might not let you tell the story you really want to tell or let you draw the artwork you really want to cut loose with. But no matter what guidelines or restrictions they lay out for you, they’ll still expect greatness.

On top of all that (this affects the creator-owned/self-published projects as well), you still have to be aware of the boundaries that limit your work through copyrights, trademarks, synchronicity, and the like–the things you have to contend with when working in any artistic field. You have to be able to deal with all that and deliver quality work that has your distinctive style to it…those chains seem to just get heavier and heavier, don’t they?

Can you do the job with your hands tied? How about if you’re also blindfolded, gagged, locked in a moldy chest, and buried under a ton of pickled herring? If you’re flexible and imaginative enough to constantly deliver good work under any conditions, you’ll eventually get that big name and all the extra freedom that goes with it. Editors and publishers like people that will work with them–people that can be thrown an impossible mish-mash of ideas, thoughts, and requirements and honestly reply, “I can do that.”

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.
–David Brinkley

If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down.
–Mary Pickford

…you should send out, today, the best work you are capable of doing today. Of course you’ll do better a year from now. But a year from now you should be writing the story that you care about and believe in at that time–not reworking this year’s story.
–Orson Scott Card

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
–Will Rogers

It isn’t what happens to people on a page–it’s what happens to a reader in his heart and mind.
–Gordon Lish

There are times when silence has the loudest voice.
–Leroy Brownlow

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
–Winston Churchill

Determination + Goal-setting + Concentration = Success
–Harvey Mackay

Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.
–Victoria Holt

I can’t control the wind, but I can adjust my sails.
–Anonymous

Dig the well before you are thirsty.
–Chinese prover

The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
–R. G. Ingersoll

Don’t be afraid to make a mistake, your readers might like it.
–William Randolph Hearst

100 percent of the shots you don’t take don’t go in.
–Wayne Gretzky

You moon the wrong person at an office party and suddenly you’re not ‘professional’ any more.
–Jeff Foxworthy

Collecting little quotations like this is just one of the things I do to help me persevere. I know some people that keep folders of great artwork to scan through when they need inspiration. Some people have music and others might have books of poetry. It doesn’t have to be anything major…it doesn’t have to be something your world revolves around…it just needs to be something that helps you down the path you’re traveling when the road gets a little bumpy. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much at all–maybe just a dangling carrot…cake…with cream cheese icing…drizzled with hot fudge…and toffee sprinkles…with a side of homemade vanilla ice cream…and…

You head straight for the best in the business to get that job. You’ve got a degree, you’ve mastered both Roller Coaster Tycoon and Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, and you’re ready for the big leagues. Then they ask you all those silly questions. Have you worked on a roller coaster before? Yes, that’s nice, but have you even done any kind of work on a real roller coaster before? So, not even work for a local fair or a small circus? Okay, it says on your application you have a college degree…is it in Physics? Engineering? Computers? Well then, do you have a number we can reach you at? Later. Much, much later. Never’s actually a good possibility.

Chances are, that person would have never even been called in for an interview. Jobs that require specific, high-level skills tend to be like that. Most of the time, you can’t just walk in and get hired for a skill position without the right experience. They’ll want to see something that shows them you can do the work and get it done consistently. Why? Well, hiring employees involves risk control. Most companies put in a lot of time, effort, and money into hiring people. If they get a bad hire, they’ve wasted all that, and they’ll have to deal with any problems that person might have caused while employed there (work delays, friction among other employees, communication breakdowns, damage to systems/product/processes, etc). That’s a lot for a company to put at risk. Not every position will have that impact on a company or its product, but well, you want to make comics, right? If you want a position as a creator, you are inherently a risky proposition for them.

A company can’t completely remove risk from the equation of hiring though. If they want to leap forward or take things in a new direction, they’ll need to take risks and bring in new blood with new perspectives on things, but they can take measures to reduce their chances of getting burned. They often look at specific things…experience working in the field, references, personality, and whether the person actually knows how to do the job. Well, personality is all you…but the rest can be proven to them. In many career fields, they have entry-level positions. You still need a certain amount of skill in a related position or a college degree to qualify for them, but you don’t need tons of experience in that particular job. They basically pay you horrible salaries to do lots of work, but as a benefit, you get training and lots of valuable experience that can be put on your resume. And if you keep working at it, you can slowly build yourself up to be pretty competitive in the job market. In comics, they don’t quite have entry-level positions (although I see at least one company trying), but there is the small press. It’s a good place to start…a good place to learn, practice and gain valuable experience that can be put on your list of credentials.

Sometimes though, picking up work in the small press arena can even be tough. This is when you want to remember that comics deal with art. Artistic credentials can be built up outside of the comics realm. A college degree related to the work your looking for can help spice up those credentials a little. Plus, the artist types can do work for magazines, children’s books, book covers, role-playing games, advertising companies, toy companies, video game concept art, film storyboards, animation, etc. The writers can work on articles for magazines and newspapers, ad copy, short stories for anthologies and magazines, enter screenwriting contests, or even write a novel. These are also good ways to pick up extra income or have a job to provide food and housing while working towards your dream job in comics.

Besides picking up experience, there’s another benefit to doing small press work…getting to work with people. Creating comics is a team effort, so unless you can do it all on your own, you’ll need to learn how to interact and properly communicate your thoughts/ideas/opinions with others. You’ll be working with others that are also trying to break in (or sometimes, you might even be lucky enough to find yourself working with someone who already has a decent name in the comics industry), and if they like your work or think you’re great to work with, who knows where they might mention your name. And as you work on a wide variety of projects, you might find yourself on a comic about oh, let’s say, hummingbird-people. Well, you now have the opportunity to ask some people that have done stories on hummingbird-people in the past and see if they have some tips, pointers or gotchas they could share with you. Finding a common thread to open a discussion on can sometimes get you in touch with someone you might have thought was unreachable. And once you start talking with people, you never know what else you might have in common or where any decent conversation might take you.

So…take college classes, finish off that degree, submit to small press publishers, hook up with other creators to self-publish, put together ashcans for conventions, or work in related jobs outside the comics industry…just do stuff to build up your credentials and give yourself a chance to sharpen your skills. Get your name out there on as much high quality work as you can, so the editors can’t avoid it. Then if you get a chance to meet with an editor, and they ask if you’ve ever worked on a comic before…you can give that sly little grin and say, “A few” just before you hand them a stack of published comics and a list of other projects two pages long.